# When Leaders Get Nonverbal Communication Wrong

- **Episode:** [209](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/209.md) (2025-06-26)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** meetings, nonverbal, leadership
- **Time:** 10:37–13:35 (start 637s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/209?t=637](https://truthliesandwork.com/209?t=637)

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[10:37] Al Elliott: Now, I think we've all been in those meetings where something just feels a bit off, you know, You can't put your finger on it, but you know that that leader isn't connecting with their team
[10:45] Leanne Elliott: Yeah, and I asked Roit for some examples of what happens when leaders don't get this right. We'll hear those after this very short break
[10:55] Al Elliott: Billion Dollar Moves, hosted by Sarah Chen Spellings, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals
[11:01] Leanne Elliott: Join venture capitalist and strategist Sarah Chen Spellings as she asks the hard questions and learns through the triumphs, failures, and hard lessons of the crème de la crème, so you too can make billion-dollar moves in venture, in business, and in life
[11:15] Al Elliott: Maybe start with episode 124, where you're going to hear how industry giants from Canva to YouTube define leadership
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[11:24] Al Elliott: Welcome back. Let's go and hear some examples of when leaders get nonverbal communication wrong, as well as Does all this work over things like Zoom?
[11:36] Roit Feldenkreis: There are so many, so many examples. One executive I was working with, he was a very, very technical person. He was fantastic at anything, you know, coding, things like that, you know, a real CTO kind of guy. And he would come to basically address the, you know, everyone in the company, you know, to give this update on how the The development is going and things like that. So, what you would see is that he would be speaking and saying all these really great things usually, you know, we're making progress and everything is fine and everything. And, but, you know, they were just words because he would not look, you know, his employers in the eye and tell them these things. He would just glance at the hall. So bit by bit, it was astounding to see, you know, each team member would look at their friend, you know, the one sitting next to them and say, okay, so weird, you know, like, what is he saying? And why I have so many questions and he's not giving us, you know, the space for answers, for example, or I don't really get what he's saying. And so they wouldn't even speak out loud because They felt that it's not, you know, there is such a, such a place that they just give up. They just give up. So he would do that. He would do these little meetings every single week, and each week it had, you know, it was worse and worse because the team members just knew that something was off
[13:19] Leanne Elliott: And as a leader, can you see that in, in your team if something's off, if they're nonverbal isn't matching maybe the mood that you're trying to set, the vibe you're trying to set, the message you're trying to get across, is that also a signal for leaders to maybe adapt?