Power Gesture

The attorney could also have used the gesture popularized in pop culture as talk to the hand. However, it is wise to start with small nonverbal management of another’s behaviour and increase as needed. Talk to the hand is definitive power gesture. In most Western cultures, it plainly states stop. Use it wisely and only when the situation truly calls for it.

Using a power gesture can ramp up emotions. Therefore, before you do so, consider the amount of influence and/or power you may need to gain compliance. If you choose to use power gestures, the slower the speed of the gesture and the greater the bend of the elbow, the less aggressive the gesture appears. To produce the talk-to-the-hand sign, move your arm closest to the heckler straight out from your shoulder, ending at a predetermined bend in the elbow. At the same time the arm is moving parallel to the ground, the wrist bends 90 degrees up exposing the open palm with fingertips extended. Hold that position only until the offender complies. The longer you hold it, the greater the chance of damaging not only your message but also your reputation. Consider the amount of power needed to stop the behaviour immediately, and if it’s worth the collateral damage.

Collateral damage can come in several forms: the emotional upset of other group members or the destruction of your reputation or relationship within the group. Often when the leader resorts to power, others interpret it as just as offensive as the bad behaviour the leader was trying to fix. The other members of the group will have one of two responses, “Thank goodness, finally somebody did something!” or “Whoa, if the speaker did that to him, would she do it to me?”

Depending on the group’s culture, a speaker can actually spilt herself off from the group and encourage them to protect the heckler from the speaker’s aggressive gesture or action. The opposite can also be true. Another group might applaud the speaker for taking action to stop the annoying person. The attorney could have requested that the heckler leave. She may have even raised her status within the eyes of the rest of the group if she had made the request while breathing low. It’s vital to know the most likely response and meaning of your gestures with the given group and context before gestures that assign negatives, or that can be seen as power gestures.

Rapport Establishment

Rapport is the ability to hold someone's attention and create a sense of trust. It means implementing the feeling that you understand each other; that you have the other's best interests at heart and that you can be trusted to do whatever they've come to you for.

One way to establish rapport, something you've probably been doing anyway but without thinking about it, is behavioural matching. That means doing what the other person is doing – or something very similar. If the other person is sitting, you take a seat instead of standing. If the other is speaking with a soft voice, you modulate your own. It's what we do unconsciously, particularly in a new situations: following the other person's lead, a modified form of Simon Says, without being aware that we're doing it.

By becoming aware, which means making the choice to focus our conscious attention on matching another person, we can draw the other into a sense of rapport. You do something in order to create in him or her the feeling that you're kindred beings that you understand. Behavioural matching actually increases yourself understanding of the other person because you've aligned yourself with the other, literally put yourself in his or her position, and the increased understanding isn't pretence; it's real.

This is not the same as mimicking, however, which would almost have the opposite effect and break the rapport. Mimicking someone, copying the exact tonality or gait or repeating the words back verbatim is a way of teasing and making fun. Above all, it conveys disrespect. Instead, you want to create an environment of respect and understanding with the other person.

Specifically, you match posture, volume, and tempo. If the person you’re talking to is sitting, you won’t be standing because you don’t want to be placed at a higher level; it gives the impression that you’re speaking down, and that would not be the best way relating, to put it mildly. In business, with personal relationships, or even with new, still undefined contacts, you want to start out at eye level. If the other person speaks slowly, it makes sense (and increases rapport) for you to slow down your own speech; you’ll speak softer or louder, depending on the cues you’re getting. Matching is like dancing, following someone else’s lead.

Matching creates the experience of being on the same wavelength. I’m reflecting back what you’re doing so we can dance together; my movements suggest yours; we’re in tune and in step with each other, seeing eye to eye, aligned with each other.

When you’re mismatching the behaviour of the other, you’re out of sync, moving to a different drummer. You’re using a different tempo- or volume or posture- and it’s almost guaranteed to antagonise the other person so much that your communication has no real chance of getting through.

For example: You’re a Realtor, trying to convince someone to buy a house. They’re leaning forward and speaking slowly, and you're leaning back and speaking fast. No rapport. No sale. No way.

You, the Realtor, are a city person, used to a hurried pace and to the distance city folk migh like to put between themselves. Your clients are country people, used to slower ways, more time, intimacy. If you move your upper body forward, giving the impression that you’re really interested and that you have lots of time to hear them out, and speak in a slow, deliberative way, chances are good they’ll want to buy from you. If not this property, for sure the next.