7% - 38% - 55%

How many of you know the significance of these three percentages?
Anyone who has ever attended a seminar or course on presentation skills has undoubtedly heard them. When communicating, we are told, only 7% of our message is communicated through the words we use… 38% is communicated through vocal tone… and a whopping 55% is communicated through facial expression.

I was thinking about this during a trip I took this spring to Prague in the Czech Republic. Czech is a very difficult language to learn (for me anyway). But according to the 7-38-55 theory, I really shouldn’t need to learn Czech at all…. I should be able to understand 93% of a Czech conversation through tone and facial expressions alone. Needless to say, the 7-38-55 concept did not work for me that well. Without understanding the words I was pretty clueless!

So what exactly is going on here? Where do these percentages come from? Read the rest of this entry »