Body language is something not often discussed openly in volunteer groups, but it can be a prime factor in the empowered volunteers success.

For many people who take on the challenge of volunteer group membership building it will be the their first encounter with sales or any form of direct solicitation with the possible exception of helping a child move some Girl Scout cookies.

This means that most empowered volunteers will have only informal or nonexistent knowledge of body language mechanics that are not dramatic, such as poses like that of a boxer or acting poses for the most part. This post can’t substitute for books or videos on the subject but a few reminders and a bit of structure can go a long way towards success in prospecting.

The hand shake is often the initial response to meeting someone for the first time or renewing an old relationship, even if it is only one of customer sales relationship. Usually hand shaking is a normal way of renewing relationships too.

There are variations of the regular handshake, but most of them should be avoided. The normal firm, grip to grip is expected, no matter what the combination of the two involved, mixed sex or both male or both female.

The sometimes encountered “fingers only” grip some lades give sends a message that is in my experience followed up by either indifferent or negative body language, telling the other hand shaker that the message is not being received well. In my limited experience when I was on the receiving end of this partial handshake, the interaction was always difficult and for her part indifferent.

I suggest any female empowered volunteers always avoid the fingers only hand shake.

For the rest of the body language supported hand shakes such as the two handed politicians grip, or the over the top businessman who shakes but also includes the other hand on the elbow or worse, on the shoulder, these have no good use for the empowered volunteer. They convey way too much intimacy for nearly all encounters you will find with even well known prospects.

From The Definitive Book of Body Language, by Allan and Barbara Pease I have gleaned some very helpful hints for the new empowered volunteer to employ. Select which, if not all of these helpful hints Allan and Barbara Pease provide in their international bestseller, revised and expanded edition of Signals you find worthy of employing.

Laughing is unique to humans and worthy of cultivation by the new empowered volunteer, even if it needs practice and refinement before being used in public. Allan and Barbara point out research that in the 1980′s several American hospitals introduced the “Laughter Room” for medicinal purposes. All it took was 30 to 60 minutes a day to show dramatic results in many forms for patients, including painkiller drug reductions. Laughter and smiling are powerful features for any human to use in bonding.

They concluded, “He who laughs, lasts”. 

Humor research has determined that, “Only 15 percent of our laughter has to do with the jokes. Laughter has more to do with bonding.” Relationship building is what is more important and jokes are a fundamental tool for that bridging. Further research concludes, “The results demonstrate that the more social a situation is, the more often people will laugh and the longer each laugh will last.”

Advertisers know that humor sells too. A marketing professor, Karen Machleit from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Business Administration found that consumers will accept advertisers claim if humor in included, such as a funny ad with a famous person will become even more readily accepted.

Empowered volunteers will be more effective if they find ways to include humor in their presentation.

Smiling has been studied and the results are predictable, women smile more than men. The portion for the empowered volunteer to take from this is that for women, smile less when dealing with dominant men in business or to mirror the amount of smiling that men do. Unfortunately this is a fine line, research shows that for women photos of unsmiling women were judged to be unhappy while the same thing for men were judged as a sign of dominance. Male empowered volunteers in dealing with women need to smile more in all contexts, according to the authors.

From a health perspective many posts have shown that when properly applied, many of the suggestions for the empowered volunteer help parts of the body cope better or help extend the life expectancy of one’s life. In short, body language that is positive will have health benefits and body language that is negative doesn’t help.

In this case, another fact the authors bring up is that, “Evidence shows conclusively that smiles and laughter build the immune system, defend the body against illness and disease, medicate the body, sell ideas, teach better, attract more friends, and extend life. Humor heals.” 

The authors include a section on touching to gain maximum effectiveness for your message and it is very detailed, with the percentage of success between different European nationalities and how exactly, “skillful elbow-touching can give you up to three times the chance of getting what your want”. At this point the fine points are too detailed for this forum, I would encourage the empowered volunteer to either view their website or to purchase or borrow their book. Information from their website can be found here.

http://www.peaseinternational.com/

Also, through the power of the internet a pdf is available for downloading. It is large so allow time of a minute or so for downloading please. It contains a bunch of the information I have related already. I would recommend it if you can support this for a reference tool.

http://e-edu.nbu.bg/pluginfile.php/331752/mod_resource/content/0/Allan_and_Barbara_Pease_-_Body_Language_The_Definitive_Book.pdf

Something interesting to note, cultural differences between world regions. Europeans and Westerners blow their nose into a handkerchief while Asians and Japanese spit or snort! This stems from the days of tuberculous in past times, the authors say. Spitting, which is the Asian way of dealing with the same issue was seen as a method of spreading diseases, thus making it disgusting in the eyes of Westerners. For the empowered volunteer, avoid either in public if at all possible.

