Dismissive gestures are nonverbal putdowns. Popular entertainment propagates them, just as it propagates verbal putdowns. If you become familiar with them, you can recognize them more easily, and then you can think to yourself, "How dramatic of him/her!" or "What a fine imitation of <name-your-favorite-film-role>!"

Doodles by T.D. Lee, created while working with C.N. Yang at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The work led to their receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1957. Not all doodles are dismissive gestures. Photo courtesy Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Here's Part III of a little catalog of dismissive gestures. See "Dismissive Gestures: II," Point Lookout for March 28, 2007, for more.
- Snorting
- A snort can say, "What you just said fouled the air, and I must clear my nasal passages before I comment." The "laugh snort" — laughing through your nose — adds extra derision.
- Head bobbling
- Especially when combined with a grimace, and performed while your conversation partner is talking, this means, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard your nonsense before."
- Hand yapping
- Holding up one hand, making a "C," and then rapidly opening and closing the jaws of the C as if they were the jaws of the speaker, means roughly the same thing as head bobbling.
- Raising one eyebrow
- The eyebrow lift, deftly
executed, can be an
expression of derision - True experts combine the eyebrow lift with a dip of the countenance, a stern cast of the features, and raising of the eyes, as if looking over the top of eyeglasses. It means, "Come now, you fool, get with the program."
- Failure to return service
- In the volley of conversation, when we sometimes receive the "ball," others expect us to return it. Failure to do so, especially by someone with power, implies disregard for the conversation, and possibly for the conversers. For extra disdain, instead of responding, sit quietly and sip your coffee or tea.
- Turning your back
- This gesture is most effective when performed standing. In a "party" situation — a reception or gathering — the turned back of a person of status or power can be very painful.
- Stiff-arm
- One or both arms forward, with the palm facing the target, in a variation of the "stiff-arm" used by NFL football players, is a way of saying, "Back off, buddy, and let me tell you how it is."
- Playing with workplace toys
- Workplace toys include pens and pencils, paper, rubber bands, and the like. To play with them, we doodle; we fill in the loops of letters such as b, d, p, and e; or we endlessly stretch and relax rubber bands or flick them off into space. Idly playing with workplace toys while someone is speaking can sometimes send a message of distraction or disdain, as, "You're talking, but I want to move on."
Three things to remember. One: when we use dismissive gestures unintentionally, they can still sting. Two: when we feel the sting of someone else's dismissive gesture, it might have been unintentional. And Three: at times, we've all forgotten One and Two. Top
Next Issue
Are you fed up with tense, explosive meetings? Are you or a colleague the target of a bully? Destructive conflict can ruin organizations. But if we believe that all conflict is destructive, and that we can somehow eliminate conflict, or that conflict is an enemy of productivity, then we're in conflict with Conflict itself. Read 101 Tips for Managing Conflict to learn how to make peace with conflict and make it an organizational asset. Order Now!
For more on gestures of all kinds, take a look at Field Guide to Gestures: How to Identify and Interpret Virtually Every Gesture Known to Man, by Nancy Armstrong and Melissa Wagner. It's complete with full-color illustrations. Order from Amazon.com
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
Nasty Questions: II
- In meetings, telemeetings, and email we sometimes ask questions that aren't intended to elicit information.
Rather, they're indirect attacks intended to advance the questioner's political agenda. Here's part
two of a catalog of some favorite tactics.
How to Undermine Your Boss
- Ever since I wrote "How to Undermine Your Subordinates," I've received scads of requests for
"How to Undermine Your Boss." Must be a lot of unhappy subordinates out there. Well, this
one's for you.
Problem Displacement and Technical Debt
- The term problem displacement describes situations in which solving one problem creates another.
It sometimes leads to incurring technical debt. How? What can we do about it?
The Discontinuity Effect: What and Why
- Counterproductive competition is more likely in group-group interactions than in one-to-one or one-to-group
interactions. Why does counterproductive competition happen?
Downscoping Under Pressure: I
- When projects overrun their budgets and/or schedules, we sometimes "downscope" to save time
and money. The tactic can succeed — and fail. Three common anti-patterns involve politics, the
sunk cost effect, and cognitive biases that distort estimates.
See also Workplace Politics, Effective Communication at Work and Conflict Management for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming June 14: Pseudo-Collaborations
- Most workplace collaborations produce results of value. But some collaborations — pseudo-collaborations — are inherently incapable of producing value, due to performance management systems, or lack of authority, or lack of access to information. Available here and by RSS on June 14.
And on June 21: Asking Burning Questions
- When we suddenly realize that an important question needs answering, directly asking that question in a meeting might not be an effective way to focus the attention of the group. There are risks. Fortunately, there are also ways to manage those risks. Available here and by RSS on June 21.
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Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group