Body Language

When Dilbert first came on the scene, I’m sure that everyone who worked in high tech asked themselves, “Hey, did this guy Scott Adams used to work here?” He’s not always on, but when it comes to capturing the techie workplace, Adams still continues to come up with way more hits than misses.

I partricularly liked one of this week’s strips – the one where Alice was asked to take a communications seminar because of her negative body language. It reminded me of a story that a Genuity colleague once told me about an encounter he’d had with his boss.

They’d been in a meeting with a fellow from a group that Eric’s boss considered a hostile entity. The nominal purpose of the meeting was to see how the two groups could work better together. After the meeting, Eric’s boss reprimanded him for his “terrible body language.” Eric replayed the meeting in his mind and couldn’t come up with any mea culpa’s. He thought he’d been positive and engaged throughout. That was the problem. “You were giving all the wrong signals,” Eric was told. “You were leaning forward, making eye contact, and nodding in agreement with everything Dave said. Don’t let it happen again.”