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Opportunity Favors the Prepared

Guest Blog by Ron Holloway

Ron is the owner of Arrow Coaching, LLC. He pairs his studies and research with the experience with becoming blind and cognitively impaired to an invaluable thought leader in the government and beyond. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

Lessons From Boxing

Mike Tyson once said, “every fighter has a plan until he gets punched in the mouth.”

I want to add that the amateur might forget the plan and get emotional whereas the professional fighter takes it, feels the blow and gets back to the plan. The shock makes the amateur panic and helps the professional focus.

We can say the same about life and emergency management when one encounters their metaphorical punch in the face with either an untrained mind or a trained mind.

What happens after that hit is the result of everything that went into preparing for it.

As, Sun Tzu said, “The battle is won before the fighting.”  Or what I learned as a soldier, we don’t rise to the occasion; we default to our level of training.

As an anti-fragility coach and consultant, I prepare individuals and organizations to be like that professional fighter.

In particular, I develop leaders for that moment when everyone turns to them with fear in their eye’s and say, “What do we do?”

Ron’s 4-Part System

My system draws on philosophy, psychology, physiology, and spirituality.

Like boxing there are principles, such as keeping your hands up and throwing combinations.  There are also techniques to drill into your muscle memory until they become automatic.

How it Applies to You

But you might be saying, I’m not a boxer what do I need this for?  Well, there are benefits in the real world that will come with being a champion.

An example we can draw from is the initial public response to Covid-19.  Some people rushed out and bought a ton of toilet paper for a condition that affects the respiratory system not the gastro-intestinal system.

Others asked themselves the classic stoic question of “how do I turn this to my advantage?” and those people invested in Zoom and saw their investment quadruple over the next few months.

Amazon, Circuit City, and Best Buy

This doesn’t only apply on the individual level. A great example is found in the consumer electronics market.

When Amazon entered that ecosystem, Circuit City went into denial and didn’t adapt.

Best Buy adapted and diversified by finding other areas to improve, the Geek Squad, the sale of high-end home appliances and home theatre systems, and training the sales people to develop subject matter expertise in products and to sell not just to husbands but also their wives. These are what make Best Buy the last man standing.

In the Darwinian sense Best Buy is the fittest and Circuit City is extinct.  Now this lesson is part of Best Buy’s corporate story and culture and as is often written, culture trumps strategy any day.

Post Pandemic

As we emerge out of the global pandemic, we need to do an after action review. We need to ask ourselves as individuals, organizations, and a country if next time disruption occurs will we waste money and precious time on a lifetime supply of Charmin, or are we going to get the contract for those social distancing stickers in front of every register in every store in the country?

Want to enhance your knowledge about emotions, skills in reading emotions in others, and your own emotion regulation competence? Check out our online courses here!

The post Opportunity Favors the Prepared first appeared on Humintell.

Body Language in the Classroom

School is back in session! Humintell Director David Matsumoto has been a Professor at San Francisco State and Judo Instructor for over 30 years. In this video, he explains how reading facial expressions of emotion and body language (nonverbal behavior) has so many benefits in the educational process.

Teachers

For teachers, reading their kids’ and their student’s facial expressions of emotion is incredibly important. It helps them know if the students are getting the material or not, engaging with the classroom or not, and so many other things.

Students

For kids, it’s important to read each other’s nonverbal behavior and especially facial expressions of emotion for many reasons. It’s important for kids to be able to read their teachers so they can get the additional messages about what they’re trying to learn.

But it’s also very important for kids to be able to read facial expressions of emotion in everyone else for their social and emotional development, which is so important and is such an important part of the educational process- above and beyond the knowledge that kids learn.

Going Back Masked

But as you know as kids and teachers in many states and countries around the world are going back masked with a large portion of our faces covered, reading body language and especially facial expressions of emotion is a challenge.

And not doing so challenges the many benefits in reading facial expressions of emotion that would normally occur when we’re back in school.

In fact, there’s been some recent research about this that has shown that people are less accurate in reading each other’s facial expressions of emotion because of the masks.

All is Not Lost

We can still learn to read facial expressions of emotion even when people are wearing masks.

All of us here at Humintell want to help especially educators overcome this challenge during our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

We’ve got a number of blogs on this topic that can hopefully inform us more and give us more important knowledge about this important issue:

The Role of Nonverbal Communication in the Classroom

Can Children Read Masked Faces?

