5 ways to improve your personal body language:

When managing a business your personal body language is a major key to success. People focus a lot on verbal communication. They tend to focus way too little on what you communicate through your body language. Your body language actually communicates a lot more to listeners that your words. A majority of the communication people receive from you and a majority of what they communicate to others about you will come from what messages you send them through your body language. Even if you are smiling at them, they can detect whether or not that smile is sincere.

For these reasons you want to be very careful about your body language and what messages you are giving to people through your facial expressions or the way you sit. Here are five tips that can greatly improve your body language as well as improve the messages you send to people when communicating with them:

1) First and foremost, your eyes. You eyes say SO much to those you communicate with. In your eyes they can read those things that you do not say with your mouth. In your eyes they can tell whether you are happy, sad, nervous, hiding something etc. When you communicate with someone you want to make sure that your eyes are clear and open. Things such as shifty eyes or eye contact avoidance communicate dishonesty. They communicate that you are trying to hide something. They can also say that you are nervous about talking to that person. To most impress people and build their confidence in you, you need to be confident in yourself as well as being open and honest with them.

2) Second is your attitude. Your attitude can really turn people away from you or towards you. Your attitude is completely readable through your body language. They can tell if you lose attention and are not listening to them. It is easy to tell if a person you are talking to gets bored. Their eyes soon start to wander. They give courtesy grunts of acknowledgement here and there. When there is an opening in the conversation, they are quick to change the subject. When you are with another person it is important that you can show them by your attitude that you are one hundred percent theirs. What they say should matter to you and you should be able to show them that through your body language.

3) Third, you will want to be sure to give people their space. If you are too close they will be uncomfortable. They will feel that you are too pushy or that you do not have respect for others' space. If you are too far away they will think you do not like them. You should not invade their space while at the same time you do not want to go too far out of their space. They need to be comfortable in your presence.

4) The fourth thing has to do with how you are conducting yourself when you are the one speaking. You should look people in the eyes. Looking them in the eyes is important. It is very hard to listen to someone who is not looking at you. You naturally look where they are looking. If you do not look at someone while you speak it says that you want to get your message heard, but you do not really care whether it is them or someone else who hears it. You should not fiddle with other objects while you speak. It can communicate nervousness as well as distract the person so they do not hear what you have to say; they are too busy concentrating on whatever it is you are fiddling with.

5) Lastly, you should give them a warm smile, not just half, courtesy smiles. A warm smile goes a long way with people. When you look into their eyes and sincerely smile at them they can feel it and it warms them up to you. If you smile but it is a selfish smile they will read that. A selfish smile would be one where you smile because you know you should, but your mind is on other things that you consider to be more important than that person. You should always let the other person know that they are important to you and that is in large measure communicated through your body language.

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Categories: Management,

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