What Is Nunchi? 8 Rules For This Korean Secret To Emotional Intelligence

Nunchi is a Korean word that literally translated means “eye-measure.” It’s the art of gauging how people are thinking and feeling in order to create connection, trust, and harmony. It’s related to concepts like emotional intelligence and situation awareness, but with two major distinguishing factors:

In Korea, nunchi is woven into daily life. Koreans have a saying: “Half of social life is nunchi.” In the modern world at large, the time for nunchi is long overdue. The myth of autonomy, self-reliance, and generally being pushy and selfish has brought us to the brink of self-destruction: It has worsened income disparities and is eroding the planet. Smartphones just exacerbate the problem, providing an addictive excuse for ignoring everyone.

The minor adjustment of plugging your five senses—and your gut—into a room has an instantly grounding, harmonizing effect. All you need are your eyes and your ears. And, this cheat sheet can’t hurt.

Step back, breathe, and remember that prejudice prevents you from learning anything about people. If you assume you know everything about a meeting, new country, or a date before you’ve even started it, you are shutting down your senses and leaving less room to gather data about the room.

When you enter a room, you change the room. Be aware of your influence. Your presence is already changing the environment without you saying a word. No need for a dog and pony show unless everyone seems to have dogs and ponies. If you enter a party, meeting, or any other social gathering, please don’t launch into a joke right away. It’s much more jarring than you think, even if the joke is funny.

For example, most people have the ability to discern when they’re arriving at a party and the couple hosting it have just had a huge fight—but only if you’re paying attention. If you don’t pick up on this tension, you may miss something. Is the food not yet out on the table? Don’t comment on it, or you may unintentionally be hitting upon the very topic they’re fighting about, and introduce even more unwellness into the atmosphere.

If you wait long enough, most of your questions will be answered without your having to say a word. This advice will serve you well in negotiations, where the goal is to learn as much as possible while keeping your cards close to the vest. If you’re making an offer on a car, for example, and the other person does not respond to your offer, do not deal with your anxiety over the silence by saying anything else; just listen.

Don’t dismiss them as hoity-toity; they’re in place to make people feel comfortable. Maybe you want to use the bread plate to your right instead of your left because you just gotta do you. But guess what? If you take the wrong bread plate it means someone else doesn't have one. 

When meeting anyone for the first time, watch them to see how they expected to be greeted. Do they look as though they’re planning to bow, shake your hand, do the French "bises" (cheek kisses), or—believe it or not—none of the above? Don’t hug your colleague’s wife or husband, only to find that the couple are from a culture where a man and woman who are not spouses are not supposed to touch each other—you’ve basically committed assault in their eyes.

Intent is not impact, as the saying goes. Intent is just based on what’s in your own head; you need to get outside of your head to make people comfortable around you. Try to create roundness, not jagged edges. This is true for things both big and small. Let’s say you are not good at knowing when a host secretly wants you to leave. Your host says, “I’d love for you to stay for dinner but I don’t have enough lamb.” If you say, “Oh it’s ok, I’m a vegetarian anyway,” ugh. Even though you didn’t mean to encumber them, they will remember you as a pest and be far less likely to invite you over in the future.

But it doesn’t have to be a mystery. All you need are your eyes and your ears, and the willingness to pay attention to the data points they provide, even if it means sitting through the anxiety of silence.