Mastering the Art of Remote Communications

Use the Force, Nod Your Head

We’ve got another tip for mastering the art of remote communications this week, and if you’re a Star Wars fan, you’re in luck.

This article is part of a multi-part series on the psychology of remote communications, as many/most of us are still working remotely. I want to reiterate that we have established a baseline over the last couple years (albeit anecdotal) that tells us these tips have helped a lot of our customers and friends. And what’s more, many of our more recent product innovations are enabling these tips to be used with much greater ease.

This Week’s Tip: Use the Force. Nod Your Head.

You remember the scene in the original Star Wars movie where Obi-Wan Kenobi tells those storm troopers, “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for”? This is a classic example of a jedi mind trick where, through a series of physical gestures, the mind of a subject is briefly controlled. In the movie, we’re told that you must use the force to do this.

For us non-jedis working from home on video conferences, nodding your head up and down (showing approval) is in effect telling others and yourself that you have confidence in your own thoughts – whether those thoughts are positive or negative. The evidence for this can be found in research done at Ohio State. In a sense, nodding or shaking your head as well as other body movements act as a kind of “self-validation” that confirms to us and others how we feel about our own thoughts. An important caveat here is that nodding your head side to side (showing disapproval) can, not surprisingly, have the opposite negative effect.

Wait, So I Can Control Other People’s Minds Simply by Shaking My Head Up and Down?

No, it’s not really like what happens in Star Wars, and that’s a good thing—although some people can be very persuasive using physical cues. What is happening is more about instilling a feeling of “contagious confidence” in what you’re saying. It’s not like nodding your head will get your boss to immediately give you that promotion.

The scientific phenomenon here is called “isopraxism” (iso being Greek for “same” and praxism meaning “behavior”) or otherwise known as “mirroring”. This is behavior in which one person unconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another.

In a video conference situation, your positive head nodding when you speak can make another person in the meeting mirror your positive head nodding which can instill agreement and generally positive feelings in both people. Note that this should be done in a subtle way (like Obi Wan), as doing this nodding too obviously will then just look strange and off-putting.

And, particularly powerful in video meetings where everyone can see all of the heads in a tile view, when your teammate is presenting, your nod as part of the audience will help instill confidence in your overall team message in the minds of the audience.

How Can RPost Help Me With this Isopraxism Thing?

While we have yet to invent a technology to directly help people gain consensus on videoconferences, RSign is the most effective, efficient, and affordable way of gaining agreement via electronic signature. RSign’s ease of use and ability to streamline workflows instills what we like to call “sender and signer bliss” — it’s the software version of the up-and-down head nod.

RSign has a simple user design, sharable templates, template rules and dependencies, custom workflows, real time reporting, advanced document configuration, and much more.

Learn more:

How to Create a Signing Order for Recipients

Lease Agreement

How to Sign Forms in Bulk

How to electronically sign a word document

How to Secure Email

Erin Beals, Operations Manager at Andres O’Neil & Lowe Agency, recently spoke about how RSign has made her life so much easier: “The simplicity of RSign, from both our end and the client end, was incredibly important… It’s one click, and it’s there, and we haven’t had any issues.” (Click here to listen to her 3-minute discussion at Optimize!2021.) And, we are friendlier to work with, actively helping you to optimize your eSign initiatives.

If you’re now nodding your head in agreement about RSign’s benefits and ease of use, then my work here is done. In the immortal words of Obi Wan, “you can go about your business…move along.” Click here to try RSign for free, and please feel free to contact us to discuss RSign further.

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