In significant (though often misinterpreted) research, Albert Mehrabian found that when it came to discussing emotions, only 7% of the speaker’s message was communicated by words, while tone of voice was responsible for about 38% of the meaning, and body language about 55%. This means that the words themselves played only a very small part in conveying meaning. In other conversations (not the ones about emotions), we know that tone of voice and body language have a large impact on those messages, too.

In our fast-paced world, we don’t have time to get more than a quick snapshot of how a person looks before we make up our mind about them. They are making up their mind about us at the same time, so it is essential that our non-verbal messages are consistent with what we say verbally.