Voice tone and social status

People who want to hire us, invest in our companies or collaborate with us increasingly look at our digital footprints on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google and Twitter to ‘profile’ us.

As we go more and more online, the way we are perceived digitally, in our display pictures, zoom videos, emails and social media provides a mountain of data for humans, and machines to make judgements about our personal and professional attributes.

As companies and individuals access our digital avatars and make their judgements, we have the ability to curate them and tell them a story that we want them to hear.

We need to understand the algorithms that are formulated to identify signals and patterns, and ‘hack’ them to our advantage.

“We have two ears and one mouth, therefore we should listen twice as much as we speak.”

When someone is coming to you for advice, you have to listen, with intent. You are not supposed to jump into a conclusion and start dishing out advice.

Usually, people just want someone to listen to their problems.

We tend to focus on giving employees critical feedback. But, by focusing on their weaknesses, we only create competence. By focusing on their strengths, we create excellence.

Give equal measures of positive and negative feedback. We usually gloss over the strengths, but focus in great detail on the critical feedback. Add examples and details to your positive feedback.

Be objective when you speak about a negative event. Rather than placing blame or evaluating the problematic situation, describe it and its consequences, and suggest acceptable alternatives.

You can’t change an emotion you don’t own.

Accept responsibility for its existence.  Because an external event always precedes your experience of an emotion, it’s easy to assume that the event caused it. But as long as you believe it was externally caused, you are going to be a victim to your emotions.

Emotions are the result of both what happens, and of the story you tell yourself about what happened.

• A victim story: it absolves you of your responsibility for what happened.
• A villain story: it exaggerates the faults of others and makes them responsible for what happened.
• A helpless story: it convinces you that any course of action is pointless.

Duchenne was interested in the mechanics of facial expressions, including how the muscles of the face contract to produce a smile.

The Duchenne‘ smile is long and intense, though it involves the contraction of just two muscles. First the zygomatic major, which resides in the cheek, tugs at the corners of the mouth, then the orbicularis oculi, which surrounds the eye, pulls up the cheeks, leading to the characteristic ‘twinkling eyes’.

In babies, a broad grin can either mean they’re happy or distressed and studies have shown that men tend to smile more around those considered to be higher status.

A happier face conveys trustworthiness. People will consider a smiling face as more trustworthy, warmer and sociable.

Not all is lost if your first impression has not been as good as you hoped. If you can impress someone afterwards, they will often not remember their first impression of you.

Charm is defined as your likability - how pleasant it is to interact with you.

And it is possible to train yourself to be charming.

Your first impressions are usually pretty accurate. But whether they are wrong or right, first impressions affect us in a big way and we are slow to change them.

You have to be willing to update them quite rapidly. 

• Studies show that if someone seems extroverted, confident, religious or conscientious, they probably are.
• We all pay more attention to pretty people, and so we tend to take the time to evaluate them.
• If you want to know if someone is good at their job, watch them do it for 30-60 seconds. 
• Funny people are smart: Effective humor production acts as an honest indicator of intelligence in humans.

• Pursed lips: an indicator of distaste, disapproval, or distrust.
• Lip biting: signals people are worried, anxious, or stressed.
• Covering the mouth: used when people want to hide an emotional reaction.
• Turned up or down: When the mouth is slightly turned up, it might mean that the person is feeling happy or optimistic. A slightly down-turned mouth can be an indicator of sadness/ disapproval.

• A clenched fist indicates anger in some situations or solidarity in others.
• A thumbs up and thumbs down: gestures of approval and disapproval.
• The "okay" gesture: "okay" or "all right." In some parts of Europe, the same signal is used to imply you are nothing. In some South American countries, the symbol is actually a vulgar gesture.
• The V sign: peace or victory in some countries. In the UK and Australia, the symbol takes on an offensive meaning when the back of the hand is facing outward.

The myth purports that we use 55% body language, 38% tone of voice and 7% actual words.

The research of Professor Mehrabian had nothing to do with speech, but to guess emotion based on the recordings of a single word. 

Actual words "must dominate by a wide margin", argues famous author Philip Yaffe.

Smiling is one of the most powerful elements when thinking about speech.

The smiley face is rated with the highest positive emotional content. The painting of the Mona Lisa with her contented smiled is one such example.