Central Texas College What Are You Saying without Words Discussion

View the graphics presented in the Learning Activity titled “The World of Nonverbal Communication,” and give three examples of body language that was mentioned in the Activity that you have used today to express something non-verbally. Was your message received the way you intended? Why or why not? Next, describe a situation in which a person’s nonverbal expressions did not align with his or her verbal message. This could be a personal or professional experience or one you observed in the media. How did you interpret this person’s message? Please explain.

The World of Nonverbal
Communication
Introduction
Think about how you view the world around you. How do you
communicate without words? Read this section to discover more
about the subtle layers of communication happening all around us.
Other readings address verbal elements of communication, and in
this reading, you will explore how you communicate without words,
through the use of vocal and visual sounds, signs, and behaviors. The
messages you send nonverbally serve different functions when you
interact with people, but they primarily communicate your emotions
and attitudes and contribute information about what you are
thinking and feeling. Improving your ability to understand and to use
nonverbal communication effectively is an important component in
developing your interpersonal communication competency.
When you think of communication, you most likely think of words.
Most parents celebrate the first words a young child speaks; you
seldom hear them report when their children first point to something
or flap their tiny hands to represent a bird. Most people do not pay
much attention to these signs because they do not consider them
important (Doherty-Sneddon, 2003). However, children often learn to
send messages using nonverbal communication before they learn to
speak.
Nonverbal communication is defined as communication of a message
without words, which means that it encompasses a wide range of
vocal and visual signs and behaviors. Throughout your life, you
express thoughts and ideas not only through language but also
through your voice, eyes, face, body posture and movement, and
hand gestures. A sigh, a “cold stare,” a frown, a shrug of the
shoulders, or a finger pointed at someone often conveys a message
as clearly as a spoken word.
© eurobanks/iStock/Thinkstock
When you listen to others, your attention is usually focused on the
words they say rather than on characteristics of their voice or their
body language. However, you process the nonverbal messages
people send at the same time you process the verbal messages, and
you make judgments about others based on both.
Like language, nonverbal communication can be ambiguous and may
be misunderstood. However, nonverbal messages are usually more
believable and more reliable than verbal messages. They are often
outside our conscious control and, thus, they are often a truthful sign
of what we are feeling and thinking. For this reason, nonverbal
characteristics and behaviors are an integral part of interpersonal
communication.
When you communicate nonverbally, you use your voice and parts of
your body to send messages. Some of these messages are conscious
and intentional, but many are innate aspects of your unique voice or
body that you cannot change.
Still other nonverbal communication is unconscious and the result of
habits you have developed. These unspoken messages serve a variety
of functions in interpersonal communication. They may:
1. reinforce, complement, or emphasize the words you
speak
2. substitute for words
3. interrupt or distract from verbal communication and be
a form of noise
4. conflict with/contradict the verbal message
Various types of vocal and visual messages have different
characteristics; however, they are all similar in that they primarily
communicate your feelings and attitudes and contribute information
about what you are thinking and feeling. Nonverbal communication
can also be a form of feedback and the method by which you show
interest and help maintain conversations.
As you examine the aspects of voice and body language that people
use to communicate, think about personal characteristics of your
own voice and the visual signs you use regularly in interpersonal
communication. Your voice, facial expressions, and body movements
can be such clear and distinct features of you that other people use
them when they want to imitate you, and comedians employ them to
create impressions of celebrities and political figures.
Your voice reveals a great deal about you. Your vocal quality or tone,
rate of speech, volume, pitch, and rhythm, along with your silences
and the vocal fillers you use when you pause often communicate
your feelings, intentions, and meanings in powerful ways. These vocal
elements are called paralanguage.
When people are angry, their voices usually get louder and more
shrill. When tired, their voices are often flat and dull. Trainers often
instruct people in customer relations jobs to put a smile on their
faces when they talk with customers on the telephone because the
facial smile also tends to “put a smile in your voice.” When you
communicate with others, what does your voice say about you? Let
us examine how each aspect of your voice contributes to the
impression you create when you communicate with others.
