Action Speaks Louder than Words

No matter how hard we try, we cannot get away from the fact that image and appearance are important when meeting someone for the first time. Dressing well goes a long way toward making a positive impression as you begin to establish rapport, but how do you make people warm to you? And how do you project the likable parts of your own unique personality?

Body Language

our body language, which includes your posture, X your expressions and your gestures, accounts for more than one-half of what other people respond to and

make assumptions about.

When people think of body language, they tend to think it means what happens from the neck down. But much of what we communicate to others—and what they make assumptions about—comes from the neck up. Facial gestures and nods and tilts of the head have a vocabulary that equals or exceeds that of the body from

the neck down.

The signals we send with our bodies are rich with meaning and global in their scope. Some of them are hardwired into us at birth; others are picked up from our society and culture. Everywhere on the planet, panic induces an uncontrollable shielding of the heart with the hands and/or a freezing of the limbs. A smile is a smile on all continents, while sadness is displayed through down-turned lips as often in New York as in Papua New Guinea. The clenched fists of determination and the open palms of truth convey the same message in Iceland as they do in Indonesia.

And no matter where on earth you find yourself, mothers and fathers instinctively cradle their babies with the head against the left side of their body, close to the heart. The heart is at the heart of it. Facial expressions and body language are all obedient to the greater purpose of helping your body maintain the well-being of its center of feeling, mood and emotion—your heart.

Volumes have been written about body language, but when all is said and done, this form of communication can be broken down into two rather broad categories: open and closed. Open body language exposes the heart, while closed body language defends or protects it. In establishing rapport, we can also think in terms of inclusive gestures and noninclusive gestures.

Communicating

Everyone seems to have a different sense of the word "communication," but the definitions usually go something like this: "It's an exchange of information between two or more people" . . . "It's getting your message across" . . . "It's being understood." In the early days of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a research project devoted to "the study of excellence and a model of how individuals structure their subjective sensory experience," Richard Bandler and John Grinder created an effective definition: "The meaning of communication lies in the response it gets." This is simple, and brilliant, because it means that it's 100% up to

you whether or not your own communication succeeds. After all, you axe the one with a message to deliver or a goal to achieve, and you are the one with the responsibility to make it happen. What's more, if it doesn't work, you are the one with the flexibility to change what you do until you finally get what you want. In order to give some form and function to communication here, let's assume that we have some kind of response or outcome in mind. People who are low on communication skills usually have not thought out the response they want from the other person in the first place and therefore cannot aim for it.

The skills you will learn here will serve you on all levels of communication from social dealings like developing new relationships and being understood in your daily interactions all the way to life-changing moves for yourself and those in your sphere of influence.

The formula for effective communication has three distinct parts:

Know what you want. Formulate your intention in the affirmative and preferably in the present tense. For example, "I want a successful relationship, I have filled my imagination with what that relationship will look, sound, feel, smell and taste like with me in it, and I know when I will have it" is an affirmative statement, as opposed to "I don't want to be lonely."

Find out what you're getting. Get feedback. You find that hanging out in smoky bars is not for you.

Change what you do until you get what you want. Design a plan and follow through with it: "I'll invite 10 people over for dinner every Saturday night." Do it and get more feedback. Redesign if necessary, and do it again with more feedback. Repeat the cycle—redesign-do-get feedback—until you get what you want. You can apply this cycle to any area of your life that you want to improve—finance, romance, sports, career, you name it.

Know what you want.

Find out what you're getting.

Change what you do until you get what you want.

This is terrifically easy to remember because a

certain Colonel had the good sense to open a

chain of restaurants using the abbreviation KFC

for a name. Every time we see one of his signs,

we can ask ourselves how well the development

of our communication skills is going.

The Benefits of Connecting

Our personal growth and evolution (and the evolution of societies) come about as a result of connecting with our fellow humans, whether as a band of young warriors setting out on a hunt or as a group of coworkers heading out to the local pizzeria after work on Friday. As a species, we are instinctively driven to come together and form groups of friends, associations and communities. Without them, we cannot exist. Making connections is what our gray matter does best. It receives information from our senses and processes it by making associations. The brain delights in and learns from these associations. It grows and flourishes when

it's making connections.

