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Guest Blog Post: Turning Crisis into Opportunity


Guest blog post by Ron Holloway, CEO, Holloway Resilience Solutions

 

In today’s uncertain world, leaders must be prepared to guide their teams through crises. Success during challenging times isn’t about avoiding adversity, but rather facing it with the right mindset and approach.

One of the most effective methods I use in coaching leaders is rooted in logotherapy principles and benefit finding, which help individuals not only survive but thrive during periods of disruption. The key is to frontload resilience, both logistically and psychologically, to transform crises into opportunities.

Seeing the Big Bad Wolf as a Fur Coat, Not Fangs

In times of crisis, most people instinctively focus on the fear and danger—the “big bad wolf” with sharp fangs. But what if we shift our perspective? What if instead of seeing the wolf as a threat, we view it as a valuable asset, like a fur coat that can keep us warm? This is the essence of benefit finding: reframing challenges in a way that reveals hidden advantages.

Crises often reveal vulnerabilities in organizations, but they also expose opportunities for growth, transformation, and innovation. Leaders who embrace this mindset can help their teams not only weather the storm but come out stronger on the other side.

Emotional Intelligence in Leadership Webinar

Frontloading Resilience: Logistical and Psychological Preparation

Resilience is a combination of preparation, adaptability, and mindset. By frontloading resilience, we equip leaders and their teams to face crises head-on with confidence and clarity. This involves two key components:

  • Logistical Resilience: This includes preparing systems, processes, and infrastructures to withstand disruptions. Whether it’s supply chain flexibility, business continuity planning, or ensuring robust communication networks, logistical preparation ensures that when a crisis hits, the company can continue to function effectively.
  • Psychological Resilience: The psychological side is equally critical. Using logotherapy, which emphasizes finding meaning in adversity, we help leaders and teams see beyond immediate fears and focus on the larger purpose. This involves cultivating a mindset where challenges are viewed as catalysts for growth and innovation. It’s about framing the crisis not as an existential threat but as a stepping stone toward something greater.

Logotherapy in Action: Finding Meaning in Adversity

Logotherapy, developed by Viktor Frankl, teaches that humans can endure almost any hardship if they find meaning in it. In a business context, this means that when teams are aligned with a clear mission and purpose, they can face even the most difficult challenges with greater resilience.

When crises occur, I work with leaders to reconnect with their organization’s mission. This could involve refocusing on customer needs, finding new market opportunities, or identifying ways to innovate under pressure. By doing so, teams shift from a mindset of survival to one of purpose-driven action. They stop fearing the crisis and start seeing it as a chance to reaffirm their values and pursue new avenues of growth.

Practical Steps for Leaders to Build Resilient Teams

Here are some actionable steps leaders can take to frontload resilience in their organizations:

  1. Conduct a Pre-Crisis Audit: Evaluate the logistical strengths and weaknesses of your organization. Ensure there are contingency plans for various scenarios and that critical systems can function during disruptions.
  2. Build Psychological Safety: Foster an environment where team members feel supported, even when mistakes happen. Encouraging open dialogue about fears and uncertainties can reduce the emotional impact of a crisis.
  3. Frame Challenges as Opportunities: Regularly practice reframing challenges. Discuss past crises and how they were overcome. Identify areas where adversity led to unexpected gains or innovations.
  4. Develop a Crisis Mission Statement: Create a clear mission for how the team will navigate crises. This should align with the company’s values and emphasize the opportunity to grow stronger, not just survive.
  5. Practice Benefit Finding: During times of stress, encourage teams to actively seek out benefits from challenges. Whether it’s finding efficiencies, identifying new market needs, or streamlining processes, the ability to “find the fur coat” in the wolf’s threat is a critical skill.

Conclusion

Crisis doesn’t have to be feared—it can be leveraged. By frontloading resilience through logistical and psychological preparation, and embracing the principles of logotherapy and benefit finding, leaders can turn crises into opportunities.

With the right mindset, the “big bad wolf” becomes an asset, not a threat. Your teams will emerge stronger, more focused, and more aligned with the organization’s mission.

For more insights on how to build antifragile teams and thrive in times of uncertainty, visit Holloway Resilience Solutions.

The post Guest Blog Post: Turning Crisis into Opportunity first appeared on Humintell | Master the Art of Reading Body Language.

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Dogs May Use Blinking To Bond With Other Dogs

Did you know? The subtle nonverbal exchange of blinking back at someone who blinks at you helps humans and primates bond. Now according to a new study, dogs may also use blinking as a form of connecting to other canines.

In their study entitled “If you blink at me, I’ll blink back. Domestic dogs’ feedback to conspecific visual cues“, researchers out of the University of Parme, “investigated the behavioral and physiological responses of 54 domestic dogs to videos of conspecifics performing blink”.

Research has already shown domestic dogs tend to blink more around other dogs. They also appear to blink to keep the peace with their canine companions—and humans as well—when tensions rise.

The Methodology

puppy-dog-eyesLead researcher Canori and her colleagues created a variety of 12-second videos of a terrier, a cocker spaniel, or a border collie looking at the camera. In some clips, the dogs were blinking, and in others, they weren’t.

A third set of videos showed the dogs licking their noses, a well-known gesture that can signal eagerness or frustration in dogs.

The researchers then edited the videos and strung them together into 71-second clips. In clips with blinking and nose licking, these movements occurred every 4 seconds throughout the clip.

