As I giving consulting advice and offer training programs on customer service and wearing a mask I discuses why its stressful and what you can do. It's
stressful dealing with people wearing masks because anything emotions in facial
expressions are ways we decide if someone is safe to interact with and how they
are feeling and responding to us. Reading those
facial expressions is wired into our primal brains. In my book Snap: Making
the Most of First Impressions, Body Language, and Charisma I share the importance of establishing rapport and how behaviors like handshakes and smiles help reduce help us and know it's stressful
to interact without them. Their are barriers to overcome.
How can you show your sadness, glee, or anger
while still protecting ourselves and others from COVID-19?
One change you can make if your interacting with a mask on is to say your emotions out loud. For example, instead of just saying, "Good Morning," say, 'I'm smiling. Good morning." Instead of just saying, "Goodbye." Wave, and say, "I enjoyed being with you, Goodbye." Naming your emotions is a great way to improve communication.
Naming your emotion is also a great way to monitor your feelings and reduce stress. When you check in on your emotional state, you create a sense of control of your emotion, you can even choose to feel and go deeper into an emotion that your would like to feel. So say, for example, you are feeling stressed out on a trip to the grocery store during Covid 19. You want to reduce that stress. You can change what you think, feel, say, and do by calling out a good emotion. For example, as you approach the cash register, you can tell yourself that you want to feel happy and grateful for human interaction. You can know it relatively safe because you are both wearing masks and distanced. You can make the decision to reduce the stress for both you and the cashier, smile under your mask, and say, "I am smiling hello under this mask because it's great to see you today." Grab that confidence and kick away the stress.
You can also change the way you sound if you smile under your mask. When you smile, it changes the shape of your vocal cords, so
when you speak while smiling, it sounds different and enjoyable to others
Smile under your mask. People
can't see your smile, but they can see the raise of your cheeks and a little
lift below your eyes, and the crescent shape your eyes make, as well as the
little crinkle folds around the eyes that occur when smiling so a smile CAN be
seen when wearing a mask. Plus, smiling sends a message to your brain to
release feel-good chemicals, some of the same ones we get from warm touch like
hugging!
For more tips and or coaching or training on Body Language While Wearing a Mask, including training on Customer Service While Wearing a Mask Contact are office at Patti@Pattiowood.net
