Having strong nonverbal communication skills is essential for effective communication. Regularly, nonverbal cues are used unconsciously and consciously to convey messages.
Nonverbal communication can be used to convey more information than other methods of communication. Albert Mehrabian suggests that communication is 55% nonverbal, 38% verbal, and 7% written only.
While we are usually aware of verbal and written communication, nonverbal communication is usually used unconsciously. So, it is necessary to develop nonverbal communication skills to avoid ineffective communication.
In this guide, you will learn the definition of nonverbal communication skills, examples and types of nonverbal communication, the benefits and limitations of nonverbal communication, and how you can improve your nonverbal communication skills.
Table of Contents
What are Nonverbal Communication Skills?
Nonverbal communication refers to the process of conveying a message without the use of words, either spoken or written. In this type of communication, messages are conveyed through eye contact, proximity, gestures, appearance, etc.
Nonverbal communication skills are the ability to encode and decode nonverbal signals.
Encoding is the ability to express emotions in a way that the receiver can accurately interpret the messages.
Decoding is the ability to take the encoded emotions and interprets their meaning accurately to what the sender intended.
Types of Nonverbal Communication
There are seven main types of nonverbal communication, which are:
1. Kinesics
Kinesics involves the use of gestures, body postures, eye contact, and facial expressions as nonverbal communication.
Gestures
Gestures can be subcategorized into adaptors, emblems, and illustrators.
Adaptors:
Adaptors are used unintentionally and don’t have a specific meaning to both the sender and receiver. It indicates that a person is experiencing anxiety or discomfort.
These behaviors can either be self-adaptors e.g coughing, throat clearing e.t.c. or object-adaptors e.g. pressing smartphones, playing with a pen, touching your hair, etc.
Emblems:
Emblems are gestures with specific meanings. They can completely replace words.
For example, you can wave your hands, rather than saying “Goodbye” or “Hello.” Similarly, in the US, a thumbs up can replace the word “Okay!”
In contrast to adaptors, emblems are used intentionally and have specific meanings to the sender and the receiver.
Illustrators
Illustrators are gestures used to illustrate the verbal messages they accompany. Unlike emblems, Illustrators do not have their own meaning.
For example, you can use hand gestures to indicate the size or shape of an object.
Body Postures
Body postures are nonverbal cues that you can use to communicate your emotions or convey information.
There are two types of body postures, which are open postures and closed postures.
An open posture can be used to communicate openness or interest in what someone is saying. Examples of open postures are uncrossed legs, uncrossed arms, etc.
A closed posture can indicate nervousness and a lack of interest in what someone is saying. Examples of closed postures are crossed arms, crossed legs, arms in front of the body, etc.
Eye Contact
Oculesics is the study of how eye behaviors affect communication. Eye contact has a lot of impact on communication.
Maintaining eye contact (not staring) indicates interest in what the other person is saying. While disinterest can be noticed when there is little or no eye contact.
Facial expressions
Facial expressions refer to the movement of facial muscles to convey messages.
Our faces are capable of expressing different emotions such as happiness, sadness, fear, anger, discomfort, etc.
For example, frowning indicates that you are angry. Similarly, a smiling face shows that you are happy.
2. Haptics
Haptics refers to how people communicate through touch. It is the study of touching as nonverbal communication.
Haptics can be subcategorized into four levels, which are:
- Functional/Professional level
- Social/Polite level
- Friendship/Warmth level
- Love/Intimacy level
A lack of nonverbal communication skills related to touching can lead to negative consequences. For example, when you touch an opposite gender inappropriately, you can be punished for sexual harassment.
3. Vocalics
Vocalics, also known as paralanguage, involves conveying messages through pitch, tone, volume, speaking rate, vocal quality, and verbal fillers.
Pitch: Pitch refers to the highness or lowness of the voice
Tone: Tone is the manner in which you speak to someone
Volume: Volume is related to the strength, intensity, pressure, or power of the voice
Speaking Rate: Speaking rate is simply the speed at which you speak i.e. how fast or slow a person speaks
Verbal fillers: Verbal fillers are sounds or words used to signal that someone pauses to think.
4. Proxemics
Proxemics is the study of how we use space and its effects on communication. It refers to the use of space and distance as a form of communication.
Proxemics can be classified into four major zones, which are intimate, personal, social, and public spaces.
