Your Body Language Could Kill Your Career

We usually hear about body language that indicates a lover is lying to you or a member of the opposite sex is interested in you. Here's something new from Monster.com.

6 ways your body language could be holding you back in your job. Some should be obvious, like the one about looking bored or the one about playing with your hair. The one that surprised me the most was about making notes on a white board. My favorite example under the category of generally awkward or inappropriate motions was this:

“As a career coach, I was working with a client who had a distracting habit of adjusting his crotch during conversations with colleagues and friends,” says Roy Cohen, career coach and author of The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide. “He was completely unaware of the gesture and to add insult to injury, no one was comfortable enough to address his hand action. He was smart, attractive, well-dressed, and well groomed, but his restless hands were blocking any serious consideration for more senior-level management responsibility.”

I'm often amazed how many people think I'm pissed off about something when all I am is deep in thought, so maybe there's something we can all learn from this. I'm not sure this would come under the category of body language but one of my favorite workplace stories is about Bill Doyle. We were working at a station in Detroit and had to make a speech in front of some ladies from an ad agency. When it was Bill's turn he made the entire speech with his fly open by accident. Funnier still is that the purpose of the meeting was to explain how non-offensive and female friendly the show was.

You can find the full list of bad body language to avoid in the workplace here.