Emotions are contagious

So I sat down to write my blog as every Sunday and ... no internet. Restarted my computer. Nothing. Fiddled with the modem. Still nothing. Put my laptop right next to the modem (which is a really uncomfortable place in the hall of our house) and tried to directly plug it into the modem (good old pre- WLAN times...) – nada. And it was already too late for internet cafés and the likes. To cut a long story short: That’s why I’m posting this week’s blog today and not yesterday. But back to its actual content and topic ... psychology. Or to be more specific – emotions.

One of my upcoming workshops will revolve around effective communication. While I was working on the concept I asked myself: How do our emotions get in the way of successful communication? Well, 90% of our communication happens non-verbally. That’s a lot. And the problem is that most of the non-verbal communication is done by our unconscious. So we are not even aware of the signals we’re sending out. Think of a conversation with your boss for example: Let’s say you have an unresolved issue with him or her, you can be sure you’ll communicate that in one way or another. Which might, no, will cause trouble. So you could find yourself stuck in a downward spiral of negative interactions, although you just wanted to talk about something innocent like where to hold this year’s Christmas party. Just because your wayward emotions decided to stick their noses into this quite unemotional business of yours and MAKE IT EMOTIONAL.

Sometimes I think of my feelings as little children that just want attention. And they use the exact same strategies to get it. Like choosing the most inconvenient times to get crying fits or smear peanut butter (whatever the equivalent of emotional peanut butter may be...) all over your shirt. The exercises I will do with the workshop attendees help avoid this by making you aware of these feelings. And not only your own, but those of the other person as well. You just have to learn how to read the signs and clean up your own signal sending mechanisms. NLP uses eye movement patterns in order to “mind read”: Looking down, to the right for example usually means thinking about feelings.

So what about our own non-verbal communication? If you’ve got something on your mind while talking to somebody and you’re lucky they will see it and ask you about it. But most of the time people are not trained in reading other people’s facial expressions, voice tone, body posture etc. which sidelines that part of the communication to the realm of the unconscious. Not good. Because you have no control whatsoever over what is happening there. This could result in you talking to somebody about grocery shopping on the conscious (verbal) level, but about your disappointment about that person’s unreliability on the unconscious (non-verbal) level. Which would in turn lead to a corresponding conscious and unconscious response so that you have two totally different communications taking place at the same time. Chances are you won’t be able to agree on what to buy.

The bottom line is: Emotions are contagious. That’s why it’s so nice to be around happy, optimistic, energetic people. (Unless you feel it’s too much in your face cheerfulness. That happens to me when I’m in a bad mood and don’t want to be cheered up. Then I avoid these people if possible because I want to soak in my own unhappiness and don’t want to “catch” their good mood.) So if you plan to have an important conversation with someone and want a positive outcome you better take a closer look at the sidelines first – there might be a whole cheerleading team of emotions determined to salt your conversation with inappropriate remarks.