Search This Blog

What are the challenges and new things that you can do to ensure a safe meeting and conventions"

I am an expert on body language and first impressions, a professional keynote speaker at conventions, and the Author of SNAP Making the Most of First Impressions body language and Charisma. Here are a few of the articles I have contributed to about changes in interactions in the Post Covid world.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/smarter-living/coronavirus-greetings-handshakes-hugs.html

https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/do-face-coverings-help-or-hinder-defendants

https://www.iaapa.org/news/funworld/how-staff-can-maintain-welcoming-environment-social-distancing



What challenges and new things can be done to ensure a safe meeting?

 

  1. It's essential to help meeting attendees feel safe and informed before they get to the meeting. I suggest emails and newsletters websites that give as much information about the safety precautions.  I also offer personal phone calls to board members and key individuals to ensure that the information they are getting is clear and accurate. One key member telling potential attendees negative or incorrect safety information can dramatically affect your member's attendance. For example, what are the sizes of the rooms? What are the ceiling heights? What has the meeting facility done to ensure safety, air circulation in the rooms, and how does that meet new recommendations? Will people wear badges with sensors so contract tracing can occur if there is a positive covid case during or after the convention?
  2. Give the group fun ways of safely greeting and interacting. Throughout all cultures, people greet one another as a sign of recognition, affection, friendship, and reverence. Now people may be scared to greet or not know how others in attendance will greet. I have some alternatives listed below
  3. If you are putting the tables further apart and more sparsely seated, make sure you make the tables look more appealing with color choices and centerpieces, so the effect is warmer and more welcoming. Have greeters at the door to safely and warmly greet people as they enter to make the attendees feel more welcome and warm them up for the speaker.  Spend the money to get great friendly, upbeat music in the room, perhaps even live performers. Even someone playing guitar or a quintet playing classical music can warm up the environment.

 

HANDSHAKE ALTERNATIVES

For in face to face online interaction like your live stream concerts

By Patti Wood, Body Language, and Human Behavior Expert

 

 With concerns about Germs, I wanted to give you and your company handshake alternatives that can make you and your team comfortable. I want to make sure you feel prepared and know what to do. Because greetings and goodbye rituals have so many physiological benefits, I encourage you to create nonverbal greeting and goodbye rituals when interacting online via Skype or some other format. I want to have ways to acknowledge how unique each human being on this little blue planet is and what a sacred thing we do when we interact.

 

First, know that without an acceptable form of touch, we will be losing an invaluable bonding mechanism that normally helps us feel safe and lets us bring down the "stranger barrier" and connect.  I share this with you because I want to emphasize that greeting rituals allow to create a positive first impression and connect and reduce conflict. If you don't shake hands or have an alternative ritual, there is a cost, so you need a replacement.  I have done three years of academic research on handshakes and greeting rituals and have spoken and written about them for over 30 years. I know their value. You need to do some sort of ritual, even online.

 

Start the Greeting Earlier. If you are face to face start at about 8 to 6 feet out. If you are shaking hands, you typically smile when you are four feet apart and again as you get close. If you start the greeting earlier, you can create a contact in time to signal that you want to create a different ritual and NOT SHAKE HANDS.  What you want to do is slow down the greeting, so you have the time to change the greeting graciously.

 

Wave- hold up your open pam and wave. Open palm signals directly to the primitive limbic brain that you come in peace and friendship. It was said to have originated with American Indians to signal to others that you held no weapon and come in peace.

 

LEAN IN – Just lean in instead of shaking hand. You can even make sure no one reaches for you hand by keeping our arms at your sides with a slight bow lean in  -This shows that first of all are NOT offering your hand but also that you come in peace and still allows you to acknowledge the person as special, that you honor them and that the and the interaction as special.

 

The NAMASTE – This was originally a Hindu greeting and used in the 2000s by celebrities who didn't want to shake hands with fans in red carpet greeting. The Namaste is a slight bow and hands pressed together, palms touching and fingers pointing upwards, thumbs close to the chest. In Hinda, you actually say the word NAMASTE but you don't have to but its a beautiful greeting and the actual ritual its called "Añjali Mudrā;"  In Hinduism, it means "I bow to the divine in you".

 

THE PEACE SIGN or Victory V  -  I wanted to offer another option that signals a greeting that could catch on as we battel whatever this cold/flu/virus gives us and come out in peace and victory. This thought of creating this for our season of germs started with my friend Carl who is a biker. He is smart, cool and he greets fellow bikers on the road with a peace sign. Yes, the peace sign! Who knew the hippy, bead wearing right hand up, palm facing out with two fingers spread in a slight "V" greeting?   Remember, we like people who are like us. The various versions of the peace symbol given by bikers show other bikers they have something in common. During World War II, Victor de Laveleye, a Belgian refugee, suggested during a BBC broadcast that his countrymen use the letter V as a rallying sign. The "V" is the first letter of victoire (victory) in French and vrijheid (freedom) in Dutch. Soon you could see "V" in graffiti all over Belgium and then all of Nazi-occupied Europe and given as a hand sign. It was a message that said to the occupier that "he is surrounded, encircled by an immense crowd of citizens that don't want this occupation.  British Prime Minister Winston Churchill popularized the V symbol as a victory.  1958, the artist Gerald Holton began using the graphic representation of the "V" in an opposite way from the World War II usage, casting it as a symbol for peace to create the peace symbol.         

It is a greeting that shows others your own beliefs and desires and asks in return, "Are you part of my tribe? Will you interact with me in harmony?"

I suggest that if you are meeting face-to-face or online with business associates, friends, or family, you talk about how you would like to greeted. Perhaps pick a team or family or friendship tribal greeting ritual like the fist bump was created to show we are in this together.

 

Because we also need a ritual to show we are done and grateful for the interaction will return in peace again, I suggest you end with one of these rituals or your own special parting as well.

 

 

Patti Wood, MA - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com.

 

 

 

einteractions

For you and for your company

(suitable to send out to those you 


Patti Wood, MA - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com.