“A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.”
So said Oscar Wilde. The Rector at Dallas’s Episcopal Church of the Incarnation used that line in his homily on Christmas Eve. It drew polite laughter from many but there were several men—husbands—who seemed to be enjoying the humor way too much. Immediately recognizing that discretion is always the better part of valor, I made sure my laughter fell into the polite category.
When we meet people for the first time, we take stock of their face. You can learn so much from a person’s face.
As an executive recruiter who works on C-suite assignments, I pay a great deal of attention to the faces of the candidates I interview. I learn much from the way they smile, they way they make—or do not make—eye contact, how they react to a challenging question or a humorous line, and how they perform in the recorded video interviews.
People, who lack the confidence to establish the connection with the face of another, can miss out on so much in business and interpersonal relationships.
© 2012 John Gregory Self