Primary Vocal Characteristics
You can recognize people by their voices. In fact, your individual voice
is unique and you can be identified by a voice print, a computergenerated analysis that can distinguish one person’s voice from that
of another. How often have you heard someone talking as they
walked by and knew who they were before you looked up?
Your unique vocal characteristics may help you create a positive
impression when you interact with others; however, these
characteristics might also create a negative impression due to poor
speaking habits that you may have developed. You can correct bad
speech habits, if you wish. Your attitudes and emotions can also
influence how you use your voice, which is one reason you
sometimes cannot pinpoint the reason you reacted negatively to
something someone said. Instead, you might state, “It was not what
she said, but how she said it.” Let us look at the characteristics that
give your voice its distinctive character: timbre, pitch, intensity,
tempo, and rhythm.
Timbre
The timbre (pronounce “TAM-ber”) of your voice refers to its overall
quality and tone and is often called the “color” of your voice. Timbre
is often regarded as one of the primary characteristics of a person’s
voice. It is what makes your voice either pleasant or disturbing to
listen to. Adjectives often used to describe the timbre of a person’s
voice include clear, brassy, mellow, breathy, resonant, piercing,
harsh, nasal, warm, melodious, thin, and flat.
Pitch
One of the most important ways you convey messages with your
voice is through pitch. Vocal pitch describes where your voice is on
the musical scale and determines whether singing voices are
soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, or bass voices.
Your voice is not usually at the same pitch all the time. Your pitch
goes up and down the musical scale as you express different
thoughts and feelings. When you are excited, for example, you
usually unconsciously tighten the muscles in your throat, which
causes your voice to rise in pitch. Changes in pitch are called
vocal inflection, and it can affect how interesting you judge a person
to be. Someone who speaks at the same pitch all the time, with no
changes in their voice to express emotions, is said to speak in a
monotone, and you may find it boring and difficult to pay attention
to that speaker.
Vocal inflection is also an important element in creating meaning. For
example, try this exercise: Say the sentence “I never said he stole
money” six times, emphasizing a different word each time. The first
time you say the sentence, emphasize the word I: “I never said he
stole money.” The second time, emphasize the word never:
“I never said he stole money.” Continue the exercise, emphasizing
each of the last three words as you repeat the sentence. Did you get
a different meaning from the sentence each time? Possible common
interpretations of each sentence with the different vocal inflections
follow.
Vocal Inflection (stressed word in italics)
Sentence 1: “I never said he stole money.”
Common Interpretation
Someone else must have said it.
Sentence 2: “I never said he stole money.”
No way (strong, emphatic denial).
Sentence 3: “I never said he stole money.”
I might have implied it, but I didn’t say it.
Sentence 4: “I never said he stole money.”
Someone else might have stolen it, though.
Sentence 5: “I never said he stole money.”
However, he might have borrowed it.
Sentence 6: “I never said he stole my money.”
He took other things, though.
When you communicate, you often combine verbal communication
with changes in pitch and body language. For instance, a high-pitched
word, “Oh,” with raised eyebrows and raised arms usually indicates a
happy surprise, while a low-pitched “Oh,” with a droopy face and
body suggests disappointment (Poyatos, 2002b).
You cannot change your basic type of voice, but every voice has
a vocal range that extends from its low to high pitch. You can modify
the pitch of your voice by tightening or relaxing the muscles in your
throat and speaking at the higher or lower end of your vocal range;
this can make your speech more interesting or more appropriate. If
you have been told, for example, that your voice is occasionally highpitched or shrill, you can modify it by practicing vocal exercises that
force you to speak at the lower end of your vocal range. If you like,
you can find plenty of exercises by searching the Internet for “vocal
exercises.”
Intensity
Successful communication requires some practical considerations.
First, the receiver of your communication must be able to hear you.
Vocal intensity refers to the volume of your speech; how loudly or
how softly you express yourself.
Even children as young as three years old instinctively know that as
their distance from another person increases, they must increase the
volume of their speech (Johnson, Pick, Siegel, Cicciarelli, & Garber,
1981). The key here is to make sure that your vocal intensity is
appropriate for the context in which the communication is taking
place. Intensity that is inappropriate for the situation, such as talking
too loudly in the workplace or too softly in a meeting, can cause
others to make negative judgments about your communication
competency.
