Are Your Words Meaningless?

After last week's Customer Service Tip, you may have wondered if a similar study was done where researchers were evaluating how people judged each other based on a face-to-face conversation. The answer is yes.

Several years ago, researchers also conducted a study where they setup conversations between two people who had never met before, but these conversations took place face-to-face; so body language and facial expressions were involved. We'll still call the participants Jane and Joe and Jane and Joe would meet and carry on a discussion about whatever they wanted to talk about, and then they'd end the conversation. The next day, the researchers would go to the person in the role of Jane and say "Jane, tell me about Joe. What is Joe like?"

And Jane would describe Joe as funny or arrogant or dull or interesting or odd or lively or whatever adjectives came to Jane's mind. Then the researchers would ask, "Well, Jane, what was it about Joe during that face-to-facec onversation that gave you the impression that that was the kind of guy that he is, that that's his personality?"

A certain percentage of those folks in the role of Jane focused on Joe's mannerisms or his expressions (we'll generically call this his "body language"). Another percentage of the people in the role of Jane focused on how Joe's voice sounded, judging his personality based on his tone of voice.

Finally, the remaining people in the role of Jane focused on the actual words that Joe used, feeling like "these certain words" or "these certain phrases" helped the other individual to judge Joe's personality.

Out of 100% of the people in the role of Jane, what percent were judging the other's personality based primarily on his body language? Wha tpercent were judging the other's personality based primarily on how his voice sounded?The results? For body language, the percentage was 55%, tone of voice was second with 38%, and the words were last with 7%.

Does that mean that your words are irrelevant? Not at all. Your words are very important. They are the answer to the question; in the information age, the words are often the product. But the body language and the tone of voice are often what others judge us by - especially if they don't know us well - in terms of how service-oriented we are and in terms of HOW we delivered that "product."

When you're communicating with others, think about what you say, but be self-aware of how you're coming across to others with your body language and tone of voice. Those are the biggest determining factors in HOW your information is received.