Discomfort

The nonverbal signs of happiness, sadness, and anger are usually relatively easy to notice once you start looking for them. Discomfort, however, can be much more difficult, as the cause of the discomfort can be difficult to pin down.

All you may know is that someone is uncomfortable, but you won't necessarily know why they are uncomfortable. Maybe they are nervous, or late for an appointment, or need to use the bathroom.

The nonverbals of discomfort tend to come from the "Freeze" and "Flight" reactions that our brain's limbic system triggers whenever we detect a threat. When we are in unfamiliar surroundings, as we are in a room where we are being interviewed, our bodies may be stiff as if we are trying to avoid the detection of a predator. When we are asked a difficult question that we don't know the answer to, our bodies prepare us to run, dumping adrenaline into our bloodstream, causing us to sweat, our hands to tremble, our legs to bounce, and our rate of breathing to increase.

The signs of physical discomfort and emotional discomfort are similar, making it necessary to rule out any physical causes of discomfort before we can attempt to accurately interpret someone's nonverbals.

If someone starts to sweat, it might be caused by them having a "Flight" or "Fight" reaction, or the room may be too hot.

If someone is folding their arms, they may be subconsciously protecting their torso from attack, or maybe the room is too cold.

If someone's hands are trembling or legs are bouncing, it could mean they are preparing to run, or that they just drank a massive amount of caffeine.

Before drawing a hasty conclusion about why someone appears to be uncomfortable based solely on their nonverbals, it may be a good idea to ask questions to make sure you are not confusing physical discomfort with emotional discomfort.

When people are emotionally uncomfortable, they will tend to want to calm themselves down. We may withdraw our hands from view, or if they are in view, we may interlace the fingers and rub the hands together. We may fold our arms across our stomachs, resting our elbows in the palms of our hands. We tend to hide our lips, as if we are trying to stop ourselves from saying the wrong thing. We may touch our eyes or blink excessively, perhaps in an attempt to hold back potential tears. We may touch our neck, as if we are afraid someone is going to strike out at our throat. We may pull our feet underneath our chair as if we are a sprinter getting ready to run, or if we are standing, we make sure our legs are not crossed or obstructed, and that we are well balanced so that we can run if we have to.

Provided physical causes of discomfort are ruled out, these nonverbals - especially if several of them are happening at the same time - indicate that someone is uncomfortable, but they don't tell us why.

In the case of a job interview or a performance review, the likely cause of discomfort is nervousness, stress, and fear, as someone's livelihood may be on the line. If an interviewer has not been interviewed themselves in a long time, as would be the case for a long-standing employee; or a manager doesn't have their performance reviewed, but does performance reviews on their subordinates; they may not be sensitive to just how stressful interviews and performance reviews can be.

The fact is, for many people, interviews and performance reviews are some of the highest-stress moments of their lives. Provided the goal is to get the most accurate read from a future or current employee, every effort must be made to calm the person down before commencing with the highly stressful process of asking questions or giving feedback.

It's important to keep in mind that for some people, positive feedback is ignored if there is any negative feedback whatsoever, so a performance review that is 99% positive may have that 99% ignored if the feedback is even 1% negative.

If you detect what you believe to be emotional discomfort in someone, there are a few things you can try.

When someone is seated in a room, make sure they are sitting close to the door with nothing obstructing their exit, as people are more comfortable when they can make a quick exit than when there are several people blocking their escape.

Instead of locking your eyes on the person, balance making eye contact to show that you are engaged in the conversation with looking away to break the tension often caused by staring.

Rather than sitting directly across from a person with your shoulders and hips pointed directly at them, angle your body away, and instead of planting your feet as if you are about to lunge at them, cross your legs in front of you.

Make sure your hands are showing at all times, as people feel reassured when hands are visible, and nervous when they are not.

As people become very nervous when their personal space is being invaded, give the person plenty of space - more than you might think is necessary - and let them move closer to you if they think they are too far away.

As you speak to them, speak lower and slower than you might otherwise, as high-pitched rapid-fire speech can put people on edge.

If you know the conversation is going to be stressful, try to lighten the mood by talking about something fun and positive, not related to work, and see if you observe their body relaxing.

It is important to remember that someone who is very nervous may take as much as half an hour or more to relax, so you must learn to be patient, as the more stressed they are, the more time it might take for you to make them comfortable.