Every Move You Make....

Judi James

The Face Says It All

Body Language

The Body Language Bible

A study at the University of California discovered that on meeting someone for the first time, most of us make up our minds on a person within the first 30 seconds and 55% of all the communication we make face-to-face is based upon non verbal behaviour: In other words, body language.

Being a journalist, I’ve always thought of words as my primary tool of communication and yet when I spoke to Judi James, leading TV expert in body language, relationships and communication skills, I soon realised that what we say counts for very little when measured against how we sit, move and physically interact with each other.

Judi has had her own body language series on television and writes for a number of magazines, as well as being a published author. Her latest book – The Body Language Bible – is in stores now.

Judi’s career started as a leading catwalk model and later she opened her own modelling school in Chelsea where she trained – among others – Naomi Campbell.

“Models have to act with their bodies; they are like mime artists. To model on a catwalk you have to “re-learn” every movement and this helps you become more aware of your body language”.

Judi has also given lectures about job interview techniques and she soon discovered that understanding body language was a major contributor to interview success for many candidates.

“Body language was the very first form of communication. Words are quite young in comparison! All animals use body movement to communicate. When you study apes you see patterns, rituals and gestures that are very similar to things humans do on a daily basis.

“Humans have the most complex system of all. We are also the only animal to have the whites of the eye showing all the time, meaning that the eyes alone transmit thousands of signals via things like direction and even pupil dilation”.

It seems that we all have body language skills to a certain degree; to some these are seen as a sixth sense or gut reaction. However, by studying this subject in more detail, Judi is able to project more accurate signals about herself and have a deeper understanding of how to read others.

In practical terms I was still unsure of how a better understanding of body language skills might help in the work place but Judi reminded me that in business, knowing how to utilise these very human abilities would always put you at an advantage.

“Charisma, impact and self-marketing are all vital for business success and they stem from good body language signals. I’ve recently been studying Barack Obama and his non-verbal charisma has a lot to do with his current success. His body language is near perfect during his “performance” moments”.

Of course there is always a flip side and being able to read another person’s body language does have its disadvantages. One gesture can mean many things and it’s easy to be over-perceptive.

“The “Othello Error” is when you judge a gesture correctly but associate it to the wrong cause.

“When Othello confronted his wife, Desdemona, she appeared nervous, which he read as guilt and killed her. In reality, her nervousness was prompted by innocent fear”.

So how can you tell the actual from the accidental?

“When you’re studying others, look out for congruent or incongruent signals. Do a person’s gestures match the message of their words? Also, you need to be aware of “leakage” gestures, like smaller movements of the hands and feet. These are the least easy to mask and are often more revealing about true thoughts and feelings. Eyes are a huge giveaway, too. Eye expression, eye direction, eye contact and eye cut-offs will all speak louder than someone’s words.”

Some of the most revealing moments Judi can recollect have come from the royals or politicians.
“I watched the whole footage of the Charles and Di engagement interview and the way their faces fell and his eyes trailed away to the floor in between answers showed a much more tragic and doomed side to their relationship, even from the start.

“I also followed Brown and Blair during the last election and it was easy to see they didn’t really have a great degree of liking for one another, even though they were claiming to be best mates!

“The trickiest couple were Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. Their last shots together really did make them look like a couple in love even though they split up a few hours later. I can only imagine they were taken when Jennifer still believed there was hope for them as a couple. Later that year Brad and Angelina Jolie were defiant, claiming there was nothing between them but one glance she threw him at their press conference gave the game away!”

So it seems if you are looking for the truth in any given situation it’s the eyes (or the hands or the legs or the smile) and not the words that really hold the key.

If you would like more information on Judi James and body language then check out her website at http://www.judijames.com

Poppy Watt