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In today’s exercise, you will be practicing and developing your ability to distinguish between the cues that lead you to assess someone as being in the comfortable or uncomfortable clusters.

Click the “More” button to view the exercise.

The Workout

  • In this video, observe the woman standing against the far wall next to the trash can (she will be highlighted once the video starts).  As the video plays you will see her displays behaviors from the Comfortable Cluster.
    • 1: Identify those behaviors from the Comfortable Cluster
    • 2: Identify the behaviors that reveal she might not be comfortable, but actually in the uncomfortable cluster.
    • 3: Make a final assessment about whether she is actually displaying comfort or discomfort.
  • Write your answers on a sheet of paper before viewing our answers

[expand title=”View Our Answers”]

  • Indicators from the Comfortable Cluster
    • Leaning against wall
    • Putting one leg up against wall
    • Standing with legs crossed
    • Texting/using her phone
  • Indicators that reveal the Uncomfortable Cluster
    • Her legs comes off of wall right as the woman walks very closely past her
    • Elevated levels of situational awareness – she is pretty alert and looking at people as they come closer to her.
    • She starts to put her leg up a second time, but puts it right back down.
  • Our final assessment: She is in the uncomfortable cluster
    • Even though there are indicators from the Comfortable Cluster displayed, the fact that they are often only displayed in a short-duration has me prioritize the Uncomfortable cues higher.
      • While she is on her phone, she keeps looking up every few seconds as people move past her.
      • While her foot in on the wall for a moment, it comes off the wall as soon as someone gets close to her
      • While she is standing with her legs crossed for a moment, she begins shifting her weight back and forth, especially as the video progresses.
    • When assessing behaviors and considering what you observe between comfort (no stress/threat response) and discomfort (flight response to stresses/threats triggered), I often prioritize those that reveal a stress response has been triggered.  Even if it is minimal, the presence of those Uncomfortable cues reveals that despite the few indicators revealing comfort, that she isn’t completely comfortable in this setting, leading to a final assessment that she is displaying low intensity discomfort.

Add a comment with the assessments that you made, but that we didn’t make, so that we can check for those assessments and provide feedback on those specific observations.  We will add them to our answers in the post itself for future viewings of the exercise.[/expand]

Enhance The Workout

  • Repeat
    • The second time you watch the video, spend your time looking at both the duration that the various behaviors are displayed for and the frequency that you observe them.
    • This can become a quick method to begin distinguishing between two potential clusters and prioritizing certain observed behaviors when you start to add up the duration and frequency of what you are observing.
    • We also recommend that you start by reviewing the indicators for the Comfortable and Uncomfortable clusters from the cluster cards.
  • Reflect
    • As you watch the video, put yourself in her shoes.  Operating under the assumption that you don’t want to be in the Uncomfortable Cluster (it takes the body out of a state of balance), when you are waiting for something, in any location, what factors do you think about when choosing where you wait?
      • How often do you find yourself in situations where you are closer to strangers than you’d like?
      • How often are you near a natural line of drift where people are moving past you and getting closer to you than you’d typically like?
    • When you think about those factors, what does that say about you? Are you a person who is comfortable waiting right at the counter while your coffee is getting poured, even if you are surrounded by strangers? Or do you typically take a step back to avoid being in that crowd while waiting for your name to be called?
    • When you consider the person in this video, think about which one of those two groups she is likely in and where you would have positioned yourself to wait for your plane in this airport.
  • Act
    • This video is taken inside of LaGuardia Airport in New York City while people wait for their plane to begin boarding, but you can often observe people displaying conflicting behavior (behavior that could be assessed as being in multiple clusters) in most settings where they are waiting for something.
    • While his exercise was designed to help you identify and prioritize some of the behaviors over others while assessing an individual person, one of the best ways to recognize and prioritize these is to first recognize it on yourself.
    • The next time that you are waiting in line, for a table at a restaurant, first consider everything that your body is doing, from your feet to your hands, to your torso and your level of situational awareness and what about your mindset right now is triggering that behavior?
    • If you are displaying uncomfortable cues, are you at least a little bit anxious?  Are you running behind schedule by even just a few moments? What is the “thing” that is going through your head at that point in time that has made you display these behaviors?
    • You don’t have to write these down, but think about what you are displaying and why.

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