Intimate space is any distance less than 18 inches and is usually used when interacting with a partner, friend, child, or parent.
Personal space is a distance of 18 inches to 4 feet and is usually used when interacting with friends and close acquaintances.
Social space is a distance of 4 to 12 feet and is usually used when communicating with colleagues, classmates, acquaintances, or strangers.
Public space is any distance greater than 12 feet and is usually used for public speeches, lectures, campaigns, etc.
5. Personal Appearance
Personal appearance involves two parts:
- Physical characteristics
- Artifacts
Physical characteristics such as body shape, height, weight e.t.c are capable of conveying messages. We don’t have control over how these physical characteristics convey messages.
Physical characteristics play a significant role in first impressions. People can make assumptions based on your body features.
On the other hand, artifacts like clothes, jewelry, tattoos, hairstyles, cars e.t.c can send messages to others about who we are.
For example, Muslims (females) wear hijabs to communicate their religious beliefs.
6. Chronemics
Chronemics is the study of the relationship between time and communication. Time is an important non-verbal cue that can affect communication.
Chronemics can send messages to other people about the things we value and the things we don’t value.
For example, your response time to a job offer email can communicate your level of seriousness to the employer. A late reply can indicate that you don’t value the job offer.
7. Physical Environment
Physical environment refers to the physical place in which communication takes place.
Your environment is capable of conveying a lot of information about your personality, financial status, occupation, etc.
For example, a messy and crowded office will send negative messages to your visitor. The visitor may think that you are not an organized person.
Benefits of Nonverbal Communication
Below are some of the benefits of nonverbal communication:
1. More credible
The involuntary nature of nonverbal communication makes it more credible than any other method of communication. People usually put more trust in nonverbal signals over verbal messages.
Nonverbal cues are difficult to fake, which makes them more credible.
2. Conveys more information
There is a proverb “Actions speak louder than words.” This proverb indicates that nonverbal cues can convey more messages than spoken words.
We can rely more on nonverbal signals when verbal and nonverbal messages conflict with each other.
For example, if someone says “Are you stupid?”, we may focus on the tone of the person’s voice to know whether the person is joking or not.
3. Suitable for Illiterates
Apart from visual communication, nonverbal communication is another method of communication that is suitable for illiterates.
Nonverbal communication can be used to overcome language barriers. Language barriers occur when a person doesn’t understand a particular language or loses the ability to speak.
For example, babies who have not developed language skills can use facial expressions to communicate.
Nonverbal communication is also suitable for deaf people i.e people who can’t talk or hear. Deaf people usually communicate using sign language, which is also part of nonverbal communication.
4. Consume less time
Non-verbal communication reduces time wastage. Nonverbal cues can convey messages to the receiver more quickly than written or verbal communication.
Unlike written communication, nonverbal communication consumes less time, you don’t have to waste your time creating or editing messages.
5. Less disturbing
In situations where communicating via spoken words can be disturbing, you can use nonverbal cues to communicate.
For example, you can use hand gestures to signal to your friend that you are ready to leave the library.
Nonverbal communication can also be used in loud places. Instead of shouting, you can easily convey messages through non-verbal cues.
Limitations of Nonverbal Communication
Even though non-verbal communication has a lot of benefits, there are some disadvantages that cannot be overlooked. Just like other methods of communication, nonverbal communication also has disadvantages.
Below are some of the Limitations (disadvantages) of nonverbal communication:
- Involuntary
- More Ambiguous
- Difficult to control
- Lack of formality
- Not secretive
- Contradict verbal messages.
1. Involuntary
The involuntary nature of nonverbal communication can either be an advantage or a disadvantage.
Most times we don’t know when we start conveying messages. For example, you may shake your head because of discomfort but someone next to you may think you disagree with what they are saying.
2. More Ambiguous
Most nonverbal signals can have different meanings; this makes it difficult to understand the message conveyed.
The ambiguous nature of most nonverbal cues makes them more difficult to understand and often leads to misinterpretation.
Since there is no use of words, the receiver may find it difficult to accurately interpret the conveyed messages.
3. Difficult to control
The involuntary nature of nonverbal communication makes it difficult to control. While we can decide to stop sending verbal messages, it is usually impossible to stop nonverbal cues.
