How to Handle an Unruly Airline Passenger Sitting Next To You By Body Language and Conflict Expert Patti Wood

 

I have flown an average of once a week for over 30 years. People are angrier than they use to be. What can you do? 

One of the first things to consider is how crowding on a plane increases and escalates bad behavior and being in an intimate zone of space from your seat makes ( less than 14 inches apart) a space we typically reserve for intimate conversation and battle. (Yes, strange but true) So if there is conflict Isopraxism makes it more likely to catch you up in a negative emotional state and, sharing the intimate zone of space with someone who now may be foe makes you very uncomfortable and your central nervous system may go into FREEZE FLIGHT FIGHT FALL/FAINT or Friend RESPONSE very quickly. So, take a deep breath. Check-in with your body to see what’s happening so you can self-comfort calm before you act.

What if the person next to you is drunk? The basic rule is you can not reason with someone drunk. They, only with dangerously angry people are the exception to the rule that healthy non-threatening communication can deescalate a conflict and produce positive results. I teach threat and risk assessment as well as conflict management and I suggest to my clients, (I consult with Fortune 500 clients as well as public-facing small business owners such as amusement park owners and restaurant owners.) That passenger should request to change seats. Ideally getting up from their seats to speak to the flight attendant rather than in front of the drunk seatmate.)  

What if the person is argumentative or combative? First, assess your risk and the likelihood the person is willing and able to listen and create a positive outcome. Watch their body language and listen to their voice. Are they in the stress response? Are you afraid?  If you are at risk as a passenger, leave your seat and request assistance or a different seat.  If they seem like will and are able to listen, you can make a calm reasonable non-threatening request. I highly recommend you show the palms of your hands, in an upward direction at your waist level. Keep your voice level and calm, make eye contact but don't glare or stare. If you are making a soft request you can briefly tilt your head. If you want to make a strong request keep your head level. 

Here are aggressive/about-to-strike behaviors to look for that indicate immediate threat and risk. Danger Signals that Someone Is About to Attack. 

1. Jaw thrust also known as the chin jut or jaw clenching. The person grits their teeth and juts their jaw forward indicating they want you to back down or they will take you down. 

2. Nostril Flaring or Wing Dilation- the outer lobes flare out so you get more oxygen and you have the energy to fight. 

3. Pressed Tight Lips or Even Hidden Lips

4. Chest Puff - Attempt to get Bigger to look threatening and Imposing. 

5. Pupil Dilation - So they can see what's going on. 

6. Lowered Brow often with a forward head tilt - to show dominance, a bid to power. Saying back down and doing what I want or else. 

7. Teeth licking- Licking the teeth preparing the teeth to bite. 

8. Blading -Moving your body so only the side shows.- an action to put the shoulder and arm in a position to fight and protect most of your vital organs. 

9. Tightened Muscles - This is a way of creating a muscular shield to protect your vital organs and increase blood flow to the limbs to prepare them for fighting. 

10. Clenched Fist -It may include tightening the hand into a fist and or tightening and flexing the hands. 

11. Foot Stomping. Often seen in children. You may have seen movies where horses, toss back and raise their heads, thrust out their chins then stomp. 

12.  Eye Narrowing. Eye muscles tighten- The ocular orbital muscles around the eye tighten.

13. One leg up/ arm out and over leg or arm on your chair. Claiming ownership. Alpha signaling. 

14. Rattling/Shaking/Growling. You see it as a stress response in dogs and in humans it's also a stress response and can indicate they are stressed and ready to fight or in fight mode, it can be accompanied by other fight behaviors like touching or shoving. 

First, establish commonality, “I know you want to have a comfortable and enjoyable flight and I do too.” State their specific behavior from their perspective and show empathy, “I can see that you are very unhappy.” Then state the issue, “Your raised voice and upset demeanor are making me uncomfortable.” “So that we can both have better flight could you bring down your voice and calmly deal with your issues?” Thank them if they do so.

What if they invade your personal space? You can calmly say to yourself, it's just a short flight, stay calm and let them invade your space. You calmly reclaim your space, not showing any irritation or anger, just reclaim it or use the method above to ask them to give you your space back.