Tempo
Tempo refers to your rate of speech—how slowly or quickly you talk.
Your speech tempo is influenced by whether you lengthen the
syllables of a word (called a drawl) or shorten the syllables (called
clipped speech). It is also influenced by how fast you deliver the
sequence of words in a sentence, by how often you pause, and by
how long you hold that pause between words or sentences. These
vocal characteristics are all part of your individual vocal style, and
they enable you to emphasize certain words when you speak. They
can also indicate power, self-assurance, or dominance, as when you
speak very deliberately and distinctly. On the other hand, if you speak
very slowly or hesitate when you talk, the tempo of your speech can
show a lack of self-confidence or suggest that you are uncertain
about what you are saying (Poyatos, 2002b).
Rhythm
Differences in the pitch, intensity, tempo, and length of word
syllables as you speak produce variations in the flow of your voice
known as vocal rhythm. This rhythm can produce an overall speech
pattern that is smooth, flowing, and easy to listen to or one that is
jerky, staccato, and halting (Poyatos, 2002b). If you have listened to a
dull speaker who drones on with no vocal variety, you can appreciate
how much more interesting the human voice can be if it has rhythm.
Recording your voice and playing it back to yourself is an excellent
way to assess the rhythm and other qualities of your voice.
Other Vocal Features
In addition to the primary vocal characteristics that give your voice its
distinct character, you use other paralanguage to send nonverbal
messages about your attitude. These other vocal attributes are not
regular features of your voice like the primary vocal characteristics
discussed previously. They occur only occasionally and are generally
of short duration. However, their meaning is often shared in a
culture, and they are usually interpreted in specific ways that can
modify the verbal message you are sending. Sometimes this
paralanguage can even change the standard interpretation of a word.
Nonverbal Vocalizations
Some of the vocal features that can convey meaning in a culture are
specific sounds, noises, and behaviors called nonverbal vocalizations.
These vocalizations are often accompanied by visible body language
and include whispering, laughing, crying, shouting, sighing, gasping,
panting, yawning, coughing or clearing the throat, spitting, belching,
hiccupping, and sneezing. These behaviors, sounds, and noises—
along with others we humans can produce, such as “grrr” to indicate
anger or frustration, “psst” to get someone’s attention, “shush” to
tell someone to be quiet, “ah” when we see a beautiful sunset,
“plop” to imitate something soft falling on the floor, or “hiss” and
“boo” to express displeasure at a sporting event—help us express our
ideas and feelings without words (Poyatos, 2002b). Whistling also fits
into this category, and different types of whistles can express a wide
range of ideas. Vocal sounds can be voluntary or involuntary, but
they modify your communication and send a nonverbal message.
Many of them also have cultural implications, and some sounds may
be considered rude or inappropriate in certain social settings.
Pauses and Silence
When you communicate, for different reasons you often stop making
sounds. The presence or absence of pauses or moments of silence,
how often they occur, and how appropriate or inappropriate they are
to the conversation, can be important messages in your
communication. “I do not want you to disturb me” is the message of
the person sitting next to you in an airplane if he or she remains
silent and does not initiate conversation or greet you when you
arrive, and most of us get the message (Penna, Mocci, & Sechi, 2009).
Dysfluencies
A final category of vocal characteristics that influence our
interpersonal communication consists of speech dysfluencies. The
word dysfluent means “not fluent” or “not flowing.” Dysfluencies are
speech problems that keep your speech from being as smooth and
fluent as it could be. Dysfluencies can have a number of causes. For
example, you might have a speech disability, such as a stutter, or a
hearing loss that may require medical diagnosis or treatment. In
other instances, however, dysfluencies are caused by poor speech
habits that you can correct.
One of the most common poor speech habits is the use of vocal
fillers. People around the world fill pauses. In the United States, “um”
or “uh” is often added to pauses. The French say something that
sounds like “euh”; Serbs and Croats say “ovay”; Spanish speakers use
“este”; and Japanese speakers say “eto” (eh-to) and “ano” (ah-no)
(Erard, 2004). These vocal fillers are natural in ordinary conversation.
