I disagree. It’s unnatural to ignore nonverbal communication. If you had to take a shit and you were talking to the CEO of the company, wouldn’t you do your best to hide that scowl and be polite?
> It’s unnatural to ignore nonverbal communication
In my experience, most people do pay a lot of attention to nonverbal communication… and they're really awful at interpreting it. Basically taking any vague body motion as evidence in favour of their preconceived ideas :/
My communications got noticably smoother when I made a conscious decision to ignore the majority of nonverbal communication; and if it seemed like somebody was trying to say something, I’d explicitly say “Hey, I get the impression that you’re <angry/sad/etc>, am I reading that correctly?” and go from there rather than assuming.
> and if it seemed like somebody was trying to say something, I’d explicitly say “Hey, I get the impression that you’re <angry/sad/etc>, am I reading that correctly?” and go from there rather than assuming.
