First off, BIG LOVE to everyone I met at the Iowa Big I Young Agents Conference, especially Tom, Melissa, Nicole, Derrick & Tyler.  

I spent a few hours in Chicago's O'Hare airport on a layover between flights, and it was an excellent opportunity for people-watching.

Regulars to this blog will know that I am a fan of the Mehrabian communication model, which states that most of our message is delivered via body language followed by the tone and the actual words we use. This is the basis of sarcasm. Picture someone saying "very funny" in response to something they don't think is funny at all. Imagine their posture, facial expression, and tone, and you will see the hierarchy influence in delivering a message.

So, back to O'Hare and people-watching. I focused on finding folks engaged in emotional conversations on their phones. 

It was a non-scientific experiment to bear out the Mehrabian model. I teach business professionals this hierarchy related to getting things done with other people.  

 -In-person is best

 -Video calls are second best

 -Audio calls are third 

 -Email is last

My people-watching experiment bore this out. The more emphatic people got while conversing on their phones, the more body English they employed. Those without earpieces cradled phones in their necks to free up their hands to stress a point. As conversations accelerated, I saw frantic gesticulation, shoulder moves, hopping, kicking, poking a toe in the ground, skyward looks, and defeated slumps. The problem is that the person on the other end of the phone didn't see any of it.  

The point here is to understand the power of this and how natural it is. The people I watched know that the person they're speaking to cannot see their body emphasis moves, but they do them anyway.  They must.  It is how we humans communicate.

I know we are in dicey times in terms of in-person communication, but as we continue to emerge from this pandemic, please remember the order of effective communication and insist on being belly to belly when you have a critical pitch to make.

Own Your Sales Gene…