How To Make People Like You In 90 Seconds Or Less (5 page)

Positive, open-body gestures reach out to others. These gestures are generally slow and
deliberate. When an open person makes contact with the heart of another person, a strong
connection is made and trust becomes possible. (You know the feeling of a good hug? Or a
heart-to-heart talk?)

When you meet someone new, immediately point your heart warmly at that person's
heart. There is magic in this.

Other common open gestures include standing with your hands on your hips and your feet
apart, a stance that shows enthusiasm and willingness, and moving forward in your chair
(if accompanied by other open gestures). Leaning forward shows interest, and uncrossing
your arms or legs signals you are open to suggestions.

Defensiveness is shown through gestures that protect the body and defend the heart. These
gestures suggest resistance, frustration, anxiety, stubbornness, nervousness and
impatience. They are negative gestures, and they say “NO!”

Crossed arms are common to all manifestations of defensiveness. They hide the heart and
defend one's feelings. Although you can also be relatively relaxed with your arms crossed,
the difference between a relaxed crossed-arm position and a defensive crossedarm
position is in the accompanying gestures. For example, are your arms loosely folded or
pressed close to your body? Are your hands clenched or open?

Defensive gestures are often fast and evasive and beyond your conscious control. Your body
has a mind of its own and is ruled by your attitude, useful or useless. In addition to
crossed arms, the most obvious defensive gestures are avoiding eye contact with the other
person and turning your body sideways. Fidgeting is another negative gesture, which can
also show impatience or nervousness.

Right away, you can see the difference between a person who faces you squarely and
honestly, and someone who stands sideways to you with crossed arms and hunched shoulders
while the two of you talk. In the first instance, the person is openly pointing his heart
directly at your heart. In the second, the posture is defensive; the person is pointing
his heart away from you and protecting it. One is being open with you, the other closed.
Being in the presence of these two postures produces very different feelings.

Hand gestures are also part of the vocabulary of body language. They, too, can be divided
into open gestures (positive responses) and closed or concealed gestures (negative
responses), except that their range is far more intricate and expressive. I should point
out that individual gestures, just like the individual words on this page, don't say
much. Only when you're presented with more than one gesture, perhaps combined with an
expression and topped off with some overall body language, can you deduce that a
particular clenched fist means “Wow, my horse came in first!” and not “I'm so mad I want
to slap him!”

A similar set of differences occurs in body language above the neck. The open face smiles,
makes eye contact, gives feedback, shows curiosity and raises the eyebrows to show
interest. In a casual encounter, a quick look and a lowering of the eyes says, “I trust
you. I'm not afraid of you.” A prolonged look strengthens the positive signal. In
conversation, we may use a nod of the head at the end of a statement to indicate that an
answer is expected.

In contrast, the closed face frowns, purses the lips and avoids eye contact. And there is
yet another negative category to add to facial responses. We politely call it the
neutral, or expressionless, face. It's the one that just gawks at you like a dead trout.
In the next chapter,

you'll find out how to react to this “non-face,” which can be very disconcerting if you
don't know how to deal with it.

Frequently I look around at my audiences and recognize people who have heard me talk
before. I recognize them because they have “the look of recognition” on their face when
they see me. It's a look, or even an attitude, of silent anticipation that any minute
I'll recognize them. Well, this look can work wondersfrom time to timewith people you
haven't met before. If you're on your own, try it out right now. Let your mouth open
slightly in a smile as your eyebrows arch and your head tilts back a little with
anticipation as you look directly at an imaginary person. A variation is to tilt your head
as you look slightly away and then look back at the person with the bare minimum of a
frown and/or pursed lips. Practice. Then give it a try. Be as subtle as you possibly can.

Last spring, I rented a bus for my daughter and her friends to be chauffeured around in on
the night of their prom. While I was paying at the rental office, I noticed a woman
sitting at the next desk over. She had a look on her face that said she knew me, and I
racked my brain to place her. I couldn't.

In the end I had to say, “I'm sorry, but have we met before?”

“No,” she replied seriously. Then she stood up at her

Classic flirting behavior involves letting someone know you like him or her and that you'd
like to pursue it further. Not surprisingly, body language plays a huge part in this game, and even less surprisingly, so does eye contact. Dozens of little gestures are
used to send out sexual messages: the tilt of the head, holding eye contact a little
longer than normal, the angle of the hips and the hands through the hair. Glancing
sideways is a gesture that can suggest doubt on its own, but combined with a slight
smile and a narrowing of the eyes it is a powerful gesture of flirtation.

A man sends out signals with his swagger; a woman, by rolling her hips. A man loosens his
tie ever so slightly; a woman moistens her lips. On and on, the parties convey their
interest in each other through their stances, glances and postures until some small
gesture synchronizes and sends the O.K.

desk, held out her hand to me and smiled. “Hi, I'm Natalie,” she said.

I had been obliged to speak first, and she had done the polite thing. She had stood up,
offered her hand, smiled and introduced herself. All completely innocent or was it? I have
no idea. But we had rapport, and she had me talking.

In 1967, Professor Albert Mehrabian, currently professor emeritus of psychology at UCLA, carried out the most widely quoted study on communication. He determined that believability depends on the consistency, or congruity, of three aspects of communication. In a paper titled “Decoding of Inconsistent Communication,” he reported the percentages of a message expressed through our different communication channels in this way: interestingly, 55% of what we respond to takes place visually; 38% of what we respond to is the sound

Rosa, a waitress, folds up the ad she's torn from a newspaper, clears off the table where
her new computer will sit and leaves her apartment.

At the electronics store, as Rosa hovers over the latest desktop model from Megahype, a
young salesman notices the ad in her hand and wanders over to her. He unbuttons his
jacket, spreads his hands out, palms up, and looks her in the eye. “I see you found it
already,” he says with a smile. “Hi, my name's Tony.”

