How To Read Others’ Body Language In 3 Simple Steps

In the first blog in this series I recommended turning over your body language chores – monitoring your own body language and others' – to your unconscious mind. Here are 3 easy steps to accomplishing the second half of that – monitoring others' body language. I'll cover how to handle your own body language in subsequent blogs.

1. Decide what you want to know. This step is critical, because it's the way you get started tapping into your unconscious expertise. What is it that you want to understand about someone else's body language? Is she lying? Is she the real decision maker? Is he going to offer you the job? Is he a threat to your career? Formulate the question in a simple yes-or-no format, a choice between 2 poles. Lying or not? In charge or not? And so on.

Figure this out before you go into the meeting, or the interview, or whatever the situation is, because you're under too much pressure to pay attention and take part once you're actually in the moment. This little step – of thinking ahead, figuring out how the meeting will go, and deciding the question you want to answer – will pay huge dividends in awareness as you get the hang of it over time.

2. Pose the question to your unconscious. Once you've figured out what you want to know, then sit still for a moment and pose the question to your unconscious mind. Say something like, "In this interview, I want to know is Jane going to offer me the job?" Focus your mind on that, and push out other concerns, nerves, and distractions.

3. As the meeting takes place, wait for your unconscious to let you know what the answer is. At first, your unconscious will only whisper its information to you, and it will do that slowly. You'll be uncertain about what it's telling you. But as you practice it, the answers will come faster and more clearly. People who say they have a strong "gut instinct" or "good intuition" are already listening to the messages that their unconscious minds are sending them. The point is that anyone can learn to develop this sense, just like a muscle. It takes practice, and you must go through each of the three steps.

With time, you'll develop this ability to pose questions to your unconscious mind and get the answers back more and more clearly and quickly. Until you have the expertise, don't bet on an inside straight.

Next time I'll talk about how to manage your own body language, a trickier chore.

Thanks to Nick Morgan - Persuasive Public Speaking / Blogs Forbes