Developing Your Own Non-Verbal Competence

This chapter describes different ways to develop one’s own nonverbal competence on the basis of learning psychology. A distinction is made between sending and receiving nonverbal signals and critical influencing factors are taken into account, which regularly occur as a bottleneck during development and make further progress more difficult. Various exercises serve as a basis for developing a more differentiated perception. Basic rules and regularities that non-verbal communication follows are described in more detail. Furthermore, critical factors that influence the classification and interpretation of non-verbal signals are explained. Finally, possibilities are described to develop both the ability to interpret unknown signals and the nonverbal transmission competence and to integrate them into daily practice.