How close is too close?

I’m up early on the morning of the last day of a holiday in Barcelona. Everybody else is fast asleep and I’ve been downloading photos onto my mac for safe keeping. I adore Barcelona – there are so many different ways to spend your time here - it’s as if you are in 5 separate cities at the same time. The fact that I’ve been over here to watch my team play in a unique Rugby League match in the Catalan capital has made it even more special this time.

As I’ve been sorting through my photos, I’ve noticed one of the street where our apartment for the week is located. And, as I think about going home, I’m struck by the difference in this street and my cul-de-sac at home. At home (in the UK at least), we tend to have plenty of space between our house and the neighbouring properties. There are roads, pavements, fences, shrubbery, parking spaces, driveways and gardens separating us. These things are architected around us to ensure that we have the right sense of personal space.

My Barcelona street is narrow - a more daring person could jump from a balcony on one side to an adjacent balcony on the other. Some of the streets in the Born and Gothic districts of Barcelona are so narrow that you could lean over and steal your neighbour’s washing left drying in the city heat. The local culture and necessity have defined an architecture that is tight and close here.

Different people have different feelings on personal space. Some like lots of it, some like hardly any – preferring to be in constant close proximity to the people around them. As far as communication skills go, in business, understanding personal space is an important factor in building rapport. Without rapport, good communication is really difficult.

Sometimes you’ll meet people who are ‘in’ your personal space, they seem to get up close and need to push up to you in order to make their point. From times this has happened to you, you’ll remember how pressured and threatening it can seem. If you maintain a border around your personal space, not only can you be more open with your gestures, but you will also put the person you’re communicating with in a much more relaxed state. And that’s fine if you want them to be relaxed.

By contrast, getting into someone’s personal space consciously from time to time enables you to change his or her state. You can evoke secrecy, comradeship, collusion, intensity, passion, togetherness or friendship by getting into someone’s personal space in just the right way. As with any behaviour, we should design why and how we do it.

As quaint and European as it may seem to live in our neighbours’ personal space, if it isn’t architected properly, neither of us will be able to live with it.