Hi everyone, old and new readers.
As these are unprecedented times I have changed the format of my blog to be about how you can keep state during lockdown, using NLP techniques and also just telling you what I´m doing here in Spain, where we are having one of the strictest lockdowns in the world and as I publish this six weeks in isolation will have passed by.
I´m not a doctor nor an epidemiologist, I´m just an International Life and Health Coach, NLP Trainer, motivational speaker and blogger. So, my blog is not a theory about the virus. It is about how do we keep state during hard times and how do we adapt to physical distancing and economic insecurity.
I´m aware that many of you are working from home and you are doing this while you are taking care of your children and that in itself is a challenge. I hope you can find a way to juggle it all and that your employer is flexible.
I also hope that you take breaks, what I hear from the people I talk to is that their work Is more intense both off and on-line as there are no natural coffee breaks and the focus and concentration is different during online meetings.
I know the online Coaching I do is very intense as I only have the frame of the camera to look for the non-verbal clues.
Today I will talk about the non-verbal communication that we lose when we are not in the same room. Online communication can be tricky, but we can teach ourselves to look and listen for information in the limited frame from an online meeting.
It may surprise you but approximately only 7% of communication is from linguistics (the words and the spoken language), 38% is from intonation (tone, volume and rhythm) and 55% is physiologic (facial expression, blinking, gestures and postures)
There are many things you can look for, how are the people breathing? You can often see this by observing the top line of the shoulders. Do they seem calm or agitated somehow? How are the muscles in the face, are they relaxed, are they tense? Are they sitting close to the camera, or a bit further away?
What can you listen for? How are they talking? What is the volume like, the rhythm? Do they pause or is it one long flow of words that leaves them tired? Which words do they use?
Do they use predicate phrases?:
Visual
- It appears to me
- Clear cut
- In light of
- See to it
Auditory
- Give me an account of
- Loud and clear
- Idle talk
- Clear as a bell.
Kinaesthetic
- Boils down to
- Come to grips with
- Get a handle on
- Know-how
Just to mention a few.
Once you have collected this information, what do you do with it?
You can use it to calibrate the state of the people in the meeting and you can also use it to create rapport.
You can create Rapport by matching what the people you are meeting with are doing (you do the same they are doing), by mirroring (you are like a mirror to them ) or you can do a Cross over match (they cross over their legs you cross over your arms for example)
If you notice the predicate phrases, they are using it can be an indication of how they get most of their information, visual, auditory of kinaesthetic. You can then adapt your predicate phrases to the ones they use.
It takes some practice and with time you can become a regular specialist in online meetings. There are other things you can look for like eye-movement. Or you can learn how to translate between the different predicate phrases to enhance the communication between co-workers.
When all this is over this is what I will travel around to teach in companies as many are planning to have more tele-workers and cut cost of offices and their running costs.
You can also use these techniques when you connect with family and friends.
I hope you are staying safe and looking after your state, remember it is free to be kind.
My best intentions
Ivalo