How To Use Humor to Deal with Grief and Loss,

In our family, humor is one of the ways we have coped in a healthy way with loss. It started with my Dad.  He was a great storyteller. No matter how many times he repeated a funny story, Mom laughed every time as if it was the first time, he had told it. (She really loved him.)

When he passed away many years ago, one of the ways we dealt with his loss was humor. My Dad had been a fighter pilot in two wars and did the driving and always got the best parking spaces right up front. It didn’t matter if it was Saturday at a busy grocery store or a packed movie theater parking lot, Dad got us the prime spot right in front of the doors. It was uncanny. For years it was a family joke and we laughed together in the car every time he got a great spot. We use that funny shared family memory to cope with his loss.

Still, more than thirty years after his passing, when we are in the car as a family and get the best front parking spot we joke and say, “Dad must be in the trunk.” Yes, it’s a rather macabre way to honor our Dad, but, as family, we get it and know he would!

Even the grandkids born years after his death know the joke. In fact, my former fiancé who never met my Dad would even say when we got a prime spot. “Your Dad must be in the trunk” Every time we say it it’s a way of making him feel close. Heck, he is right there with us in the trunk!

In the same way, we have used humor to deal with the loss of our Mom, (who was very witty.)  She passed away in October.

My sisters and I will call each other when we think of a funny “Mom story.” Recently at a ceremony to celebrate Mom, we brought funny stories to remember her.

To give you an idea of how we celebrate my kooky Mom, my Mom’s favorite place in the world was Stein Mart! She loved, loved the sales at Stein Mart. Her side table always had stacks of Stein Mart coupons from the paper and when one of the Stein Mart stores where she used to live closed shortly after she went to live in Georgia, we said it was because she had moved! It was not surprising that my sisters and I on our own all thought that the parking lot of Stein Mart would be a great place to spread her ashes! In fact, we all shared our same funny idea and laughed about it. By the way, we didn’t spread her ashes at Stein Mart. But, in one of the steps to grieving her loss, I took an "In Memoriam" trip to Stein Mart in Atlanta and sent the photo to my sisters and called them and we laughed together. My Mom loved anything glittery and shiny, like rein stones and always wore fun costume jewelry.  My dear friends knew I was always bringing my Mom fun jewelry so when I had a little ceremony to grieve with them, they came dressed in costume jewelry, even the guys. It was such a great way to celebrate her life and make me smile. And when my sisters and I are together and we go to Stein Mart or see shiny jewelry, we say to each other, she is right here with us, shinning away.

I wrote this today for a national publication. Funny how the opportunity came up just before our family’s celebration of Mom. I think she may have had a hand in that!

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.
     

Compliment Others Easily With Great Introductions!

Introducing people by recognizing talent and giving praise is an important part of being a good leader, team member, and friend. In my book, "People Savvy Leadership," I give the following tips:

When you focus on other’s accomplishments and notice what is worthy of praise, your energy is lifted, and you build successful interactions.

A simple way to give praise is with an introduction. For example, when you introduce your friends, coworkers and business associates to someone new, share their name and an accomplishment. "Jim, this is Sara Beckman, she just headed up the committee for our new quarter sales meeting and it was fantastic." "Tom, this is Morgan Tyler, she just spearheaded the new marketing project." "Karl, this is Veronica Mann, she works with our top client Prudential." Or “Pam, this is my dear friend Karla, we have known each other since we were kids and she has the best sense of humor” “Karla this is my co-worker Pam, she has designed our new social media platform to rave reviews from the team or “Mark this is my colleague Jim, Jim he is our go to expert on customer loyalty, he really knows his stuff.” Jim, this is my friend Mark, Mark and I met at Top Golf benefit he was in charge of last year and it was a huge success and did us proud.” 

If you need a quick reminder on proper introductions you typically say the name of the highest status, eldest, or most honored person’s name first. Sometimes it gets complicated so here is an example. If you are bringing a top client, honored quest, or say the speaker for the event up to a small group of people who don’t know the guest and you are introducing them to a high-status person such as the president of your company you should say the name of the person you are bringing into the group first, for example, “Patti, I would like to introduce you to our president Jim Shore who has led us to the most profitable year ever.” “Jim, this is our speaker Patti Wood an internationally known expert of Body Language. Hearing their name first makes the guest feel warmed and welcomed. Try a compliment introduction in the next 24 hours.

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.
     

Hope Hicks Is "Enjoying The Attention," Says Body Language Expert

Hope Hicks testified in a closed-door hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, and an expert said her body language was very revealing.

"Oh my god, she's enjoying this," body language expert Patti Wood told Refinery29 as she watched a brief video of Hicks walking down a hallway and ignoring reporters' questions. "That's so fascinating. But I'm not incredibly surprised."

continue to full Refinery 29 article

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.
     

Job Interviews and Body Language, Algorithms And Online Job Interviews

Software is screening resumes and analyzing video interviews. But what if you want to be treated like a person?