We’ve also got some brand new online courses that can help people learn to read facial expressions of emotion even when others are wearing masks. They made be helpful not only for educators but also for health professionals, security personnel, and anyone who’s dealing professionally with others wearing masks.

So please check out our resources. We hope that they can help all of us be the best that we can be in reading people and reading facial expressions of emotion during this difficult time.

The post Body Language in the Classroom first appeared on Humintell.

Can Children Read Masked Faces?

Can Children Read Masked Faces?

As children around the country return to school, the debate whether or not children should wear masks in school continues. In addition, the issue of whether kids wearing masks delays development has become a hot-button topic for many.

Some parents believe their children are being negatively impacted. They suggest that kids are unable to read social cues or see expressions and thus, they do not want their children or anyone else wearing them.

But those who want to prevent their unvaccinated kids from contracting COVID state that developmentally, children are just fine, even when they and everyone else around them is masked.

What does the latest research say about children, mask wearing, emotion recognition and child development? Read on to learn more.

Babies and Infants

Emotion Recognition Skills in ChildrenResearch has shown that infants as young as 27 weeks old begin to recognize facial expressions of emotion. In addition, a series of studies have shown that babies between the ages of 5 to 7 months recognize facial expressions of happiness, sadness, fear and surprise.

A key part of learning to communicate for a child is watching the faces, mouths, and expressions of the people closest to them. Babies and young children study faces intently, so the concern about masks covering the face is understandable. However, there are no known studies that use of a face mask negatively impacts a child’s speech and language development.

Interestingly, visually impaired children develop speech and language skills at the same rate as their peers. In fact, when one sense is taken away, the others may be heightened. Young children will use other clues provided to them to understand and learn language. They will watch gestures, hear changes in tone of voice, see eyes convey emotions, and listen to words.

Some people worry that although young infants shouldn’t wear face masks themselves, they will be subjected to developmental delays from not being able to see others’ full faces.

Yet experts say that babies and toddlers can get all the face time they need in the home with family members who aren’t wearing face masks.

By providing dedicated time to converse with your child without screens or other interruptions, children should reach their expected milestones.

READ: 4 Tips to Improve Infant Emotion Recognition Skills

Children age 3-5

While essential emotion processing is evident in infants, early childhood is considered a critical period for the development of understanding emotions and emotion processing.

In a report entitled “Masking Emotions: Face Masks Impair How We Read Emotions” researchers demonstrated that face masks influence the human ability to infer emotions by observing facial expressions.

Specifically, a mask obstructing a face limits the ability of people of all ages to infer emotions expressed by facial features, but the difficulties associated with the mask’s use were significantly pronounced in children ages 3 and 5 years old.

The researchers’ findings are of essential importance; they suggest that we live in a time that may potentially affect the development of social and emotion reasoning. In addition, young children’s future social abilities should be monitored to assess the true impact of the use of masks.

One proposed solution is to design devices for personal protection that allows visibility of the lower part of the face, especially all environments important for developing social and interaction skills in children, such as in education or rehabilitation. This is especially important for children suffering from sensory or cognitive deficits.

Children age 7-13

A grid of faces showing various emotions.

In research conducted by Ashley Ruba and her team at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, researchers used our own JACFEE/JACNeuF images (available here) to conduct their study.

They showed more than 80 children, ages 7 to 13, photos of faces displaying sadness, anger or fear that were unobstructed, covered by a surgical mask, or wearing sunglasses.

As reported by UWM, the kids were asked to assign an emotion to each face from a list of six labels.

The results? The kids were correct about the uncovered faces as often as 66 percent of the time, well above the odds (about 17 percent) of guessing one correct emotion from the six options.

With a mask in the way, they correctly identified sadness about 28 percent of the time, anger 27 percent of the time, and fear 18 percent of the time.

The researchers suggest if children can do better than guessing at emotions even with a mask in place, they’re likely to do even better in real-life situations. It all adds up to kids growing in their emotional capabilities, even if some of their interactions with others are happening through face coverings.

Says lead researcher Ruba:

“I hope this settles some nerves. Kids are really resilient. They’re able to adjust to the information they’re given, and it doesn’t look like wearing masks will slow down their development in this case.”

For more on how children learn about emotions, watch this lecture by Dr. Ruba below:

Tips to Communicate with Kids while Wearing a Mask

Maybe you’re in a profession where wearing a face mask is required. What are some helpful tips to better communicate with children while wearing a face mask?

The American Academy of Pediatrics has some helpful tips to be a better communicator:

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