I just finished six days of training with the John Maxwell Team in Orlando, Florida.  Some Maxwell teammates and I decided we would spend a few extra days in Orlando to decompress and collaborate on what we had learned and how to apply it in building our businesses.

What better place to do so than at Disney World.  I never imagined how many lessons we would learn walking around “The Happiest Place On Earth.”  This will be the first of a handful of posts discussing lessons learned from the land of Mickey.

If you have ever been to a Disney park, you  know that there are several opportunities to get your picture taken with any number of Disney characters.  I know what you are thinking … a bunch of adults walking around a theme park getting their pictures taken with cartoon characters, really?  Hey – what were you doing on Saturday night!

The picture above includes King Louie, yours truly and Baloo from the Disney classic “The Jungle Book.”  We had been watching these two (King Louie and Baloo) interact with a group of high school aged girls from South America.  It was an incredible display of interaction between the characters and the kids, then disaster struck … 6:00 shift change.

We had been watching Baloo and King Louie act in such an animated way that everyone watching was totally engaged just to see what they would do next.  Then the coordinator called a time out and escorted the two out and said they would be back in one minute.  A minute later they reappeared from behind a gate and walked back into the photo area.

I am not sure what tipped it off for me but I looked at my friend Bob and said “I bet they are bringing out some new actors, it will be interesting to see if they can hold the crowd like the previous two.”  Sure enough, I called it.  The new guys were not even close.  In fact King Louie looked more like a spectator than an actor.  I actually grabbed his hands to try and get him engaged before my picture got taken (see picture).

Now don’t get me wrong, for almost the entire two days, the quality of the park personnel was top notch and I an not even sure anyone else noticed.  We did! Communication is one of the areas that we focus on as coaches, speakers and trainers and this was a great example of how important our body language can be.

The character’s didn’t speak and their facial expressions didn’t change.  All that leaves is their body language.  The first two were totally animated and engaged the students. The girls were speaking a foreign language (at least to me) and Baloo and King Louie were not speaking at all.  But watching them, you could clearly see communication taking place.

When the “B” team took over, it was simply some kids on the trip of a lifetime, getting their pictures taken with some two dimensional characters from a book.  Ok, why does this matter?  It matters because it shows the power of effective communication.  Have you ever had someone tell you that they know you are not giving an accurate response “because of your body language”?

Only seven percent of what we communicate is from the words we speak.  The rest of it is from body language and tonality.  Baloo and King Louie (the “A” team) connected with no words or tonality.

It has been said that people won’t remember what you did or remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel.

After your next conversation, ask yourself “How did I make them feel.”

***********************************************************************

Don’t miss a single post from Building What Matters by subscribing at the top left of this page. 

Help support us by clicking here and Liking our facebook page

Barry Smith   www.buildingwhatmatters.com   2/25/13            photo by Bob Kittridge