Learners smell your fear

New Scientist magazine recently reported a study that concluded that:

… anxiety prompts the release of a chemical that bypasses conscious experience, automatically triggering similar feelings in anyone who sniffs it. This may allow fear to spread quickly and speed our ability to flee danger.

What does this mean in the training room?

Managing your own state is vitally important when managing the state of your learners. If you are nervous, they will pick up on this and their own anxiety will increase.

Be the change you want to see in the world

Ghandi had the right idea about influencing others. The best way to stimulate a positive state in others is to demonstrate that state to them.

Share this now:
  • email
  • Add to favorites
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  • Posterous
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or save time by having new blog posts sent directly to your inbox using the box at the top of the column on the right. Thanks for visiting!

Related posts:

  1. Scent of fear puts brain in emergency mode
  2. 6 Tips for training in a recession
  3. Bleeding ears, nervousness and a paddling duck
  4. Perfection – when 80% is good enough
  5. The Truth About Icebreakers 01 – the golden age
This entry was posted in Theory and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

One Comment

  1. Paul
    Posted July 11, 2009 at 7:33 pm | Permalink

    Yet again we see how important state management is. I recall someone saying the ratio when prioritising managing state in the training environment is “your, yours and theirs”.
    I like that

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>