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.

Social conversation skills is simply a means and an aptitude for getting along with other people. Some people are natural born empaths and have the ability to quickly find a common denominator in their conversation to connect to someone. Once this connection is established, conversation becomes easy and relaxed between people.

Someone once said that there was “seven degrees of separation” between people and as I’ve travelled around the world, I’m inclined to think they weren’t far wrong.

The more you socialise with people, and all that means is mixing with them socially, the easier it becomes. Once you become relaxed in someone’s company you will find they will also become relaxed in yours. (more…)

Have you ever been in a situation where someone has put you down for expressing your opinion? Not only is that the height of rudeness, ignorance and bad manners but anyone who has to validate their own opinion by disparaging the opinion of someone else, is showing the whole world their own insecurity problem. If they want to ‘air their dirty laundry’ in public, don’t be drawn into it.

Your opinion matters the same amount as any one else so never allow a disparaging comment to throw you off or to silence you. Unfortunately, many stay-at-home Mums “get down in the doldrums” because they can sometimes feel that no one wants to listen to their opinion or thoughts on what’s happening around them or in the wider outside world.

For some inexplicable reason, it seems that some people tend to think that stay-at-home Mums have had a lobotomy or some other mind-removing operation and now no longer have an opinion on anything.

(more…)

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…)

Some people often say “”Hey”? today instead of “excuse me” or “pardon” or “I beg your pardon” when they haven’t heard or understood what it is that you have said. Is this a rude and discourteous response to someone’s conversation? How does it make you feel when someone replies to you with a straight or cranky look and they say “hey” abruptly.

If you are like many people, you may feel almost insulted but definitely disinclined to repeat in full what you have just said to elicit that response. It could make you feel rejected, hurt, angry and any number of other things. But one of the things it does do is to mark the person who responds to an unheard or misunderstood question with “hey” is that they are bad mannered individuals.

In a peer group of uneducated people hanging around a corner ’shooting the breeze’ it may be the accepted practice. This is a case of “birds of a feather, flocking together” so it may be acceptable to the group.

However, if you are in a job interview and one of the interviewers asks you a question that you haven’t heard properly or understood, and you respond with “hey?” then don’t expect to have a successful outcome to that interview simply because you have immediately shown that you have no respect for other people or their feelings and are highly unlikely to be a good team player. If you are going to be in a team, then you have to (a) be acceptable to the other team members and (b) have to be able to get along with the other team members.

If you are in a casual social situation and you turn to someone jokingly and say “hey, what’s that” with a smile on your face it could be construed as being playful but if you turn to someone and say “hey?” abruptly without a smile then you are most likely going to be thought of as being rude and or angry over something.

Spoken language and body language often mirror each other quite well in meaning when rude people say “hey”. Next time someone says it to you, remember to take note of their facial features when they do so and in particular their eyes. These will always give you the precise meaning of what they are feeling/thinking/meaning when they speak so rudely to you.

If a person is in a more formal social situation like a cocktail party or after-work drinks with colleagues and someone responds with “hey?” to something that you’ve said, take notice of how you feel at the time. Saying “hey” is rude in any educated social activity with colleagues and in a formal social setting like a cocktail party it is definitely a “No-No” if you want to be invited to the next social gathering.