You have little or no control over the way people will judge you based on your appearance. For example, in Nigeria, most people think anybody with large body art (tattoos) is involved in illegal activities.
4. Lack of formality
Nonverbal communication cannot be used in professional settings because it is not formal and lacks structure. In professional settings, written and verbal communication are more suitable to use than nonverbal communication.
For example, it will be rude to nod your head when your lecturer asks you a question. Similarly, you can use a thumbs-up to indicate “okay.”
5. Not secretive
Nonverbal cues are capable of leaking out our emotions or feelings. Facial expressions and other nonverbal cues can leak out messages you want to keep to yourself.
For example, a sad person can tell someone that he is happy, but his facial expressions will indicate that he’s not happy.
6. Contradict verbal messages
Although non-verbal cues can be used to complement verbal messages, they may also contradict verbal messages.
Nonverbal cues, especially when used unconsciously may convey messages that don’t match what a person is saying.
Ways to Improve Your Nonverbal Communication Skills
We can communicate nonverbally as much as we do with words. Developing nonverbal communication skills will improve the way you communicate.
Communicating with nonverbal cues can be tiresome if you don’t have the necessary skills. You can develop these skills if you follow these tips:
1. Pay attention to nonverbal signals
Nonverbal signals can convey more messages than spoken words, so it is necessary to pay close attention to nonverbal signals.
As you are paying attention to what the person is saying, also try to pay attention to the person’s nonverbal signals like eye contact, gestures, tone of voice, body posture, etc.
When words fail to convey the speaker’s messages, you should ignore what has been said and focus on nonverbal signals.
For example, someone who is angry can tell you he’s happy while frowning. In this case, pay attention to his non-verbal cues.
2. Maintain eye contact
Always maintain eye contact, but avoid staring. Maintaining eye contact indicates that you are interested in what someone is saying.
You should still maintain eye contact even though the other person is not looking at you. The other person may be shy or don’t want to maintain eye contact because of cultural beliefs.
Eye contact can also indicate that you are confident in the message you are conveying. For example, if a speaker is looking down during a presentation, his/her audience will think that the speaker is shy.
3. Focus on the Tone of Voice
Your tone of voice is capable of conveying several messages, ranging from disinterest to frustration, anger, anxiety, happiness, etc.
For this reason, you should always be aware of your tone and use different tones for different settings.
For example, if you want to tell someone a joke, you should use a sarcastic tone.
4. Ask Questions
During conversations, when the other person sends mixed messages you should ask clarifying questions, rather than jumping to a conclusion.
Mixed messages are sent when non-verbal cues don’t match spoken words. They can confuse, so feel free to ask clarifying questions to get a clearer understanding of the message.
Asking questions at the appropriate time also indicates that you are actively listening to what the person is saying.
5. Look at nonverbal signals as a group
You should look at nonverbal signals as a group, rather than interpreting a single nonverbal cue.
Reading too much meaning into a single nonverbal cue can lead to misinterpretation and can affect effective communication.
Most times, a single nonverbal cue may not convey any message or convey the wrong message. So, you should always interpret all the nonverbal signals you are receiving.
6. Mind your body posture
Your body postures and movements are also capable of conveying thousands of messages.
Be mindful of your body posture and make sure it is not conveying negative messages. For example, slouching indicates that you don’t have an interest in what a person is saying.
Avoid using closed body language, instead maintain open body language such as uncrossed arms, uncrossed legs, standing straight, etc.
7. Use your facial expressions
Our faces can display several emotions. Research confirmed that human faces can share more than 16 complex expressions.
You can use your facial expressions to tell other people about your mood. For example, smiling indicates that you are happy. Similarly, frowning indicated that you are sad or angry.
In addition to the above tips, you should always practice. Just like every other skill, you must practice developing effective nonverbal communication skills.
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Conclusion
Words can fail but nonverbal cues hardly fail. We are capable of conveying thousands of messages and emotions through nonverbal cues.
However, nonverbal communication has some disadvantages, which have already been discussed in this article.
Even though nonverbal communication cannot be used in some situations, we cannot overlook its numerous benefits. You need to develop nonverbal communication skills to enjoy these benefits.
We have already shared some tips that can help you improve or develop nonverbal communication skills. In case, you find it difficult to use these tips, feel free to drop your questions about the tips and other topics discussed in this article, in the Comment Section.