Mehrabian myth – debunked by the man himself

93% of communication is non-verbal, right?

You’ve seen and heard this for decades from many, many management and presentation gurus you’ve been subjected to.

Well, long ago I researched it and found that those ideas came with some pretty heavy strings attached. And the common usage of the numbers were candidates for snopes.com.

And I’m not alone.

In recent months I’ve been pleased to see a chorus of voices raised shouting, “Wait!  It’s a nice number, but it’s used out of context 97.3% of the time!”

(Okay, I made that last number up, but you can quote me if you want)

What joy, then, when I saw Olivia Mitchell‘s retweet (@oliviamitchell) of Colin McLean‘s (@presentationwks) blog post with a link to a brief interview with Doc M. himself.

Sorry, you’ll have to find different numbers now, but I hope you get 100% better sleep.