 What if they threaten you or anyone else on an aircraft?  Again, access your risk. If you can calmly establish commonality, show you understand their intense emotional state, (Ie I can see that you are unhappy, I can see that you're very upset.) and request a change in their behavior great. If not request assistance. If you feel in danger and can safely leave your seat, do so. If it's dangerous to leave your seat. Ring for assistance and calm your body down and think of options. If there are people near you that you can request calm assistance signal them that you may need them. See if you can request assistance from the flight crew over the internet. You may be able to reach out to the company through its website.

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.
     

What are the Benefits of Walking Outside with Someone

I am a body language and human behavior specialist. In many books and programs I share the benefits of walking.  

1. Men feel more comfortable, bond, and self-disclose more when side by side, and walking outside with someone side by side can increase all those factors for men walking with other men and mean walking with women. In addition children, male or female or LGBT+ feel more comfortable and will self-disclose more when side by side with adults. So if men walk with others they can share, listen and bond more easily. In addition, because walking and swinging opposite arms synch the right and left hemispheres you are more comfortable having conversations. (My rough notes from one of my books discussing this are below.)
2. When you swing your left arm and the right leg and your right arm and left leg the opposite sides of your body are working together in a cross-body motion that synchs the right and left hemispheres of your brain, stimulating the brain for growth of the neural pathways. Walking with your arms swinging in this manner can increase creativity, and problem-solving and stabilize the central nervous system.

 

I am a professional speaker and coach. When I work with C-suite executives for a full day or over a weekend I walk with them outside to increase their comfort in self-disclosing and help them process and problem-solving. The results of the past 20 years have been amazing. I also use walking/coaching to help my clients who are on the spectrum. I am blessed to live a few houses from a path through the woods over and by creaks that go on for many miles and all the nature has an additional benefit.

 

 

Notes

The central window is the window at the middle of your chest that I call the heart window. Children start changing how they orient their hearts and the rest of their bodies to others at about the age of five. Boys begin playing with their buddies side by side and battling face-to-face and little girls begin playing face-to-face. The theory is that girls are nurtured and rewarded for reading and understanding body language so they can eventually nurture preverbal babies and little boys begin competing and jocking for who is going to be the most powerful in a situation at this age.

When men sit across a table a counter or a desk facing another man and their heart windows are open and unprotected it can cause them to feel uncomfortable and awakens their primal fears of danger. Men feel that in that vulnerable position, they must battle, and in a business interaction that leads to disagreements, defensiveness, ego battles, and verbal attacks. Because of this primal warring position even little boys will move their chairs and work to sit and stand side by side. In that position, their heart is protected and they feel that the man beside them physically is also symbolically on their side. Men feel so much safer that they will self-disclose more and communicate more effectively in a side-by-side or catty corner position than from the more opposition-causing male face-to-face position. Women are wired and socialized to speak positioned face to face. This helps them to create and nurture relationships. In a face-to-face position, they can see the other entire person's body language and respond accordingly. Again, men prefer to have their hearts protected and be on the "same side" when they talk. For more information on this you can read the chapter on body windows in my book success signals www.PattiWood.net. Go to the products page to o

 

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.
     

How I Became A Body Language Expert part two.

A Researcher From SNOPES contacted me about how I became a body language expert. Here are some of his questions and my responses.

How many years before you became a body language expert?

It happened gradually over 20 years. My clients started calling me a body language expert of body language expert in the 1990s. By then, I had done academic work in my field, taught Body Language and Nonverbal Communication at Florida State University and Oglethorpe University, and spoke, wrote, and consulted on nonverbal communication. I wrote a monthly article on Nonverbal Communication for several trade journals. And that led to me writing my first book on body language, Success Signals -Understanding Body Language. I created a body language blog, writing posts about current events, and recent research in the field and answering questions my clients ask me about human behavior. The blog now has over 5,000 posts. National media started recognizing me as an expert in the early 2000s. I began as a consultant on "Hard News" stories during the O.J. Simpson murder trial. In 2004, I started doing at least two weekly national media interviews, both hard and soft/entertainment news. For example, I analyzed political debates and murder trials and did a weekly Nonverbal Analysis of celebrity couples each week for several magazines. Those magazines would send me photos of a celebrity couple, and I would read the couple, and the magazine would print a one-page spread of the photos and my read. I did this for US Weekly Magazine for four years, YES magazine for two years, and InTouch magazine for two years. That led to The Washington Post article that labeled me the "gold standard of body language experts" in 2004. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42111-2004Jun14.html. I also had a regular guest spot analyzing murder trials on Nancy Grace and Dr. Drew and for Murder trials and political analyst for CNN, Fox News, and FOX Business News. I still do two or more four national and international media interviews weekly about body language and nonverbal communication. I have written several books on nonverbal communication and other books on communication.  

