The sound of me rolling my eyes

Now, as a Sloan grad, I like The Sloan Management Review as much as the next guy - probably even more.

But I have to say I was a little underwhelmed by an article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, in which an SMR editor interviewed an MIT professor on The Power of Nonverbal Communication.  (Note: access to this article may require a subscription.)

Dr. Alex "Sandy" Pentland of the MIT's Media Lab has come up with a device - the "sociometer" - that measures nonverbal communications.

The results of a "sociometer" study, we are told "were startling. And powerfully instructive for managers."

First off, I have to say that the fundamental idea is very interesting. Sure, we all know about folded arms, Blackberrying, grimacing, nodding, smiling, and eye-rolling. If the "sociometer" can measure more subtle elements of communications, well, bring it on.

Pentland measures nervous energy, timing between the back-and-forth in a conversation, mimicking another's gestures, and consistency in time and motion, "signals [which] are really qualitative readings of brain state. "

Okay, so what does all this tell us?

Here are the "startling" findings that are revealed to us.

We began to do things like look at job interviews. We found that if job candidates show confidence and practice, if they're mirroring the interviewer's gestures, if they're active and helpful, if they act the right way, they'll get the thumbs up.

In the course of my career I've been on loads of interviews, and I've interviewed loads of job candidates. So I kind of already knew this, without having ever wearing a "sociometer."

"If they're active and helpful, if they act the right way, they'll get the thumbs up."

This is "startling"?

A more interesting finding was Pentland's study of a business plan competition.

It turns out you can estimate their ratings of each other...just by listening to their tone of voice. You didn't have to know anything about the business plan; you didn't have to know anything about the executives. It was how they delivered the plan that determined how it was rated. That's pretty amazing. Because these were not fools. These were executives in their mid-30s -- very successful. And yet they were listening to how excited the presenter was about the plan; they were not listening to the facts.

Could it be that, all things - i.e., the business plans - being more or less equal, the nod would go to the person who was more enthusiastic?

The point Pentland makes is that people have to do more than respond to the way a pitch is given - they have to actually "take it offline and read it also." And this is, of course, good advice.

But wouldn't this finding be more insightful if, after the winners were chosen based on their nonverbal communications, a panel of experts - say the domain equivalent of Jack Welch, Warren  Buffet, and Bill Gates - evaluated the plans, and came back with the finding that some were better than others? And wouldn't it be interesting if the rah-rah plans were actually better? Of course, the scary finding that enthusiasm carried the day would tell us something if, on balance, the rah-rah plans were in fact inferior.

That's what this inquiring mind would like to know, at any rate.

Hey, folks in the Media Lab are -as they say in these parts - wickid smaht. So I'm sure that there is plenty of merit to the "sociometer" research.

Unfortunately, it didn't quite come across in this "Business Insight" article.

It did remind me of an amusing nonverbal communication story that a former colleague was a character in.

Dave and his manager were meeting with someone that the manager considered her enemy. (And, in fact, in this enemy-filled company, was her enemy. She had plenty of them.)

After the meeting, she called Dave into her office and dressed him down on his inappropriate body language.

When Dave protested that he hadn't thought he was giving off the wrong vibes, his boss disagreed.

"You were nodding your head, leaning forward, and smiling," she told him. "You were way off base. I don't want to see behavior like that again."

Imagine what she could have done with a "sociometer".