5. Eyes. Sometimes, the eyes say it all. Maintaining good eye contact is one of the most important non-verbal signals you can send. Doing so says "I’m interested in you and when I say I believe in you, I really do." Making sure that your eyes are open wide is also helpful. Squinting or the "narrow, beady eyes" look can be off-putting to the recipient. Worse yet is looking around, paying attention to other things and not paying attention to the person or topic at hand.

Here’s something interesting you can try. Mentally put yourself in a situation where someone is telling you how important you are to the team. Then picture that individual engaging in the "avoid these" non-verbal cues described above. Get a sense of how that feels. Next, put yourself in the same situation but as a recipient of the "do more of these" non-verbal cues.

That’s just the sample. The real question is "how do you come across?" Are there some ways in which you, unintentionally, are sending the wrong message about your belief in the members of your team? Are the people you work with receiving a message that’s different from the one you sent? Yes? Then, get to work on that. Pick out some "positive belief" items from above and use them a little more frequently. Also pick out a few of the "negative belief" items from above and cut them out altogether.

Congruency Is Key

The key to realizing the power of expectations is to make your entire message congruent. If your words say "I believe" and your tone of voice and non-verbal cues say "no way," people will pick up on the "no way" and end up believing they won’t succeed at the task.

Research by social psychologist Albert Mehrabian, Ph.D., shows that when there is a conflict among the words, verbal intonations and the non-verbal cues, the non-verbal cues carry the most weight. Given a conflict among the three channels, your words have an impact value of 7 percent, your verbal intonations have an impact value of 38 percent, and your non-verbal cues have an impact value of 55 percent.

So make it a point to be congruent when communicating your belief in the achievement of great results. Your words, the look in your eye, the tone of your voice, your body language—all have to be saying "you can do it" whether your expectations are based on a lead-pipe cinch or the marginally possible. Then you’ll find positive, even astoundingly successful, outcomes in the realm of the improbable.

Communicate high expectations well enough and you may even have to step aside to avoid getting run over by a team of committed players whose performance is accelerating.

© 2005 Thomas K. Connellan

About the Author

Tom Connellan is a business keynote speaker regularly used by leading firms such as GE, Neiman Marcus, Dell, FedEx and Marriott to strengthen customer loyalty and leadership practices. When looking for a keynote speaker, Tom probably belongs on your short list of possibilities.