However, when you use them excessively they cause communication
problems. In formal speech, for example, in a business meeting or in
a public speaking situation, these vocal fillers can make you look as
though you lack confidence or are unprepared.
Vocal fillers such the words “you know,” “go,” (as in “Then I go,
‘What do ‘ya mean?’ And he goes, ‘I didn’t mean anything.’”) or “like”
(as in “I was thinking like maybe you could like stop by this
afternoon”) create even more serious problems. Besides simply
acting as fillers for pauses, these words can create negative
impressions, especially in professional environments, because they
are often interpreted as careless or rude. Even more troublesome are
swear words as fillers. Again, in professional situations such as the
workplace, these vocal fillers can reflect poorly on you as a
communicator.
Aside from what you say to another person with words and with
paralanguage, in face-to-face communication you also transmit
messages by means of visible signs. These signs and behaviors are a
type of body language that involves your eyes, face, body posture,
and hand gestures. The study of these visible methods of
communicating with our bodies is called kinesics.
Earlier we noted that nonverbal elements of communication often
transmit messages that are more believable and more reliable than
spoken words. In fact, researchers have found that you tend to rely
more heavily on visual communication, rather than words, in times of
stress. For example, at times of great loss, words may fail you, and
you may communicate your feelings by hugging others or touching
them instead of talking (Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall, 1996).
Some nonverbal communication is personal and has meaning only to
the communicators, such as secret handshakes and gestures.
Nonverbal communication is also an element of culture and, like
vocal characteristics, many visual signs and behaviors accompany
speech and convey a standard, shared meaning in a particular
culture.
Eye Behavior
One of the most important aspects of nonverbal communication is
eye behavior. Were you aware that every culture has unwritten rules
about when it is permissible to look at someone, where you can look,
and how long you can look? For example, in the United States, total
strangers usually think nothing of stopping someone on the street
who is pushing a stroller to gaze at the baby, and caregivers usually
think nothing about letting them do so. Americans tend to look at
others above the neck or below the knees. Looking at other parts of a
person’s body is considered impolite, while looking at anyone for
more than three to five seconds can be interpreted as staring.
Eye behavior communicates in many important ways. You can widen
your eyes, narrow them, dilate or constrict the pupils, roll your eyes,
raise and lower your gaze, wink at someone, and close your eyes. You
can hold your eyes steady, look over your shoulder, or turn your head
and look behind yourself. You can also raise or lower your eyebrows
or scowl to draw your eyebrows close. Laughter is also reflected in
the eyes, and they become bright when you laugh; however, your
eyes can also glaze over when you are bored, and tears can fall from
your eyes with sadness (Esposito, Bratanic, & Keller, 2007). Your eyes
can send messages of love, hate, dominance, and empathy, and they
are important indicators of your feelings.
The act of fixing your eyes on someone is called eye gaze. When you
communicate with another person, gazing at him or her serves two
primary purposes: (1) to help you monitor the conversation and
know when it is your turn to speak and (2) to obtain feedback
(Esposito, Bratanic, & Keller, 2007). Eye gaze typically does not
involve steady fixation on one location on the face. Our gaze tends to
move around the other person’s face in brief fixations, primarily on
the other person’s eyes and mouth.
Fixing your eyes on someone is called eye gaze.© Denis
Pepin/iStock/Thinkstock
Having someone gaze at you can be pleasant, especially if you look at
someone you are attracted to and he or she returns your gaze.
However, if you gaze at a person to the extent that it causes
discomfort, the person may interpret the eye behavior as threatening
or intimidating. Thus, eye behavior is one area of nonverbal
communication in which children are often given explicit instructions
such as “It is rude to stare at someone” (Doherty-Sneddon, 2003).
