To be Chewbacca, or non-verbal communication. Little practice

Laurus Fedotovich finally exhausted this difficulty, and, interrupting the speaker, he said only one word:
- unconvincing.
There was a heavy blow. The Big Round Seal dug into my application.
A. and B. Strugatsky. "The Tale of Troika"


Good morning, Habr.

Let's discuss a little more, like at home (read: without special teachers and trainers) to learn proper communication. The program is almost continuous non-verbal component of communication, as well as a couple of exercises to work it out.
')
The question of why communicating seems to be no longer there, but I will write two lines about why a non-verbal component is needed, and what kind of beast it is. And I apologize in advance to those who understand this term very well.
In each message there are two parts: the actual text and ... everything else. Having the property, in contrast to the text, to act directly on the listener's subconscious, leaving in it reliable traces. All that is put in the subconscious, being properly laid, firmly supports the message transmitted to the mind. An incorrect message, transmitted at the subconscious (read: non-verbal) level, can enter into a cruel contradiction with the spoken text and thereby cause him, the text, heavy damage in the minds of the audience. To illustrate, I don’t know, imagine that the robot Marvin from HHTTG told you how genuinely happy he is to see you.

The number of all that is perceived mainly at the subconscious level includes: intonation, pace of speech, diction, emotional content, gestures, posture, facial expression and blah blah blah from our Carnegie's Dale that the appearance of the audience decides . Honestly, about the appearance today, I will not, in my opinion, this topic is already full of teeth. About what I will, - so it is about intonation, emotional content, the pace of speech, the treatment of the audience.

Micro training # 1

Everyone, of course, remembers Comrade Chewbacca, who spoke in the language of the Wookiee, but at the same time, every shabby inhabitant of the galaxy understood him completely? Because the power of his words was not in truth, but in intonational wealth. In order to pick up the desire of many of us to read seminars in the even sad tone of Marvin's robot, you can try this kind of thing:

Conversation on jibberish

(practicing the author of the exercise is not me, by the way, bowing to a colleague

We organize a group of 3-4 people.
Instructions for action: each of you should alternately be in the role of a speaker, asking questions and arguing. Choose any topic for a speech that is close to you, think over your arguments. The time for performance is 1-2 minutes. Your colleagues should, depending on the role, ask you questions and contradict you reasonably. Attention, a trick: all conversations must be conducted in a non-existent language. Everyone invents the language itself, who is in that much.

After everyone has tried themselves in each of the roles, do not forget to hold a feedback session, asking each other questions about whether the conversation was a success, did you understand each other, what mood did you hear in the words of your opponents?
Estimated organizational conclusions: an opportunity to be convinced on my own experience, ─ intonation solves. Supposed skills: by deliberately disconnecting the brain from the content of the text, to work on the intonation of their messages.

Micro-training # 2: Interaction with the audience

It has long and well noticed that the audience quickly dies. How to live with it further?

Persuasion exercise followed by collective criticism

Each participant should get out in front of the group and during the same minute or two, appeal to the public with an appeal to do something. Then give the group the opportunity to break down the speaker's credibility .

The exceptional usefulness of this analysis is that your trainees can see all of the following on their own, and this, according to the law of any training, is assimilated an order of magnitude better than just a set of rules listed by the lecturer.

Most likely, the group will see the following nuances:

Eye contact

If I do not look at you, you are offended. If I look at you and only at you, and point-blank, you are afraid, or flattering, that I am so tender to you. It's a shame to everyone else. Look from face to face, trying to cover the entire audience, not lingering for a long time on anyone, while trying to make eye-to-eye contact, but avoid burning the eyes in the listener's skull with your eyes.

Interested pose

Well, everyone knows about the closed / open poses, about the fact that your back will bother the listeners much faster than your brisk face, about the fact that if you carelessly wiggle in a chair, the intonation almost automatically becomes indulgent, and, consequently, the effect of thoughts expressed will be blurred.

Intonation, it is also transmitted emotion

See exercise # 1. In addition, it can be noted that if the speaker himself does not believe in what he says, then we, modest listeners, will treat his message with understandable disbelief. Therefore, it is worthwhile to follow the covenant of the White Queen from “Alice” and try to believe in breakfast before a fable or another. Especially if you explain it tomorrow. Otherwise, the very subconscious of the listener, which perceives a fair share of your message, will remain unheeded.

Diction and pace of speech

People notice these features in one of the first goals. So, if you correctly tune everyone into thinking that benevolent criticism was invented to help colleagues, then you may finally be able to convey to all those who hold both fists at the mouth in a responsible conversation - that is not worth doing. Group impact is a terrible thing. Unfortunately, to be able to draw the attention of the speaker to this, is only the upper part of the iceberg, so if I manage to convince a colleague, and it will be interesting, we will sing about diction separately.

Here are a few things that are visible not too naked eye and well stuck in the head when you give her a group of your colleagues in the feedback mode.

Two more things from a different series that may not emerge, but which you can unobtrusively pay attention to when your group’s stock of criticism has been exhausted.

Reaction to questions

As one fabulous character said, ─ "Everything about myself, but about myself, while others may also want to talk about themselves." As soon as you begin to respond vividly to questions, the temperature in the room immediately jumps up. Because by doing so you show how important your audience is to you. A primitive idea, and in theory we all know it. Try to steer on this idea by joint debriefing, and it will immediately shine with new colors.

Jokes of humor

It is clear that the art of joking correctly and in time is impossible to work out with any training. But in the “how to” guides, as well as in most American TV shows, you can find the term “a joke joke”. When it comes to homework performances, take the time to find a suitable anecdote for the seed. This is almost guaranteed to attract the attention of the audience to you and at the same time slightly relax all those present, and in an informal atmosphere, as a rule, it is easier to discuss any topics on a global scale.

I repeat, this story, like the previous one, is built on the actual practice of working within a 1-2 hour workshop for very specific people, so it seems to me that all of the above can be safely applied to those of your employees who, by occupation, have to talking, convincing.

PS: In the following series:

• And now - slides
• Corporate party - corporate brain
• Managers are best friends of recruiters.