 

Expertise requires years of focused practice, constant curiosity, attention to the newest research, and a keen eye for what is happening around you that relates to your area of interest. I not only read research articles related to nonverbal communication every week, but I observe and listen and see each conversation, media program, and interaction through my nonverbal-communication-reading senses. I'm blessed to have clients worldwide, and my speaking, training, consulting, and coaching clients ask me questions and bring me problems to solve. My work keeps me abreast of what is happening currently in the business world regarding verbal and nonverbal communication. I have been traveling as a speaker and consultant for decades, visiting businesses and spending time with people from many different realms of the business world. That allows me to observe the hot issues in my field. Currently, I can see, for example, what changes are happening to greeting behavior and small talk and how cell phone use and other technology are affecting interactions. I know from my clients that there is increasing concern over employees' lack of face-to-face and over-the-phone social skills and that issues of bullying and conflict have increased in the workplace in the last two years. I speak to VISTAGE groups around the country; those groups are made up of small business owners and high-level executives. Their insights and issues are particularly valuable, as are questions I get for high school and college students when I speak on campuses.

 Expertise can also be recognized internally when you achieve confidence and mastery, and it appears to be recognized externally when others experience an expert's mastery. For me, it began with the foundation of academic research. If I made a statement about my field, I would cite the research that supposedly supported it. Eventually, however, I reached a time when I saw changes and trends, and over the years, my knowledge broadened, and I could begin to predict changes and trends. My father, a Ph.D., and a college professor believed you couldn't consider yourself a true expert until you knew the research in your field and added to that body of knowledge.

As a result of my work, I am happy to fulfill the wish and standards of my father and add to the body of knowledge about Nonverbal Communication.

  - What scientific research would you recommend I read to gain a better understanding of the science of body language?

Several peer-reviewed journals contain the latest research in the field. You may want to search the Journal of Nonverbal Communication and the Journal of Social Psychology. If you want a more accessible layperson resource, visit Science Daily News. This site gives a simple example and summary of the latest academic research. If I read something there that I may want to quote, I go to the actual research. Sometimes the simplified explanation in just that. Or I disagree with it and want to see how they conducted the research. You can search for general terms and specific cues, like eye contact. I am particularly fascinated with any research related to first impressions, greeting behavior, goodbye or closing behavior, gender differences, touch, handshakes, anger, charisma, power, deception, and credibility – anything related to neuroscience and nonverbal communication, as well as the latest artificial intelligence and other technology related to nonverbal communication. I typically read new research daily; I am a research junky for anything that relates to my field! Today I was reading about software that can take videos and create changes to the videos. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/26/fake-news-obama-video-trump-face2face-doctored-content. One aspect of that article I find interesting is that they think it can improve video conference calls. My clients complain about the poor interactions they get on those calls.

- What, in your opinion, are some of the most essential or recurring principles of non-verbal communication and body language when it comes to politicians? (Whether in debates, speeches, meetings with other leaders, on the campaign trail, and so on.)

How nonverbal cues communicate power, anger, alpha characteristics, charisma, credibility, and deception. I am particularly interested in what makes someone credible and teaching my clients how to be authentic and credible, and how to create trust. Everybody wants to find "tells" of deception, but the secret is to be honest so people naturally tell you the truth, and you can easily discern deception. If you look up my name and some of those words, you'll see that they are the keywords that the media tend to choose when they quote one of my reads. I find that very interesting. Here are three:

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patti-wood/positive-body-anguage_b_2459454.html,
• http://time.com/4849232/g20-summit-donald-trump-vladimir-putin-body-language/
• http://www.reuters.com/article/us-body-language-candidates-commentary-idUSKCN12K263

 

 

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.
     

