Gestures are very important to improve your communication at work. They support you to present yourself effectively. Using them correctly helps you to convey information and understand your colleagues.
In a day, we often use nonverbal communication. But, in most cases, we do not know what they mean. This causes weak communication and consequently affects our success at work. There are thousands of nonverbal communication such as voice tone, facial expressions, and physical touch. That is why you may sometimes struggle to use them effectively and interpret the other side. But, it would not be logical to start with a general term like nonverbal communication. Instead, we will start with gestures. So, you can gain confidence with gestures and continue your learning.
Now, let’s look into the 4 main gestures to improve your communication at work.
In a day, we often use nonverbal communication.
What are the Main 4 Gestures and Their Meanings?
Eye contact, balancing body movements, and regulating your tone of voice is critical to give a good speech or having an effective talk with your colleagues. But, gestures play an important role to improve your image. These days, many have started to give importance to their gestures as they have seen that they are crucial to communicating productively.
Getting to know the gestures and using them in your life effectively help you to improve your communication at work. If you want to be a better communicator, you must check the following 4 gestures and their meanings. Then you can start to implement them in your workday to improve your communication.
1. Manipulator gestures
These gestures usually use one part of the body. They may not be correlating with the speech and happens naturally. Some examples are, nodding your head when listening to someone or covering your mouth when you are surprised.
To properly understand the meaning of manipulator gestures, we must look into the context. Otherwise, it is complicated to make a correct interpretation. But, some research shows that if someone moves fidgety, they are more likely to lie. However, it does not mean that if someone uses lots of body gestures, they are not honest.
2. Emblem Gestures
Emblem gestures are more clear compared to manipulator gestures. These may change from culture to culture but commonly they all express one meaning. For example, waving to someone means “hello” or “goodbye”. When you nod your head, it shows that you say “no”. We can say that these gestures are as deliberate as words.
3. Beat Gestures
Beas gestures, in reality, do not hold any semantic or abstract meaning. The main purpose of beat gestures is to emphasize a word or support the rhythm of the talk.
These gestures are often used in a speech, presentation, or argument. They serve as an effective way to take the other side’s attention. When you harness these gestures into your speech you can help you to improve your communication skills. But you mustn’t use them very often otherwise, it would distract the audience.
4. Deictic Gestures
Deictic gestures are easier to understand compared to others. These are usually the “pointing” gestures in that the speaker points out someone or something to take the attention toward there or increase your visibility. These gestures are very vital in communication and scientific studies. Scientists use these gestures to track disorders like autism.
5. Metaphoric gestures
Metaphoric gestures are more open to interpretation. You use these gestures to represent an abstract concept. Some examples are; balancing your hands like two scales to show that you consider the options or placing them on top of one another to show that the ideas are overlapping.
