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

118 The Nonverbal Advantage
“She keeps me at arm’s length.”
Like facial expressions, hand gestures, and body postures,
space speaks. And proxemics—the study of space as used in
nonverbal communication—says volumes about relationships.
People communicate through the distances they maintain
during encounters.
TRY THIS
At your next business meeting, notice who sits next to whom.
Most of the time, people choose to sit near others they like and
agree with about the topic to be discussed. They will also find
ways to put distance between themselves and those they dislike.
Spatial Zones
A salesman was taking a client out to lunch, and by the time
they’d finished their drinks at the bar, I knew the deal was
lost. I watched the salesman move so close to his prospect
that the client began, very slowly, to inch away. When the
client could stand it no longer, he excused himself to make a
phone call—and left the restaurant shortly thereafter.
One of the easiest mistakes to make during an encounter
with someone is to misjudge how much space the other
person needs to feel comfortable. A mistake here can trigger
a truly deep-seated response. Anthropologist Edward T. Hall
was one of the pioneers in the study of proxemics (in fact,
he coined the word), and he found that people’s territorial
responses are deeply rooted and primitive. They are also predictable—if
you know what to look for.
There are five zones in which people feel most comfortable
in dealing with one another. One way to think of
these is as a set of invisible bubbles we all carry with us into
the workplace.