What am I putting out there?

In class this morning, Kyle presented on improving his listening for his capstone project. During the presentation he mentioned what kind of listener he is in his classes. It was mentioned that active listening includes leaning forward and sitting upright while someone is speaking. This made me think about myself and how I present my body language.

For the past two years I have been a student here at Sac State. What has my body language told others about myself. Have I shown my professors that I am listening and active by my body language? I catch myself leaning forward during lectures but other times I am looking around, looking at other work or plain ol' staring off into space. I need to be more aware of myself and what my body language is giving off to others.

So to all my professors and fellow students, I am sorry if my body language looked less than interested in what you were saying. I promise from here on out, really only three more weeks till graduation; that I will be aware of my body language. I'll lean forward, nod, and laugh at your jokes. Promise!

Whoops

So I messed up tonight...I had been doing pretty decent with paying attention to body language, but not so much today!

Sunday nights are the nights my small group from church gets together and like usual, Bill had a movie he HAD to show me and invited me to stay and watch it while I worked on my paper that was due the next day. Ashley, Bill's wife, had just gotten home that evening from the weekend women's retreat and seemed pretty tired so I asked to make sure she was o.k. with me staying after we were done meeting. When we were talking about it she seemed less than enthusiastic like normal but she said sure.

After working on my paper and getting half way through the movie, Ashley announced that she was going to bed and hardly said goodnight. This is when I was really cued into her body language and the way she really felt. I felt pretty lame for not analyzing the whole situation, especially her body language, when I made my decision of weather to stay or not.

Guess this whole taking body language into account is as easy as it seems!

Invisible Manager

Work has been rough lately. One of our managers left and the new one has been here just a few weeks while everyone is still trying to get used to the one that stated about six months ago. With so many different mixes of personalities and plenty of leaders to go around, there is bound to be confrontation.

Our GM has had her fair share of battles since starting last year. Everyone seems to have something to complain about, something they don't like or don't want to do. I try to stay out of the mix, do my job and call it a day. After getting a pretty bad review the other day, my GM was pretty much at her wits end with what to do. She wasn't her usual smiling self. I don't think anyone else notice. They all seemed to pass by her and not ask if she was o.k. or do anything to show that they had noticed she was having a hard night.

After asking her if she was o.k. she said she was fine. But since I gave myself this challenge, I didn't leave it at that. I didn't want to push the issue that she was having a hard time by her lack of smile, closed off posture and lack of eye contact. Knowing that she would leave that night without anyone acknowledging the signals she was giving away, I wrote her a note that simply said "Don't let tonight get you down. Smile" and left it on her desk. My hopes are that her body language changed and that it was a relief that someone noticed.

Not a fan of waiting...

Working as a greeter at a busy restaurant that is only open for dinner and has 33 table, we are faced with a wait pretty much every evening. There is nothing more that a guest hates to hear more than "We are on a 45 minute wait, can I have your name please?".

Each night I dread going into work because I know there will at least be one unhappy party because they had to wait a little longer than expected. Don't get me wrong, I have been in their shoes and understand it's not fun waiting for a table when you are starving. But sometimes, people decide to sit and talk and there's nothing we can do about it.

Tonight was one of those nights where everyone decided they wanted to sit for hours and we were over quote with those who were waiting for a table. While looking around the lobby, I made an attempt to honestly pay attention to body language to see who was happy and who was not. Even though we were over quote on a few parties, you could tell that one was particularly not happy. Their arms were crossed, the eye brows were furrowed and their kept staring in our direction.

All the other greeters weren't paying attention and in my opinion probably wouldn't have noticed that they were unhappy unless they came over to talk to us. By taking on my challenge and paying attention to their body language, I walked over to let them know that tables were sitting longer than expected and that we would get them seated as soon as possible. The shear fact that I noticed that they were unhappy without them even having to mention anything to me eased their discomfort.

There might be something to this challenge that might actually work. Here's to my first night of success of observing body language at work.

Hanging Outside of Work

Just got home from my managers going away party, it's so different seeing people outside of work. Usually our manager was pretty uptight and straight to business with a few side jokes thrown in here and there. Tonight, his body language was quite the opposite. When he walked in you could tell that he was so relaxed and was just enjoying himself. He gave hugs all around which he obviously never did while at work. It's amazing to me how a job or certain surroundings can totally change a persons body language.

While at the going away party I saw a co-worker who seemed quieter than normal and his shoulders were slouching a bit, it looked like he was in a pretty down mood. I walked over and asked how he was doing. He had just gotten back from an uncle's funeral and was just still in a bit of shock. By noticing his body language and talking to him for a bit it seemed as if letting some of that out really help and by what it looked like he cheered up a bit and went on to enjoy the rest of the evening

Kids Give it Away the Most

Sunday nights I go to small group for my church and we always prepare a meal together each week. Last night I was super excited because we were having a BBQ. This means summer is getting near! While we all began to sit down to eat dinner one of the guys had to run to the store real quick to pick something up. His wife was out of town so his daughter was sitting at the table with us as he ran to the store. I am really close with his little daughter and I notice that she had a worried look on her face and was fidgeting in her chair. As everyone was moving around her and it seemed as if no one else was noticing her. I asked if she was o.k. and she said yes. As I watched her for a little longer I realized the problem was that the pieces of meat she had were way to big for her to chew. After noticing this I walked over and cut it up for her. After doing this her body language softened and she was her normal happy self again.

I am excited to see where this challenge will take me. It's hard to really stop to pay attention to others when we are so used to being self focused. I am sure I will pass up opportunities to help someone out during these two weeks but hopefully not too many and that I will really learn something about myself through this.

Anyone Up for a Body Language Challenge?!?!

Growing up, in my house feelings were push aside. I was the one who had to be happy and make others happy. I couldn’t express my feelings or be upsets about something because that was not my role. My parent’s marriage has always been rough and we have had our fare share of medical issues with everyone in our family. I was a talkative and cheerful little girl and was the one who brought the “sunshine” so to say to the family.

As problems were masked and I grew older, I began to really pay attention to body language and to read how someone was really feeling beyond their words. I paid attention to how they held themselves contrary to what they said. Many times, I would be able to pin down that something was truly wrong.

After studying body language in multiple classes here at Sac State, I have realized how important it is in our interactions each day. Body language is something that we are so familiar with that sometimes, I think we often overlook it. When we were given our capstone project and told to chose a topic to explore, I thought hard and realized that body language is one of the most essential part of communication.

So, I took this project as a challenge to myself. A challenge to assess my understanding, perception and my ability to cue into a persons body language. What you will be following here is two weeks of me digging into the world of body language to discover how I could improve my relationships simply by focusing on body language and beyond words.