, Singapore

3 signs of a nervous business negotiator

By Christian Chua

Body language reveals more of ourselves and then we sometimes wish to. Often, even the untrained person can pick up subtle signals from the gestures we display during a negotiation.

Our actions are the personification of our emotions, and our emotions is the embodiment of our thoughts. When we get excited, the excitement actually starts from our thoughts. An emotion of excitement is displayed through what we call reflectors, or what many were call Body Language.

Some people think that body language can be concealed. It is true to a certain extent, but body language cannot be totally concealed.

Let's take the example of someone who is excited over a certain business deal but does not want to show that he is. However, when a person is excited, he's pupil dilates. The pupil is enlarge so as to take in more light. This is not something anyone can prevent.

When a person is nervous during the negotiation, some of the signs which we lookout for are:

1. He swallows hard. This is because the muscles in his throat are constricted and he finds it hard to swallow.

2. He might also be rubbing his arms or clasping his hands and rubbing his fingers as a self comforting gesture.

3. Other signs that we should watch out for includes, scratching of head, giving a fake cough and taking a sip of drink etc.

An expert body language practitioner is be able to read his candidate quite accurately. On top of what we have just discussed, other clues which reveal the truth of how a person is feeling or thinking includes the person's speech pattern. What he says and how he says are all clues to what his real thoughts are.

Baseline

We first determine the person baseline. By baseline we mean that we determine his normal speech pattern while he is comfortable and in his natural speech.

Once a person becomes emotionally charged, he will begin to display all kinds of reflectors. His speech could be faster or slower, his tone could be higher or lower and he will be making more speech errors.

When a person is off his baseline, we would term that a 'red flag' indicator. A red flag does not mean that the person is being deceitful, but it means that this is an area that is making the person uncomfortable. The question is "Why are you uncomfortable during a discussion of a certain ?"

The red flags tells us that we should pay more attention to this area and that we must revisit this area and probe further. If the red flags consistently shows up when a certain topic is being brought up, one can conclude that the counterpart is not revealing something which is making him very uncomfortable.

Usually, an untrained body language reader say something like "I have a funny feeling about this person", it is because the reader is able to pick up the subtle clues but is unable to define and decode the clues like a trained reader. 

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