 In this video, we're going to take a look at the intersection between non-verbal communication and listening, specifically the skill of listening and active listening. So first of all, this takes place as part of our discussion of the hurryer model of listening. That's H-U-R-I-E-R, which stands for hearing, understanding, remembering, interpreting, evaluating, and responding. And specifically right now, we are in the interpreting area of the hurryer model discussing that. We're going to lay in non-verbal in interpreting and talk about the factor that it plays and the role that it plays in interpreting things as a listener. So interpreting as you may recall falls as far as the hurryer model falls in this area of understanding, interpreting, evaluating, and really just that process of processing what it is we're hearing and trying to come to some understanding and common shared understanding of what is being communicated with the person who's speaking as the listener. So that's where interpreting falls in there and non-verbal then we're going to talk about that as an aspect of interpreting. We've talked about some other factors in interpreting like shared understanding, frame of reference, and emotional intelligence. So again, now we're going to get into the non-verbal elements in that process. So non-verbal communication is to review the definition real quickly is the process of sending and receiving messages without using words either spoken or written. So anytime we have an actual word, the symbolic representation of these characters we put together as a word, whether it's spoken or it's written, that's not non-verbal, that's verbal communication. So non-verbal communication though is everything else and we'll talk about some of the different channels of non-verbal communication but when we have the word itself either spoken or written, that's verbal communication. What we're talking about is all the other parts of outgoing communication really. So a couple of things to understand about the nature of non-verbal communication. Some foundational aspects of non-verbal communication. First we need to recognize that all behavior has communicative value. As Paul Waslow put it, communication researcher Paul Waslow put it, you cannot not communicate. Everything you do or don't do, everything you say or don't say has communicative value. So it's not just words and language that have this communicative value in terms of verbal communication but non-verbal communication also has tremendous communicative value and communicates a lot. We're very expressive using non-verbal communication especially when it comes to the relational aspect because as we're going to learn here right now, non-verbal communication is primarily relational. If I said, okay, lay out your case for who is the better general at the conclusion of the U.S. Civil War, was it Ulysses S. Grant or Robert E. Lee, who was the better general throughout that period, lay out your case but do it non-verbally. You can't use verbal communication. Remember verbal communication includes sign language, so you can't use sign language. Some people want to get around it by that but we don't really do that. That's not how we use non-verbal communication. It's primarily relational. If I asked you to tell me how you feel about these generals or something that you might be able to do that using non-verbal communication certainly more easily than you could give me facts about their names or their birth dates or the major battles that they participated in. We don't use non-verbal communication to relay factual information. We use it to communicate relational information, how we feel about that message, how we feel about that person or whatever it is we're talking about. Non-verbal communication is ambiguous. It's ambiguous. It's oftentimes vague. It can be interpreted in a variety of ways. So we need, as we focus on interpretation here as a part of the listening process, we need to remember that non-verbal communication itself is ambiguous. So if I said, tell me what facial expression this person is using, tell me what they're trying to express with this. Now, a couple of them we might be able to identify a fairly effective expression that would be attached to that emotion that would be attached to that, but some of these are much more vague. We could come at it from a lot of different directions because non-verbal communication is ambiguous. It's really hard to pin down specifically a lot of time. So we need to bear that in mind that it is ambiguous. Non-verbal communication does occur in what we call mediated messages. So messages that use some sort of technology as an intermediary. We see non-verbal communication occurring in those. A lot of times we'll see it through, you know, what use things like all caps means that somebody's shouting, right? That's an expression of non-verbal communication, even though it's not technically non-verbal. It still has to do with just the words themselves. We've come to the shared understanding of the fact that if it's all in caps, then it represents shouting, right? Or we use emojis. We started with things just like this, very simple, using characters on the keyboard to represent a smiley face. And then we got more advanced. We had different kinds of faces that we could express, and now we just have all kinds of things, right? And my favorite is the ice cream, but we can communicate non-verbally through these mediated messages through using these different techniques that we've agreed upon. Non-verbal communication is absolutely affected by culture and gender. What