Читать книгу Power Cues - Nick Morgan - Страница 26

I’ve observed this phenomenon at work in a small-scale experiment I ran on some Harvard midcareer Fellows a couple of years ago. We had a group of about seventy of (very) high achievers. I wanted to see the effect of gesture on how they presented themselves to each other.

The experiment was very simple. I asked them to introduce themselves to each other. So, one by one, the Fellows stood up and took a minute or two to speak about themselves. I gave them no guidance beyond asking them to “introduce themselves.”

Then, after each one had finished, I took the speaker aside and asked him or her to adopt a specific gesture and then give exactly the same introduction again. I was curious to see the effect of open gestures on the thought processes and verbal patterns of people speaking in front of groups like these. The gestures I asked them to adopt varied, but mostly consisted of some form of open arms, exposing the torso to the audience.

Most of the speakers, before I coached them the second time around, in fact clutched their hands nervously in front of their stomachs, behind their backs, or at their sides. So the effects of my instructions to them were to greatly increase their openness to the audience.

The results were astonishing. In every case, the amount of personal information the speaker divulged greatly increased on the second try, when he or she was forced to be open through the open gestures.

I’ll never forget one student in particular, who, on his first introduction, stated his name, in a flat, unemotional way, and then proceeded to identify his year in the program, the courses he was taking, and how much longer he had to go.

Then I coached him to open his arms out at his sides like a preacher at an altar, what I call the “Jesus gesture,” with the palms upturned, just a little above waist high, and about twelve inches out from his sides. Try it yourself. Stand up and adopt the posture. Then imagine yourself talking to a group of seventy people, holding that gesture, for two minutes.

The student’s second introduction was extraordinary and transformational. He said, “I’ve just come back from spending two years in Iraq, working with children. I saw atrocities committed that should never be done to anyone, let alone children, and I’ve made it my life’s work to try to improve the lot of children around the world. Please join me in working to save children from the terrible mistakes adults make in war zones and other trouble areas worldwide.” That was the gist of it; his speech was more impassioned and eloquent than that.

The audience rose to its feet and spontaneously gave him a standing ovation. A number of people came up to him afterward and asked how they could help. When I asked those in the audience to describe the difference between the two introductions, they spoke passionately about the second introduction and how it had moved them. The first one had failed to move them at all. When I asked them if they had noticed the Jesus gesture, none had!

Recall that I had instructed the speaker to give the same introduction. When I debriefed the speaker, he remarked that the first time he had been nervous and hadn’t said much. But the second time, he felt inspired to share his heart with the audience more directly.

It was an extraordinary demonstration of the power of gesture and how we present ourselves to others to affect our interpersonal communications.