My wonderful son stood in front of me excited to be retelling the adventures he had at church camp last week. He was full of words and stories. I just love hearing him talk about his experiences and answer questions. I asked him about his favorite food, the friends he made, the different play activities, the bus trip and so on.
Did he remember the things that his mother told him before he left on the trip? For instance, did he always put on sunscreen (the Texas sun is bright and very hot in July)? Yes, he assured me that he always had done so.
Did he remember to always wear his swim shirt to the lake? That’s when he averted his eyes, shifted his feet and changed his tone. “Well,” he said “I only went to the lake twice.” And then he grinned at me and I knew. TRANSLATION: Dad, I forgot about the shirt.
When you know someone really well, you can often sense their message from many cues that are more telling and accurate than their words. All of the other signals give them away. In fact, in a strange way, the actual words are distracting as often as they are informative.
Interpersonal signals abound among those we know best (and that know us). I use this often with close friends.
We might be listening to a speaker when one of us will signal the other with a lifted eye brow (TRANSLATION: can you believe this speaker?). A casual flicker of the hand (TRANSLATION: this is not important), a half smile (TRANSLATION: I’ll tell why it’s amusing later) or rolling eyes (TRANSLATION: we are wasting our time) can all be quite meaningful when interpreted correctly.
In competitive intelligence we can use the same signals (except that our subjects are other companies).
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