What’s not said in a business meeting can be more important than what is said – everyone knows that.
Or do they? Actually, Sandra Ketrow bets most people heading into a business meeting don’t know. And that’s a shame, according to the University of Rhode Island communications professor, because business people can gain a critical competitive edge by learning to see what people are saying with their bodies.
People in meetings communicate volumes of crucial information about their thoughts and feelings without even realizing it, according to Ketrow, an expert on nonverbal communication who researches how groups make decisions. People don’t always say what they’re really thinking and feeling, but their body language doesn’t lie, she contends.
Building a Strong Data Foundation in the Age of AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a key priority in the boardroom and across management —…
Learn More
Typically, there are at least 4,000 nonverbal cues in a large conference room during a meeting, said Ketrow. A person’s facial expression generally speaks louder than the words he says. So does where a person sits in the group, and how he sits in his chair.
By learning to recognize these cues and their meanings, smart business people can cull a wealth of information that their adversaries across the table don’t necessarily want them to know – who really likes the idea of a merger, and who’s repelled by it. Who’s really your ally, and who’s just mouthing the company line. And who really holds sway behind the scenes, even if she doesn’t have the title.
But first you’ve got to learn the verbal cues, said Ketrow, whose latest research on nonverbal aspects of group communication was published in the 2002 12th National Communication Association/American Forensic Association’s Conference on Argumentation, entitled “Expanding the Theoretical Domain of Argument: Emotional Competence, Interpersonal Sensitivity and Argumentitiveness.”
“In a business setting, one of the precepts is that you’re not supposed to display emotion. But everybody has emotional responses, and we display them without even realizing it,” she said. “The cues are there and easy to recognize, if you know what to look for.”
Ketrow’s approach to business dates back to the late 1960s, when UCLA psychology professor Albert Mehrabian and other social scientists pioneered the field of nonverbal communication. By examining body language, scientists began to identify nonverbal and subtle ways in which one conveys like or dislike, power and leadership, discomfort and insecurity, social attractiveness, or persuasiveness.
Communication and leadership trainers and political campaign managers have relied on these findings for years. Indeed, most people today recognize that a person leaning forward in his chair is more interested in what you are saying than someone leaning back, said Ketrow.
But the field of nonverbal group dynamics still hasn’t been fully embraced and studied in the business world, she said. As a result, a certain level of available insight, and even tactical warfare, is lost to most business people.
A lawyer setting up a conference room for a high-stakes negotiation probably doesn’t know she can make her male adversary feel impotent by taking away the conference table, said Ketrow. Men also don’t work as well in small, cramped rooms as women do, she said.
On the flip side, a knowing businessman can make a woman feel vulnerable by insisting that she hang up her coat. Ketrow has discovered in hear research that women almost never take off their suit jackets in a meeting when the men do.
“It signals to me that the women feel somewhat inferior, and they are dressing more formally to equal the playing field a little bit,” she said.
Ketrow has published studies in the academic journals Small Group Communication, Management Communication Quarterly, Psychological Reports, and The Handbook of Group Communication Theory and Research. She is currently writing two books and collaborating on a third. Outside of academia, she has worked as a consultant to attorneys, publishing houses and hospitals.
She teaches that, among other differences, women and men communicate differently in group-settings. Women tend to talk quietly on a personal level before a meeting, she has found. If a male enters the room the women tend to fall silent or pause and shift to a more business-related item. On the other hand, men typically don’t speak about personal matters. If they speak, they will focus on business, sports or the weather.
During a meeting, men tend to sprawl in their chairs. Women will cross their legs. Women usually smile more and use much more eye contact than men, and they want the eye contact returned, said Ketrow.
“It’s similar to couple communications,” she said. “When a husband isn’t looking at his wife while she talks, she’ll often complain that he isn’t listening. Men are usually being attentive; they just have different speaking-listening-looking ratios than women.”
Ethnically speaking, blacks are more physically expressive and laugh more during a meeting than their white colleagues, who tend to laugh only at the end of the meeting, Ketrow has found. Hispanics, on the other hand, like to tackle several problems at once during a meeting, and feel comfortable walking around the room during the process.
Next, Ketrow is planning a sabbatical to take her research overseas. She wants to learn more about the nonverbal dynamics of business people in other parts of the world – particularly in Asia. Nonverbal communication will become increasingly important in a burgeoning global business culture, she believes. Americans need to know how to read the nonverbal cues of businesspeople abroad, and know how our nonverbal cues effect others, she said.
“American business is relatively oblivious,” said Ketrow. “If I’m going into an important meeting with a Japanese firm, I may find myself in trouble. They may have more resources upon which to draw. Japanese business people might be very tuned into the nonverbal-cues part of context around them. They don’t need someone to say, ‘you can’t do that, he’s in charge of that.’ We Americans tend not to pay much attention to that kind of thing.”
