How come we can have perfectly good conversations in the dark?

Just before christmas I was running a ‘change management’ workshop for a financial services client, and, helped by a professional role player we discussed interpersonal skills with our participants.

A key facet of these skills is the importance of non-verbal communication, but some recent work does question that in all cases, i.e., if 93% of communication is non-verbal (7% verbal (words); 38% vocal (tone); 55% facial (body language)) then how come we can have perfectly good conversations in the dark?

Research by Albert Mehrabian applies specifically to the communication of feelings and attitudes (like-dislike). For effective and meaningful communication about emotions, these three parts of the message need to support each other – they have to be ‘congruent’. In case of any incongruence, the receiver is likely to quickly spot the mixed message when the ‘words & music’ are different. In fact narrowing the application to the specific restrictions of Albert Mehrabian’s experiments, it only applies when: 

• A speaker is using only one word
• Their tone of voice is inconsistent with the meaning of the word, and
• The judgement being made is about the feelings of the speaker

So here’s the payoff… live with the dilemma. Common sense tells us that words count for more than 7% and experience tells us that we can spot incongruence in a flash! Celebrate it as another triumph of reality over misinterpreted research.