The team then showed the videos on a large screen and in random order to each of 54 adult pet dogs of various breeds who had never interacted with the dogs in the videos.

Researchers outfitted the canine viewers with heart monitors to assess their emotional reactions and also filmed them to spot blinking and other behaviors.

The Results

A few of the dogs got bored and fell asleep but the rest blinked about 16% more on average when watching the other dog blinking than during the two other kinds of scenes.

They found that when dogs witnessed other dogs blinking, they were more likely to blink. They compared these habits to the other behaviors such as nose licking and remaining still and attentive.

Interestingly, only the blinking caused the mimicry effect. Experts suggests that this nonverbal behavior is similar to when we see others yawn and then yawn ourselves.

The researchers suggests that blinking has been a means to express non-aggressive intentions towards members of their own species.

Reciprocal blinking in dogs might help to:

  • Facilitate social bonds
  • Cope with frustration
  • Communicate non-aggressive intentions

Similar to yawning, researchers believe this behavior is related to emotion contagion; the phenomenon when someone’s emotions lead to or produce similar emotions to others.

Even if the blinking is purely reflexive, the results suggest dogs have evolved to use it in meaningful ways.

Researcher Francesconi notes the animals showed no signs of stress in their faces or heart rates while watching the videos.

“Blinking could be a way, for example, to signal, ‘I’m relaxed, and you can be, too.’”

The post Dogs May Use Blinking To Bond With Other Dogs first appeared on Humintell | Master the Art of Reading Body Language.

Can Artificial Intelligence (AI) Read Animal Emotions?

As technology advances, scientists from around the globe have been investigating the use of AI to help recognize animal pain signals.

Through computerized facial expression analysis, this AI technology can quickly and accurately recognize pain signals in animals. In some cases, AI is better at this task than some humans!

This AI technology has been used in animals from sheep to horses to cats.

An example includes the Intellipig System developed by scientists at the University of the West of England Bristol (UWE) and Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC).

Intellipig examines photos of pigs’ faces and notifies farmers if there are signs of pain, sickness, or emotional distress.

Facial Expressions in Animals

Scientists assess an animal’s level of pain by looking for telltale muscle movements around the eyes, ears, and other facial features. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems make similar judgments by measuring the distance between “landmarks” on the face (orange and teal dots).

Like humans, animals convey how they’re feeling through their facial expressions. In fact, humans share 38% of our facial movements with dogs, 34% with cats and 47% with primates and horses.

But, as an article in Science points out, “the anatomical similarities don’t mean we can read animals’ faces like those of fellow humans. So, researchers studying animal communication often infer what an animal is experiencing through context”.

An example of this is pain; researchers studying animals can induce mild discomfort or be cognizant of pain signals after an invasive procedure such as castration.

After spending countless hours observing the faces of animals in painful or stressful situations, scientists can then compare them against animals who are pain or stress-free.

As a result, scientists developed “grimace scales” which provide a measure of how much pain or stress an animal is experiencing based on movement of its facial muscles.

In addition, like the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) used on humans, experts have also become skilled at coding facial movements in animals (AnimalFACS).

Amazingly at present, the FACS system has been adapted into 8 different species and their manuals are freely accessible through the animalfacs.com website:

  • ChimpFACS: common chimpanzees
  • MaqFACE: rhesus macaques
  • GibbonFACS: hylobatid species
  • OrangFACS: orangutans
  • DogFACS: domestic dogs
  • CatFACS: cats
  • EquiFACS: domestic horses
  • CalliFACS: marmoset species

However, coding work is incredibly tedious, and human coders need 2 to 3 hours to code 30 seconds of video.

This is where AI comes in.

AI can do the same task almost instantaneously, but first it must be taught.

Teaching AI to Read Animal Faces

AI systems are becoming faster and more accurate than humans at determining whether an animal is in pain. That’s partly because they can identify the tiniest muscle movements and find new indicators of pain that humans are not even aware of.

At the University of Haifa, scientists Anna Zamansky and her team have been using AI to pinpoint the subtle signs of discomfort in animals’ faces.

There are many steps in teaching AI to read animal faces.

These steps include:

  1. AI learning to ID parts of the face crucial to creating expressions (this is done by manually flagging important parts of the face associated with specific muscle movements).
  2. Feeding AI a plethora of landmarked photos to teach it to find landmarks on its own.
  3. AI identifying specific facial expressions by analyzing distances between landmarks.
  4. Cross referencing expressions against grimace scales to determine signs of pain or distress.

Zamansky’s team trained their AI on photos of Labrador retrievers who were either eagerly anticipating a treat or were able to see the treat but were prevented from reaching it.

Their AI was able to successfully detect whether the dog was happy or frustrated 89% of the time.

The AI also successfully differentiated happy and frustrated horses in the same experiment.

Despite some limitations to their technology, Zamansky’s team is about to release an AI based app that will allow cat owners to scan their pets’ faces for 30 seconds and get easy to read messages.

The technology also extends to horses- researchers in the Netherlands have developed a similar app that scans resting horses’ faces and bodies to estimate their pain levels.

This app could potentially be used in equestrian competitions to improve animal welfare and fairness in the sport.

The post Can Artificial Intelligence (AI) Read Animal Emotions? first appeared on Humintell | Master the Art of Reading Body Language.