faux pas | Applied Psychology and Solution Focused Life Coaching with Dr Gary Wood

I occasionally do media briefings when it’s a positive story and when it’s well supported by psychological evidence. Recently I contributed to a briefing on survey findings into the decline of manners and common courtesy in the 21st Century. Overall, my take on it, was that manners and common courtesy provide those daily little uplifts that can counter the petty daily hassles. Also, that it’s important to recognise that manners and etiquette change over time. So, for instance, saying ‘pardon me’ when you don’t hear what someone has said is not necessarily relevant. After all, why should we be saying ‘pardon me, oh Lord and Master, please don’t cut my head off for nor hearing you. er. . .especially when you’re mumbling’. It’s perfectly acceptable to say ‘Would you say that again please?’ It’s also not necessarily bad manners that younger people don’t go around ‘doffing’ their baseball caps.

However, looking back on the video (see link below), I notice that my body language is all wrong. I look uncomfortable, which I was. The seating was rather like an ironing board, and if you notice, the presenter has learned to sit in a way that allows him to cling on to the back rest. I also recall the time when working on a morning ‘confessional’ chat show. Uncomfortable straight back chairs were on stage. When I asked why, the producer told me that the chairs ‘forced out the body language’. In order words, it made people less comfortable and changed the body language. People could look shifty and defensive, which thankfully I didn’t on this occasion, but it wasn’t because they had anything to hide. Instead, they didn’t have arm rests, were in front of a studio audience, in a chilly studio with hot lights, and sitting on a chair guaranteed to wipe the smile from anybody’s face. The context was saying far more than their awkward movements. It’s just that the staging was less obvious.

So, now to my next faux pas in the video: I don’t shut up! Now this is down to four things: I was frightened of sliding off the chair and was bunched in a corner; they seated me directly opposite the presenter and he just kept talking to me; we’d just done 15 back-to-back radio interviews and I was on a bit of a roll; and, well, I just love to talk.

My other faux pas was to make a negative comment about ‘shopping channel presenters’ and I’ll let you guess from the fleeting reaction of the presenter what his other job is. Oops! (see link below).

So, I’m eager to point out that body language is all about context, rather than being accused of not practising what I preach.

Links: