How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching With Meta Communication | Page 46
As with posture, the greatest involvement and harmony is achieved
when gestures are synchronised – when the movements of one person
are echoed or reflected by the other. You may have noticed that this
tends to happen naturally between people who like each other and get
on well together. Watch pairs of lovers in a bar or pub, and you will see
that they often tend to lift their drinks and take a sip at the same time,
and that many of their other body movements and gestures will be
similarly synchronised. Psychologists call this 'interactional synchrony'
or 'gestural dance', and some of their research findings indicate that the
timing of matched gestures may be accurate down to fractions of a
second.
Although this synchronisation normally happens without conscious
effort, you can use it as a highly effective flirting technique. If you feel
the conversation is not flowing easily, or you and partner seem
awkward and uncomfortable with each other, try to be more sensitive to
the patterns of his/her gestures and body movements, and to reflect
these in your own body language.
If your partner spontaneously begins to synchronise his/her body
language with yours, this is a sign that he/she feels comfortable with
you. Men should not assume that it necessarily indicates sexual interest,
however. Women can avoid creating this impression by reducing
synchronisation, adopting a more 'closed' posture and avoiding the use of gestures which are specifically associated with
flirtatious behaviour. In experiments, female hair-flipping and head-tossing were among the (non-contact) gestures most
often regarded as sexually flirtatious, along with repeated leg-crossing and movements designed to draw attention to the
breasts.
Facial expression
An ability to 'read' and interpret the facial expressions of your
partner will improve your chances of successful flirting, as will
awareness of what you are signalling with your own expressions.
Some expressions can be effective even from a distance, as in the
'across a crowded room' encounter with a stranger. The 'eyebrowflash', for example, which involves raising the eyebrows very
briefly – for about one-sixth of a second – is used almost
universally as a long-distance greeting signal. When you see
someone you know, but are not near enough to speak, the
eyebrow-flash
shows that you
have noticed and
recognised them.
We all use this non-verbal "Hello!" in situations where we cannot use
the verbal equivalent, either because of distance or social convention.
Watch a video of Andrew and Fergie's wedding, for example, and you
will see that Fergie performs frequent eyebrow-flashes as she walks
down the aisle. Social etiquette does not allow a bride to call out cheery
greetings to her friends and relations during the ceremony, but the
highly sociable Fergie is clearly unable to refrain from signalling the
same greetings with her eyebrows.
If you are desperate to attract the attention of an attractive stranger
across a crowded party, you could try an eyebrow-flash. This should
make your target think that you must be a friend or acquaintance, even
though he or she does not recognise you. When you approach, your
target may thus already be wondering who you are. You can, if you are
skilful, use this confusion to initiate a lively discussion about where you
might have met before. Such conversations inevitably centre on
possible shared interests or friends or habits, and invariably involve
mutual disclosure of at least some personal information. As you will
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