The authors also review lie detection, which is valuable for the empowered volunteer to know when the prospect is not being honest and thus they can disengage the presentation without the prospect ever knowing that they have been found out.

One detail I will mention, “Research shows that people smile less” when lying. Most people think its the opposite. In this case less positive or more negative means just that, the message is not good and the empowered volunteer should read the body language accordingly.

I am going to revisit a topic I have mentioned before, if you find these tips overwhelming or even daunting to learn you might consider broadening your mind and making your awareness to body language easier through another researcher, Barbara L. Fredrickson’s website on Positivity. The site provides for free a few guided meditation exercises that takes only a few minutes to learn and are very powerful at expanding your awareness of body language when done properly over a few weeks.

Couple these techniques from Barbara with the lessons in the book on pdf  for body language listed above and you are on your way towards a better life no matter how well your prospecting goes! Here’s the website for the meditations as well as the positivity ratio needed for moving your life toward flourishing. Who doesn’t want to flourish?

http://www.positivityresonance.com/meditations.html

Body language can’t be learned overnight, nor would you want to believe that meditation techniques will transform your life experience overnight.

Extensive research show both tool sets reviewed in this post work and will help you live a healthier life if you use them and retrain your mind to work better. When you’re more positive and perhaps even funnier when appropriate you will be more effect in your encounters with others, whither you are trying to persuade them to your point of view or just trying to be friendly.

Enjoy the empowerment expanding your mind and improving your communication skills which the proper reading of body language can help you achieve.

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With over 40 comments on this initial post on passion, and several directly requesting more information on the topic, I will elaborate on “passion” as it relates to the empowered volunteer and volunteer groups and the data or science supporting why it works and how it helps all involved, health wise.

One of many scientists writing on social intelligence, Daniel Goleman PH. D., author of Social Intelligence, the New Science of Human Relationships (2006) makes quite a strong case for human connections.

To quote him from this book, “Neuroscience has discovered that our brain’s very design makes it sociable, inexorably drawn into an intimate brain-to-brain linkup whenever we engage with another person. That neural bridge lets us affect the brain-and so the body- of everyone we interact with, just as they do us”. 

He continues to explain that this effect between people goes to the very cells of our bodies, as to whether or not our T-cells are activated, which are the basics of our constant battle against invading germs. That is some very fundamental influence!

To wrap up his thinking regarding the links between people, “That link is a double-edged sword: nourishing relationships have a beneficial impact on our health, while toxic ones can act like slow poison in our bodies”.

This is huge stuff for the empowered volunteer!

What it means is that someone with passions for a cause can instill very profound physically helpful health influences on another person’s body when they convey their passions to another person. They are really helping that person just by being so vibrant and intense, in a real physical way beyond any cheer leading type of temporary emotional lift.

It is real, science has documented this impact and the health affects enough to call this particular health benefit valid.

Another scientist, writing in her 2009 book, Positivity, Barbara L. Fredrickson, PH. D. provides top-notch research that reveals the 3-to-1 ratio that will change your life. In this book she associates human needs for positive things to the heliotropic effect in plants, where they will turn their leaves towards the sun as it moves across the sky.

In humans, who need what she terms positivity just as plants need the sun light, she calls our need for positivity the “broaden effect”. Humans need positivity for a great many good things and effects on our bodies her research proves, research proven over two decades long and continuing.

I present the science behind what I am suggesting the empowered volunteer has to offer because I want to drill home the idea that it is fundamental to human nature to associate with others who are positive and driven to helping others, to sociability. The science reflecting the abundance health benefits from social intimacy that many society has intuitively known for hundreds of years is now abundant and irrefutable.

Humans are hard wired to be socially intimate with each other, brain-to-brain connections that really align us for causes while helping us physically at the same time.

