Tag Archive for First Impressions

Handshake Conclusion

It’s obvious to most that the extremities of the handshakers are most undesirable with the middle ground making the best impressions. Most people would have experienced at least five of the ten types of handshakes listed here, hopefully being spared of the most traumatic, that is, the ones that cause pain such as the bone crusher or death grip. The worse I’ve ever endured was a combination of a short grabber combined with a bone crusher. Whenever I meet this person I tried to trust forward to get as much finger into this persons hand as possible or try to avoid the handshake altogether! Women also seem to be particularly prone to thrusting just their fingers forward and in turn receive an unwelcomingly firm handshake by a clutch of fingers and palms wrapped around their little fingers. They’d be best served to keep their fingers together and thrust the whole lot forward instead of just the tips.

Ingredients of a good handshake includes raising your hand when about three feet away from the other person, keeping your hand vertical with the thumb pointing upwards, making a firm grip of the other person’s hand, shaking web-to-web rather then finger to web, maintain eye contact and shaking for a maximum of three times then letting go. A firm handshake gives the impression of quiet confidence and says that “I’m happy to meet you” yet portrays a person as having a no “non-sense” attitude. As the other person releases their grip pressure be sure to let go of their hand rather than holding on for longer than necessary. Holding the hand at the completion of the handshake can convey added emphasis and intimacy, but it is also risky. This is especially important in business where first impressions can often set the tone for the entire relationship. Fortunately handshakes are learned behaviours and not inherent making it easily corrected when the proper formula is adopted.

You Have Four Minutes!

You're on the clock, so make it count!

You’re on the clock, so make it count!

It has been repeatedly shown that the first four minutes are crucial to formulating life-long impressions of others. The research has shown that the reality of the matter is that it might even be shorter than this. [!dw-post-more level=”0″]Once a judgment has been past, people will vigorously resist changing it. In fact, our first impressions are so strongly held, that we’d prefer to ignore, omit or distort information about someone as it comes in that doesn’t fit our impressions than to modify our initial impressions of someone. Add to this, the fact that only some our time formulating impressions is done verbally through speaking, but all of our time is spent sending signals nonverbally. Our impressions are made passively, regardless of our desire to create them, so being caught on an off day can really hurt future relationship. If, say, for example, we are caught in a bad mood, or happen to be dealing with a rare crisis, the judgment others make during this period will follow us for a very long time. Shy people who take longer to warm up to others know this all to well and are often reminded of this fact later. As their relationships flourish, friends will tell them how their initial impressions of them were quite different from the person they have come to know. Being shy holds their true personalities from sight, and this hurts them in the short term because the initial impression they make comes across as indifferent and cold.

Knowing that impressions are so important, we can use it to our advantage by placing added emphasis on initial impressions and concentrate our efforts. Once this time has elapsed, we can either relax back to our regular selves and allow our newly created reputation to keep us afloat, or maintain out initial behaviour. The choice will be ours to make. This book will cover the all important job interview and skills to portray confidence and knowledgeable and how to pack it all into the typical four minute interview. Fortunately, this book is almost entirely about formulating and maintaining good impression. [/dw-post-more]So the rule here is to never ignore the power of first impressions. More often than not, first impressions are the ones that last for an entire relationship and can’t be easily corrected later. I should also emphasis that what you ‘say’ is often far less important than what you ‘do’. Listening, and using strong body language will illustrate a much stronger impression then being a good speaker, so always pay more credence to positive body language.