In the 1960’s Dr Albert Mehrabian, an eminent behavioural psychologist, studied the impact of communication and concluded that human communication can be broken down into THREE distinctive areas: body language, tone of voice and spoken words – and most people are surprised to find that what is said carries less significance than the way it is said and how the body interprets the words.
Are you ready to become a better communicator and speak with confidence, clarity and credibility?
Workshop Details & How to Register
Does the ‘new normal’ world of work mean that we communicate in a different way?
Non-verbal skills are even more important now than they were before this global pandemic. With the Covid-19 crisis forcing most people to reduce face-to-face contact and to work remotely using video links to interact with customers and colleagues, the importance of using facial expressions and voice tonality has dramatically increased. We believe that anyone who develops strong non-verbal communication skills in today’s ‘new normal’ world is going to benefit significantly in the future.
Non-verbal communication can help gain trust, confidence and respect much quicker than words alone can … non-verbal communication ‘talks’ all the time!
But what does all this mean for telephone communication?
Recent research suggests that we can detect whether someone is frowning, slouching or smiling, even if there is no visual contact between two people. This is because posture affects the tone of the voice, therefore the ‘Circle of Communication’ for non-visual communication alters to tone of voice (how we say it), approximately 75% and the words we use (what we say), approximately 25%.
Understanding the importance of the tone of your voice during your phone call is the first step to a successful conversation. The second step to bear in mind is that there is no visual contact on the phone and your body language can’t actually be seen, but that doesn’t mean that you should not be using body and facial gestures ……. By using appropriate gestures, your body language will be absorbed into the tone of your voice because each gesture will affect the sound as it comes out of your mouth!
Speak in colour! … not black and white