By Strategy Four: Use positive gestures of relationship to set the tone. Using an open, upward-facing palm, gesture with your forearm and hand to the person most likely to start the negative situation. While you slowly gesture—remember, palm up and open—comment on how “wonderful the decorations are this year….” As you get to the word “wonderful,” be sure to have your fingers of the open-palm gesture pointing directly at the likely offender. You have just nonverbally called them “wonderful.” Continue the day assigning all the positive words you say. You’ll be amazed how it can reset the tone.
Strategy Four and a Half: The opposite is also true—you want to “aim” negativity away from the person you’re talking to…no matter what you’re talking about. You can hurt people’s feelings with your gestures and not even know it. For example, right after Thanksgiving, a coaching client was telling me about how he hurt his aunt’s feelings while he was speaking about an event at work. “What a jerk!” he said, while widely gesturing about “that jerk!” Before long, his auntie wasn’t listening. He said to me, “She looked like she had been insulted.” She had—he had just called his aunt a jerk, nonverbally.
