Smirking in Meetings 8

[ivymike]

I was in a fairly serious meeting yesterday, and one of my esteemed coworkers seemed to be smirking constantly and inappropriately throughout the meeting. I've never met the guy before, so I don't know whether his face always looks like that, but to me it seemed that he was going to giggle out loud at any second. It looked as though somebody was whispering dirty jokes in his ear the whole time. We were discussing a potentially serious product issue with an extremely short window for resolution. Anyone else ever seen this sort of thing before?

It's my impression that regularly giving the wrong body signals will be in impediment to ones progress.

 

[lewtam]

No a male bellydancer.

 

[IRstuff]

If it were that, I'd close my eyes ;-)

TTFN

 

[HVACctrl]

Funny!

Of course you know I was just being overly technical.

Ed

http://www.engineerboards.com

 

[VeryPicky]

Thanks for the award ivymike. I accept it with due respect. I will frame it and hang it next to others. And you are right, I suffer a lot because people pay to much attention to appearances.

It is our own insecurity that makes us seek weeknesses in others. If we were more mature and secure we would look for strengths and build on them. My life has been devoted to find such a team - synergistic. Unsuccesfully so far. Instead, I tend to fall in dog pits most of the time. And guess what? After a while I usually find tempted to bark with them, what is easier than that?


Putting Human Factor Back in Engineering

 

[josephv]

Hello ivymike,

If several people are jumping on the wrong bandwagon it might be because your original post did not clearly specify what was the main topic of discussion (i.e. you may have unintentionally lead them towards the wrong bandwagon).

Now you mentioned, “I've gotten feedback on multiple occasions that my facial expressions and body language indicate frustration with the conversation at hand... that's not always what I'm trying to get across... I've been advised that I should avoid appearing frustrated, even when people JUST DON'T FRIGGEN GET IT. It's a related difficulty.”

It is not easy to talk to someone who “does not get it”. Many times, this happens when two people have different styles of communication. Frequently no one is to blame, but trying to understand the other person and their communication style does help.

I don’t want to start discussing communication styles here. It would be better to do a new post on this topic. On that note, best wishes and good luck.