Tristan Chermack – Conflict Manager

Eye Contact: Watch People-Read Body Language, Part III – Tristan Chermack

When you watch people, strangers or people you know, look at them for more than just recognizing who they are. Look for a moment longer and try to get a feel for their mood or current attitude. We are not talking about trying to read every person in a crowd. It is very helpful to see when someone is showing signs that they are upset, angry, hostile or aggressive. These signs start out fairly subtle, but are pretty plain to people who are even a little bit used to looking for them.

There are many books out there on reading body language and facial expressions, and you can certainly research much more on the subject. It is not necessary to become an expert on the subject to look at someone for a few seconds and get a feel for whether they might be in a foul mood. It is easier when you know them and are familiar with their normal state.

One particular trait to watch for is the person who is looking around to start trouble. Bullies show their predatory instincts by scanning around actively and studying people they consider might be good targets. This should be a warning flag to you. It is pretty obvious, and is pretty easy to spot – as long as you are looking!

A bully, or bullies, might have taken up a spot and are ‘on the hunt’ for a good target. The part to look for is when they spend more time scanning around outside their group than talking with each other. Picture in your head a group of lions sitting on a hill watching for a nice, tasty antelope to happen along. If you see this, then stay relaxed and calm but move along and get out of their sight quickly.

The goal of watching people and reading their body language is to get a feel for their mood and intentions. Your instincts will almost always warn you when someone is up to no good. In fact, we recommend not getting too caught up into researching tiny details of body language because they can distract you from using your instincts to get a good impression of someone’s mood.

You should practice every day, which is easy and even fun. Look at people you know and try to get predict what mood they are in. You will have to do this before you talk with them. Observe them for a few moments and guess their mood, then greet them and chat a bit to see if you were right. Once you talk with them, their mood should be pretty clear and you will find out how close you were.

If you try it with strangers, you won’t be able to confirm if you were right but it is still fun practice and you can do it almost anywhere. The more you play around with it, the better you will get. Before long you will be able to spot people who are: relaxed, happy, nervous, upset, or in any number of other moods.

When you have built up this skill, people who show signs of aggression and anger or have the intention of causing trouble will stick out like a sore thumb. Your instincts will tell you something is wrong. It is up to you to listen and heed those warnings.

Years ago when I worked one of my first security jobs, a seasoned pro showed me how well someone could hone these skills. We went from working the door in a bar to helping sort out getting a PA system set up. He never stopped scanning despite working on an unrelated task. He was particularly interested in those entering the room because he already sized up the patrons who were there. A man walked in and he quietly leaned over to me and said “Watch that guy. I guarantee by the end of the night we will be carting him out of here.” He didn’t look any different than any of the other patrons. He was dressed similarly, although he did walk in alone. He wasn’t scowling, or appeared to be carrying a weapon. I asked if the pro knew the guy from a previous encounter, but he hadn’t ever seen him ever before. There was something in his body language that told the pro that this guy was not here to enjoy a beer and some music. Sure enough, a few hours later we had to throw the guy out because he got aggressive.

I can still picture the guy’s body language, it was so subtle that it would not raise an eyebrow to most people. That old pro not only knew to look at every person coming into the bar but knew the body language to look for. Not even sure he could describe what it was either, he just knew it when he saw it and it gave us a heads up to take caution.

Eye contact and body language are huge factors in self-protection. You may wonder why I use the term self-protection instead of self-defense. Quite simply, they apply to two very different things. Self-defense describes the physical skills you use when in physical conflict. Self-protection describes the skills you use to avoid physical conflict. Self-defense is what you need to employ when your self-protection skills have all failed.

A great start to building self-protection skills are mastering eye contact and reading people. It’s pretty easy and fun to do.

Eye Contact: Observe Surroundings, Part II – Tristan Chermack

Observe surroundings

Any self-protection must involve you paying attention to your surroundings, regardless of whether there are people around. Keeping an eye on people adds a little more difficulty to the task, but it is still pretty easy to do. Let’s look at each of these separately.

When observing your surroundings, you should first be looking for anything that might pose a danger. Accidents claim more victims than predators, and self-protection skills also work with accidents. Many accidents happen because of a lack of awareness. The street crossing analogy comes into play here: look to see if you can safely cross the street regardless of what the light says. Potential threats come in many shapes and sizes, so we cannot possible tell you every way to spot them here. Keeping your eyes open for potential problems, or accidents waiting to happen, is something you must build. The practice of looking around rather than having your eyes buried in a cell phone or iPod works splendidly.

It should take a quick look around, for only a second or two, to get a decent feel for your surroundings. Familiar surroundings are easier, but you should take the time and effort to notice anyway. If a place is familiar to you, looking around can show you something that is out of place or not normal. This can be helpful to give you a heads-up that something might be amiss. Your instincts will pick up on these things, you only need to scan around and take in what you see.

If you are in an unfamiliar place or somewhere that gives you an uneasy feeling, you will probably look around a lot before becoming assured that you will be safe. This is an instinctual trait so use it. Once you have looked around extensively and still feel uneasy about where you are, you should really leave. If you cannot leave, get yourself to a position where you can see anything approaching you. This brings us to the next point about observing surroundings.

