Nonverbal messages can be hard to understand at times. You may think it could be referring to a certain thing, but the sender might actually be trying to convey a completely different message. I have found myself wrong about someones meaning of a nonverbal message. At work I had seen one of my coworkers crying after talking to our boss. I had made eye contact with her and she had such a sad facial expression that all I wanted to do was comfort her. I then walked over to her to ask if she was okay because she seemed like she wanted to talk to someone since she motioned me to come over and as I approach her, she then turned the other way and walked off. I was rather appalled and very confused because we were such good friends I didn’t understand why she would walk away. I then didn’t know if I should follow her or not, so I went back to what I was doing because I didn’t want to make things worse. It turns out that our general manager was also walking over to her to talk with her and she went to try and hide so she wasn’t confronted by him. I had then thought that maybe she was mad at me when she walked off, but her nonverbal communication of not letting me know what happened and just turning around gave me another message. In order for people to increase the accuracy with which they interpret nonverbal messages would be to make them clearer. If you motion for someone to come to you, don’t then leave without an explanation or at least signal to them that you will be right back or “one sec” to them. They can also look at the content in which the other person is seeing it from and try to make sure that what they are trying to communicate nonverbally makes sense to the other person. Nonverbal communicate can be at times very blunt or hard to read.
No comments:
Post a Comment