Lightning talk given at Scale Summit 2015 about hand signals and non-verbal communication in groups. This was thrown together quite hurriedly, so apologies for the image quality in the slides.
Hello, I’m me. Today I’m going to talk to you about...
so that you can have more efficient, shorter meetings.
What do I know about meetings? Well a technical architect has been described as a developer that goes to meetings.
The communication that I’m going to talk about is not verbal.
People typically forget that we have more than send or receive over audio
We have body language. That can be quite a subtle thing.
I don’t do subtle.
A group of hand signals used by Occupy Wall Street protesters to negotiate a consensus.[1][2][3] The signals have been equated with other hand languages used by soldiers, cliques, or even Wall Street traders.[4]
Why hand signals?
Hand signals are used instead of conventional audible signals, like applause, shouts, or booing, because they do not interrupt the speaker using the human microphone, a system where the front of the crowd repeats the speaker so that the content can be heard at the back of the crowd.
Why is this useful?
Interrupting people is rude. Talking over people is rude.
Interrupting people is rude. Talking over people is rude.
Some people don’t respond nicely to that.
I have 2 things that I want to tell you, and each thing has 4 points.
2 things I want to cover
(RH makes a ‘C’)
I don’t understand what you just said, and if you carry on, I won’t understand anything else either.
(Point at the audience)
Direct response
What you said is interesting. I have a point that I want to talk about.
(Raise hand)
Want to talk
Tangential question
(Make a triangle with hands)
Stay on track please, stop bikeshedding
The second thing is indicating feeling about the speaker
Up twinkles or simply twinkles
Down twinkles
(fist])
I feel very strongly against your point of view
(Cross arms)
I’m really not comfortable with what you’re saying
If nothing else, it is fun to watch bemused faces as you do this to them