Mar 22, 2016

The word corruption can be a corruption itself. Usually it means an act of dishonesty but it can also mean a debasement or alteration of language or text. And that is the meaning I am intending here, so sorry if you thought you were going to get some steamy gossip.

What you will get is some insight into communications and how what we thought might have been true may not be as true as we thought.

For years I have heard in communications training, in person and on the net, that words only represent seven percent of what is communicated, whereas tone and body language convey the greatest meaning with 38% and 55% respectively. In fact this ratio is a big facet of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) training, which is widely drawn upon in Personal Development and the training industry. (I do have training in NLP.)

Sometimes, if you are lucky, a trainer might reveal that these ratios came from a study done by an Armenian/American Psychologist and academic, Albert Mehrabian, who is still an Emeritus Professor at UCLA.

We even teach it in courses, such as Advanced Interpersonal Communication but we do mention the following extra pearl of wisdom.

Mehrabian has said that since he did his study that gave rise to ratio in 1967, he has been widely misquoted. This is because he did the study on close interpersonal relationships and simply did it on like or dislike basis, not on the meaning that the subjects created from the communication. Which means that perhaps there is more to words than we might imagine.

Just to complicate things even further, in the late 70s and 80s, Australian, Alan Pease started to develop the body of knowledge on body language. This too was a bit of a corruption because his work has been accepted as fact rather than a nice aid to communication, which means that it may not always be helpful.

Never-the-less, tone and body language are still incredibly important parts of the communication process and ratios aside, to get good at communication, you need to appreciate the subtleties of these two areas. How you come across and how you interpret these elements in others gives rise to the quality of communication.

Simply looking at the two photos below, it is easy to tell, which Barack you might want to deal with. This is a fairly extreme example but we do pick up very subtle distinctions, usually unconsciously and make interpretations and draw conclusions sometimes accurately and sometimes erroneously. And that goes both ways.

For more information, have a look at New Horizons' communication courses.