In 2009
I attended a ‘Mind & Its Potential’ Conference in Sydney. Among the speakers was Paul Ekman who
introduced the Australian audience to micro-expressions. These are brief flashes of the emotional truth
belying a false face and last between one twenty-fifth and one-fifth of a
second. During his talk we underwent a
training program where there would a face on the screen showing one emotion and
which would suddenly show another emotion for microseconds and then revert
back. Ekman used a portfolio of seven
emotions and I think 25 pictures. At the
end of session he asked us to put our hands up we had got more than 20 right,
15, 10 etc. I was terrible at the
recognition and I think of the audience of say 500 people two of us admitted we
got less than five images correct.
Afterwards
I bought Ekman’s book and then decided I would to the course that he sells
on-line to improve your results. While
there was some improvement – I got around 40% correct – it was still pretty
poor and I must confess that I concluded this was not a technique for me.
For
those unfamiliar with Ekman’s work the core hypothesis is that The face is the most powerful indicator of
deception. According to Ekman micro-expressions
tell you whether a person is lying or not.
His technology is the basis of the TV program Lie to Me and Ekman is famous for his ability to read faces for
signs of what people are thinking and feeling. In his best seller Blink, Malcolm Gladwell writes that
"much of our understanding of mind-reading" is owed to Ekman and his
collaborators. Ekman’s work
helped inspire an immense federal program in American airports called SPOT, for
Screening of Passengers by Observational Techniques. Costing about $200-million
annually—$900-million in all since 2007—the program, run by the Transportation
Security Administration (TSA), deploys more than 3,000 officers to look for
behavioural cues in the faces and body language of airline passengers.
So
somewhat chastened by my experience and Ekman’s reputation I decided that I
would I put the micro-expression technology in the bottom drawer.
However
a recent article The Liar's 'Tell': Is
Paul Ekman stretching the truth? paints a completely different picture
about the usefulness of micro expressions.
There have been a number of experts testifying before Congress that
Ekman’s work lacks scientific validity.
The result was in November 2013, the Government Accountability
Office recommended that Congress cut the funding of the TSA program. The
watchdog agency argued that neither scholarship in general nor specific
analyses of SPOT offered any proof that malign intent could be divined by
looking at body language or facial cues.
The
article argues the pros and cons of using micro-expressions. The one safe conclusion from the article is
there is no doubt being able to hear a prospective liar talk and listening
carefully to the narrative noticeably improved lie detection results and also
made the training more effective.
In our
workshops we teach our participants a simple mnemonic TOPDOG which stands for talk, organisation, position, dress, office,
and gambit. By using the
following clues:
1.
The way the individual talks (we agree here with Ekman);
2.
The organisation the individual works for;
3.
The individual’s position in the organisation;
4.
The individual’s dress;
5.
The individual’s office or working environment;
6.
The first meeting with an individual
participants
learn within several hours how to recognise which of the seven core emotions
are dominant in a person’s temperament. They
learn how to quickly recognise the group most likely to lie, the corporate
psychopaths.
According
to my Chinese partner, Michael Chen of Zest Learning, who this year has signed
up over 20 major organisations on selling and management training programs in
China it is TOPDOG which is the most attractive part of the training programs.
This is one of the most significant information for me. And I am glad to read your article. Thank you for wonderful post. See more at: - http://www.doortraining.co.in/solutions/training/leadership-management/emotional-intelligence
ReplyDeleteMy only problem is that the EQ technology you are using in your training courses does not include a person's temperament.
ReplyDeletePeople drive performance, emotions drive people, temperament drives emotions.
Emotional Intelligence is achieving self- and social mastery by being smart with core emotions.
Self-Mastery = Awareness + Management (Steps 1 & 2 as defined by Goleman)
Social Mastery = Empathy + Social Skills (Steps 3 &4 as defined by Goleman
However the key to emotional intelligence is understanding your core emotions compared to your transient emotions. Your core emotions are driven by your temperament – what you are genetically born with. Based on a study of 11,000 identical twins nature is around twice as important as nurture. I have found the Humm-Wadsworth model of seven core emotions the most practical tool for people to use and once understood (takes a day) dramatically lifts their emotional intelligence. If you want to learn about the Humm download a free white paper on using Emotional Intelligence in either selling or management . http://www.emotionalintelligencecourse.com/eq-free-white-papers/
My e-books available in Kindle format explain the technique in more detail.