Back to the challenge

At last, here is my video analysis...



1 - Carleton Fiorina : Former CEO of HP :

Her eyebrows are often maintained in a position that shows confidence, authority and a strong belief in what she is saying. She maintains a strong eye contact with the interviewer. She really articulates and stresses the important words of her speech. She also smiles and uses her hands very efficiently because they illustrate what she is saying : "vast organization" , "change"...10/10!

2 - Steve Ballmer : CEO of Microsoft :

His message is clear : tenacity and perseverance. He frowns very often and stresses his words. Since he talks to an audience, he doesn't lean his head and his hands show very fast and strong gestures which illustrates his message. He is leaning forward a little bit but he is still showing energy. His voice pitch is so intense that you cannot get asleep while listening to him. He also has a funny way of saying things! 08/10.

3 - Peter Brabeck : Chairman of Nestlé :

He doesn't frown and he seems very serious. He speaks slowly, his head inclination makes him seem more reliable and he has controlled gestures and voice. He doesn't communicate much with his hands but he is very confident. Concerning the voice pitch, I guess now you can fall asleep...06/10.

4 - Steve Jobs : CEO Apple :

He frowns a lot especially during the strong moments of his speech and he looks everywhere even though he does not see the audience. He articulates and stresses the important words and expressions and he uses all the space around him to make big gestures in order to talk about big projects. His body stance is very straight and he is confident. He also speaks very loudly with great stressing : "some amazing products for you"...09/10.

5 - Richard Branson : CEO of Virgin :

He is natural and does not frown. He looks at his notes very often but when he looks at the audience, he looks everywhere (he also looked behind him to talk to a person that was there). He is smiling but his head and his body lean towards his notes. He is playing with a ring and he is keeping his hands together so does not seem very confident. His voice pitch is very monotonous...04/10.

Once upon a time...women won!

Eye contact

Eye contact is one of the keys to a great body language. Tracy Goodwin, of whom we already commented a video invites us to work on our eye contact when we are delivering a speech in front of an audience.



The face is a part of public speaking and as she says : "The eyes are the window to the soul". You have to make eye contact without staring at the floor which shows that you are a shy person and that you lack confidence. On the other hand staring at one person in particular is weird and makes that person uncomfortable so instead of doing that, you have to talk to everyone. The most common mistake that public speakers make is only looking at the persons who seem to be interested in what they are saying (by nodding their head for example or smiling) so don't look for a positive feedback when talking to people. The last piece of advice given by Tracy is not being expressionless. You have to smile showing interest in what you are saying so smile and make great eye contact!

Don Varney is the founder of Varney Speaks, a company specialized in coaching people in public speaking and other more general things about personal development (this man is one of the first 33 members of the US Air Force).



Like Tracy Goodwin, looking at everyone is one of the keys to deliver a great public speech. Sometimes, when you are on the stage, highlights prevent you from seeing people in front of you. In this case, you have to visualize them and look at this mental image because you have to deliver the following non-verbal message while speaking : "You are important to me and I want to make sure that I do a great job for you.". Also, avoid forced gestures, don't look nervous, don't hang on to the podium and don't be shaking when hanging a piece of paper. You have to see this as an interaction with other people and focus on that rather than fearing them.

Like any other body language area, eye contact is also important in romantic relationships and especially dating. Jessica Claire is a professional dating coach at New York Dating Coach in New-York City and she is one of the rare female dating coaches for men.



According to her there are two categories of eye contact. The first one is the sudden eye contact and the second one is "staring". The last one consists on looking to someone without getting the same from him/her. It makes you look creepy and makes the other person feel very uncomfortable. On the other hand, sudden eye contact creates a connexion so you can hold it for 10 or 15 seconds. She is inviting people to train by practicing with people they know very well like family and friends.

My learning diary

In response to an older post from James, here is a link to my learning diary : https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AvyVXuU1eAY9dGhmX09Kek5FWXFaQnVrOXRfbHFoUlE&hl=en

Yet, I am not sure everyone can get access to it...

Albert Mehrabian's work

Albert Mehrabian is considered to be a pioneer in the communication area. He was born in 1939 in the USA and what made him so famous is his work on the difference between verbal and non-verbal communication during the 1960's. He was the one propose the following figures (which Jan Hargrave talked about) :

-7% of the meaning of a message is given by spoken words
-38% is given by paralinguistic (the way we say things, the voice, the tone...)
-55% is given by facial expression

Of course these figures describe Mehrabian's work and cannot be generalized so easily even though they are often used in a very simplistic manner.

Mehrabian message is that understanding how to convey and interpret messages is essential but these figures do not fit all communication scenarios. Nowadays we use the e-mail and the phone very often and what Mehrabian wants to say is that greater care must be taken in the use of words in such situations.

You can learn more about Mehrabian's work in his personal website. Unfortunately Mahrabian articles are not free...

My links

The aim of this post is to make a list of my useful links :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmjGz4PS6sI : Give a great speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X7fKZTmZa4 : Body language expert Jan Hargrave
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpiUohPPyks&NR=1 : How good are you interpreting it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYh7UmVSgk0&feature=related : PUA Body Language: Edward Norton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwbUy3MHZGg : Eye contact avoidance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swEa_rPFBfw : Eye contact for Puppeters (even puppets need to have a good body language, very funny...)

