Avoid Misdiagnosing Your Body Language

• 00:05 Warning, you need to be careful of the misdiagnosis.
• 00:10 What do I mean by that?
• 00:12 So often, I have clients all over the world, who look at video of themselves,
• 00:17 they're doing something well, and
• 00:19 their diagnosis is they've done something really wrong.
• 00:23 And I'll tell you what those three specifics are.
• 00:26 But first I need you to think back to those videos you watched of people you
• 00:31 really admire and like and respect.
• 00:35 As you may have noticed, and you may have taken notes ideally.
• 00:38 They move their hands, their heads move.
• 00:42 Their head isn't staying frozen and stiff, and whether you noticed it or
• 00:45 not people blink their eyes.
• 00:49 So here's what I want to point out to you when you're watching your own videos and
• 00:53 diagnosing yourself.
• 00:56 I have seen this to be true all over the world.
• 00:59 It doesn't matter what culture, what language I'm working with, what industry.
• 01:03 When people watch themselves on video and they see their hands moving
• 01:09 in a normal way, a very high percentage of people who look at and
• 01:14 say oh, my God, I look like an idiot!
• 01:17 I'm moving my hands like crazy!
• 01:19 Well, I sure I'm glad I saw this video.
• 01:21 I now know the solution to my problems is to lock my hands down and
• 01:26 put a staple on the floor.
• 01:29 No, for
• 01:30 whatever reason, when we see ourself moving with our hands, it looks weird.
• 01:36 It looks strange.
• 01:38 But every time I'm in a situation like that, and I'm working with five,
• 01:42 six, eight clients, and
• 01:44 the person is just misdiagnosed themselves as moving their hands too much.
• 01:49 I'll turn to everyone else in the room and say well what do we think?
• 01:52 Were John's hands crazy wild out of control?
• 01:56 Who thinks so?
• 01:58 And without me prompting, they always say, no he looked comfortable.
• 02:04 She looked confident.
• 02:05 Everything was fine.
• 02:07 So in my experience people see themselves, they don't like their hand motions but
• 02:12 everyone else in the room thinks it's fine.
• 02:15 In theory it is of course possible to be wildly moving your hands and
• 02:21 gesticulating in a distracting way.
• 02:24 In theory that can happen.
• 02:26 I've worked with more than 10,000 clients for 30 years in 6 continents.
• 02:29 I never yet had a client do that.
• 02:33 You see it on sitcoms, you see it in movies.
• 02:38 But it's not really a problem in real life, most of the time.
• 02:44 Can there be exceptions?
• 02:46 Sure.
• 02:46 Can honest, fair minded people disagree?
• 02:50 Sure, some of you might not like my hand movement.
• 02:53 But the one thing I can tell you is I'm not thinking let me bring my left
• 02:57 hand up now, let me bring my right hand.
• 02:59 I'm just talking to you in a natural way.
• 03:02 This is how I talk whether the camera's on or not.
• 03:06 So that's the first big area of misdiagnosis a lot of people have.
• 03:12 The next one I've noticed is the angle of the head.
• 03:17 Human beings, when they talk, their head moves all over the place.
• 03:21 Again, if you doubt me, look at the videos of the people you saw you admire.
• 03:26 For that matter, look at the evening news.
• 03:28 The 6:00 news or any network news anchor, with the volume off.
• 03:34 And you will see their head is moving all over the place.
• 03:36 That's how people talk.
• 03:39 So for some reason,
• 03:41 when people see their own heads moving they think I look like an idiot.
• 03:44 My head's not perfectly straight.
• 03:47 So they will try to self-correct to make their heads stiff.
• 03:51 Big mistake.
• 03:52 That will make you look scared, nervous, uncomfortable.
• 03:57 And that's going to make your audience feel like you're uncomfortable and
• 04:01 it's going to make them uncomfortable.
• 04:03 So it's a very downward spiral.
• 04:06 Do not try to keep your head perfectly straight.
• 04:08 Now, every once in a while is it possible that someone keeps their head tilted
• 04:12 to one side too long?
• 04:14 Yeah, but the answer is not making it perfectly straight.
• 04:18 The answer's giving a full range of movement to your head.
• 04:22 The final body language issue that people often misdiagnose, blinking.
• 04:27 And they'll see themselves blinking every couple of seconds and they'll think,
• 04:32 oh my God this is embarrassing.
• 04:34 I'm horrible, doesn't this look awful, I have to apologize and,
• 04:39 no, they weren't blinking too often.
• 04:41 In fact it's really weird if you don't blink.
• 04:45 If you're looking like this the whole time and
• 04:47 you never blink that's what looks weird.
• 04:51 That's what looks strange.
• 04:52 Now people blink on average every second and a half or so.
• 04:57 Your eyeball needs that moisture.
• 04:59 Now some people do blink more often than others.
• 05:04 And if you're really, really nervous, in theory you could blink faster.
• 05:07 I have a higher blink rate, than normal.
• 05:10 I have light sensitive eyes.
• 05:12 Nothing I can do about it other than wear dark sunglasses.
• 05:16 And that would look really strange to people, if I am indoors, or for
• 05:20 that matter, outdoors giving a speech or a media interview wearing sunglasses.
• 05:24 So in that case, the solution would be worse than the problem.
• 05:30 I assure you it's not because I'm nervous.
• 05:32 I couldn't be any more comfortable right now if I were taking a nap.
• 05:36 But my eyes just blink a little faster.
• 05:39 Somebody doesn't like it?
• 05:42 Tough, there's nothing I can do about it.
• 05:44 So I'm not going to waste time and energy and effort worrying about it or
• 05:49 thinking let me keep my eyeballs open.
• 05:52 So when you see a video of yourself,
• 05:55 if you think you're blinking too often, chances are you're not.
• 06:00 You need to go back to the video of the people you respect.
• 06:04 Whether it's politicians, news anchors, business experts or
• 06:08 celebrities and watch them.
• 06:11 Their eyes are blinking too.
• 06:13 So again, critically important to watch yourself on video.
• 06:17 Give yourself an honest assessment of what's working and what isn't working.
• 06:21 But don't get tripped up on these three areas.
• 06:24 My experience shows people do often misdiagnose themselves.

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