EI The OTHER

There are many ways that we communicate with others and the key is to understand the “language”. How do you know when someone is being truthful; how do you know if someone is scared, how do you know what you see is not just your projections? When you learn to “see” and interact with others and it may even give you an unfair advantage.

Definitions

BarOn who has written extensively on emotional inelegance in the individual defines the following :

• Empathy – The ability to be attentive to, to understand and appreciate the feelings of others. It is being able to “emotionally read” other people.
• Interpersonal Relationship – The ability to establish and maintain mutually satisfying relationships that are characterised by intimacy, and by giving and receiving affection.

Rationale

Why would we want to get better at understanding others and working with them? Ultimately we are social creatures and we live in societies. We interact with others and mostly the quality of those interactions impact on our well-being and happiness. We all benefit when we can achieve interactions that are win-win. Until, as societies, we get to the point where mutual understanding and respect is high, we need to understand how to engage with others and to protect ourselves at the same time.

Some of the ways to do this is:

• Understand what makes people tick, especially those who are different from me
• To be able to identify the less obvious messages
• To detect truth and lies.
• To uncover attraction and rejection.
• To creating a sense of trust.
• To persuade, sell to, and influence other people.

Ethics

The ability to read others is a bit like owning a gun. It can be put to good use as protection or it can be used as an offensive weapon to harm others. Be warned. As you develop skills on reading others, it can be very powerful. The power to influence as well as read others can be intoxicating and you should treat your new-found skill with respect.

Communication

More than one “English”

We have preferences about how we think as well as what we think about. If we understand the other person’s filter preference and we can “speak” their language they may be more inclined to engage in a more meaningful connection.

We selectively filter information from our environment in three broad ways:

• Some see sights and pictures
• Others hear sounds
• A third group grasp the emotional aspects or touch. They feel the kinesthetic dimension as body awareness including taste and smell.

A good author will use all three to capture all three groups. See the three sets of writing below and identify the preference. It is quite obvious and easy when you are looking for it.

• The water was shimmering silver white against the light blue sky. It felt that any minute it would explode into a single white light that would roll over me and float me down a river.
• The wind whipped into the sails and they snapped to attention as the boat took off, swishing through the water. The ropes pinged in perfect resonance against the mask and together it was the orchestra that took me back to the holidays of my youth
• The blindfold pressing against my eyes was rough and scratchy. The floor was cold and hard. My whole body was stiff and sore from lying in one position and try as I might I could not turn over. Something was holding me down.

Personality Profiles

We are all different in so many ways. Personality is an interesting study and so much has been written on it, I will just choose one possible dimension and talk about that could influence our ability to connect with others. We go the way back to Hippocrates and his four temperaments:

Cool blue – showing no bias, objective, analytical, detached

Earth green – still, tranquil, calming

Sunshine yellow – cheerful, uplifting, spirited,

Fiery red – positive, bold, assertive

These personality differences can cause serious and sometimes amusing clashes. Imagine an earth green trying to explain the need for a morning check-in meeting to a fiery red boss. All he wants is “be bold, be brief and be gone”. Or a sunshine yellow trying to explain the fun programme for the Christmas party to the accountant who is only interested in the cost and when the invoice will arrive.

Body Language

Professor Mehrabian of the University of Californiadid research and published papers in the 1960s. His findings were that communication happens on different levels. 55% body language 38% tone 7% words. Not only can we understand these different communications processes cognitively, we are really good at “hearing” these unconsciously. It is the universal language. It is an innate human ability that we have stopped paying attention to because we rely so heavily on words, spoken and written.

Research done on facial expressions found that these were almost completely without cultural bias. In other words, everyone expressed grief, joy, concern etc with the same sets of muscle patterns around the world. (Paul Ekman: in Blink). You already have the ability to “see” these. Until you have practiced and enhanced your skills in this area, use insights to trigger good questions rather than making assumptions. Body gestures on the other hand, have a very strong cultural bias. For this reason it is a good idea to brush up on local customs before traveling to new places.

If we now combine our awareness of facial expressions and thinking preferences, with an awareness of the current reality of the other person, we can match, mirror and pace them. We do this to build rapport, to connect strongly to others and to get them to a place where they are able to listen to us and we are able to lead them. First you have to listen, demonstrate genuine interest, acknowledge who they are and where they are right now. If you tried to jump onto a moving train you will probably fall. If you ran alongside it until you were at the same speed, jumping on will work better.

We can pace people by matching and mirroring their movements, their postures and even their breathing. Be careful that what you do is not obvious or patronizing. Remember that without training all people are wired to notice when something is not authentic. They may not be able to raise it into their awareness, but it will be the niggly feeling in their stomachs.

How to Determine When Someone Is Lying to You

There’s no way to guarantee someone is always telling the truth or that the signs below always mean lying.

• Guilt over untruthfulness reveals itself in the following ways: Covering the mouth, stroking the nose, closing the palms, and lack of eye contact.
• Covering the mouth is a way of masking a lie
• The pressure applied determines whether a nose stroke is a way of covering up a lie or merely a means of scratching an itch.
• Open palms are a traditional sign of honesty.
• Men tend to rub their eyes, while women are more likely to rub below their eyes, when they lie.
• Men tend to look at the floor, while women are more likely to stare at the ceiling, when they lie.
• Looking up and to the right is an indication someone is lying.
• Dilated pupils are a sign of untruthfulness.
• Micro gestures that last less than one second can signify untruthfulness.
• The stress of lying increases sweating.
• When a person is being truthful, her gestures match her words.

Recommendations

I hope this article has made you think a little about what you can do to make your interactions with others better for you, and, for them. There is a great deal to learn. Each time you discover something new, you will have earned the right to wear yet another pair of x-ray vision glasses because you will see what has always been there, just not visible to you.