Patti Wood Body Language Expert Blog

A Body Language Expert Analyzes Notre Dame’s QBs

April 14, 2016 by andrew winn 6 Comments

What are Notre Dame’s quarterbacks saying with their bodies that they aren’t saying with their words?
I posed this question to Patti Wood, a body language expert and professional speaker. Wood, once dubbed “the Babe Ruth of body language experts,” is the author of “Snap: Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma.” She’s been asked to speak on non-verbal communication during hundreds of national news and entertainment programs. When she’s not speaking in front of Fortune 500 companies and government agencies, she maintains a blog about body language.
Wood watched three separate interviews, conducted March 18, of redshirt junior Malik Zaire, redshirt sophomore DeShone Kizer and sophomore Brandon Wimbush.

ZAIRE IS FRUSTRATED & UNCOMFORTABLE

http://foxs.pt/1nVFOPv

Wood said her overall impression of Zaire, based solely off this interview, was: “This is a young man that has been through a lot.”
The body language expert was initially struck by Zaire’s movement of his neck – a quick jerk from side to side, combined with a pull back movement – which she called “such a strong tick.”
“It seems so out of his control that it may be neurological,” she said. “Less pronounced movements in individuals show a lack of centeredness and confidence.”
Wood said to watch for Zaire pressing his lips together tightly or turning his head away from the interviewer, which show a lack of confidence.
“His hesitant speech and low volume level show his discomfort and disquiet,” she added.
It may be no surprise that Wood said Zaire may be obscuring his true feelings when asked about the quarterback competition.
“His eyes are almost closed as he listens to the question,” she said. “That is typically an attempt to block the truth of how you’re feeling from the main interviewer and to give yourself time to think of a better answer than what you might be truly feeling.”
Wood says to watch for additional movements that may demonstrate frustration (sticking out his tongue or filling his mouth with air) and feeling uncomfortable (rubbing his nose several times) and during what moments they come in.
“As he goes on in the interview, notice his chin and how it juts out. He’s trying to give himself more confidence; that chin is jutting out in defiance,” she said. “The only thing he seems truly happy about is his love of Tex-Mex.”

KIZER TENSE, BUT MORE COMFORTABLE THAN ZAIRE

Wood said her impressions of Kizer, based solely off this interview, is that he’s tense, a bit frustrated, but overall more comfortable than Zaire.

“His volume level is also low, but his voice seems even and steady,” she said. “Both of them [Zaire and Kizer] are chin jutting, he [Kizer] does it less so. He also has a slight pursing of the lips and a little tiny bit of that blowing out air and frustration – holding it in – but it’s much less.”
While Wood believes Zaire’s tongue motions were a sometimes a sign of passive aggressiveness toward the questions being asked, she believed Kizer’s tongue betrayed something different.
“He is getting more moisture into his mouth, showing tension,” she said. “Overall, his body language cues are much less anxious and he, overall, is much more comfortable [than Zaire].”

WIMBUSH IS OK WITH REDSHIRTING

Wood was impressed with the way Wimbush handled himself, at least initially.
“Brandon starts his interview so much differently than the other two players,” she said. “Notice his smile. Notice how his head is more forward. He gives, in just that first moment or two, such a profoundly different first impression – much more ease as to what’s going on.”
Wood said Wimbush holds his mouth open and moves his jaw to the side, which indicates he’s unsure about the answer he’s going to give to the question being asked.
“His gaze goes unfocused and glazed over like he is saying in his mind, ‘Get me out of here,'” she said. Wimbush also bites his lip, which betrays his nervousness.
Wood was also struck by a portion of Wimbush’s answer regarding Coach Brian Kelly’s initial decision to redshirt him.
“He has this interesting statement where he says, ‘I can control only what I can control.’ And then notice how he laps with his tongue out,” she said. “To me, that’s states nonverbally that he’d like to control more.”
Wood’s final impression of Wimbush is that he is “sincere” in his answer about redshirting this year.
“There’s a great truth,” she said. “He does feel it wouldn’t be so bad and you can hear a respect in his voice for his teammates.”

Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

How To Give Bad News To Your Children

How To Give Bad News To Your Children

A few years ago I had the honor to speak to an association whose members work with grieving children. Any child who has to hear bad news needs to be given that news with grace and honesty. Here is research to guide you if you have to give difficult news to your young adults.

Revealing news to young adult children

A quick search on the internet returns all kinds of resources aimed at helping parents communicate with their young kids or teenagers. But, what happens when teens turn into young adults? When it comes to disclosing important news to young adult children, how can parents do so in a way that results in closer relationships?

“My previous research had indicated that parents really struggle with how to deliver important news effectively to their grown kids,” says Erin Donovan, Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Associate Director of the Center for Health Communication at The University of Texas at Austin. Donovan is the lead author of a new study recently published in the National Communication Association’s journal Communication Monographs.

“You can find information online like ‘how to tell your kindergartener that you have cancer in a way she can understand,’” says Donovan, “but there's virtually no guidance for how to talk to young adult children, even though parents, understandably, worry about how to do this. I wanted to be able to say to parents: here’s how to disclose important news well to your adult children.”

In their study, Donovan and her co-authors Charee M. Thompson of Ohio University, Leah LeFebvre of the University of Wyoming, and Andrew C. Tollison of Merrimack College identified three tips that could help parents communicate big news to their adult kids, while making sure that their relationship grows stronger: providing access to information, relating as peers, and communicating with candor.

Nearly 300 college students were asked to recall and describe in detail a time when a parent had shared important information with them. Topics of disclosure included a parent’s illness, the death of a loved one, a change in parental employment, a move, and family secrets or family turbulence. The participants wrote about what contributed to the success or failure of the conversation. They were also asked what they would keep the same or change were the conversation to happen again.

Students indicated that parental disclosures were evaluated based on how cooperatively parents seemed to offer access to a sufficient quantity of information. Responses mentioning this dimension tended to focus on how parents “filled us in as much as they could” or whether a participant felt that he or she had “learned everything I needed to know.” When a parent had been relatively unwilling or unable to provide access to information, participants noted their dissatisfaction with the lack of information provided.

Another aspect students noted was “candor,” which was related to participant descriptions of how honest, straightforward, and unambiguous parents were when disclosing. When children knew or felt that parents had been dishonest, the communication was deemed unsuccessful. One participant explained: "Recently my mom was having surgery and had to have some tests run the day before. I called her to ask how her tests had gone and she explained that they went fine. That was the end of the conversation. Then the next day I talked to her, she explained that she had lied to me the day before and one of her tests had come back with an abnormality. I was devastated because she tried to hide it from me."

Another theme that emerged was that children deemed disclosure more successful when “relating as peers” with their parents. When parents opened up in a manner that reflected an appreciation for a child’s maturity, participants perceived that the communication was more successful. They described their parents as “being real,” treating them as adults and confiding in them the way a friend or peer would, rather than shielding them the way parents do with young children.

In a follow-up study, the researchers confirmed that providing access to as much information as possible when communicating with their young adult children and relating to them as peers during these disclosures could predict increased disclosure quality, which in turn predicted relational closeness. Candor didn’t predict either disclosure quality or relational closeness.

This study provides a needed analysis of how emerging adult confidants view parental openness and its relational outcomes. Disclosure may be an important way to promote and maintain relational closeness even as young adults become more independent from their parents.

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Quick Ways to Feel More Energetic

Quick Ways to Feel More Energetic

How you hold your body can actually change how you feel, in less than a 1/40 of second. If you hold and move your body the way you want to feel, your body's chemistry can change in a fraction of a second. Your posture and movement create a message that acts like a doctor’s prescription. The message is sent through your neural synapse to the brain's pharmacy. The brain notes the posture and movements and creates chemicals that match and sends them out into your blood stream so you begin to feel chemically the way your body language is held or moves. If you drag around head down feeling tired you will get the chemicals that make you feel more tired. You think your body language reflects your fatigue and lack of energy but you can change your energy by how you hold and move your body. I have been writing about the biochemistry aspects for over 30 years. (In her Ted Talk Amy Cuddly speaks about Power Poses using research about this phenomenon.)