For the next 10 minutes, a relaxed and sincere Tony talks to Rosa. He faces her with his
hands exposed and leans forward from time to time as they discuss the features of the
computer. Rosa listens with interest, her head tilted to one side and her hand on her
cheek, as Tony offers to “throw in” $95 of extras and even agrees to “eat the tax.”

Finally, stroking her chin as she forms a decision, Rosa nods. “Yes,” she says, “this is
the model for me.”

“Great,” says Tony, eagerly rubbing his palms together. “It will take about five minutes
to take it down and find some boxes.”

Rosa looks sideways at him and frowns. “You don't have a new one in a box?”

“That might be hard to find right now.” Tony's hands become fists, and he pops them into
his pockets. -*

“They're such an unbelievable dealthey've just been flying out of the store.” He buttons
up his jacket, shrugs his shoulders and laughs nervously.

“So this is a demonstration model?” Rosa tilts her head, inquiring.

“Just came on the floor this morning,” Tony shoots back with an insincere smile. He folds
his arms in front of his chest and turns himself sideways to her, pretending to be
distracted by something going on in the TV department nearby. His voice falters and
weakens as he says, “It has the same warranty as a new one.”

Rosa rubs the side of her nose in doubt. “Came on the floor this morning? Fine. Can I have
that in writing?”

Tony's back is turned to her as he leans over the monitor, fiddling with the cablesany
excuse not to look at her. He catches a glimpse of himself in one of the wall mirrors. Oh boy, what an idiot I am, he thinks. He bites his lip and turns back to face Rosa.

But Rosa is gone.

As a good waitress, Rosa is used to reading body language. She saw that the
salesman's gestures conflicted (lacked congruity) with his words, and she knew that she
should believe the gestures. The change in Tony's voice tone from informing to pleading
just served to confirm her feelings of doubt.

of communication; and 1% of what we respond to involves the actual words we use.

The Professor called these the three “V's” of communication: the visual, the vocal and
the verbal. And to be believable, they must all give out the same message. This is at the
very foundation of rapport by design. Over one-half of all communication is nonverbal! It
is the look of the communication, our body language, that counts the most: the way we act,
dress, move, gesture, and so on.

Need proof? Think of the last time you were with someone who stood with her arms crossed,
tapping her foot and looking annoyed, and then huffed the words “I'm fine.” Which clues
did you believethe words or the body language and tone of voice? Physical messages often
send a much louder message than spoken words. Since 55% of your communication occurs as
body language, see how easy it is, whether consciously or not, to signal either openness
or defensiveness to another person by means of your body language. Gestures, rather than
words, are the true indicators of your instinctive reactions.

If you want others to believe that you can be trusted, you must be congruent. Your spoken
language and your body language must say the same thing. If they don't, the other person's
body will signal its discomfort to your body. In response to this communication, your

Say each phrase below with different tonality: anger, boredom, surprise and
flirtatiousness. Notice how your body language, facial expression and breathing combine to
alter your emotional state.

“It's late.” “I've had enough.” “Look at me.” “Where were you born?”

To check your tonality, find a friend and say one or two of these phrases. See if your
friend can tell you which of the four feelings you're expressing. If it's not obvious,
keep working at it until it's clear.

body will signal to your brain by mixing up a chemical cocktail that corresponds to the
discomfort that the other person is feeling. Then you will both be uncomfortable, and rapport will be that much harder to achieve. When they notice a
discrepancy between your words and gestures, other people will believe the gestures and
react accordingly.

So, congruity occurs when your body, voice tone and words are all in alignment. And when
your body, tone and words are communicating the same thing, you will appear sincere and people will tend
to believe you. This is why a Really Useful Attitude is so important. Appearing sincere,
or congruent, is a key ingredient for building the trust that opens the door to likability
and rapport.

Make sure that your words, your tonality and your gestures are all saying the same
thing. Be on the lookout for incongruity in others. Notice how it makes you feel.

We've all seen those old movies where a couple of people are driving along in a car, and
they're rocking the steering wheel even though the background shows a road that's straight
as an arrow. It's phonyyou know they're really in a studio being bounced around in a box.
Your senses have told you that something isn't right, something is out of alignment, and
so you can't believe what you see. Or have you ever had someone get mad at you and then,
in the middle of bawling you out, flash a sinister little smile that disappears as fast as
it came?

Very chilling. This is another example of incongruent behavior. The smile doesn't belong
with the anger; it's insincere.

Recognizing incongruent behavior is another survival instinct. If you're on vacation and
you're approached by a complete stranger who grins at you while he rubs his hands briskly together, licks
his lips and says, “Good morning, how would you like to invest in the world's best
time-share deal,” the chances are you'll be on your guard. A quick congruence check is
instinctive and is another reason why first impressions are paramount.

Frequently a person's emotions and intentions are misunderstood by those around them. For
instance, a woman at one of my seminars discovered that she unconsciously used a tone of
voice that was incongruent with her words. “No, I'm not confused, I'm interested,” she
would insist when tested. And again, “No, I'm not sad, I'm relaxed.” This went on and on
until she came to the verge of tears and said, “Now I know why my kids are always saying,
'Mom, how come you get mad at us all the time?' And I'm not mad at them. Sometimes I'm just excited.”

The same woman also told us that her coworkers accused her of sarcasm but that, to her,
nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, sarcasm is simply words said with
conflicting voice tone. It is structured so the person on the receiving end will believe
what's inferred by the tonality. Suppose you let your team down and somebody is heard to
quip, “That was brilliant,” with a tonality that communicates annoyance. It's a very
different case when you score a fantastic goal and the same person is heard to say with excitement, “That was brilliant!”