(Bk Business) Carol Kinsey Goman Ph.D.-The Nonverbal Advantage_ Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work -Berrett-Koehler Publishers (2008)

C H A P T E R
5
Talking with
Your Hands
JANE IS TELLING IAN A STORY. At a crucial point, one of
her characters slips a lethal substance into somebody else’s
drink. To illustrate the action, Jane holds her hand in a C
shape and tilts it, as if pouring from a cup. Nothing strange
about that, you might think, except that Jane is blind and
well aware that Ian is, too.
Hand and arm gestures not only are an adjunct to speech
but may be our oldest method of communication. Researchers
now believe that early humans communicated using a
form of mime. Somewhere in our evolutionary history,
speech took over from gesture as the main form of communication,
but gesture and speech are so tightly connected that
we can’t do one without the other. It’s an old, old habit, and
it doesn’t die just because we are on the telephone or talking
to someone who is blind.
This chapter illustrates how hand and arm gestures have
become an integral part of business communication. You’ll
learn why people who use a variety of gestures are usually
judged to be more personable, how emblematic gestures differ
from those produced without conscious awareness, and
how to decode gestures of low and high levels of confidence
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