Keep your body language “up.” Up, energetic body language is beautifully symbolic–you go up when you’re feeling up. In addition up body language brings your posture up in a way that allows more deep full lung capacity breathing which gives you more oxygenated blood, thus more energy. Though the steps may seem wacky, if your are feeling sluggish and just want to lay down and take a nap, these methods can charge you up very quickly.

Quick Ways to Use Your Body Language to Feel More Energetic:

Take five deep full breaths. Breathe in on a count of three, hold for three seconds and let your breath out slowly on the count of three. Make sure your lungs fill up fully.
Stand up and lift your chest up and out.
Stand up against a wall and see if you can get your shoulders back against the wall. Pull the shoulders back so even the tops of the shoulders touch the wall. Now step away from the wall and see if you can stand and walk with your shoulders back. This posture enlarges the chest allowing the lungs to fill up with air giving your body more oxygen.
Bring your hands up and gesture high in the air. The location of your hands also affects other nonverbal behavior. Put your hands at your sides and your energy goes down, your voice lowers and can become more monotone, and you tend to move less and show fewer facial expressions. Bring your hands to the level of your waist, and you become calm and centered. Bring your hands up high to the level of your upper chest or above, and your voice goes up; you become animated.

You can have fun for a second and pretend you’re a conductor leading an orchestra. Coincidentally, research shows conductors tend to live longer and they believe one of the reasons is their high gesturing that increases their oxygen. You can pretend like you have just won an Olympic competition and bring both hands up above your head and hold them there for three seconds, lower them then raise them again.

What You Can Say To Stop A Bully

Yes, you can look for these behaviors. I would also say you need to be aware of how you feel in the presence of person. If you “feel” bullied, check in on what you are hearing in the words and the nonverbals. Bullies sometimes know exactly what they are doing and they get what they want. Sometimes they don’t know. In either case you have many ways of dealing with it. One possibility if you are awake and aware is to say,

· Och,

· Och, that hurts

· (Action - hold up your hand in a stop hand position.) Stop!

· I am willing to listen to what you have to say, but you need to say it to me in a different way, please speak to me with honor and respect.

· I am feeling uncomfortable with how you are speaking to me.

· You may not be aware of it but, I feel you are not treating me with respect.

· You’re not treating me with respect. I ask that you change the way you are speaking with me

· Stop, I ask that you treat me with honor and respect.

· I don’t deserve that tone of voice, please speak to me with honor and respect.

· I am stopping this conversation because you are not treating me with respect.

Notice that you don’t call anyone a bully in any of these options. Do not label or name call, ask instead for what you want.

Five Tips for Getting Your Children Involved in Politics

Here are five tips I would suggest to get your children involved in politics.

First have them listen to and watch and read the platforms and voting habits of their senators, congressman and women and the political candidates and talk to them about what they see and notice.

For example, recently children have seen politician being bully’. If they are young you can have them imagine a child on the playground saying those things and acting in a particular manner and ask them how they would feel and what that shows about the politicians. ( How would you feel? How would you feel if someone said those things about you?) Watch the debates with your children and have them count and point out the good strong comments and ideas and the attacks and jabs. Have them express what they like and don’t like. Stop the recording and talk about what you have seen and ask them their feeling and state yours!

Second, have them take public speaking and debate classes and enter speech competitions. This will build their confidence and give them a skills that will benefit them the rest of the their lives. The more they speak the better they will be.

Have them take classes on interpersonal skills, logic, and negotiations and teach them how to make friends, form alliances, network, small talk, connect to others and be nice.

Teach them how to meet greet shake hands and make a stranger feel at ease. I have conducted several years of research on first impressions and greeting behavior this is also a set of skills that will serve them well.

Finally I suggest that you see if they would like to volunteer to work on a campaign or assist in the office of a politician. I was a volunteer for a Florida state senator when I was in grad school. I learned so much. One of the things I realized is that my senator was only working three days a week and rarely was present for votes. That guided me to look at voting records of candidates and be very aware of the work ethic of the people I voted for!