represents, again, non-verbal communication is ambiguous. So what a non-verbal symbol mean in one culture is not necessarily the same as in another. And it could be something very innocuous in one culture and mean something completely different in a different culture. So we need to be aware of that. Just like language, non-verbal communication changes from culture to culture. So it's not universal. There are a few functions of non-verbal communication, and just real quickly, we use non-verbal communication for a lot of different things, including creating and maintaining relationships. We use it to regulate information or interaction to determine, you know, whose turn is it to talk, essentially. We regulate interaction through non-verbal communication. We use it to influence others, sometimes sweetly and positively, sometimes through intimidation, right? We use it for concealing and deceiving others, concealing information and deceiving other people, and we use it to manage impressions. We spend a lot of time thinking about non-verbally what we're communicating, how we're dressed, how we smell, what we look like, what our tone of voice is, to manage impressions with others. So we use non-verbal communication for a lot of different things. We also use non-verbal communication in a lot of different ways. So let's chat about some of the different channels of non-verbal communication that we have, excuse me, starting with our body movement or kinesics. There are a variety of different kind of categories that we place under body movement in non-verbal communication, starting with our facial displays. Our face is very expressive, and we use it a lot in communication to identify what a person is feeling, how they feel about that message, all those different types of things, right? We depend a lot on facial expression, so our facial displays enhance our communication a lot through non-verbal communication. Our eye behaviors, our oculistics, as it's called, our eye behaviors indicate a lot of time we interpret, again, to get back to interpretation. There are different interpretations for these things, but in our culture specifically, we interpret eye contact. If somebody's maintaining eye contact, we associate that with truthfulness. We associate that with somebody paying attention to us. In other cultures, too much eye contact could be a signal of trying to dominate somebody else, right? Or trying to express dominance over somebody else. That's very common in the animal kingdom. It's very common in different, especially collectivistic cultures, too. That's why eye contact is different from culture to culture. But regardless of how we use it, we use eye behaviors to interpret a lot and make meaning of a message in a lot of different ways. Our posture, just how we're standing or how we're sitting as we communicate indicates a lot about the message and how we feel about it. And we use it a lot to express ourselves non-verbally. And of course, our gestures, how we use our hands and our arms. Some people talk a lot with their hands. Some people don't. That's fine. It's not that there's a better or worse type of thing, but we use gestures and a lot of different ways to communicate non-verbally. So all of these have to do with our body and our kinesis. So we throw them under body movement, but they're all very important specific channels of non-verbal communication. Another is touch or what we call haptics. Haptics, again, just have to do with touch. We use touch in a lot of different ways to communicate non-verbally. Sometimes it's a comforting touch like this, right? Or to express affection or caring for someone else. Sometimes it's more of a clinical touch like what you have at the doctor's office when they're examining a particular area. If you're checking your lymph nodes in your throat or whatever, and they're touching you here, they're touching your chest to check your breathing and things like that or whatever it is you're doing, that's more of a clinical touch. But we communicate non-verbally a lot through different ways of touch and avenues that we use touch in a lot of different ways. And again, very culturally bound. Different cultures use touch in drastically different ways. So we need to be aware of that. But in any case, touch is a very important non-verbal communicator. We do have what we call paralanguage or using our voice and elements that are related to that. Now, this is different than verbal communication. Again, we've distinguished that verbal communication has to do with the words that we use, which are very important, but there's also non-verbal elements involved in, for example, how loudly we say those words or what rate of speech we have and the tone that we're using. Are we monotone or are we using a lot of different tones in our voice? So this is all what we call paralanguage or the way that we use our voice to communicate something, and that is non-verbal, not specifically, not specific to the words that we're choosing in that instance, but specific to our use of our voice. That is a non-verbal channel. We also think about space or proxemics. Proxemics have to do with how close we are when we're standing next to somebody, right? Or when we're talking to somebody, how close are we? And different cultures vary in terms of what's considered appropriate personal space or those types of things. But in general, we know that space is a very important non-verbal channel. For example, even just if we're sharing a secret with somebody, we lean and we whisper it in there, we get really close when we put our hand up. I mean, that's a couple of different