Body Language is a big part of your communication learning, we can be saying all the right things but our body language can give away how we are really feeling in less than 3 seconds!
What is body language?
Body Language relates to how you carrying yourself, how you stand, what you do with your hands and the attitude your body is portraying! If you are telling someone off but you are timid and looking at the floor you aren’t going to be getting your message across clearly. Body language when also catch you out when you aren’t telling the truth, that doesn’t mean you can use some handy tips to appear more confident than you are feeling in an interview situation though! Stand up straight, give eye contact and practise your handshake – we have the tricks of the trade covered!
Being able to read other people’s body language is a really useful skill to practise too. If your posture and tone is making people shy away from you you may want to think about how you are behaving and expressing yourself to get the best out of that interaction. If you are presenting and people are looking bored you can use the response of the people in the room to change your approach or realise you perhaps have been talking too long already!
Body language – the basics
Lets start with eye contact – maintaining eye contact when you are in conversation will not only help you concentrate on what is being asked but also show are interested, polite and help you build up a rapport with the other person
Mirroring behaviour – if you are sitting down it can help to lean forward a little and face the person you are talking to
Shaking hands – in a formal setting when meeting new people you may be required to shake hands. A firm handshake is best, don’t squeeze too hard but don’t offer a limp hand either!
So we have the basics covered : now think about what you’ve read so far and see if you can place that in the setting of a job interview and see if you can tackle the three questions below.
Communication skills:
Communication skills make up one fifth of our Young Professional training, find out more about communication skills here and start working on how you can develop them!
