Dr. Tom's Tip-October

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A few weeks ago, as I waited to give the keynote speech at Microsoft’s international reseller conference, I happened to notice something that piqued my curiosity.  Someone had prepared a series of slides containing trivia questions and answers to entertain the audience as they filed in, and one of the questions was, “How much of the meaning we communicate depends on the words we say?”  Then there were three choices:7%, 38%, 55%.

After a few seconds, the answer appeared:  7% of meaning depends on our words, 38% depends on our tone of voice, and 55% depends on body language.

Only 7% depends on our words?  Wow.  That was a bit disturbing to me, mainly because I was about to speak to about 750 people and had carefully prepared my words but not given much thought to my tone of voice or body language.  And how would I communicate my meaning (which had to do with developing strong executive summaries in proposals) through body language?  It seemed to me even Marcel Marceau would have trouble pulling that off.Like any dedicated scholar, I decided to do some research.  By that I mean I googled the statistics.  And what I learned is that the percentages were correct, but they are wildly misleading.  It turns out those statistics come from a study done by a psychologist named Albert Mehrabian who was studying the communication of feelings. 

He had people assess the “meaning: of messages when the tone of voice and body language—the nonverbal communication—were at odds with what their words literally communicated.Verbal:  “Of course I’m glad your mother is going to stay with us for six weeks.”Nonverbal:  The speaker speaks in a strained voice, avoids eye contact, looks anxious or stressed.In that kind of situation, test subjects were more likely to believe what they saw in someone’s nonverbal behavior than what they heard in the words.  And we can probably think of examples where that has been true. 

Have you ever chuckled inwardly to hear some poor soul tell the audience how happy he or she is to be standing in front of them while looking as if they were about to collapse from stage fright?  It’s the incongruence of the spoken versus the nonverbal message that strikes us.  There are two conclusions I’ve drawn from reading about Mehrabian and his study.  First, although his statistics are often quoted or misquoted (“80% of your message is nonverbal”), they are almost always misapplied.  Mehrabian himself was very clear that his study only applied to the way speakers convey their attitudes or their feelings. 

It is absolutely not true that nonverbal cues somehow communicate most of the content in a person’s message.  A lecture on Newton’s third law or a conversation about last Saturday’s golf game or a keynote speech on proposal writing all depend on the meaning of the words.  As Mehrabian worte, “these equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes….Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.”Second, in persuasive communications, attitudes and feelings matter a lot.  If the customer senses incongruence between our words and our attitudes—if we are saying we are committed to the success of their project, but our nonverbal cues suggest that we don’t really feel that conviction—then we’re going to have problems.  The customer may conclude that we are not trustworthy. 

I’m not suggesting that you should learn how to fake sincerity or conviction or enthusiasm.  A speaker should be authentic when he or she presents, not playing a role.  But we do need to be aware of what our nonverbal cues look like.  Sometimes we are so nervous that we look as though we’re uncomfortable with our message when we’re only uncomfortable with the spotlight.  Rehearse.  Ask for feedback from your colleagues.  Best of all, look at videotape of yourself presenting with the sound off.  What kind of nonverbal messages about your feelings are you sending? 

If you’d like help in developing your ability to deliver an effective message—both verbally and nonverbally—let me know.  I can help you or your sales team do a better job with both sides of the equation.

To order a copy of Persuasive Business Proposals, please click here.  To order Dr. Tom’s new book, The Giants of Sales, please click here.  To improve your writing, take a look at Tom’s most recent book, The Language of Success, which you can order here.

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