When I train, I stand, even when training remotely - which means that for the last two days, I have spent the entire work day on my feet, but hardly moving from the spot, though I do tend to wander when talking. I have barely walked anywhere today, but have managed 6000 steps in front of the screens.
The reason I stand while delivering is that it changes the way I present, the tone of voice, my level of engagement, the speed I speak, the intonation and pauses I take and I hope, how engaging the presentation ends up being. I have been training for many years now and have found, sitting has a negative effect on the atmosphere, depending on topic.
Body position in general is something that we don't generally spend much time thinking about, but it does affect the perspectives of our world in how we see and, how we are seen. We make judgments on state of mind and personality when we see someone hunched over or standing tall, on confidence on the ways in which they move and we can hear the difference over the phone if someone is smiling or not. While we don't spend much time thinking of them, the influence these minor things have can completely change our experience of circumstances and whether we believe or not, buy or not.
At least for me, my thoughts change depending on my body language and when I have my "chin up" I am far less likely to be thinking or dwelling on negative thoughts. I am not sure why, but I suspect that it has something to do with the way we access memories, for example - what was the color of the walls in your first bedroom? What about your first bike? Did you look in a particular direction in order to recall the information? Up? Now, when was the last time you cried? Did you look in the same direction? It seems that it is common to look downward when thinking or feeling negatively, which we can see represented in a thousand pictures and movies to the point we can sense the feelings of another through their posture.
What I was wondering was, what about when we are on our phones - which way are we looking and does it affect the way we think, feel and of course, interact. Would the way we talk to each other change if instead of looking down at the phone screen or keyboard, our chin was raised and we looked straight ahead. Would we look for and engage with different kinds of content, would we interact in a different way with those we meet online?
I am not sure how much of an impact it would have, but I suspect that there is at least some influence from our posture and position. A possible suspected example from my own observations might be that, due to the size of the screen and keyboard, comments made from a phone tend to not only be shorter, but also contain poorer grammar, less punctuation, shorter sentences that omit pleasantries and "get to the point" with a minimum of words. The problem might be - is it as effective?
Efficiency of words doesn't seem to translate into efficiency of communication, as the atmosphere of the conversation is a massive influence on how participants interact, how forthcoming and open to ideas they are and due to the part emotional attachment plays in our memories, how much of the information gets onboarded, remembered, considered or enacted at a practical level. While some people think that the learning happens at the information level, most of what adds value to the retention has very little to do with what is actually said, with how it is said having far more weight.
Efficient doesn't mean effective - conservation of energy doesn't mean that the energy spent isn't wasted. What I find is a lot of the communication that people intend to have an effect on whatever audience they has is lost, because they do not spend the time building the environment for effective communication. My legs could have had a much easier day if I had sat down, but would I have transmitted the messaging as well as I could, or in a way that was most beneficial for my audience, clients paying to learn from me? In my experience, no.
What I guess it comes down to and perhaps why people tend not to spend much time on this when interacting online, is whether we are communicating to convey a message we want others to consider, or are we speaking in order to release our thoughts. I think a great deal of the communication online is aimed at the latter, we want to "be heard" even though what we are saying isn't delivered in a way that is likely to be considered. We blurt out whatever comes to mind, yet do not care whether it is in a form that is consumable for consideration - and then we think that those people scrolling through and randomly liking things matter.
The world of social media skews the style of communication and most of the time, rather than effective brevity, it is short irrelevancy that makes so little lasting impact that literally seconds later, the message is already forgotten. We might have a lot of information pass through our awareness, but it has become an in one ear, out the other flow that doesn't touch the sides - we have become "information loose".
Now, I don't know what your intuition tells you, but through intentional observation, I think many will discover that not only is the way they present not geared well toward engagement, how they consume is not a great way to extract value from what is consumed. Sure, it might be all you think you need to do or get, but do you ever consider what you are missing as you speed through the stream with a quantity over quality approach?
We expect all of the value of the world do be delivered in 144 characters, everything we need to know on a subject through a pithy tweet or a headline - and then wonder why others are doing far better than us, while we feel so smart.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]