From CoachingConfidence.co.uk

In this week’s guest post, Jeff Thompson shares his expertise and thoughts on a subject that will apply to coaches of all niches who meet clients (and potential clients) face to face.

You Did What With Your Hands?

Seriously, Hand Gestures Are Important

by Jeff Thompson

Hand gestures and hand placement are important.We use them all the time yet either their importance is often discounted or they are stated as being the obvious.What do I mean by importance?They are important as they can help us be more effective communicators or contribute to misunderstandings. The obvious comments are often “of course that gesture means that” however are you fully aware of the gestures you use and those used by others?

As coaching, conflict and communication professionals, not only what we say is important but also what we do. This brief article will give some examples of gestures and hand placement that often can reflect an emotional state the person is feeling, as well as being used to compliment or contradict the verbal message being delivered.

This blog post is listed in sections as each one can be read and practiced on its own, while collectively it gives a good starting point (pun to be intended) to becoming aware of the important role of hand gestures and placement.

Firstly:I approach nonverbal communication, and for this blog article solely gestures, from a social semiotic perspective.What does that mean?It means approaching it from 3 steps

1)Identify the gesture used (this is semantics for the geeks out there like me)

2)Determine how is the gesture used in combination with other gestures (syntactics)

3)Explore what the gesture means, especially given the context of the situation (pragmatics)

Read the full article [HERE]