Shaking hands today is still common and proper etiquette in the business world. A handshake is a sign of friendliness and honest intentions. There are all kinds of handshakes so what does your hand shake say about you?

Etiquette decrees that it should be the woman who offers her hand first for a handshake but that does not apply so much today with equality between the sexes being paramount. So it doesn’t really matter who offers their hand first; but it does matter enormously if you don’t take it. Any person who refuses to shake hands on meeting another person, is almost slapping them in the face and this is obviously very, very rude. How would you feel if someone refused to shake your hand? Yes, you’d probably feel like a ‘dogs breakfast’ too the same as everybody else.

Would you trust that person enough to do business with them? Unlikely, unless you had a masochistic streak. One of the biggest requirements in business is trust and a handshake is a physical sign of this trust.

Firstly, whether you are a man or a woman, if you are going to shake someone’s hand, put your hand out as if you intend for them to shake it. I have seen ‘uncertain’ offerings that resembled a “stop-Go” traffic signal and this causes everyone embarrassment. My Mothers motto has stood me in good stead for this eventuality “If in doubt, put your hand out”

Put your arm out firmly with your thumb up so that the intended recipient sees your hand index finger top side-up and horizontal to the ground. Never put you hand palm down to the ground because this is a dead-set sign of control and no one is going to trust a control freak.

Never offer your hand to be shaken palm up because this is an immediate physical sign that you want to be dominated. Not good for business unless you are in the ‘bedroom’ business. These may appear as weird body language descriptions but the signals they send are understood by all humans. Perhaps they may relate back to our “Ape” ancestry but the body signals are very real. If you don’t believe me, try the experiment for yourself in any situation that is not overly important to you. Never try this experiment on someone you want to impress because the impression won’t be favourable.

Now, are you a “death gripper” or a “dead fish”?

The death-gripper is someone who grabs hold of your hand and squeezes the life out of it. They tend to squeeze the blood out of your fingers (almost ~ slight exaggeration) but they tend to squeeze your hand so hard that you can feel your knuckles start to crack. This is not good simply because it hurts. Men and women are both guilty parties to being a ‘death-gripper’ in order to be sure they are offering a firm hand shake.

Now we come to the ‘dead-fish’ brigade. These are the people who put out a hand that looks like a long-stemmed dead dahlia and when you take their hand to shake; it sort-of goes limp in your hand and falls away like a dead fish that has lost all its stuffing. Frankly, it leaves one feeling creepy.

The ideal hand shake is one given with an accompanying smile and facing the person ‘front on’ or directly.. The smile rounds-out the body language of friendliness and good intentions and leaves everyone comfortable and happy.

Many people today have forgotten that social skills existed long before social book marking sites and other Internet social communities existed online. The dictionary (Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1964) has nearly a page listed dealing with the word “social” and derivatives of, but the meaning we are most concerned with in this article is the definition given to the word social:

“social:a.& n. Living in companies, gregarious, not fitted for or not practising solitary life, interdependent, co-operative, practising division of labour, existing only as member of compound organism, (man is a social animal; social bees, wasps, kinds having common nests etc. ~birds, building near each other in communities; ~plants, kinds that grow thickly together & monopolize ground they grow on)”

People have been social creatures since they first learnt the benefits of not clubbing each other to death.  (more…)