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Key points
- Non-verbal communication that has served you in face-to-face interactions often leaves you disconnected online.
- With intention, attention, and practice you can develop new skills to build rapport and mutual understanding.
- Active sensation practice forms the basis for non-verbal communication to achieve rapport and mutual understanding.
This is the second post in a two-part series on how to address some of the drawbacks and integrate the benefits of online meetings. In our previous post, we described how multiple senses are needed to connect with and understand others. We gave some tips on how to use your senses to connect online. Here we go into more detail, applying skills from Integrative Empathy on how to create rapport, understand others, and, most importantly, avoid misunderstandings in online meetings.
Rapport and mutual understanding don’t just happen on their own. They are things to cultivate, requiring intention and practice. If you are an experienced facilitator or presenter, you have likely developed skills in reading and applying body language to connect and create rapport with the people you work with. Yet face-to-face skills don’t necessarily convert to the online environment; we hear of many experienced teachers, coaches, facilitators, and therapists struggling with body language online.
Non-verbal communication is picked up and honed early in life. It is processed by an older part of our brain (the limbic system), which makes it more instinctual and involuntary than verbal communication, as it is happening in an automatic and unconscious, or semi-conscious way. The techniques you develop in your first relationships have an enduring effect in adult life.
Interestingly, non-verbal communication that has served you in face-to-face interactions often leaves you disconnected and floundering online. The virtual environment is unfamiliar in a way that instinctual habits don’t automatically convert to online interactions. Therefore, we need to develop a reflective range of skills.
Here are a few techniques we teach in Empathic Intervision to achieve these important interpersonal and inter-group goals. The basic principles below guide and inform five empathy skills in Integrative empathy. We’ll share those that help build rapport and mutual understanding.
Embodied Communication and Self-empathy
In embodiment, we perceive how our mind and body interact with each other. It helps us explore how bodily responses and bodily expressions bring awareness to self and to others, and the connection between us.
Our mind and body are inseparable. Like the chicken and egg, it is difficult to know which comes first or causes the other. Think for example of how emotions are bodily in that they feel a certain way: Anxiety causes tension in our muscles, which reinforces fear. Many emotions come with a change in physiology and are often accompanied by shifting sensations in the body. By being aware of our bodily sensations and how they shift and move, we become more aware of our mind.
Experiences of the mind also direct bodily expressions and can be perceived by others in our face, postures, movements, and tone of voice. Microexpressions flit across the face and micro-movements ripple across the body, giving hints of what one is thinking or feeling. In this way, a reflection of inner experience is visible to others.
Active Sensing
In principle, we are able to perceive something of the inner experience of another by sensing their facial and bodily expressions, movements, and tone of voice. However, in practice this doesn’t necessarily happen—even less so in Zoom or Teams meetings. This is because most day-to-day sensing happens passively. We are left with a general impression, but we do not actively notice it. And our perceptions are tinted with the glasses of our bias and preconceptions.
The good news is that, with intention and practice, we can sense actively. The first step is to acknowledge the importance of gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice. We can train ourselves to notice them.
With active sensation practice, we are able to sense and make sense of our own bodily gestures and movement. This is important because facial expressions and body language might communicate attitudes you would rather keep to yourself. To send the message you want requires you to be aware of how your attitude reflects in your gesture and tone of voice. Self-empathy is a useful practice to bring awareness to your experiences, thoughts, and feelings. In self-empathy we sense into our own state of mind, body position, and movement to know our inner world. We can then apply this newfound bodily awareness to build rapport through kinesthetic empathy.
Building Rapport with Kinesthetic Empathy
With self-empathy, we become aware of our inner experience through bodily sensations and corresponding gestures or movements. We build rapport with others when we coordinate or synchronize our bodily gestures and movements with each other. For instance, dating goes better (you like your date more) when your date leans back when you do, crosses his or her legs when you do, and so on. The same principles apply to conflict management.
Online, you might choose to rely on your natural inclination to synchronize and coordinate bodily expressions. In this case, it is helpful to set up your technology to ensure you have a good view of your participants. To help build rapport with each other, ensure that you set up your camera to show your face and a good portion of your upper body. Ensure that the light source shows your face to best effect, and request that the people you meet with do the same. Don’t hide yourself by staying a meter and a half away from your camera. Be willing to lean in and show others your expressions.
Even more effective is to incorporate specific kinesthetic empathy exercises to achieve an intentional objective. For example, we can share gestures or movements reflecting how we are at the start of a meeting, and have each person mirror the shared gesture. In this way, we communicate a non-verbal experience of how we show up to a meeting.
Also, listen to how your voice comes across online. Good quality sound is indispensable. When you are too close to the microphone it distorts your voice, making it sharp to listen to. A smooth, moderate voice draws people in.
Understanding with Reflective Empathy
With reflective empathy, we practise two levels of listening: Reflective listening and empathic listening. With reflective listening, we practice literal reflections: just reflecting back the content of what you hear the other person say. We learn to be present with each other and to follow the content of what the other says.
After practising the literal reflections for a while, you can start reflecting back the mood, the essence, the feeling, or the meaning of what the speaker says. Empathic listening applies more than just your sense of hearing to understand another person. A sense of hearing picks up the vibrational quality of sound. But we also sense a thought or concept through word choice and intonation. A tone and intention might be interpreted as sharp or harsh or soft and gentle. Furthermore, meaning is conveyed through the emphasis placed on words, or lack thereof. Being alert to tone and meaning, we gain an impression of someone's inner experience and attitude.
We also have a sense of the being of the other person: Are they present? Distracted? Perhaps enthusiastic, bored, or frustrated? What does this tell us about how connected we are or whether they feel understood?
When you come out of an online meeting feeling heard and having heard others, you will have actionable outcomes to work with. More importantly, you will have fed everyone’s need to connect, leaving you energized to continue with what is next.
These techniques, useful to gain a more nuanced understanding of others online, are also useful to build rapport face-to-face. When we get back to relative normality post COVID-19, you might try them there too.
Please share with us your experiences and comments on @EIntervision.
