“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say .” Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Communicating Nonverbally
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Nonverbal communication refers to body movements or vocal variations that communicate without words. Non verbal behavior manages and regulates conversation, displays emotions and feelings, provides feedback and influences others. Nonverbal behaviours can also communicate to customers.
Types of non-verbal communication.
1.
Kinesic behaviours are the movements we use to communicate. Kinesic behaviours, such as leaning or pressing your index finger to your lips to signal others to be quiet, can regulate conversation. They can also help us illustrate our verbal points, reduce anxiety and express emotion.
2.
Eye behavior can certainly communicate emotions, but it can also facilitate and regulate conversation and monitor others’ reactions. Imagine that you are at a department meeting during which you are scheduled to present report findings. The department director looks directly at you to signal that it is time for your presentation. While you are presenting, you notice the gaze of your colleagues and determine their level of interest or attention to your message. From a cultural perspective, direct eye contact is important in North
America because it can signal interest. But in Japan and some Eastern cultures, direct eye contact can signal aggressiveness, disrespect or even an invasion of privacy.
3.
Paralanguage , also referred to as vocalic, involves vocal sounds other than words.
Paralanguage is about how you say something rather than what the words mean. In our interactions with others, vocal pitch (highness or lowness of tone), speech rate (speed), volume (loudness) and rhythm (timing and emphasis) can express a variety of meanings.
Suppose that when you present your report to the members of your department, your speech is hesitant, your rate of speech is slow, and you repeatedly use vocal interferences such as “um”, “er”, “uh”, and “like”, “you know” to fill some of the dead air. Your colleagues may interpret this paralanguage as insecurity or limited knowledge of the subject matter.

4.
The study of how people use and perceive time is known as chronemics . Time is of great importance in North American culture. In the United States, time equals money, so the focus is on adherence to deadlines, schedules, promptness and alacrity when making points, all facets of monochronic time . From a monochronic time perspective, arriving ten minutes late to a job interview may convey a message to the employer that the applicant is unreliable or uninterested and may cost the company valuable time. It is not unusual in the United States and England for business meetings to begin exactly at the scheduled time. In Eastern Asia, 20 to 30 minutes early is common. By contrast, in many Latin
American and Middle Eastern cultures the focus is on interpersonal relationships and a perception that everything has its own time. In this polychromic time orientation, schedules are not strictly observed and expectations about arrival and departure time are less rigid. Being 20- 30 minutes late is acceptable because the pace is more relaxed.
5.
Proxemics is the study of our use of space and distance. The distance we put between ourselves and others also reflects feeling and attitudes and thus it affects communication.
For example, distance can reflect the attitude of the person who does the positioning.
Research shows that a person who expects an unpleasant message or views the speaker as unfriendly takes a more distant position than does someone expecting good news or viewing the speaker as friendly. An observant communicator can thus use the distance others choose with respect to him or her as a basis for hunches about their feelings.
Interpersonal distance is another nonverbal indicator of power. One unspoken cultural rule is that the person with higher status generally controls the degree of approach. This principle of distance explains why subordinates rarely question the boss’s right to drop in to their work area without invitation but are reluctant to approach their superior’s office even when told the door is always open.
6.
Touching behavior is known as haptics.
Nonverbal touching can communicate a variety of messages, including a formal greeting. Most business touching consists of formal handshakes, informal pats on the back and the occasional arm touch when addressing a co-worker in conversation.
Importance of Nonverbal Communication
Burbinster sees six functions for nonverbal communication.

Complementing: nonverbal signals that complement the verbal message repeat it.
Typically, these signals accompany what is being said. For eg., a supervisor welcoming a subordinating back after a lengthy illness might give him a warm handshake to stress how pleased he is at the other’s return.
Accenting: those nonverbal signals that accent call our attention to a matter being discussed. A common example is a person pounding on a desk as she makes an important point.
Contradicting: The nonverbal signs that contradict are less obvious. These are usually sent unintentionally by the subconscious to say nonverbally the opposite of what is being said verbally. Either subtly or obviously, nonverbal cues will often tell the careful observers the truth when the verbal cues don’t.
Repeating: this occurs when we already have sent a message using one form of communication and wish to emphasize the point being made. For example, a demonstration following a verbal description of a tool’s use is a nonverbal repetition.
Regulating: this occurs during conversations to signal to our partner to “slow,” “stop”, and even “wait your turn” and let the other person know that you are ready to listen or to speak.
Substituting: when we can’t send a message by verbal cues, we might choose to use nonverbal ones- especially emblems, to get the point across to our receiver. A supervisor visiting a loud factory might use the “OK” sign to signal to an employee.
From a theoretical perspective, nonverbal communication also serves another important function: communication redundancy. This concept refers to the phenomena built into any language system that combat the effects of noise. It simply means that much of the meaning of a message can be deduced from other elements in the message that have already appeared.
The TV show Wheel of Fortune is an example of redundancy in that not every word or letter must be on the game board before one can guess the correct phrase.