People are deeply influenced by other people’s eye behavior, and eye
gaze is governed by cultural rules. In the United States, for example,
looking someone “in the eye” is an indication of honesty and
sincerity, and Americans interpret eye contact as attentiveness,
involvement, a desire to obtain or to communicate information, and
an attempt to be friendly. In Japan, however, direct eye contact
makes many Japanese people uncomfortable and may be interpreted
as an attempt to intimidate or an indication of hostility. Instead, it is
advisable to gaze at a person’s forehead or chin most of the time
(Gesteland & Seyk, 2002).
Facial Expression
The part of the body where emotions are expressed primarily is a
person’s face, although other nonverbal channels such as vocal
sounds, posture, and hand gestures can contribute information about
the intensity of the emotion. The face is a finely tuned visual channel
for sharing information, with the ability to produce a range of facial
expressions from the very subtle to the very dramatic. Faces also
convey other types of important information, for example, by looks
of disbelief or an “eyebrow flash” to greet or acknowledge someone
(Doherty-Sneddon, 2003).
Researchers do not agree on how many facial expressions can be
formed; however, psychologist Paul Ekman, who has studied facial
expressions for more than 50 years, has cataloged more than 10,000
human expressions. His research suggests that some facial
expressions are universal, and others are culturally specific (Ekman,
1971). For example, people in all cultures seem to react to fear with
similar facial expressions; however, people in different cultures are
frightened by different things (Griffiths, 2008). Seven facial
expressions—contempt, fear, surprise, anger, disgust, sadness, and
happiness—as you can see in the following images, appear in all or
most cultures and are widely accepted by researchers as universal
(Duenwald, 2005).
A few facial expressions appear to be innate, but others seem to be
learned. Researchers, for example, report that just moments after
birth newborn babies make expressions of disgust in response to
bitter tastes. As children mature, they learn to produce specific facial
expressions, to understand the facial expressions of others, and to
modify their own expressions to match those of others. Being able to
understand and produce appropriate facial expressions is essential to
a child’s social development, and problems doing so are often signs
of developmental disorders such as autism (Doherty-Sneddon, 2003).
Understanding facial expressions is also necessary for safety.
Interpreting facial expressions is a good way to predict other people’s
behavior and judge their personalities. For example, you might signal
that you are friendly by smiling at someone, or you might judge
someone as cold and arrogant based on facial expression (Knutson,
1996).
Most adults are adept at controlling their facial movement and
masking their feelings, if they work on it. However, this voluntary
control of your face is only one way that facial expressions are
produced. Other facial expressions are spontaneous and involuntary,
so they are much more difficult to disguise.
Controlled or deliberate voluntary facial movements are often
called posed expressions because they do not necessarily reflect how
you feel; instead, like a forced smile, they are what you want others
to think that you feel. Often they look insincere.
Some facial expressions and emotions are universal, so you may wish
to let them guide you to interpret colleagues’ meanings. These
common expressions are:
Fear: The eyes widen and the upper lids rise, as in surprise, but the
brows draw together and are not curved. Person has a hard stare.
The lips stretch horizontally, and mouth may be open.
© shvili/iStock/Thinkstock
Anger: Both the lower and upper eyelids tighten as the brows lower
and are drawn inward and down. Upper eyelids are tense and lids
tightened to appear as if squinting. Lips are either tightly pressed
together or the mouth is open and squared, with lips raised and/or
the jaw thrust forward.
© Purestock/Thinkstock.
Happiness: No distinctive brow appearance. Eyes may be relaxed or
neutral or upper lids tense and pulled up at the inner corner,
narrowing the eyes and creating crow’s feet at the outside corners.
Outer corners of lips are raised and usually drawn back.
© Ingram Publishing/Thinkstock
Contempt: This is the only expression that appears on just one side of
the face: One half of the upper lip tightens upward.
© Daniel Ernst/iStock/Thinkstock
Surprise: The upper eyelids and brows rise, the eyebrows are raised
and curved, and the jaw drops open.
© sjenner13/iStock/Thinkstock
Disgust: Brows are drawn down but not together. The nose wrinkles,
and the lower eyelids are raised but not tensed. Mouth is either open
with upper lip raised and lower lip forward or out, or mouth is closed
with upper lip pushed up while the lower lip protrudes.
