Bloom Your Mind

Ep 129: Congruence

• Marie McDonald

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A group of entrepreneurs presented their ideas to a panel of angel investors to be rated, and eventually chosen or rejected. While both groups poured over the content of reports, and bantered over the words spoken, the real investment decision was happening on an entirely subconscious level.

Scientists who study non verbal communication were able to predict with perfect accuracy which entrepreneurs the investors would choose…based entirely off of non-verbal cues. 

This episode is all about what our bodies are saying that we don’t realize, and what our brains are reading in other people, that we don’t consciously know. While we’re unaware of this layer of communication running beneath the surface, it makes up over 90% of the exchanges we’re having with the people around us. Meanwhile, we’re basing all of our decisions on this subconscious data…and giving the people around us the data they need to make decisions about us, without realizing what we’re doing.

There’s one simple answer to becoming more aware of this constant non-verbal conversation, and it’s called congruence.  

What you’ll learn in this episode: 

  • The breakdown of verbal vs non-verbal communication in a normal exchange and why it’s so important to understand it  
  • The list of sociometers that indicate cultures where people feel safe
  • Hear the story of the bad apple and how one person’s negative tone can be contagious
  • About the strength of a good apple, whose positive signals can be an antidote 
  • How the link between body language and results is neither valueless or all important   
  • The difference between congruence and incongruence, and the symptoms of each 
  • Eight ways to check ourselves for congruence and non verbal alignment 
  • Two ways to call in someone who feels incongruent to us 

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Bloom your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, Certified Coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Speaker 2:

Hello everybody and welcome to episode 129 of the Bloom your Mind podcast. Okay, I've been thinking about these phrases that I'm going to share in some way, probably on Instagram, because they've been delighting me so much, but I thought I would start our episode before I get into our real content of what your body is saying. I wanted to share some of these sayings that I've heard lately that have completely delighted me. So the first one last week, after we had finished these two days of training that I told you about last week, my business partner and I were walking through the airport and it had been quite a day, quite a two-day period, very full, very magnificent. We were pretty reamed from the dates of wonderful connection with people that we loved and training and speaking and thinking and all of the stuff traveling. So we're walking through the airport at the very end of the second of two very long days and my business partner and my dear friend Maggie looks at me and she's like I wonder what I look like right now. And then she shakes her head and she says nevermind, it's none of my business what I look like right now. She says nevermind, it's none of my business what I look like right now, and this sentence made me laugh so hard and filled me with delight.

Speaker 2:

I'm always talking to people in coaching about how it is actually none of our business what the people around us think about us. What they think about us is a mirror of themselves, and we can waste so much energy and time and effort guessing what people think about us and then changing our behavior to adapt to what we think they think about us, and it's such a rabbit hole that is not regenerative in any way. When someone approaches us and wants to share feedback with us, hey, that's a different story. We're going to listen, we're going to connect, we're going to be great listeners, practice active listening, all that good stuff to learn about how we're impacting people around us right, which still may be a mirror of them, but we might get some good insight out of it. Or when it's something we really care about and we can see that they're all kind of messed up emotionally, we can check in and see what's going on, but most of the time, it is none of our business what other people think about us, and that really is a shocking release and relief for a lot of my clients when they really are spending a lot of time thinking about what people think about them. When they start thinking it's none of my business, can they let a lot of stuff go.

Speaker 2:

So she just like made that sentence and she applied it to what she looks like, which really delighted me. It's none of my business what other people what I look like right now. It's none of my business what people see. May you take that and love it. Also, I was going on a double date the other night and I walked up and the person that we were going on the date with said she saw my outfit and she said, yes, you understood the assignment. This sentence made my night. It was such an affirmation of my outfit and that I looked cute but also cracked me up, and I know that this has been around for many years, but I am such a fan of using that sentence. You understood the assignment Well, at the same time thinking it's none of my business what I look like. These are fabulous right.

