Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

33 How Conversations Work
Managing behaviour 
Conversations are never simply exchanges of words. Supporting 
the language we use is a whole range of non-verbal 
communication: the music of our voice, the gestures we use, the 
way we move our eyes or hold our body, the physical positions we 
adopt in relation to each other. 
We have less control over our non-verbal behaviour than over 
the way we speak. This may be because we have learnt most of 
our body language implicitly, by absorbing and imitating the 
body language of people around us. Our non-verbal 
communication will sometimes say things to the other person 
that we don’t intend them to know. Under pressure, our bodies 
leak information. Our feelings come out as gestures.
Key factors: structure 
Each stage of the conversation includes key questions. Use 
these questions to develop your thinking in each stage. 
First-stage thinking 
Second-stage thinking 
What do we want to achieve? What do we think about
this?
What are we looking at? 
How do we evaluate it?
What might it mean? 
What can we do? 
How else could we look at it? 
What opportunities are
there? 
What else could we call it? 
How useful is it? 
How would someone else 
Why are we interested
see it? 
in this? 
What is it like? 
How does this fit with our 
plans?
What shall we do?
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34 Improve your Communication Skills
Conversations often go wrong because we misinterpret non-
verbal messages. There are four main reasons for this: 
• Non-verbal messages are ambiguous
. No dictionary can 
accurately define them. Their meaning can vary