Passions generate these brain-to-brain connections and thus help provide the basis for the health benefits that are generated by such intimacy. Teachers connect with students, great leaders connect with their followers, religious leaders of renown connect with their parish members, political leaders sometimes connect with their constituency, and parents connect with their kids as examples of the intimate relationships that benefit from passionate exchanges between two people in face-to-face passionate contact.

So why can’t this effect be generated between two people by reading a great uplifting book or by viewing a popular but still positive internet post?

Face-to-face contact provides the communication of body language which seems to be the link necessary for the health benefits both parties receive when passionate communication is exchanged. The old rule, “it takes to to tango” is about passion and dancing, but it now holds much more meaning for the two participants!

A large percentage of human communication is by body language, much of which is only recently being decoded at the level of micro-expressions. These studies reveal that much of our communication is on a deep level in our brains, much of which we are not conscience about. Our brain registers the communication, but our minds may not convey the message to our conscience thoughts. The information is transferred into feelings instead.

To sum it up, science is understanding the power of emotions and gut feelings today. Unfortunately people don’t always interpret the body language correctly, such readings take patience and practice. Science is evaluating these emotions, their effects and how those effects last, and making huge strides on how to improve your life by small changes to be more positive in your own life.

The empowered volunteer can rest assured that the prospect who accepts the offer to join a group can if they are willing benefit greatly in a deep and personal way, just by the science showing how positivity helps the health of all those engaged in human to human interactions, particularly if those people are passionate and positive.

Thus, everyone wins when someone joins a volunteer group if these elementary issues are met.

Even if goals go unfulfilled, even if disasters happen, the human to human element coupled with passion and positive aspects guarantees positive health benefits of various kinds to the participants no matter what else happens.

Good things happen to positive people are doing good for others.

Barbara Fredrickson’s “broaden effect” shows that conclusively in the two decades of studies she and her students have conducted. Believe it and go forth with passion to help your group, which helps your charity cause, and in the process also helps every prospect you engage with your message.

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Religion at courthouses is controversial subject

Emotions run high whenever religion is mixed with things in our daily lives, particularly if that mixing is controversial or seemingly in conflict with the U. S. Constitution! When religion mixes with Constitutional rights, emotions run white hot for many Americans.

When you ask someone to join your group, do you think they are really just thinking of the group? You are the one asking so the first thing they think of is their perceptions of you. Their body language tells the story. If you seem credible, then the group may be the next thought, unless the group’s message is full of controversy, such as the example above.

In past posts I have mentioned that when a person considers a request or a purchase, their emotions are always very involved no matter what their head requests in the form of facts and data. In the end, the purchase or their joining will be determined by how the transaction will make them feel.

To go further with this, feelings are mirrored by our body language. Many large and rigorous studies have practically proven that body language is very accurate translator, when read correctly regarding how the person really feels about your request. You should learn to “listen” to the body language and govern your proposal accordingly.

Leil Lowndes in the book, How to Be a People Magnet wrote about how she learned from a friend she knew who used a study from the Journal of Genetic Psychology to teach her children to detect emotions in other children. The friend’s children also learned to be more empathetic as well as detecting when other children were lying. The point is that the skill can be taught to anyone and many professional sales people develop the skill to a very high level. Body language need not be a huge mystery, even children can learn to understand the language.

Some people now teach the skill of reading body language to executives and law enforcement.  In his book, Louder Than Words author Joe Navarro, a retired FBI Special Agent talks about the importance of emotions at work and that “emotions always override logic”. He goes on to say, “A negative stimulus, sufficiently powerful, will overwhelm logic…”

If your group has any negative emotions or perceptions from recent news releases or any other background that detracts from your message, be ready to deal with it and when you do, you must use your passion and your body language to be totally convincing. This means you can’t have mixed feelings because your body language will more than likely give that away.

During the First Gulf War many military recruiters were subjected to physical assaults by people throwing red paint on them to symbolize blood as a protest. Now this was daring of them to hide behind the courts and laws when they did this to the Marine Recruiters, to be honest. Marines are not usually tolerant of being assaulted, actually they have a well-earned reputation of responding to assaults with one of their own!

Fortunately for these misguided people, all military recruiters were told in no uncertain terms ahead of this event and others like it to not retaliate with force. Even when emotions ran high, the military men and women were to stay under control when attacked by the civilian citizens.

