The language of the hands

Do you know what is the first thing people look at you??? YES, YOUR HANDS

• Politicians
• In Court
• Networking
• Negotiation

We are back to meeting in person, but even if you are still meeting in Zoon, there is one part of your body, one part of the other person’s body, to which you need to pay attention if you want to create rapport and if you want to know whether the other person is creating rapport with you.

USE YOUR HANDS

•  Hands have meaning, showing love, care, and safety.
• Create rapport with others. 
• Not showing your hands can be perceived as being less open and honest.
•  When we are walking on the street, and someone is not showing their hands, our paleo brain can perceive the other person as a threat.
• We use it to quantify things to indoctrinate kids, and it can be used to establish better communication either in the workplace, networking or during negotiation. 

THE LANGUAGE OF THE HANDS

Hands are part of our body language communication.  Politicians talk with their hands, negotiators talk with their hands, parents talk with their hands, and you, you say more than you think when you are using your hands and worse when you don’t.

I still remember the old days when I was a kid and I did something wrong, [by the way most of the time] and my Mom was pointing her index finger and shaking the hand saying, “Susan, what have you done?” Do you remember those moments when you were a kid and your mom or dad did that???

WHY HAVE POLITICIANS AND SPEAKERS CHANGING HOW THEY USE THEIR HANDS?

The study of human behavior has changed in the last few years. One major discovery was how politicians and speakers who wanted to create rapport changed the way they used their hands when they wanted to communicate. 

In the old days, when somebody wanted to point to someone, an object, or to emphasize a fact they used to use the index finger with the hands closed to communicate it.

With the study of behavior and now the possibility to understand emotions in real-time, we found out that using the finger in that way reminds us of when we were kids and our parents were reprimanding us or saying that we did something wrong.

Now, when either a politician or speaker wants to emphasize something, the way they use their  fingers is by closing the hand, putting the thumb between the index and middle finger, and shaking the hand.

IN THE COURT HOUSE

I’m a behavior science trial consultant, meaning I help lawyers, experts, and clients to better express their stories in court, as well as when they need to give a deposition and words need to align with the body. 

One phenomenon that I have observed from years of interviewing jurors after a verdict is that when someone is testifying and not showing their hands or not using their hands, they are perceived as less open and less honest, which can modify the outcome of a testimony and the outcome of the trial.

Now the opposite happens too if you use your hands in an aggressive or exaggerated way.  People are going to perceive you as lying.

For that reason, there’s a science behind any trial, and there are specialized companies like us that coach people on how to tell a better story using their hands, too. 

Next article I am going to explain how this works in NETWORKING & NEGOTIATION

Susan Ibitz 

⚠️Don’t wait for your competitors to call us; call us first.

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https://freebusy.io/susan@humanbehaviorlab.com/15min

Working on the humans that grow your business | Human Behavior Expert, I teach corporations & employees how to hack into humans using Behavior & Persuasion. I work with Pharma | Finances| Banking | Insurance| Sales| AI – Language & Behavior Prompt Engineering