Speaker 2:

Another one that I love came from my son when he was little. Instead of saying I'm dead serious, he said I'm hot, serious, little. Instead of saying I'm dead serious, he said I'm hot, serious, and we use that a lot of the time to say that we're real serious. The fourth one is that when I'm late and I text my husband, ever since I first was dating him 15 years ago, he will text me back and say get over here, which I just think is the best response. It's like the opposite of passive, aggressive behavior. It's the opposite of passive aggression. It's like passive support. He's telling me not only is it important to him that I'm not important to him that I'm late, but literally he's not even commenting on that because what he cares about is having me next to him. This is the best.

Speaker 2:

Then two more for you. I just thought this would be an entertaining way to start our podcast today. So we've got. It's none of my business what I look like, it's got you and we've got you understood the assignment. We've got hot, serious, we've got get over here. And then this guy in this training that I was leading called his need to learn feedback skills. He called it a hole in his game. I loved that so much to use this sports reference to talk about what we need to learn in our gaps in communication skills. And then another person right next to him said that the feedback framework we were teaching was a cheat code for good communication, like taking this gaming reference and applying it to communication skills. I love it. So these are some phrases. I've got more and I'm going to write a post in an email about them just because I think they're so fun, and I've been collecting them, so may they delight you too.

Speaker 2:

Today, our real content is to talk about what your body is saying and what your brain is registering, is hearing that you don't even know, that you're picking up on, and this information that is under the surface of what we think we are basing our perceptions off of. It is actually informing our decisions day in and day out, and what I'm talking about here is nonverbal communication. I'm going to start by sharing some research that I got real nerdy digging into. I really enjoyed researching this topic and some amazing studies that I found within the research that were really kind of mind-bending for me, and then I'm going to end by sharing how you can be more aware of what you're communicating with nonverbal communication of all different types, and give you some tools to use also when you're not sure somebody else is being straight up with you, when their nonverbal communication maybe doesn't match their verbal communication what they're saying.

Speaker 2:

The reason this is so important is because, as we're making our ideas real, so many of us are really focused in on things that are interactive in some way with people. Either we need people's ideas on our idea, we need their buy-in, their support, or ideas actually involve them. We want them to come to gatherings or communities. I'll talk a little bit about that more later but it's so important to be aware of what we're communicating. When we talk about our idea, we're giving all kinds of signals about how much we believe in it, how much we think someone else should believe in it, how committed we are to our idea, and so really generating some awareness about this can help you to come across in an authentic and sincere way. And again, I'll talk later on about how this is not about power posing or faking till you make it. It really isn't. I'm going to give you some tools for how you can be congruent in your mindset and in your nonverbal communication.

Speaker 2:

So, first of all, your body is talking. So is mine. Some theorists believe that 93% of our communication is nonverbal 93%, that only 7% is verbal, that 55% of it is our tone and 37% of it is our body language. Well, as I was researching, I found that this information came from a guy who presented it in the 1960s, so it's old and it has held up relatively well. But I wanted to learn some more.

Speaker 2:

So I started reading a book called the Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, which is not specifically about body language. It's about how to create communities where people feel belonging and where people feel a strong sense of connection to one another, which I'm all about, but the first part of it, the whole first third, is about belonging, and the first part of that section is about body language, and he has some incredible studies in there on nonverbal communication. What they found in their research was mind-blowing for me. I'm going to share more from this brilliant person, this author, in a different podcast, because Coyle has a ton of really important things to say on how to create belonging and many of our ideas, as I said mentioned earlier, are focused in on that on creating businesses, communities, families, gathering spaces, friendships that feel connecting and that feel have a strong sense of belonging. So more episodes on that in the future.

Speaker 2:

But today is all about what our bodies are saying that we don't realize and what our brains are reading in other people that we also don't pick up on. So first, coil was able to boil down the main signals of belonging. It's called a sociometer is this whole sort of collection of things that signal all these body language signifiers and actions that we do in groups that signify connection and belonging. And because these are all boiled down, it makes them measurable so we can measure the nonverbal communication that's going on between two people in groups and actually create some real quantitative data from these studies. So some of the sociometers that they use are things like proximity, how close people stand to one another, and when there is a lot of sense of belonging we stand closer not too close, but closer. Eye contact, like strong, direct eye contact between people, all the different people in a group.