My point is that if someone responds to your request to help them join with any kind of emotional blasting towards you, be prepared ahead of time and do not become outwardly emotional. If they call you names, devil worshiper, sons of Satan, commie, or any other negative name just disengage or whatever you need to do, but do not become emotional at their level. The best you can do is to let them go without further confrontation. Very few times can anyone in this situation change the other person’s mind. Emotions at this kind of passionate level are not subject to a logical review for the topic at hand.

Emotions rule a very ancient part of our brain, with the fight or flight response. Only later will you likely be able to review things and suddenly come up with many great responses that you wish you had said. That’s the power of emotions, they clog up your logical thinking and subvert your reasoning!

To review, your body language unless you are very well trained nearly always tells others your true state of mind, if you are truthful and how dedicated you are to the message. Emotionally negative responses to your message should be handled with great empathy, retreat when necessary, but you need to avoid emotional conflict if at all possible.

A real life example of this kind of thing would be if your group helped people who were sight impaired and this person’s family member had an accident, went to your group for help, was reportedly turned down and subsequently got hurt because they could not see dangerous machinery at their work place. The family members are vague on the details but they all agree that your group let them down. How would you handle this as an empowered volunteer?

You should express the proper sympathy for their loss and retreat, if at all possible. Perhaps later you can contact them and attempt to resolve the issue, but don’t do it when emotions are running high.

Keep in mind, everyone can benefit from joining volunteer groups, as we have addressed in previous posts, rich and poor and men and women, everyone. You should very seldom encounter this kind of situation. But the passionate empowered volunteer must be ready for anything. That is what being a professional is all about.

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If you want an example of passion, you will find it in waves with the Shriner’s who help crippled and burned children get to the various Shriner’s Hospitals all over the country, and in other countries too. They often drive all day, deliver the kids and often parents supporting the children, then return the next day. All the time by the drivers is volunteered. I have seen waiting lines in my days in Va Beach (see hat image above) as a Shriner to drive the kids. That is passionate care, which is very hard to fake!

For the empowered volunteer who is out passing out cards and approaching people to present them with an opportunity to volunteer for his or her volunteer group, attitude is everything. I have already mentioned passion in a previous post, which is something we all need in our lives.

I want to touch on the abundant science behind the attitude in this post. Many studies have made sense of the human emotions and associated body language. However, we are now seeing much deeper into what makes us human and how we really operate between each other.

Barbara L. Fredrickson, PH. D. in her new book, Love 2.0 reports on how being positive can help open up the brain, which in certain negative modes acts as a “reducing valve” and “by-pass”.

She reports on that despite previous authors writing on this concept of using drugs to open the mind, it has now been confirmed that without drugs or hypnosis even people can become much more open in their perception, which newer studies by brain imaging experiments have now confirmed.

The studies show sometimes all it takes is what Dr. Fredrickson calls, “positivity”.

Negative emotions narrowed people’s perceptions while positive emotions opened them up.  This brings us to an important point for any person who is in the position where they need to persuade others to their way of thinking, which involves many more of us than are usually credited with so called selling jobs. Nearly all humans engage in selling, in one form or another.

People who fake a smile do themselves a disservice, studies show. They are I suspect meaning well, but they are not getting the message across in most cases. Here again science weighs in with evidence from studies.

Dr. Fredrickson writes in Love 2.O, “Feigned positivity resonance creates a toxic insincerity that is damaging perhaps most severely to the person who initiates it. To be loving rather that to seem loving is an aspiration truly worthy of your time and energy”.

The challenge for anyone presenting a product or service is to know in their heart that what they provide is not only worthy of the time and effort they are presenting to the candidate, they also must know that it is a positive aspect of that persons future.

The saying, fake it until you make it uses the idea that if you adopt the body language associated with an emotion that emotion will become real. Method actors use this mental exercise, mentally contemplating some image or emotion in their head in order to get their body to live that experience in the presentation for their audience, a way to bring a more genuine performance to their acting.

When presenting, never fake it. Mentally prepare yourself every time to present to your prospect with all of the  positive energy you can bring to a passionate message, one which you not only believe in but which you are in the right frame of mind to convey at the time you reveal their new opportunity to them in person.

Get the offer right for them the first time! You may not have another chance to make the necessary first impression they need to see the value of your offer.

In short, it is not just your delivery but your real life positive belief in the group which you must convey, with real meaningful passion but also with sincerity.

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