© offstocker/iStock/Thinkstock
Sadness: Brows are drawn together with inner corners raised and
outer corners lowered or level, or brows are drawn down in the
middle and slightly raised at inner corners, with eyelids drooping.
Mouth is either closed or open with partially stretched, trembling
lips, with the corners of the lips pulled down.
© moodboard/moodboard/Thinkstock
Spontaneous expressions, on the other hand, occur as a direct result
of an emotional experience or feeling. So, when you feel sad or
happy (two of the suggested universal emotional expressions), your
face naturally reflects those feelings, unless you deliberately try to
mask the expression. It appears that humans are born with the
potential to produce the seven basic emotional expressions
spontaneously and do not have to learn them. Children who were
born blind have been found to produce these expressions, even
though they had never seen them (Doherty-Sneddon, 2003).
Paying attention to and accurately interpreting the facial expressions
of others is an extremely important skill you must acquire to be an
effective communicator. As with all forms of communication,
nonverbal messages may be unclear or ambiguous, so providing
feedback or questioning someone to make sure your interpretation
of facial expressions is correct is an essential part of the
communication process.
Body Posture and Movement
Also known as spatial behavior, body posture and movement are
important aspects of body language. Nodding your head in response
to something someone says, leaning forward or backward when you
are interacting with other people, and crossing your legs at the
ankles, over the knees, or not at all, all say something about your
cultural background, without using words. Like other forms of
nonverbal communication, you learn body posture and movement
early in life, and you might assume that it is just natural. However,
these nonverbal behaviors are very much culturally determined and
can have different effects on people from different backgrounds.
Like facial expressions, certain body postures seem to be related to
emotions. As discussed previously, adults are generally aware of how
to mask their facial expressions in social situations. However, people
are not nearly as conscious of their body postures, so they exert
greater control over their facial expressions than they do over other
bodily expressions.
Body posture can indicate how interested you are in another person
or how fond you are of him or her. For example, leaning toward
someone generally indicates interest and involvement, whereas
leaning back is a way to disengage from someone. Thus, you can
often determine the relationship between two people by their body
postures toward each other and how close together they sit or stand.
Interestingly, people often mirror or copy the behavior of others
(e.g., crossing or uncrossing the legs or leaning on the arm of a chair
when the other person does it) when they communicate with
someone, especially if that person is of a higher social status
(Poyatos, 2002a).
Hand Gestures
When people talk, they usually gesture with their hands. The hand
gestures usually reinforce the verbal message. At times, however,
you may produce hand gestures unaccompanied by words. In these
instances the gestures may carry the entire burden of the
communication. For many people who are hearing impaired, sign
language carries most of the communication, although some also
read lips. Learning to communicate through sign language seems to
follow the same learning process as learning to communicate with
speech. When hearing-impaired children are exposed to sign
language from birth, they learn that language as naturally as hearing
children learn spoken language (Goldin-Meadow, 2003).
Hand gestures can reinforce our efforts to communicate. ©
Alliance/iStock/Thinkstock
A wealth of unspoken information is communicated with your hands,
and gestural communication plays a crucial role in interpersonal
communication. Like all forms of nonverbal communication, culture
plays an important role in gestural communication. In the United
Sates, handshakes or “high fives” are used as ritual greetings, and use
of your hands and arms to hug someone or to give a playful poke are
signs of affection. However, you must be extremely careful about
touching another person and ensure that touch is welcome and
appropriate for the context of the communication. Although the
hands are the most common body parts used for gesturing, you can
use other parts of your body to gesture, such as when you shrug your
shoulders or wink. Consider how you might interpret each of the
following gestures.
