December 18, 2015
Hi and welcome to this video. In this video I want to talk a little bit about… non verbal communication skills. Non verbal communication skills have a lot to do with the way we communicate with others and getting things done. When I ask you what non-verbal communication skills are, you might probably say:
- “The way that the body moves” or
- “The gestures that I make” or
- “The way that I speak.”
And you would be right! Those are just a few of the components of non-verbal communication. But I want to invite you to consider that there is another bigger chunk of the non-verbal communication that we don’t really talk about. And that component is the component of emotion.
Emotions Are Part Of Non Verbal Communication Skills
As a leadership life coach, I consider emotion to be a tremendously vast territory of learning. This is actually how I work with my clients. We spend time talking about how effective communication is affected by the body, language and emotions.
I work with my clients to improve their communication skills by addressing the non-verbal communication skills as well as addressing all the components that contribute to that.
Before we can actually get to knowing what the non-verbal communication skills are, we have to understand what communication is.
Communication includes: speech and the things we say; body language and the way we shape our body; and finally emotions and the way we show up in conversations.
From just this 3-step model about communication, you can see that non-verbal communication is a significant component of the overall communication and conversations we have in life.
Body, Emotions, Language; The B-E-L Model
These 3 components make up the B-E-L model. Every component of the B-E-L model, body, emotions and language, all interact with each other and affect each other in turn. So, in effect, your verbal communication skills are affected by the non-verbal components of emotion and physical stance or disposition. Likewise, the non-verbal components influence each other and are, in turn, influenced by language.
So when you show up in a conversation and you are in the emotion of excitement, there are certain ways that you are going to express that in your body. Your listener, whether or not they know you well, can pick up on the cues of your excitement.
They do this by listening to what shows up in your words, what shows up in the way you speak those words and finally can intuit that you are in the emotion of excitement.
These are all of the subtle cues that go into non-verbal communication. So one way to actually improve your overall communication skills is to understand the 3 components of communication. Once again the 3 components of communication are: language and the linguistic component; the body and the physical, somatic component; and finally the emotions.
Practising Non Verbal Communication Skills
As a leadership life coach, mastering all of these three components of effective communication takes a lot of time and takes a lot of practise. That’s why, when I work with my clients, we take things one piece at a time.
Sometimes we will focus on the linguistic aspect and talk about the speech acts. And sometimes we will talk about practising the physical dispositions that may allow you to show up in a different way to another human being. Or, at other times, we will work on the emotion component and seek to understand what emotion would work best in certain conversations.
I hope this video has been helpful and if you have more questions I invite you to check out my self-paced self-study course that I’ve created to help you improve your communication skills.
The course is called “3 Steps To Improve Your Communication Skills” It has 41 lectures and over 5 hours of content. There are videos, downloadable MP3s, PDF transcripts and a community to support your learning.
So take care of yourself have a beautiful day and I’ll see you soon.