Forums:
VOXOPOP : Username : Hatim (Created a talkgroup)
stevepavlina : Username : Hatim -> http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/social-relationships/43089-non-verbal-communication.html#post514303
absoluteastronomy : Username : Hatim -> http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/discussionpost/Hi,Is_there_anybody_that_can_explain_how_Albert_Mehrabian_got_his_statiticsThanks_63666

your learning log...

It would be nice to post a link to your learning log... where you keep track of what you do , what you learn and how much time you've spent so far on the project...

Case study : Alpha male body language

Have you ever heard of PUAs? Actually this means Pick Up Artists and they form a worldwide community. These people are interested in male/female interactions so they spend their time going out to bars, night clubs, libraries, commercial places or just in the street in order to approach women and start an interaction with them. They develop techniques and test them "in the field" so they are very concerned about body language. They say if you have good body language, then you can be attractive by saying almost anything that comes to your head. They also have their own terms and theories.

The author of the video below seems to be member of that community since he entitled it : PUA Body Language : Edward Norton. It is an analysis of a very short extract from the movie "American History X" focusing on the main character's body language : Derrick (Edward Norton). The aim of the video is to give us an example of an alpha male body language. For PUAs, an alpha male is a dominant male who establishes himself as the leader of his group and who is, obviously, more attractive for women.

Here's the video:


Derrick is a racist gang leader and he went to jail for killing some black people. Half of the movie takes place before he went to jail and the other half after he was released and the scene analysed in the video is taken from the beginning of the second half. Derrick just gets out of jail and he's meeting up with his brother, his sister and his friend.

Derrick stands very straight, waving his hands and teasing the characters. He is has a very relaxed posture, gives hugs and keeps swinging his shoulder. Then he crosses his arms in order to show them that he is going to give everybody a lecture. He is standing up straight but looking looking down so he is show some kind of condescension by bending his head down and looking up with his eyes. It seems like this is the perfect body language to use if you are annoyed by somebody.

In order to tell the friend to get out of the room because he wanted to talk in private with his brother, he stood straight next to him, one hand on the friend's shoulder and another showing the door which means : if you want to take part of this conversation, you should physically get through me. He also makes him know that if he is asking him to go away, this is not personal...we will come back to that later.

Then begins the discussion with his brother. He keeps grabbing his arm which shows male dominance. The author insists on the fact that some men may feel insulted if show them such body language especially AMOGs in a set...what? You don't know what an AMOG is? Actually I didn't know three hours ago...An amog is the Alpha Male Of the Group and a set is a group of people! I told you these people are seduction nerds. If you do this by looking in someone's eye and looking down and keeping your shoulders back, then you show a good dominance body language.

Of course this is a good way to start a fight but only if it's not well communicated. In fact, even if you are teasing or admonishing someone, you should let that person know that you are not an ennemy and that you are doing all this because you care about her.

How to deliver a great speech

Well, you can tell me my last post is funny and intersting but the details I extracted from the video of Mrs Hargrave will not apply to the video we want to comment. Let me remind you that I will not focus exclusively on studying CEOs body language as proposed for our challenge and this blog will try to focus on a wider approach to non-verbal communication.

However a challenge is a challenge (and I like challenges) so this post is directly related to our famous video. I came out with a video where Tracy Goodwin give us some tips on how to deliver a great speech. This woman is an expert in professional speaking. She has a master in corporate communication and ten years of experience.



According to her, the main mistake most people make when speaking to an audience is to lean over the podium. Instead, one has to have a casual posture without locking his knees.

Most courageous people may want to walk but it must not be a way of taking out your nerves. Instead, one must walk with a purpose.

The last tip is about the hands. One has to rest his hands on the podium without tapping on it. Also, many people tend to overdo the gesture with their hands which make them seem nervous. So, just keep your hands on the podium and relax!

If you respect these tips, you have a better chance of showing a more confident body language instead of looking nervous.

Body language expert Jan Hargrave

Now that we've settled the frame of the subject, we can begin our study. Let's start with watching an expert in body language talking about her job.



Jan Hargrave has 15 years of experience in studying body language! She wrote several books in this area and featured on famous TV programs. She teaches body language skills for sales, business, negotiation, job interviews and romance. She is also involved in jury selection (seems like body language is a serious matter!).

In this video she asks people in the audience to raise their right hand as if they were swearing they were telling the truth in a courtroom. She says :

-If your fingers are wide apart, it means you are terrified and willing to tell the whole truth.
-If your fingers are tight, it means you will say the truth but we will have to make effort to extract it from your brain. It's called analytical honesty.
-If your hand is bent, it means you are preparing to tell us lies.
-If two fingers are together and the others are apart, it means you are communication a mixture of the first two ones.

It says that the only possible origin of a lie is our mouth, our body never lies since 55% of our communication is non-verbal, 38% is voice inflexion and 7% is verbal (I am very curious about knowing how these figure have been calculated).

She asks the audience 5 interesting questions the reader may think about :

1- If a guy keeps touching the bottom of his chin while you are talking to him, does it mean he is seriously contemplating?

2- If a man jingles the change in his pocket, does it mean he is concerned about his financial condition?

3- If somebody uses his left hand a lot, does it mean he lies a lot?

4- If a man and a woman are having a casual conversation and the man pulls-up his socks, does it mean he wants to ask the lady out on a date?

5- What does it mean when someone have his hands going away from and toward his body while talking to you?

It seems that, when you are trying to solve a rational problem, you will tend to use your right hand. The left hand is used when you are trying to be creative and when you are dreaming about something.

Our challenge

Let's say our challenge is that at the end of this blog, we propose a pertinent analysis of the following video based on all the things we are going to learn during the project...