How And Why to Give Effective Praise to Your Child By Human Behavior Expert Patti Wood

                                    By Human Behavior Expert Patti Wood 

Jake is an energetic, talkative child who loves to have fun, but he would get into a lot of trouble when he was at home. His mother Sarah was working long hours and came home tired, and she hated the chaos and mess that he caused. She wanted him to behave so whenever he did something wrong, she would yell at him and tell him how disappointed she was in him. She would criticize him for not being able to sit still during family dinner, for yelling in the house as he played, for running through the kitchen, for leaving a mess in the living room, for not putting away his toys and not going to bed the first time she asked him at night. The list of his wrongs seemed overwhelming to both of them and the yelling and all the punishments she meted out to him didn’t make him stop.

     In fact, over time Jake felt like he could never do anything right in his mother's eyes, and he began to lose confidence in himself. He started acting out more, trying to feel powerful, yelling louder, running around more, and leaving bigger more destructive messes. Jake wanted his mother to notice he was a big boy, but it only made things worse.

    Jake's mother's frustration grew, and she grew angrier and angrier at Jake.  One day Jake exploded after she criticized him his face got red, he cried beat his hands on his little chest, and shouted “I am a big boy, and you never notice! You say I am a bad boy I am a very bad boy but I and good boy too.” Her seven-year-old was very smart. And his mother realized in that moment she was spending all her time noticing his misbehaving. Her focus and attention were only on the negative.  She decided to give Jake the praise he craved and notice the positive things he was doing. She noticed when he cleaned his room without being asked or when he helped his little sister with her homework when he brought his plate and cup to the kitchen from the dinner table and more.

    As she noticed each good behavior she began to feel proud of him and so she told him how she felt and thanked him when he helped around the house.

Jake was surprised by his mother's sudden change. He had gotten used to being criticized all the time, and the praise caught him off guard. For several weeks he didn’t change at all he kept acting out. But as his mother stopped yelling at him all the time and made a conscious effort to praise him at least three times a day. She realized her critical grove ran deep and had to stop herself from getting angry and sometimes she didn’t notice till 20 minutes before bedtime she had forgotten to praise him at all and raced to fill the three-praise quotient, but slowly she found it easier to see many good things about her son. Slowly, very slowly he started to change. He was happier, he smiled more, and he was excited to show his mother things he did well knowing now he would be seen for his good actions.

 

 Research suggests that on average, parents criticize their children three times more often than they praise them in a day. This can have a negative effect on children's self-esteem, motivation, and behavior.

Frequent criticism can make children feel like they are not good enough or that their efforts are not valued. This can lead to a lack of motivation, a decrease in self-esteem, and a negative attitude toward themselves and others. Children who experience frequent criticism may also be more likely to develop anxiety and depression.

In contrast, frequent praise and positive feedback can have positive effects on:

1.     Encouragement: Praise can be a great source of encouragement for children. When you give specific and timely praise, it can motivate them to continue working hard and doing their best.

2.    Self-esteem: Specific and timely praise can also boost children's self-esteem. When they receive positive feedback for their efforts and accomplishments, they feel more confident and capable.

3.    Communication: Praise can be a way to communicate your values and expectations to your children. By praising specific behaviors and actions, you are reinforcing what is important to you and encouraging your children to continue exhibiting those specific behaviors.

Here are the guidelines for giving clear effective praise to your children.

1.    Be specific: Instead of giving general praise like "good job" or "you're so smart," try to be specific about what behaviors or actions you are praising. This helps children understand exactly what they did well and reinforces those specific behaviors. What did they do that made it a good job, what did they do that showed you that they are smart. Notice the verbal and nonverbal behavior and how they handle their emotions and interactions.

2.    Be timely: Try to give praise as soon as possible after the behavior or action occurs. This helps children make an immediate connection between their behavior and the positive feedback they receive.

