Body Language While Organizational Behaviour Is a

¶ … Body Language While organizational behaviour is a highly important component of human resource management, communication remains the backbone of effective organizational behaviour and human resource management at large. Knowledge management, workforce motivation and the overall implementation of corporate culture is ineffective and an inefficient without effective communication. In the past, there has been a lot of emphasis has been placed on communication skills and specially communication in a corporate environment. However, the central focal point usually has been on written communication, methods of communication and language of communication.

While both verbal and non-verbal communication are equally important and play their role in the integrity of communication system, written communication is less trickier, as techniques pertaining to writing styles, language and grammar can be taught relatively easily (Lee, 2007). A verbal communication is much trickier and it becomes trickiest when the communication is carried out in a face-to-face setting. This is because, in that case the message is not merely acquired from another medium but is directly acquired from the sender.

This means that such a communication is now not merely about the content of message and getting it across but much more beyond language and content is involved in the communication process. To be precise, body language of both the sender and the receiver of the message play a decisive role in ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency of the whole communication process.

The body language of both sender and receiver and all other stakeholders of the communication process have a key role to play in practice under a lot of situations such as board meetings, staff meetings, training sessions and most importantly recruitment processes. The incorporation of body language is highly important as it gives out a message of its own and has the potential to endorse or reject the verbal message given out by the participant of the communication process (Kikosi, 1997).

How Body Language Communicates The term body language encompasses the way a person physically carries oneself. This covers one's voice module, body movement, eye contact, and other physical movement. The overall body language of a person is highly helpful in determining how confident or confused, interested or uninterested, a person is about a message that s/he has sent or received. Likewise gestures like maintaining an eye contact and movement of hands while talking helps pushing the message with a greater ease and helps holding the attention of the listeners.

It also endorses how confident the person is about oneself (Teng Fett, 1997). Besides that, body language helps adding in emotions and feelings to the wordy message and helps in clarity of expression. The more expressive a message is, the easier it becomes to hold the attention of the listener. Maintenance of eye contact also helps making the communication more personalized, an aspect lacking in many other forms of communication (Ellis, 1999).

The overall body language combined with the oratory skills, articulation and voice modulation helps determining one behaviour and the level of seriousness. Say for example a person who stutters while speaking, despite the fact that he does not have a speech problem, might mean that the person is not very confident. Likewise, a listener who is not looking towards the speaker or is sitting in a very unusually casual posture can be equated to the lack of seriousness and attention of the speaker towards the speaker and the communication process.

Importance of Body Language in Communication Process The gestures given out by the body language, including the posture, voice modulation, expression, tone, physical movements etc., helps determining the overall effectiveness of the communication process. Body Language of a person plays a vital role in the recruitment and selection process, and most employers closely and critically analyze a person's body language especially during one to one interviews.

The way a person knocks the door, enters the room, walks towards the seats, the sitting posture and the way s/he incorporates physical movement are all take as a test of the degree of confidence, seriousness and attention span that the subject under observation has. It also shows the degree to which a person is alert and observant of one's surroundings (Segerstrile, & Molnar, 1999).

Say for example a person coming in for an interview makes a handshake with the interviewer with a shivering hand would give out an impression that s/he is either shy, scared or not confident or even is unprepared for the interview. A firm handshake with a smile on the other hand would mean that the interviewee is presentable, attention grabbing and confident about himself, a trait which is an essential plus point for getting recruited on important positions.

Likewise, when an employer holds training sessions, the receiver's body language is an effective tool for testing the accuracy of feedback that the listener gives out. Gestures such as casual sitting in a leaning position and eyeing away from the speaker would mean that the listener is not paying attention to the message.