David J. Parnell’s Professional Series on Sensory Acuity | Part 3 of 3.

If you are going to effectively communicate with someone it is imperative that you ensure that they are both hearing and understanding what it is that you are say. This is difficult to know for two reasons:

1. We have developed incredibly powerful subconscious and automatic social mechanisms that help us to facilitate the flow of conversation. Head nods, “uh-huhs” and “mmm’s” are a few of the automatic and more often than not, meaningless recognition gestures that we use. These types of gestures are generally for the purpose of buying time and keeping rapport while communication is constructed mentally.
2. Do to the buffering capacity of the phonological loop, even if someone is not mentally processing the content of what you are saying they can still repeat back the last sentence or two that you fed them. A subcomponent of the phonological loop, the subvocal rehearsal loop, repeats content as it is evaluated and this allows someone to regurgitate your last piece of communication regardless of their actual “attachment” to it.

This means that without some active participation on your part, you can’t know for certain that they are processing your information. One of the best ways to know is by using your own sensory acuity to monitor their responses to see if they are congruent with the information you are attempting to communicate.

Sensory acuity is the ability to observe minute changes in a person’s physiology, tonality and/or verbal content in response to your communication or other outside forces. Responding appropriately is an entirely different ball of wax. For the time being, let’s just stick with detecting the changes first.

VOICE

• Tempo – This is the rate at which someone is speaking to you. Is this speeding up, slowing down or staying the same? Speeding up will indicate excitement, anxiousness or anger. Slowing down is an indication of relaxation, comfort and development of rapport.
• Volume – This is how loudly someone is speaking. An increase in volume can and usually does indicate an increase in excitement, anxiousness or anger. A decrease in volume is usually an indication of relaxation, comfort and development of rapport.
• Pitch – This is the “height” with which someone is speaking. A higher pitch can mean a movement toward femininity and therefore toward a subordinate role in the conversation. A lower pitch is a drift toward masculinity and can indicate an attempt toward a dominant role in the conversation.
• Verbiage/content– What are they talking about? Is the content of their responses in line with what you are talking about? Do their questions reflect your subject area? Do their responses indicate that they have actually processed your information? Did they actually answer your question, or did they through out a fallacy or other piece of information that diverts attention?

PHYSIOLOGY

• Posture – This is the positional attributes of the persons body during your communication. A slumped posture can indicate any number of things, but suffice it to say that it is “without energy”. An erect or tenser body position indicates “energy”.
• Movement – Are they like a dead fish or a spastic monkey or any where in between? Again lack of movement will indicate “without energy” and movement will indicate “energy”.
• Stance – This is the position of their feet, hips, torso and arms/hands in relation to your body. There are a number of different stances that can indicate a number of different things. The intricacies are fodder for another post. For our purposes here, we are simply looking for engagement. Are they at least facing you within the 45 degree mark?
• Muscular contraction – Is there comfort or tension in their muscles? Is there a relaxed limpness or does it appear that they are ready for action?

FACE

• Lips – Their lips can range anywhere from parsed and thin from contraction to full and pouty. The meaning of each can range from anger to anxiety to sadness to flirting to comfort. What is important for your purpose is whether it is congruent with the content of your communication.
• Eye contraction – Much like the lips, eyes can be slight and squinting with little dilation all the way to fully open and fully dilated. This can represent anger and distaste to extreme interest and enjoyment.
• Jaw – The jaw is a great barometer for tension in a person. Is it loose and a bit open or tense, closed and possibly grinding? A loose jaw represents general comfort and engagement. A tense, closed jaw represents anxiety and tension in one way shape or form.
• Forehead – Your forehead is a good indicator of emotion and there are numerous positions that indicate numerous things. The point of our post is to establish engagement though so it is important that their forehead movement be congruent with the content of your speech. Exciting verbiage and body language should be followed by an uprising brow and pulling back of the forehead.
• Skin – What is the general tone of the skin. If you are moving from a mundane and boring topic to an exciting topic there should be a slight change in skin tone from the flush of blood moving to the face and vice versa. If you are moving from exciting to relaxing, there should be a slight change in tone toward a more colorless state.
• Accessing cues – Are they spending time in the appropriate areas? If you are describing visual components, are they looking upwards during your communication or left and right or downward? There should be at least some congruence with the content of your speech otherwise it is safe to say that they are constructing something else.
• Eye contact – This is bit of a debated topic and really is circumstantial. If you are scolding someone, they SHOULDN’T be making full eye contact as they would be in a submissive position. If they are, then they have other things going on inside of their head. Normally though, good eye contact that is ENGAGED (this means not glossed over) should be maintained.

This is not a comprehensive listing, but is pretty close and more than enough to get you going in the right direction. I promise that if you are cognizant of these attributes and become proficient at monitoring them you will become EXPONENTIALLY more effective in your communication than you are right now.

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments. Until next time…