3.    Be sincere: Children can often tell when praise is insincere or not genuine. Try to give praise that is specific and authentic and reflects your genuine appreciation for their efforts and accomplishments. Make sure your voice and manner aren’t preachy or over the top manner. And don’t sound surprised or say, “Finally you’re doing something right”

4.    Let them know how their “good” behavior has an effect. Tell them how it impacts how you feel and what effect their good behavior has on your home, the family and other people.

5.    Focus on effort: Instead of just praising the end result, focus on the effort that went into achieving that result. This reinforces the idea that hard work and effort are important and valued.

6.    Avoid comparisons: Avoid comparing your children to others when giving praise. This can create an unhealthy sense of competition and can make children feel like they are only valued when they are better than others.

You don’t have to stop criticizing but It's important for parents to find a balance between providing constructive feedback and praise. Constructive feedback can be helpful in helping children learn from their mistakes and improve, but it should be given in a way that is constructive and focuses on the behavior or action, rather than the child as a person. Praise should also be specific and timely, focusing on

Here are specific examples of effective praise.

1.    I noticed how you shared your toy with your friend without being asked. That’s what good friends do, and I was happy to see you share.

2.    I loved how you tried the brussels sprouts for the first time and even asked for seconds. I like it when you are willing to try new fun foods when we have dinner together. It makes our family time happy and adventurous.

3.    I saw how you held the door open for that lady behind us who was having trouble holding her baby and opening the door. That was thoughtful and kind of you.

4.    This morning before school, I heard you practicing your music and it sounded so beautiful. I thought about your playing all day today at work and wanted you to know your hard work is paying off, and I am proud of your progress.

5.    While we are reading this story together, I noticed you ask good questions and show your curiosity about the characters. Your love of learning makes me feel excited about your future.

6.    You are helping me with the dishes without being asked and putting everything away. It shows me how responsible you are, and I am happy and grateful as those are qualities that will serve you well in life and if you do this I can have time some nights to make us a treat. How about popcorn tonight?

7.    During your soccer game I saw how you cheered on your teammates and encouraged them even when things were tough. I could see how your teammates smiled at you. You have a positive effect on them, and your positivity and teamwork make me feel proud.

8.    When we were playing a board game together, I loved how you cheered on your brother and congratulated him each time he did well when granddad won and didn't get upset. Did you see how everyone laughed all night? We had such a good time and your good attitude makes me feel so proud of you.

9.     I saw just now how you used your manners and said please and thank you to the cashier. I saw how it made her perk up and notice you and smile. You showed good manners and respect. I feel grateful to have you as my child.

10. This morning when you woke up and gave me a big hug, it made me feel so loved and happy. Your affection and love for your family make me feel grateful and proud to have you as my child.

 Here is a final story to encourage you to give clear and effective praise to your children.

 Samantha was a single mother of two children, a 7-year-old son named Alex and a 4-year-old daughter named Emily. Samantha often worked long hours and came home exhausted, and she found it hard to deal with the chaos and messiness of having two young children. She often found herself losing her temper and yelling at her children when they misbehaved, which only made things worse.

One day, Samantha came home to find that Alex had spilled a bowl of cereal on the floor and was refusing to clean it up. She was already feeling frustrated and overwhelmed, and she lost her temper, yelling at him and threatening to punish him if he didn't clean up the mess. Alex became defensive and started arguing back, and the situation escalated until both of them were shouting at each other.

After things had calmed down a bit, Samantha realized that her approach wasn't working. She was tired of constantly feeling angry and frustrated, and she could see that it wasn't helping Alex or Emily either. She decided to try a different approach and started looking for ways to catch her children doing things right.

The next day, when Alex came home from school, Samantha noticed that he had put his backpack away neatly and hung up his coat without being asked. She praised him for being responsible and for taking care of his things, and she could see that he was pleased by her positive feedback. Later that day, when Emily shared a toy with her brother instead of fighting over it, Samantha made sure to praise her as well, telling her how proud she was of her for being kind and generous.