Speaker 2:

Mimicry, which is kind of, as it sounds, mirroring each other's behavior, mirroring each other's body language, energy, having energetic exchanges between people in a group. Turn-taking, and I find this one to be so important. Turn-taking meaning that everybody in a group pretty much speaks the same amount and nobody speaks a super like lot more than everyone else. No one is super dominant in the group and I find that also connected to that is that people don't interrupt each other in really strong communities where there's a strong sense of belonging. Everybody speaks mostly in the same amount. Everybody gets a turn and people really don't interrupt each other gets a turn and people really don't interrupt each other. People also pay attention by leaning forward and giving someone the full focus of their attention when others are speaking. We can also measure vocal pitch so that it's excited and tuned in but not aggressive. We can measure the consistency of emphasis, so we're kind of speaking in a cadence that is consistent, and whether everybody talks to everybody else in a group. So it's not just little clicky behavior but everybody's talking to everybody else.

Speaker 2:

And physical touch high fives, fist bumps, shoulder pats, all little hugs, all those little signifiers that people are close. So I wanted to give you that list so you have in mind a visual. That was helpful for me. I like looked it up ahead of time so that I could understand what are we looking for here, when we're looking for body language that really connects people, what does it look like? Well, those are the sociometers that we're going to talk about in the next couple of studies, these two studies I wanted to tell you about that Coyle actually talks about in his book. That indicated some really interesting insights around body language and non-verbal communication.

Speaker 2:

Okay, the first of the two studies I wanted to tell you about is the good apple and the bad apple. Coyle put together a study where there was a group of people that were actually doing what I like to call a design challenge, which is because I come from the design thinking world. We did a lot of this back there, and these groups of people were given a set of materials and some design constraints is what I would call it A bunch of spaghetti noodles and a marshmallow, which is kind of a heavy thing, and they were supposed to build a really tall tower with the marshmallow at the top. Believe it or not, I've done this activity many times and within this activity they set up these groups that were each attempting to make these towers, and there's a lot of interesting stuff in this book that you should read about it if you're interested in this. But the thing I want to focus in on is that when groups were all together talking about their ideas in this study, they introduced someone called a bad apple.

Speaker 2:

His job was to play a character, either an Eeyore type, which is like a downer, a depressing guy that's always bummed about all the ideas doesn't like anything. Or number two, a jerk who's just really aggressive and defiant and deviant and is mean, probably loud, interrupting everybody. Or a slacker, someone who's withholding of their effort and is just like putting their head down on the desk and thinks it's all lame, okay. So what happened is, time after time after time, group after group after group after group, when this one person either the Eeyore, the slacker or the jerk was introduced into the group, the entire group of 20 plus people took on that behavior. So if the slacker was there and he was like lying his head on the table and was like what's up with all this, we don't care about it, other people started laying their head on the table too and they started not putting that much effort into the project, even when afterwards you would ask them and they would say, yeah, we tried our hardest.

Speaker 2:

It was this contagious energy, the body language, the vibe, the nonverbal communication was contagious With the Eeyore when it was all oh, what are we even doing here? Why are we spending our time like this? The whole group took that on, time after time after time until okay. So first of all, that really surprised me that one person could be so contagious in their negative nonverbal and verbal sort of contribution to a group that they infected everybody so consistently. I know that can happen, but every single time it happened what?

Speaker 2:

Until they introduced the good apple, there was one group who had a random dude in there that wasn't paid, he wasn't a part of the study and he is what they call the good apple. He counteracted the bad apples nonverbal energy and verbal contributions that were kind of taken down the group and what they found in him is that his nonverbal communication consistently was good medicine for the group. So when the bad apple would say something jerky, he would lean forward, say something warm and kind and then ask the group what they thought. Time after time after time it actually turned the group around. And so what I took from this amazing study, of course, is both how totally contagious energy is and how it doesn't have to be so our good boundaries with other people's energy. If someone in our group or in our space has nonverbal communication, that's really bumming us out and it's really sapping the energy. Nonverbal communication, that's really bumming us out and it's really sapping the energy. If someone is in our space like that, we can have our beautiful boundaries in place and intentionally not allow it to be contagious for ourselves. But what's so interesting? I always knew that part. But what's so interesting about this study is it shows that if we are resilient enough in overriding that negativity with our own connection and warmth and engagement of the other people around us, we can actually counteract a negative energy in a group. And that a lot of what this good apple did was just his body language and his tone. He didn't speak that much, so it just showed me how contagious and effective our good body language, connecting, warm presence, can be in a group or in connecting with other individuals. We don't even have to say that much.