things, but we're getting close. That indicates, hey, this is something I only want you to know, right? I don't want everybody to know this. I'm not shouting it from across the room, right? So we use space in a lot of different ways to express what our relationship is to that person and express things about the message itself. So proxemics or space is a very important non-verbal communicator. Some additional channels of communication, territoriality, the way we use space around us and we will protect that space in particular, the way we treat that space. This is my desk area or this is my part of the room and this is my car. We stake claims to these types of things and express that non-verbally. How we use time or chronemics, time is a non-verbal communicator. Are we making people wait for us or are we on time or in what message does that send? And so time is a very important non-verbal communicator. We also use physical attractiveness in the way that we look as is an important aspect of non-verbal communication. And we do things to enhance that, right? Our physical attractiveness to others or not. And that in and of itself, again, can be a non-verbal communicator, things we don't do in that regard. The clothing that we choose indicates a lot about what we do. Do we have a uniform for where you work and are you wearing that? And is there even if there's no technical uniform, what's the dress code where you work and what's the dress code at home and what message do you send by wearing those clothes? And those are all non-verbal communicators. Even things like if you're a fan of a particular sports team and so you're wearing or a particular band or whatever, you're wearing the T-shirt or a sweatshirt of that band or sports team. You're expressing yourself non-verbally. You're expressing your fandom, your loyalty to that team or that group or whatever. So our clothing says a lot about us and does so without necessarily doing so in a verbal way. Our physical environment. How do we keep our house? How do we keep our car, those types of things? And the message that that sends to how do we decorate? What does that say about us and how cleanly is it? All those types of things. Our physical environment expresses a lot about us non-verbally. And then finally smell or olfactics is a really critical, non-verbal channel. Our smell is, for example, very, very closely associated to memory. But we spend and we spend a lot of time thinking about how do I smell? I shower. So I use soap that smells a certain way. I use perfume that smells a certain way. I use laundry detergent that smells a certain way because our smell sends a particular message about us and is a non-verbal communicator in and of itself. So as you can see, there are lots of different ways that we communicate non-verbally, all these different channels and then within them, all kinds of different ways that we use them to communicate non-verbally about ourselves. And so as listeners, then we also need to use that to interpret things about others. Coming the other way, what's the other person dressed like? How do they smell? How are they gesturing? What kind of facial expressions am I picking up as a listener from them? So we need to think also about ways that we interpret non-verbal communication. So just a couple of things here real quickly in terms of interpreting specifically non-verbals first, be sensitive to those non-verbal messages. Be aware of them and also be aware, though, that we need to decipher the meaning of them because they can be ambiguous. We need to take into account what's the situation? What's the culture that I'm in and that this other person is a part of? And if need be, do I need to ask for clarification? Because these things are ambiguous at times. So when we're interpreting non-verbal communication, we want to be sure, first of all, that we're paying attention to those things. And secondly, that we were able to then decipher the meaning of those non-verbal messages with those different context clues, the situation, the culture and even potentially following up to ask for further clarification on these things. So you can see non-verbal communication is an essential part of listening because it's not just the words that somebody uses that are important. Those are certainly important, not only that we be able to hear and understand those words and know what they mean and then decipher, though, the meaning of interpreting. You know, what's the difference between them using this word and that word, but also then non-verbally, there are lots of different things we need to pay attention to and be aware of. We need to step through that, not look through the keyhole of the door, right, but open the door to see the entire picture of interpreting those non-verbals and not just seeing the words, but also seeing those different non-verbal attributes that are a part of the person sending that message. If you have questions about non-verbal communication or about how it fits into the listening process, please feel free to email me. I'd love to hear from you there. In the meantime, I hope that you will begin to account for these non-verbal behaviors as an aspect of listening and specifically as of interpreting and listening, trying to use them again to pull in those different context clues. In addition to the words that the person is using, what are some different other context clues and non-verbal cues that we can use to identify specifically and more accurately what the meaning is that that person is trying to convey and do that through our interpretation as part of the listening process.