I’ve made so many mistakes interpreting body language in meetings and discussion. A sampling:
A petite colleague sat in all my meetings with her legs and arms crossed. I assumed she was angry, distrustful, in disagreement. She was really cold in the air-conditioning.
An extremely intelligent man was quiet, well off to the side of the main discussion. I assumed he did not understand our plans. In reality, he was bored with our pedantic ideas.
A junior member of my team was fidgeting in our 1:1 while I was delegating a small-to-me-but-big-to-him project. I assumed he was nervous about failing. He had learned an hour earlier that his wife had breast cancer, and his mind was racing about how to share this news with their kids.
We hired a talented young guy for a technical role who had talked incessantly during his interviews. I counseled him on his first day that he needed to focus more on listening. The interview day was an outlier for this introverted shy man. I had to drag words out of him most of the time.
Be cautious about interpreting behaviors and body language signals. Our interpretation engine has a high error rate.