Speaker 2:

Okay, the second study was even more impressive and wild. It was a group of angel investors who were hearing a whole bunch of entrepreneurs present their ideas for businesses. They were all deciding who they were going to invest in and they were rating the entrepreneurs' presentations. So what we found was that belonging cues mattered more than anything that someone said in their presentation, that they could predict with perfect accuracy who the angel investors would invest in based on the presence and the sociometers of the person presenting. So the angel investors thought that they were ranking business plans on really rational ideas, like the originality of an idea or its fit for the current market. But what they found is, when they only looked at the idea on paper, they ranked everything really differently and what they were actually responding to was how much a person believed in their idea, how confident they were when they were speaking and how determined they were to make something work no-transcript rather than the idea itself, even though they believed they were investing in the idea. That's how strongly the nonverbal communication influences our decision-making. That 93% was 100% predictive for this angel investing. They could predict with 100% accuracy. That just blew my mind, isn't that wild?

Speaker 2:

So my husband and I were breaking down this body language thing and saying that it's interesting in that study about the angel investors because, you know, the investors went with the entrepreneurs who are the most confident, committed, resilient, and some of those things feel a little bit like a chicken or an egg, and some of those things feel a little bit like a chicken or an egg. So some of those things feeling confident about an idea, feeling committed to an idea might actually be the product of having a winning idea that you know is going to kill it. So in that way, maybe the body language is an accurate measure for how successful an idea might be. But also it's possible that an entrepreneur who's presenting that data could build those signals of confidence, that belief in their idea, when those are not really true, maybe because they aren't using great logic, they haven't done great research, or maybe they're just really optimistic or really believe in themselves, even though the idea that they have isn't that great, which would mean that that body language is not an accurate representation of how successful an idea might be. It could go either way. Then again, body language that shows someone's confident, committed, determined, resilient might mean that no matter how good or bad an idea is, they might have what it takes to make it work out in the world. But maybe too much confidence in a person is a fatal mistake, because ultimately an idea or a product has to stand on its own when it's out in the world in front of a consumer.

Speaker 2:

There's lots of conflicting thought here about how predictive the body language actually is of the idea, but what I'm actually saying is that the angel investors ultimately made their decision on who would be the right choice to invest in, not on the actual product itself. And body language is super important, but most of us, most of the time, are not aware that we're making our decisions based on it. We're not aware about what we're communicating with it and that it is so influential as one of our primary lenses. So, while it might've been super important and given really important data to the angel investors, if they had picked apart what they were seeing that was, body language and what they were seeing on the actual data of a written report, maybe it would have been really helpful, but because it was all mixed in, it was the only information they were making their decision off of. So you can see, it's important to be aware of. So we're not just walking around supporting the most confident people around us, being attracted to the people that believe in themselves the most, instead of the people with the best ideas. It's so important that we know that we're communicating non-verbally what is under the surface, even when we think that we're not.

Speaker 2:

So what do we do here? What do we do? You might expect that what I'm going to say is that you should start doing power poses or match someone else's body language intentionally, which is that mimicking behavior, called mirroring, that we automatically do when we're connecting with someone important to us. But that's not what I'm going to say. I'm not going to suggest that you fake it till you make it or that you try any tricks. What I want to suggest here is some tools that you can use to sync up what you're saying on the outside with what's happening on the inside. To sync what you think and you feel up what you're saying on the outside with what's happening on the inside. To sync what you think and you feel with what you say and you do. And what that does is it creates something called congruence.

Speaker 2:

When we as human beings feel incongruence, it's that feeling in the pit of our stomach, and when we feel it about someone else, we want to listen to it. It's that experience. When we see someone that looks super hungry and their stomach is growling and they're saying they're not hungry. Or we say are you okay? When someone looks super upset and they say I'm totally fine, we say, are you okay? When someone looks super upset and they say I'm totally fine?

