Week 7

This week's lecture focus was about the infamous “Body language” and also about Interviewing skills, both topics were quite interesting and refreshing if I may add compared to some other topics.

Body language is a skill that is a skill that allows the user to be able to “manipulate” the feelings of other persons without actually speaking and at the same time to be able to understand another persons feelings and intentions without them talking about it, that's why Body Language can be considered also as a form of “mind reading technique”. This was also proven via some recent statistics that show that Body Language can influence communication by a way larger margin than the actual voice communication. To be more precise, according to the statistics, Body Language influences around 55% of the communication while voice around 38%.

Body language is divided in seven elements:

• Facial expressions: that can easily show the emotional status of another person, like happiness, anger or sorrow.
• Gaze: The movement of the eyes can show many hints about another persons thoughts, for example if his gaze isn't steady it might mean that the person doesn't feels certain about what he is talking about.
• Posture: how someone sits somewhere and the general stance of the body.
• Gestures: give additional information when used properly, a primary example of this is the way we wave our hands when we say goodbye to another person.
• Proximity: this refer to the distance we take when talking to someone. If we are in close proximity to another person that means that we feel safe and/or comfortable.
• Touch: this is used more often when we are familiar with another person, however it can be used on other occasions too like when meeting a person for the first time and we use a handshake.
• Appearance: is one of the most important parts since the way we look can greatly change a lot of factors in communication. Someone who is dressed properly depending on the occasion will get better communicative results than someone who is not.
  

There was also a talk during this lecture about Interviewing skills, interviews in general and how we should act during an interview (something that I was familiar with but many students were not). However, the discussion led to some useful knowledge and conclusions. Like the fact that during an interview, no matter how well prepared one might be, by far the most important thing is to be able to keep your calm in order to avoid being nervous.



In general this lecture was interesting since it allowed me to familiarise myself with the use of Body Language, a skill of extreme importance, and it was also a useful revision of things to look after during an interview.

G.