Little things mean a lot

Does your boss check her e-mails while you talk? It's the nuances of expression that reveal what people really think of you, Stephen Young tells Claire O'Connell

We have all been there: a seemingly routine exchange with a colleague, family member, teacher or complete stranger that leaves us bewildered. The words seem harmless enough, everyone said the right thing, but a vague sense of something else lingers.

You walk away feeling slighted, but can't quite put your finger on why. So you brush it off and convince yourself you are being over-sensitive or having a bad day.

But, according to US management consultant Stephen Young, it's more likely that you have just been bitten by a swarm of negative "micro-messages" - barely perceptible nuances of expression, tone and body language that reveal the genuine feelings behind what we say.

"They happen constantly," says Young, who as co-founder of Insight Education Systems has preached the micro-message gospel to corporations all over the world. "It has little to do with the words we use - it has everything to do with the nuance, the subtlety, the implication, the tone, the gestures. Those things reveal what is really being said beneath the words."

Thousands of micro-messages buzz through the workplace each day: the boss who checks her e-mail while an employee talks, the colleague who scans over your shoulder or glances at his watch during a conversation, the person who introduces you in flat monotone without making eye contact, or the decision-maker who ignores a good idea just because it came from a junior.

And it's not just confined to co-workers. In the home, replace the e-mailing boss with a half-listening, television-watching spouse, or with a parent who continues to read the paper, muttering "hmmm, really" as a child talks about the school day.

Indeed, school is a haven for micro-messages, good and bad. "A teacher can, in the early years of school, set the stage for a student believing that he or she is smart and will be a success, or a message that says you are not," says Young. "And we will live up to or down to those expectations, depending on how frequently we get those messages."

In all cases, even the right words ring hollow in the medium of the micro-message. "It's not so much what you are saying but what you are sending. You say one thing but what you send is something very different."

Young insists that we ignore the cumulative power of these tiny gestures at our peril. "The basis of the success of any relationship that you are in today hinges tremendously on the subtle messages that you send to those people and the messages they send to you. They drive whether the relationship succeeds or fails," he says.

"I don't want to sound like Jesse Jackson here, but when you do this poorly it can take relationships from being stellar to the cellar. It can go from the sky to the basement."

And he's not talking about the blatant faux pas worthy of lampooned manager David Brent in the TV series The Office, like making sexist or racial comments, or giving pay rises to only the employees you like.

"People tend to look at the very big and obvious things, what we call the elephants. And those are under control," says Young, a former Wall Street executive. "Nobody does any of the foolish, stupid, elephant things any more. It's the very small, subtle things that nobody ever puts their finger on, like where I look when I introduce you, and the facial expression, how I look across that room and see someone that I really want to talk to. No one ever spends any time talking about those things. They are the ants. We are being overrun by billions of ants that we just don't look at and don't notice."

Young first became aware of negative ants marching in his direction when working with a manager who stared at him blankly in meetings and brushed off his ideas. Her behaviour led him to discover the work of Dr Mary Rowe at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who coined the term "micro-inequities" in the 1970s to describe the subtle undercurrents of communication that made female and minority students feel less valued.

He developed the concept further, categorising micro-messages according to their effects. "There are micro-inequities, the ones that disparage, discourage, impair performance," he explains. "And there are micro-advantages, the ones that build people up, they enable people to live up to their potential, to get the most out of them."

Add to these the neutral micro-messages that say nothing significant, like scratching your head in confusion, and pandering micro-deceptions, like nodding enthusiastically at the boss who is talking rubbish.

Humans have become less aware of these fundamental signals because we developed language, but the hum of micro-messaging still resonates regardless of culture, according to Young.

"Everyone sends these messages, everyone gets these messages. There are some things that vary from culture to culture but by and large whatever the standard is, you grow up understanding what the standard is. And if you take it to base level, before an infant is able to use any words at all you are able to read thoughts, feelings and emotions expressed from that infant."

Why should we care about what bubbles under the words? Micro-messaging is about motivation, and can either unlock or stifle potential, insists Young. "The most important thing about this is that it has a direct impact on performance. The way someone listens to you does more than affect your feelings, it has a direct impact on your ability to communicate," he says, noting that micro-inequities can undermine a company's potential to make money.

But despite the stark bottom line, surely watching micro-messages too closely can paralyse interactions, with people scared of not smiling enough at one person, or over-greeting another? "This often comes up. People think they have to walk on eggshells. And you absolutely do not," says Young. "For the first couple of weeks you probably are so aware of what you are doing. But what we ask people to do is be very direct and clear about what they feel and what they see. Just eliminate the micro-inequities, take off the mask and reveal what's really going on."

The result is better communication all round, according to Young. "People have come to me and said it has enhanced their relationships because they felt the micro-inequities, and when they talk about them, the person they are dealing with listens and acknowledges."

Such honesty can have unexpected fallout, too. Young admits he was shocked when one woman told him she saw her husband's inability to recognise the micro-inequities in their floundering relationship as grounds for divorce.

And even the engaging and polished Young is not immune to slipping up. He explains how his teenage daughter, Alex, told him off for giving her an insincere apology, the micro-messaging equivalent of a minefield.

"I said something about a friend of hers that was pretty harsh," he recalls. "She challenged me on it. So I sighed, put my hands in the middle of my chest and flung them outwards saying 'Fine Alex, if you were offended by that, then I'm sorry. Okay?'"

Without missing a trick, Alex dismantled the classical micro-messages of insincerity - the sigh, the hand gestures, the look on his face, the questioning "Okay?" and the conditional "if". "We always use a conditional structure when we are not genuinely remorseful," explains Young, who quite enjoyed the irony of being pulled up on his own programme.

Eliminating micro-inequities can be disarmingly simple, once you are aware of them. Making eye contact and literally getting on someone's level can be key to a positive connection, whether it's crouching down to talk to a child, or sitting to face a business associate.

"It creates a very different feeling," says Young. "That's the benefit of having a business meeting at a table. When you are standing - and many meetings are held in corridors - it's not unusual for people who are the highest physically to be the ones that dominate the conversation. When you are sitting at the table, people are relatively about the same level."

Ultimately, his micro-message programme is about changing behaviour, not minds, he says. And while the approach makes sense, haven't we heard all this body-language stuff before?

"I think what makes this different is that it goes beyond the obvious, beyond the classic body language which is eye contact and smiles and gestures. And it goes into some of the real nuances of what you do," he says. "I think the essence here is about the ants and not the elephants."

See www.insighteducationsystems.com. Micromessaging - Why Great Leadership is Beyond Words by Stephen Young is published by McGraw-Hill, £15.99 in UK