People do the same thing. It's a scientific fact that people who connect live longer. In their gem of a book, Keep Your Brain Alive, Lawrence Katz and Manning Rubin quote studies by the McArthur Foundation and the International Longevity Center in New York and at the University of Southern California. These studies show that people who stay socially and physically active have longer life spans. This doesn't mean hanging out with the same old crowd and peddling around on an exercise bike. It means getting out and making new friends. When you make new connections in the outside world, you make new connections in the inside world in your brain. This keeps you young and alert. Edward M. Hallowell, in his very savvy book Connect, cites the 1979 Alameda County Study by Dr. Lisa Berkman of the Harvard School of Health Sciences. Dr. Berkman and her team carefully looked at 7,000 people, aged 35 to 65,over a period of nine years. Their study concluded that people who lack social and community ties are almost three times more likely to die of medical illness than those who have more extensive contacts. And all this is independent of socioeconomic status and health practices such as smoking, alcoholic beverage consumption, obesity or physical activity!

Other people can also help you take care of your needs and desires. Whatever it is you'd like in this life romance, a dream job, a ticket to the Rose Bowl—the chances are pretty high that you'll need someone's help to get it. If people like you, they will be disposed to give you their time and their efforts. And the better the quality of rapport you have with them, the higher the level of their cooperation.

Establishing Rapport

Rapport is the establishment of common ground, of a comfort zone where two or more people can mentally join together. When you have rapport, each of you brings something to the interaction—attentiveness,warmth, a sense of humor, for example—and each brings something back: empathy, sympathy, maybe a couple of great jokes. Rapport is the lubricant that allows social exchanges to flow smoothly. The prize, when you achieve rapport, is the other person's positive acceptance. This response won't be in so many words, but it will signal something like this: "I know I just met you, but I like you so I will trust you with my attention." Sometimes rapport just happens all by itself, as if by chance; sometimes you have to give it a hand. Get it right, and the communicating can begin. Get it wrong, and you'll have to bargain for attention.

As you meet and greet new people, your ability to establish rapport will depend on four things: your attitude, your ability to "synchronize" certain aspects of behavior like body language and voice tone, your conversation skills and your ability to discover which sense (visual, auditory or kinesthetic) the other person relies on most. Once you become adept in these four areas, you will be able to quickly connect and establish rapport with anyone you choose and at any time.

Read on, and you'll discover that it's possible to speed up the process of feeling comfortable with a stranger by quantum-leaping the usual familiarization rituals and going straight into the routines that people who like each other do naturally. In virtually no time at all, you will be getting along as if you've known each

other for ages. Many of my students report that when achieving rapport becomes second nature, they find people asking, "Are you sure we haven't met before?" I know the feeling; it happens to me all the time. And it's not just people asking me the question. 1 am convinced that half the people I meet, I've met before—

that's the way it goes when you move easily into another person's map of the world. It's a wonderful feeling.

The Meeting

If you make the right impression during the first three or four seconds of a new meeting, you can create an awareness that you are sincere, safe and trustworthy and the opportunity to go further and create a rapport will present itself.


The Greeting


We call the first few seconds of contact the "greeting."

Greetings are broken into five parts: Open—Eye—Beam—Hi!—Lean. These five actions constitute a wel-coming program to carry out in a first encounter. Open. The first part of the greeting is to open your attitude and your body. For this to work successfully, you must have already decided on a positive attitude that's right for you. This is the time to really feel and be aware of it. Check to see that your body language is open. If you have the right attitude, this should take care of itself. Keep your heart aimed directly at the person you're meeting. Don't cover your heart with your hands or arms and, when possible, unbutton your jacket or coat.


Eye.


The second part of the greeting involves your eyes. Be first with eye contact. Look this new person directly in the eye. Let your eyes reflect your positive

attitude. To state the obvious: eye contact is real contact! Get used to really looking at other people's eyes. When you're watching TV one evening, note the

eye color of as many people as possible and say the name of the color to yourself. The next day, do the same with every person you meet, looking him or her straight in the eye.



Beam.


This part is closely related to eye contact.

Beam! Be the first to smile. Let your smile reflect your attitude. Now you've gained the other person's attention through your open body language, your eye contact and your beaming smile. What that person is picking up sub-consciously is an impression not of some grinning, gawking fool (though you may briefly fear you look like one!) but of someone who is completely sincere. Hi! Whether it's "Hi!" or "Hello!" or even "Yo!" say it with pleasing tonality and attach your own name to it

("Hi! I'm Naomi"). As with the smile and the eye contact, be the first to identify yourself. It is at this point, and within only a few seconds, that you are in a position to gather tons of free information about the person you're meeting—information you can put to good use later in your conversation.Take the lead. Extend your hand to the other person,and if it's convenient find a way to say his or her name two or three times to help fix it in memory. Not "Glenda,Glenda, Glenda, nice to meet you" but "Glenda. Great to meet you, Glenda!" As you'll see in Chapter 7, this will be followed by your "occasion/location statement."


Lean.


The final part of introducing yourself is the "lean." This action can be an almost imperceptible forward tilt to very subtly indicate your interest and openness as you begin to "synchronize" the person you've just met.



Handshakes run the gamut from the strong, sturdy bone-crusher to the wet noodle. Both are memorable—once shaken, twice shy, in some cases.Certain expectations accompany a handshake. It should be firm and respectful, as it you were ringing a

hand bell for room service. Deviate from these expectations and the other person will scramble to make sense of what's happening. There is a feeling that something is wrong—like hot water coming out of the cold tap. The brain hates confusion, and when faced with it the first instinct is to withdraw. The "hands-free" handshake is a handshake without the hand, and it is a powerful tool. Just do everything

you would do during a normal handshake but without using your hand. Point your heart at the other person and say hello. Light up your eyes and smile, and give off into a force to be reckoned with! You'll need a partner to work with. Stand about eight feet apart, facing each other like two gunfighters in a cowboy movie. As you say " H i ! " clap your hands together and slide your right hand off and past the other in the direction of your partner. Gather up all the energy you can throughout your body and store it in your heart, then clap the energy on through your right hand (the one you use in a handshake) straight into the other person's heart. This is a long explanation for something that takes no more than two seconds, but when all six channels—body, heart, eyes, smile, clap and voice/breath—are fired at the person in a rapid flash there is a vast transfer of energy. Immediately after receiving the energy, your partner should fire it back at you in the same way. Taking turns, continue fast and focused, firing at each other. Be sure to make contact with all six channels at once. Practice on each other for two minutes. Now the real fun begins. You're going to start firing different qualities of energy: logic/head energy, communication/throat energy, love/heart energy, power/solar plexus energy and sexual energy. You've already fired love/heart energy. Now do the same head to head instead of heart to heart. Keep firing head/logic energy at each other until you both agree that you can feel and differentiate it from love/heart energy. After two or three minutes back and forth, try the other regions: throat to throat, solar plexus to solar plexus, etc.


It gets even better. Figure out which kind of energy you want to send, but don't say what it is. Now greet your partner, shake hands, say " H i " and fire! Your partner must identify the kind of energy he or she is receiving. Take turns.

Practice and practice until your body language becomes subtle and almost imperceptible.


Next, go out and try it on the people you meet. Fire energy when you say " H i " to someone in a supermarket, to your waiter in the cafe, to your sister-in-law or the guy who fixes the photocopier in your office. They will notice something special about you—some might call it "star quality."


that same special energy that usually accompanies the full-blown shake. Incidentally, the "hands-free" handshake works wonders in presentations when you want to establish rapport with a group or audience.

First Impressions

There are three parts of connecting with other people: meeting, establishment rapport and communicating. These three parts happen quickly and tend to overlap and blend into each other. Our goal is to make them as natural, fluid and easy as possible, and above all to make them enjoyable and rewarding. Obviously, you begin the connecting process by meeting people. Sometimes you meet someone by chance—the woman on the train who turns out to share your passion for Bogart movies. And sometimes it's by choice—the man your cousin introduced you to because he loves Shakespeare, fine wines and bungee jumping, just like you. If meeting is the physical coming together of two or more people, then communicating is what we do from the moment we are fully aware of another's presence. And between these two events—meeting and communicating—lies the 90-second land of rapport that links them together.

Connect and Feel Love

Finally, we benefit from each other emotionally. We are not closed, self-regulating systems, but open loops regu-lated, disciplined, encouraged, reprimanded, supported and validated by the emotional feedback we receive from others. From time to time, we meet someone who influences our emotions and vital body rhythms in such a pleasurable way that we call it love. Be it through body language, gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice or words alone, other people make our hard times more bearable, our good times much sweeter. We use the emotional input of other humans as much as we do the air we breathe and the food we eat. Deprive us of emotional and physical contact (a hug and a smile can go a long way), and we will wither and die just as surely as if we were deprived of food. That's why we hear stories of children in orphanages who grow sickly and weak despite being adequately fed and clothed. People with autism may desire emotional and physical contact but can languish because they are hindered by their lack of social skills. And how often have you heard about one spouse in a 50-year marriage who, despite being medically healthy, dies a few short months or even weeks after the death of the other spouse? Food and shelter aren't enough. We need each other, and we need love.

