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Some time ago, a businessman friend of mine named L. invited me to an illustrative meeting about how to train the recently employed staff in the NVC (Non Verbal Communication). I had already had the chance to meet L. thanks to some personal lessons about body language he had wanted to take. During that circumstance I had met his brother too, T. who had proved to be very rude and with an evident negative prejudice against me. The three of us sat in their wonderful meeting room: every time I completed a sentence T. was ready to crack a joke about me. After being subjected to this for 15 minutes, he got on my nerves and I therefore decided to counterattack.
The last sentence I grasped was “now he’s going to talk about the importance of smiling”. I turned towards him and replied: “ Actually it would be better to welcome people you, truthfully, had invited, with a smile. Not only as a clear strategy, but mostly to be polite. Moreover it would be better to keep in mind that smiling is useful in many occasions. For example, when you had hired your relationship manager you hadn’t considered the person should have been a smiling one. It has been shown that even during a phone call you can perceive if the interlocutor is smiling through the change of voice volume, through speaking speed or, since he/she is smiling, through the warmth of the words he/she inevitably says due to relaxation. Thanks to this you will be able to avoid worthless verbal conflicts and to solve your problems with minimum effort. Not to mention mirror-neurons effect on a smile.
When someone smiles pleasantly we are lead to mimic that behavior in order to create a feeling, which could be useful, as in a trade. Those are few rudiments about smile (I winked after saying this) and I’m going to teach your colleagues this skills so in depth, with a practical training. I’m sure if you came to my lessons you could benefit from it.” As soon as I ended my philippic the audience roared with laughter. Me and T. turned to my friend L. who was bending over with laughter to the point he was falling from his chair. T. incredibly roared with laughter too, saying “I can understand now why you had said he’s a genius despite his youth”; I laughed too.
We greeted each other and T. even hugged me as I was leaving to my Polo GT. This event lead to the birth of a wonderful friendship.
Luca Brambilla