I’ve been pursuing a master’s degree for the last couple of years, and I’m worried about hitting the job market, mostly because job searches seem to have changed since I went back to school.

Companies are screening candidates by using automated video interviews, parsed by algorithms. One of my classmates had an interview with a beauty company last spring. She didn’t go to its offices or talk on the phone with someone — instead, she sat alone in a library study room. Questions flashed across her laptop screen, each time giving her a few minutes to speak her answers to the webcam. The company recorded her responses, to be evaluated later. Another classmate had a similar experience with an educational institution. This trend is set to spread: Almost half of respondents to a 2019 Deloitte global survey of executives and workers expect technology’s role in interviewing will increase over the next three years.

Employers say technology lets them access a wider pool of candidates, speeds the hiring process, shrinks time employees spend interviewing, and saves money. Video interviews save time for job candidates, too, says Sean Rogerson, managing director of the Boston office for employment agency Michael Page.

But my classmates say they found these interactions awkward, devoid of the normal back-and-forth with the interviewer. Neither made it to the next round, perhaps no surprise, since recruitment software can now identify mood based on how your voice sounds. In fact, these programs can look at your video interview and identify your education level, whether you’re lying, and your cognitive abilities, according to a Deloitte report. HireVue, one such video interviewing platform (customers include the Red Sox, Ocean Spray, and Dunkin’ Brands), uses predictive analytics to assess and filter job candidates on their vocabulary, intonation, and body language, including facial expressions. It can also compare applicants with the “traits of top performers.”I fear that after a stilted, one-sided chat with a camera, my résumé will be automatically relegated to the “do not hire” database.

I worry about what gets lost without human contact. The majority of the impact in an interview comes from nonverbal messages, says Patti Wood, an expert in nonverbal communication. She says nonverbal cues have 4.3 times the impact of words. In video interviews, some cues get lost, she explains, so I’m not wrong to fret about my camera presence. Wood says people tend to be more spontaneous, less in performance mode, and more in the moment in natural face-to-face interactions.

Of course, I’ll have to get my résumé past the screening algorithm to get to the video assessment algorithm. I could be the perfect candidate but if I don’t use the keywords the system is programmed to find, Rogerson says I could wind up in the reject pile. Even before that, though, I have to get past the algorithm deciding which job listings I see.

A 2015 study found that women received fewer ads for high-paying jobs than men do. Another study found that because younger women are a valuable demographic to online advertisers, it costs more to show them ads, so algorithms on major digital platforms — optimizing for cost effectiveness — showed women fewer job ads in science, technology, engineering, and math. Just last year, Amazon reportedly scrapped an AI recruitment tool that was biased against women despite efforts to fix it.

Maybe the algorithms will get better, but bias isn’t easy to fix because algorithms don’t write themselves — humans do. Machine prejudices reflect human prejudices. Upturn, a nonprofit in Washington, says without active measures to mitigate biases, these tools will be biased by default. It has called on companies and vendors to be transparent about their tools, allow for those to be independently audited, and asks vendors to takesteps to remove bias from them.

Automated interviews can perpetuate bias, too. Even if the algorithm works well, the playing field for job candidates isn’t always level, because not everyone has the same access to technology, audio-visual quality, and quiet conditions conducive to video interviews.

And then there’s the legitimate concern about what happens to applicant interviews once they are recorded. Are companies keeping this sensitive data confidential, and protecting it securely? Do they delete candidate files when the job is filled? Or does the interview and assessment become just another piece of data for a person’s profile, at risk of being sold to marketers and data brokers, packaged and divulged and perhaps even finding its way onto the Internet like other personal information?

These new approaches may backfire on companies, because we job candidates are also assessing them. And we generally prefer dealing with people. In 2017, 76 percent of Americans told one Pew Research Center survey that they wouldn’t want to apply for a job that used a computer program to select applicants. Another Pew survey found that two-thirds of respondents deem automated video analysis of interviews unacceptable, and 57 percent feel the same way about automated résumé screening.

I wonder if I’ll even have a choice. I know if I’m invited to do a video interview conducted by a program, I’m going to ask if a face-to-face chat is possible.

Link to Article


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.
     

Ivanka Trump's Body Language In London Is Very Revealing, Says Expert

One of the media stories about the Trump visit to the UK that I worked on yesterday. FYI when I do a read I find out all the context for the event and people. So all this was happening while there were massive protests in London with 75 thousand people chanting, "We hate Trump!" and sometimes heard during a press conference with Trump.  Read the full "Refinery29 article interview below:

Along with the president and first lady, Ivanka Trump and her siblings attended an official state banquet with the Queen at Buckingham Palace this week, for reasons no one has quite explained.

The visit was, of course, eventful. Donald Trump attacked London Mayor Sadiq Khan, there were thousands of protestors, Princes William and Harry snubbed the Trumps, and Ivanka got booed outside 10 Downing Street.

There were also plenty of opportunities for our body language expert Patti Wood to do analysis: She picked a video in which Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner are standing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, Ivanka looking curiously frozen.  continue 

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.