Speaker 2:

Incongruence is when what you're picking up on and what a person's saying feel totally in conflict with one another and other people pick up on that from us, when we don't believe in what we're saying. And what happens when we experience incongruence is we get a deep feeling of mistrust that we don't really know why we're feeling it, because what we're picking up is, on the subconscious level, that 93%. Or we have confusion. We don't quite know what's going on. We're like I don't feel right, but I don't know why A sense that something is off. Or we just emotionally withdraw in relationships or on teams. When we feel that feeling of incongruence, we're like something ain't right I don't know what it is, but I'm going to withdraw, and other people will do that with us as well when we are not in line with what we think and feel.

Speaker 2:

So here are a few tools. Number one, to make sure that we are not in line with what we think and feel. So here are a few tools. Number one, to make sure that we are congruent, that what we think and what we feel is in line with what we say and what we do. When we are congruent, our body language is going to communicate to others exactly what is true for us. And when we get in that place of true authenticity, things just start to flow with so much more joy, ease and lightness. And secondly, when we feel incongruence coming off of somebody else, I'm going to give you a couple of tools to check up on it, because we don't feel good when we pretend it's not there.

Speaker 2:

If you've ever had a moment where you're like I don't think that person's being honest with me. For me, I just feel icky when I leave and I don't follow up on it or say something about it. So I'm going to give you a couple tools to address that too. So, first of all, when you want to be sure your body language is communicating what you want it to, you can use the practice recorded it not too long ago I'll link that episode here to see really drop down into your body, see how you're feeling and then use the model which is in episode 18, to see what you're thinking and see if what you're thinking and what you're feeling actually match what you're saying and doing. Secondly, you can do what's called a three-channel check. You can check the channel of your feeling, your thought and your speech and action in a moment and just say do they all match? So those two things that I just said are really similar, but a three channel check can be real fast if you just need it on the go.

Speaker 2:

Then if you're feeling like I am actually not congruent. I'm not in line. What I'm thinking, what I'm saying, is not actually in line with how I'm feeling. You can ask yourself this what would I actually say here? What would I really say if I wasn't filtering myself? Write it down, coach yourself towards saying it. You can ask yourself does my body feel like a yes or a no right now? Drop down into the body. It always tells the truth.

Speaker 2:

Ask myself what's the tone I want to use and is that how it came out? Ask myself what's the tone I want to use and is that how it came out? Or just the question when you want to reflect when did I last feel out of alignment between what I said and what I felt? What did my body want to say instead? How could I practice more congruent communication next time? Those are all questions that you can ask to make sure that your body language is communicating what you want it to.

Speaker 2:

And then, when someone else just feels off like what they're saying is not matching what they feel like to you, you can say you know what? I heard you say this, but I'm noticing this other thing in your tone. Can I check in on that, just like that? Hey, these two things don't feel the same. Can you tell me about that? Can I check in on that? Is this just a respectful way to ask about it? And a second question you can say is you're saying this decision feels good, but I noticed you paused inside when you said it. Do you want to talk about that? So you're just calling into the conversation what is unspoken in the space and it opens a door. Just be ready to practice your listening skills if you are going to go there.

Speaker 2:

All right, so we've got some amazing studies today. First, we've got some amazing sayings. Feel free to use those and text me which ones are your favorite, or message me through whatever means. I'm hot, serious. I want you to do that. Secondly, we've got some studies to show how important nonverbal communication is. And then, lastly, we talk through some things that you can do to practice congruence in yourself so you can give off the nonverbal communication that matches your authentic self.

Speaker 2:

And lastly, a couple of questions that you can use to check in when someone around you needs a little bit of support to get congruent with themselves. And really what you're doing there is just saying, hey, I'm noticing this. So whether they're congruent or not is up to them, but you can be most authentic when you want to in calling out incongruence for yourself. Just asking for some clarity. That's what I've got for you today. My friends, the book that I recommend today is Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. I am going to be bringing it up again, talking about belonging and all kinds of other good stuff, but I hope you enjoyed this first look. I'll see you next week.

Speaker 1:

If you like what you're hearing on the podcast. You got to come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts and we apply them to real life in a community where we have each other's backs and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real, one idea at a time. I'll see you in the bloom room.