By Jennifer Mayer
With his office riddled with stacks of video and audiotapes, BYU Assistant Business Professor Curtis LeBaron analyzes the world through the lens of a camera, studying interpersonal communication a frame at a time.
Unlike most communication specialists, LeBaron said he believes studying the interaction between verbal and nonverbal cues is an important key to understanding communication.
'The way I do it is I take a video camera and record what people naturally do,' said LeBaron, who is in the Organizational Leadership and Strategy Department of the Marriott School of Business. 'Then I analyze it.'
While taping the real world and analyzing the elements of how people interact with each other, LeBaron said he tries to capture his audience in their natural setting.
By viewing communication patterns within a natural setting, LeBaron said he is able to see how communication is implemented in several different settings.
'I then come up with findings that are important and relevant to the situation,' LeBaron said.
Due to his unique strategy, LeBaron has been a consultant for various businesses and companies over the past several years.
Many of his projects have taken him to meetings of professional architects to the classroom and clinical settings like a doctor''s office.
One of LeBaron''s past projects analyzed the meetings of architects who were designing a building. LeBaron followed the group from beginning to end as they interacted throughout several different meetings.
According to LeBaron, architects use hand gestures to accompany the drawings as they shape their ideas before it becomes mortar and steel.
'Usually an architect does not just look at a piece of paper,' LeBaron said. 'They use simple hand gestures that continue throughout other meetings. Gestures are an important part of how people behave.'
Significantly, more and more within the business world direct communication is bypassed as technology becomes more readily available, LeBaron said. Large companies forget the significance of face-to-face communication as more technological tools become available.
An important key to communication is personal interactions between all parties involved, he said.
In order for a person to understand the communication occurring between two sources, the hand gestures complimented by the verbal cues or vice versa are important in understanding the exchange of ideas, LeBaron said.
Even his Management Communications 505 students have become guinea pigs, he said. Throughout the semester, the students are taped participating in various activities. At the end of the semester, they analyze their own group structure and communication patterns.
Significantly, LeBaron''s work along with the work of several of his colleagues has focused on the need for verbal and nonverbal cues as a whole. According to LeBaron, a communication specialist will usually focus on one single element not incorporating both.
'Nonverbal communication, vocal conversation and the environment of personal exchanges play a large role in how people relate and communicate,' said Stanley Jones, LeBaron''s colleague and communications professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. 'But many academics in the communication field appear to be drawing more distinct lines between verbal and nonverbal communication.'
LeBaron and Jones recently released a study in the latest issue of the Journal of Communication focusing on understanding communication through home videotapes.
LeBaron''s initial interest in analyzing videotape began shortly after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in organizational communication.
Originally, LeBaron said he became interested in deception. Consequently, he gained special permission to attend classes at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., where he examined covert interrogation of deception.
In turn, LeBaron gained access to the FBI Academy library. His studies evolved into analyzing videotape behavior for the bureau.
LeBaron eventually developed his own method to examine videotapes.
Later LeBaron turned his studies to business conflict, where he has performed consulting work for major companies across the United States using his videotape method of analyzing data.
After conducting his work for the FBI, LeBaron taught at the University of Colorado in Boulder for five years. Currently, LeBaron has been working at BYU for the past two years.
LeBaron has published 15 papers and was nationally recognized recently for his co-authored paper with Robert Hopper, 'How Gender Creeps into Talk.'
The National Communication Association honored LeBaron and Hopper for outstanding scholarship in the language and social interaction division.
The paper has been used across the United States in business classes throughout several universities and business schools. The research takes a look at communication from a different angle.
Often people look at context creating communication, LeBaron said. The paper flips the situation around stating that communication creates context. Among the many topics to demonstrate the hypothesis, LeBaron and his colleague used gender as an example. The research throughout the study used LeBaron''s current technique for analyzing videotape.
'It was fortunate and lucky,' LeBaron said. 'When things come along like this, we really appreciate the recognition.'
Currently, LeBaron and Michael Thompson, a colleague and BYU assistant business professor, have been studying the cascading effect of training through a company and the processes of communication.