| By Naz Beheshti, for Forbes.com |
If you were an electrician or a carpenter, you would have a toolbox full of the tools you need to do your job. You might have a favorite tool but that would not stop you from making use of the full array of your other tools.
When it comes to communication, we often tend to rely on language at the expense of the rest of our communication toolbox . Language is one of the main traits that sets human beings apart. Yet, we communicate with one another in other ways as well such as, tone of voice, facial expression, eye contact, and posture.
Evolved leaders are not only aware of these other means of communication but also they use nonverbal tools mindfully and deliberately to reinforce their message. This lifts up the value of your communication and your own value as a leader.
If our nonverbal communication is not aligned with our spoken words, then our message will be mixed or muddled and it will not resonate at all. Our message will be lost in translation.
What we are missing out on in such cases, says author Nick Morgan, is a kind of “second conversation,” one governed at both ends in a way that is largely unconscious. This makes sense when you consider that our unconscious minds can process as many as 11 million bits of information per second, while our conscious minds are limited to 40 bits. Understandably, we instinctively delegate a great deal of information-processing to our unconscious.
How can we take ownership over a process that seems to occur beneath the surface of our awareness? In his book Power Cues, Morgan argues that with practice we can move some of that second conversation out of the dark and into the light.