Over time, Samantha found that catching her children doing things right was much more effective than constantly criticizing and punishing them. Alex and Emily started to respond to her positive feedback, and they began to behave better and get along more harmoniously. Samantha also felt less stressed and more connected to her children, and she could see that her new approach was making a real difference in their lives.

 

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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.
     

How I Became A Body Language Expert

By Body Language and Human Behavior Expert Patti Wood. 

Then when I was in fourth grade, my teacher taught us how to write poetry, and I finally had a way of putting what I saw and heard on paper in a way that didn't make people uncomfortable. Once I learned English, I could remember the lyrics of every song I heard after hearing it once, a childhood characteristic of many musicians. I realized my watching world could be safely expressed in poetry and song. Every day from fourth grade until my sophomore year of College, I watched people and wrote about the secret invisible world I saw in poetry and songs. I filled large journals at night and carried small notebooks everywhere I went. I would write while in my sleeping bag at sleepovers, while I dripped dry at pool parties, or stood against the wall at dances. I wrote on the back of church bulletins in the choir loft and sat on the church bus on our youth group trips. I wrote during class, on long car trips, and while lying with my friends on brightly colored beach towels on sunny Florida beaches. I grew up watching and writing, painting the invisible world in words, so what I saw that seemed invisible to others could be seen and understood. I wrote about the glow around happy people, how love lifted your body, meanness made people sharp angular, and sharp-edged, and loss made people look squeezed out and empty.

When I was 15, my sister Jan gave me her old guitar, and I played until I grew calluses on the tips of my fingers, then I played harder. Finally, I took what I saw and sang about it. Sitting on my princess four-poster bed (ordered from the Sears Roebuck catalog), I wrote songs and sang for hours every day.  

During the week, I took drama classes and joined the little theater. My ability to mimic others' body language and take on others' emotions grew. And in between, I read. I devoured three or four books a week. The authors wrote about the lift of an eyebrow and the turn of a head. They must see what I saw, too, I realized. I wondered why poets, songwriters, and authors were the only ones who seemed to be able to talk about it. I read so many books that junior high and high school librarians insisted I become a school library assistant. They all said I had read more books than any other student. I was skinny and stringy-haired. I had braces and large brown-framed glasses. I was an odd, journal-toting, homely little nerd. Because I knew I was a nerd and there was no chance of ever being cool, I embraced my nerdiness.

I stood out in the preppy sea of girls wearing blue skirts, white sailor blouses, and Etienne Aigner belts. I wore bright-colored, hand-made dresses and purposely wore unmatching socks. I didn't smoke in the bathroom, drink at parties, or kiss on dates. I didn't date at all. Instead, I read, and wrote songs and poetry. I was very happy expressing my wild invisible world and was drawn to fun, creative friends, and day after day, I watched.

 

          When I went to College, my journals and notebooks filled a box.

In College, I majored in poetry, was president of the music dorm, and became a little sister to the music fraternity. My destiny was certain. I would move to New York after College and live in Greenwich Village. There I would sit on a stool in smoky coffeehouses and sing my songs. During the day, I would write my lyrics for Broadway shows. But my first poetry class was filled with depressed people. They seemed so lost and lonely. They did not see the world I saw.

I stopped writing. Now I felt lost, too. In my sophomore year, I was looking at the college course catalog and saw an interesting course listed in the speech department. "Oral Interpretation of Poetry." Famous poetry. Other people's poetry. The class was terrific. You gave a speech every week about a poem. The teacher said, "Patti, you are meant to be a speaker, so I signed you up to be my assistant next semester, change your major." I changed my major to interpersonal and organizational communication and was lucky enough to take a nonverbal communication class. As the teacher talked on the first day of class, I had a life-changing Eureka moment. He was talking about what I saw. There was a name for it a language, Nonverbal Communication. This was the secret world I could not seem to explain in anything but poetry and song. As a "watcher," I had been reading people for years, and now I was able to break down into cues that led to my intuitions about people. There was a science for my watching. I could explain it to others, and I could teach people to see what I saw.

