I was reading Guy’s Kawasaki’s latest book, “Enchantment” on the plane back from a speech to Judges in Texas the other day. The book was filled with wonderful little tidbits. He says early in the book, in fact on page nine that “you need four things for a great first impression: your smile, your dress, your handshake and your vocabulary.” Yippee! for recognizing that handshakes are still important. You know how I feel about them. I just did a speech last week for a Financial Association. We discussed how important it was for them to shake hands to create rapport. They have to have the rapport or people are not going to share their financial information.
Here is a quote from my new book on first impressions
“The choices of where, when and with whom to give a handshake have changed over the last few years due to differences in culture and religious background, a more casual business culture and the maturing of the Purell germaphobic generation. Yet, handshaking remains an important ritual for you to understand, use with ease and use as a source of information as you work on your first impression and reading others. Recent studies in North America indicate that a firm handshake that shows strength and vigor with appropriate eye contact length and completeness of grip creates a favorable first impression. In fact, the handshake is the quickest, most effective way to establish rapport with another person.”
In the book “Enchantment” like many recent business books he mentions Paul Eckman’s facial expression research and on page 10 of the “Enchantment” is research that I quoted many years ago in my “Success Signals” book on smiling that I also mention under likability in my new book. It is nice to know that great minds think alike.
Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at
http://pattiwood.net/. Also check out the body language quiz on her YouTube Channel at
http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.