Shaking a finger at someone (with hand moving up and down three
or four times)
Knocking on wood (fist with knuckles down moving up and down in
short movements)
Shrugging shoulders (shoulders moving upward and down again)
Clasping hands, palm against palm, and forearms moving back and
forth (this gesture can be made in front of yourself or over your
head)
Making a circular movement with hand on the stomach and the palm
inward
Bringing up palm of one hand and slapping the forehead
Pulling hand, slightly cupped, across the forehead as if wiping
something away
Pulling index finger across the throat
Twiddling thumbs (the fingers of both hands are interlocked, and the
thumbs move in circles around each other)
Many hand gestures are emblems, gestures that are clear and
unambiguous and have a verbal equivalent in a given culture
(Poyatos, 2002a). Only a handful of emblematic gestures seem to be
universal, for example, a shrug of the shoulders to indicate “I don’t
know.” Most emblems are culturally determined, and they can get
you into difficulty if you use them in other countries. In the United
States, some emblematic gestures are the thumb-up-and-out
hitchhiking sign, the circled thumb and index finger OK sign, and the
“V” for victory sign. However, be careful of using these gestures
outside the United States. The thumb-up sign in Iran, for example, is
an obscene gesture, and our OK sign has sexual connotations in
Ethiopia and Mexico (Liebal, Müller, & Pika, 2007).
Improving Nonverbal Communication
People vary in their ability to send and receive nonverbal
communication, and difficulty in understanding or interpreting
nonverbal messages can be a serious handicap in interpersonal
communication. You can improve your interpersonal communication
skills considerably, though, by paying attention to your own
nonverbal behaviors and those of the people with whom you
interact. You may want to analyze your own behavior by recording
yourself. Or, if you are thick skinned, you might ask a trusted friend
or colleague to offer feedback to you.
You might focus your analysis on the following:
Vocal
Timbre: What adjective could be used to describe your voice? For
example, is it harsh, commanding, shrill, or melodious? Is it pleasant
or unpleasant?
Pitch: Does your voice have sufficient vocal variety; do you vary the
pitch of your voice to keep listeners interested in what you have to
say?
Intensity: Does your voice carry above others in a crowd, or is it so
soft that it is often difficult for people to hear you in a public place? Is
the intensity of your voice generally appropriate?
Tempo: Do you talk at a rate of speech that allows people to follow
you easily, or do you speak too quickly or too slowly at times?
Rhythm: Is your voice flowing and easy to listen to, or do you use
lengthy pauses or fill your pauses with words or nonverbal
vocalizations?
General:
Do any nonverbal vocalizations or dysfluencies interfere with your
vocal effectiveness?
In what areas of your vocal communication do you excel? What areas
could use some improvement?
Do any nonverbal vocalizations or dysfluencies interfere with your
vocal effectiveness?
Do any of your vocal characteristics distract from your verbal
communication or conflict with your verbal message?
Visual
Eye Behavior: Do you generally make eye contact with people during
a conversation? Have you been told you make extended eye contact
that could be construed as staring? Do you look at people
appropriately or have any tendencies to violate norms about where
you look?
Facial Expression: Do you make facial expressions such as frowning or
scowling of which you are not conscious? Are your facial expressions
natural? Do you smile appropriately or inappropriately? Do your
facial expressions communicate that you are friendly or aloof?
Body Posture and Movement: Do you nod your head appropriately to
provide feedback to others when they communicate? Do you lean
forward when you interact with others to show interest in them? Is
your body posture open and friendly, or do you tend to look
uncomfortable in the presence of others?
Hand Gestures: Do you gesture naturally when you talk to reinforce
your verbal messages? Do you gesture so much that you appear
flighty or nervous? Do you hide your hands, keep them at your sides,
or fold your arms, which can make you appear unapproachable?
General:
In what areas of your visual communication do you excel?
What areas could use some improvement?
Do any of your visual characteristics distract from your verbal
communication or conflict with your verbal message?
Observe others as well, especially in a work setting. If you see
nonverbal communication that you think can be improved, consider
whether you communicate differently and how you might interact
with those whose nonverbal behavior may not be ideal. You cannot
control others’ communication, but you can control how you respond
to it, and you can ask clarifying questions if others’ communication
muddies the message and you want to be sure you understand the
meaning.
Note. Adapted from “Nonverbal Elements of Communication,” by K.
Sole, 2011, Making Connections: Understanding Interpersonal
Communication, Chapter 5. Copyright 2011 by Bridgepoint Education,
Inc.