I worked as a substance abuse counselor that summer because I thought counseling would be a great way to help others. It was awful. My fellow counselors were admirable, but the clients struggled to recover. My mentor said all of her clients from when she first started as a counselor were cycling back. She was so discouraged she quit. I got all her clients. I listened to the words of my clients as they talked about how they only had two cases of beer or six bottles of wine over the weekend and how their spouses didn't see that beer and wine weren't alcohol. Their words discounted their pain, but I could see it. I could feel it. Their pain soaked into me. Their addiction ate me up as it ate them up. Even though it was a challenging experience, I am grateful I had the opportunity to work as a counselor because it made me realize I wanted to help people prevent that kind of pain. I asked Dr. Clevenger, the Dean of the College of Communication if  I could create a Nonverbal Communication major. He worked with me through independent study so I could find and take all the classes in our College and other departments related to the field. He had me search through the catalogs of Universities across the country to see if anyone offered the major, and we discovered that, at the time, it didn't exist anywhere else. We were both excited that we could create it at Florida State, and he allowed me to create it.

As I worked toward my undergraduate and, eventually, my master's degree and later in my doctoral coursework in Interpersonal Communication, with an emphasis on Nonverbal Communication, I took courses and researched.

In my master's degree program, I studied with Larry Barker, the country's leading guru on nonverbal communication. He was also the author of a book on listening. He had a big shelf in his office of books he had authored or co-authored. I was very nervous the night before my first presentation in his class. I remembered what my boyfriend, a top-selling door-to-door book salesman in the summer, told me. "You're nervous because you rehearse your failure, and what you rehearse, you will play out." So I sat in my office and rehearsed my success. In my mind's eye, I wowed Dr. Barker.

The next day, after my lecture, Dr. Barker said, "You were meant to be a speaker." He got me a gig lecturing to the Alabama Speakers Association. And professors there said, "You were meant to be a speaker." The same sentence grew in power. Why those exact words?

I taught College over the years and got incredible joy being with my students week after week and seeing their curiosity and excitement grow. I felt a genuine obligation to nurture them. What a gift those eleven years of college teaching were. I got to be wild and crazy in the classroom. My college students' short attention spans required that I do things differently. I ran all over the lecture hall and played music thematically tied to my daily lectures. I brought props, played games, blew bubbles, and performed live theater. Each class was a chance to make magic with the students.

Each semester in my nonverbal communication class, I had everyone dress wildly odd for the day, punk, hipster, biker. They had to go all out and dress crazy for a day. That meant my one hundred and fifty students dressed up and went out to the rest of the campus and the town and noticed how people responded, and take notes, and were ready to talk about it in class. My class, with over a hundred students each semester, took over Tallahassee, and Then they came to class dressed in unconventional outfits and discussed it. One semester, one of my students, who usually wore punk all the time, chose to wear a suit and tie that day. He took out all his studs and safety pins, wore a friend's loafers instead of army boots, and dyed his hair from purple to brown. He said it was weird to see how people treated him. He said that he had become antagonistic and cynical because, day after day, people treated him horribly. Now, after going "conservative," he realized that he was creating a hostile world for himself, a place where he could be mad and where he had an excuse to be angry.

Incidents like this inspired me. I was researching everything from sexual harassment and touch in the workplace to mirroring and what makes us liked.

People in the community found out about my college class and asked me to come to speak to their businesses. So then, I started doing training for different branches of law enforcement. If you have ever spoken in front of a tough audience, imagine speaking to a room full of men wearing world-weary expressions and guns.

Dean Clevenger, who helped me create my major as an undergrad, and another Professor, Dr. Ungerieght, head of the Media program, asked me to join a consulting company they were starting. They were two of the finest humans I have ever known. They modeled integrity and treated me with great respect. Then they quickly encouraged me also to start my own so that I could grow my credibility. So I established my own speaking business, Communication Dynamics. Sometimes early in my career, I was discouraged. People did not believe "body language" was a real science. I spent the first eight years of my career convincing my audiences of its validity so they would begin to explore how nonverbal communication could be useful in their lives. I was not always respected in the universities where I taught or by corporations where I spoke. I was the "touchy-feely body language lady." But I kept doing research, writing, speaking, and, of course, watching.

 

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.