Connect and Feel Safe

Connecting is good for the community. After all, a community is the culmination of a lot of connections: common beliefs, achievements, values, interests and geography. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was Detroit. Three thousand years ago, in what today we call Rome, Indo-Europeans connected to hunt, survive and generally look out for one another. Three hundred years ago, a French trader turned up to create a safe haven for his fur business; he started making connections and pretty soon Detroit was born.

We have a basic, physical need for other people; there are shared, mutual benefits in a community, so we look out for each other. A connected community provides its members with strength and safety. When we feel strong and safe, we can put our energy into evolving socially, culturally and spiritually.

The Benefits of Connecting

Our personal growth and evolution (and the evolution of societies) come about as a result of connecting with our fellow humans, whether as a band of young warriors setting out on a hunt or as a group of coworkers heading out to the local pizzeria after work on Friday. As a species, we are instinctively driven to come together and form groups of friends, associations and communities. Without them, we cannot exist.

Making connections is what our gray matter does best. It receives information from our senses and processes it by making associations. The brain delights in and learns from these associations. It grows and flourishes when it's making connections. People do the same thing. It's a scientific fact that people who connect live longer. In their gem of a book,Keep Your Brain Alive, Lawrence Katz and Manning Rubin quote studies by the McArthur Foundation and the International Longevity Center in New York and at the University of Southern California. These studies show that people who stay socially and physically active have longer life spans. This doesn't mean hanging out with the same old crowd and peddling around on an exercise bike. It means getting out and making new friends. When you make new connections in the outside world, you make new connections in the inside world—in your brain. This keeps you young and alert. Edward M. Hallowell, in his very savvy book Connect, cites the 1979 Alameda County Study by Dr. Lisa Berkman of the Harvard School of Health Sciences. Dr. Berkman and her team carefully looked at 7,000 people, aged 35 to 65,over a period of nine years. Their study concluded that people who lack social and community ties are almost three times more likely to die of medical illness than those who have more extensive contacts. And all this is independent of socioeconomic status and health practices such as smoking, alcoholic beverage consumption,

obesity or physical activity!

Other people can also help you take care of your needs and desires. Whatever it is you'd like in this life—romance, a dream job, a ticket to the Rose Bowl—the chances are pretty high that you'll need someone's help to get it. If people like you, they will be disposed to give you their time and their efforts. And the better the quality of rapport you have with them, the higher the level of their cooperation.

People Power

Connecting to other people brings infinite rewards.And whether its landing a job, winning the promotion, gaining the sale, charming a new partner, electrifying your audience or passing inspection by future in-laws, if people like you, the welcome mat is out and a connection is yours for the making. Other people are your greatest resource. They give birth to you; they feed you, dress you, provide you with money, make you laugh and cry; they comfort you, heal you, invest your money, service your car and bury you. We can't live without them. We can't even die without them.

Connecting is what our ancestors were doing thousands of years ago when they gathered around the fire to eat woolly mammoth steaks or stitch together the latest animal-hide fashions. It's what we do when we hold quilting bees, golf tournaments, conferences and yard sales; it underlies our cultural rituals from the serious to the frivolous, from weddings and funerals to Barbie Doll conventions and spaghetti-eating contests.

Even the most antisocial of artists and poets who spend long, cranky months painting in a studio or composing in a cubicle off their bedroom are usually hoping that through their creations they will eventually connect with the public. And connection lies at the very heart of those three pillars of our democratic civilization: government, religion and television. Yes, television. Given that you can discuss Friends or The X-Files with folks from Berlin to Brisbane, a case must be made for the tube's ability to help people connect all over the globe. Thousands of people impact all aspects of our lives, be it the weatherman at the TV studio in a neighboring city, or the technician at a phone company across the continent, or the woman in Tobago who picks the mangoes for your fruit salad. Every day, wittingly or unwittingly, we make a myriad of connections with people around the world.