When you observe a room, you should be doing more than looking for threats. You should look for where the exits to your immediate area are. If you had to get out fast, which ways could you go? These exits are also entrances. We will discuss observing your surroundings for people next, but you should know where they come in so you can see who comes into your area. Knowing where the exits are is a good habit to build.

Another thing to watch for with your surroundings is where you are in them. Are you in a place where you can be approached by someone without noticing they are coming? In the best case, you should be somewhere that you easily notice people approach you. It is also best that you are in a place that has an exit handy from any given direction. The last thing you want is to be cornered by a threatening person, with nowhere to go to escape.

One last thing to look for in your surroundings is obstacles. They can provide a place for you that make approach difficult. It may happen that you notice a bully or group of potential bullies coming and want to stay out of their path. Rather than running for an exit, you can position yourself near obstacles to make it difficult to get to you. The great benefit of this approach is that you can usually move there casually without drawing attention. It will be easy to notice if the people you are concerned about are approaching you, and then you can move to an exit if it appears they are coming for you.

If you have ever been in the same room with a bully, you may have experienced looking at your environment in these ways. It is best to have an idea of what is around you before that panic hits and you are desperately looking for where to exit. We believe in preparing early, and this is a perfect example. It takes only a second to notice exits, so take a look. You might not need it, but if you do it is great to know already.

Now that we’ve covered the environment itself, the really important part is to watch people. You should at very least look for a moment at every person in your immediate area. If the area is very crowded, you should scan the crowd for anything that appears out of the ordinary. When you do your scan, let your instincts talk to you. They will tell you if you should be concerned.

This kind of looking around and scanning is more than glancing up from time to time. If you are sitting hunched over a book or cell phone and glance up momentarily and down, then you are missing two points: posture and observation. These two should work together.

Keep good body posture whether you are standing or sitting and scan regularly. Take your time scanning and don’t rush it. Anyone looking at you will quickly be able to tell which is more important to you: looking around or not paying attention to surroundings. It is okay to be absorbed in a book or texting with someone, but go to a place where you are safe to do so and look up and around frequently.

It is very common to watch for people when you know they might be present, and it is almost always someone you already know to be a potential threat. Kids who are around bullies learn to watch for their bully through pure fear. They are constantly scanning so they can see them coming and get out early.

One thing to add here, which is something more common to adults than children, is that purposefully not making eye contact is also a signal. Take care not to think that this is imperceptible because it is. If a potential predator looks at you and you are intentionally avoiding eye contact, he will very likely be able to tell. This is a signal of pure fear, which is not the signal you want to send. A confident person does not fear making eye contact.

Once you make eye contact, what you are thinking is pretty easily conveyed through your facial expressions. I’m not talking mind reading here, but simple mood and attitude. What is on your mind will affect the signals you are sending, so take care of what is on your mind. Be smart, not oblivious – confident, not fearful. This type of communication is fascinating, but not within the scope of this article.

What we take in about our surroundings and the people within it is crucial to avoiding trouble. You can think of it this way: your goal is to see trouble before it sees you. A predator decides when and where he will strike, which is powerful. Predators will avoid targets which are aware (hard to approach undetected) and do not look like good opportunities. They will dismiss inviting targets which are not in a good place or time to strike. The first indicator is eye contact or lack thereof. An unobservant target is very inviting. You might never even make direct eye contact with a predator. He may very well dismiss you as a potential target merely because he sees you scanning the area, staying aware, and appearing ready. It is so much better to avoid being targeted early than try to evade a predator who has already chosen you as a target.

Eye Contact: Your First Signal and More, Part I – Tristan Chermack

Making eye contact is something we do many times each day, and we may not even realize it but we all use it to communicate, consciously or not. Eye contact is a subset of body language and this article is meant to be an introduction to this language and how it works, with a particular focus on how it pertains to the art of self-protection.

There are excerpts here from my book “What the Bully Doesn’t Want You to Know – A Streetwise Guide to Your Bully Problem”. The book itself is focused on bully problems which children face and is written for kids and their parents. Neither the book nor this article are designed to be comprehensive works on body language, but a beginning. The reason for this article is that virtually all of what is written on body language is extremely broad and most of the material is not pertinent to self-protection or potential conflict situations.

I will expand on the material from the book to include information about adult interactions. The fundamentals are the same as they are for children and have added nuances for adults.

Let’s start with some basics. What we are talking about here is only the first few moments of eye contact. Virtually all adults realize there is far more to extended eye contact and the cues which can be learned from watching someone. Our instincts can indicate whether someone might be lying, in a bad mood, nervous, troubled, or any of a vast number of things. Let’s begin with the first impression we create when we make eye contact.

Eye contact

The importance of eye contact is hard to overstate. It is almost always the first contact we have with someone else. The eyes really are the window to your soul. The way you look at people, or don’t, tells them something about you.

Quickly lowering your eyes when you make eye contact with someone is a basic animal signal of submission and fear. This signal indicates to that person that you are weak, or at least that you think you are weaker than them. Animals reflect their ‘pecking order’ by showing signs of submission to those higher on the order than themselves. Lowering the head, and eyes, is a prime signal of submission. It is usually an unconscious response, but with a little practice you can learn to send a signal of confidence to those around you.

First, let’s define what you should and should not do. We have already indicated that quickly lowering your eyes and head down and away from someone is submissive. So, don’t do that. Almost everyone has done this, and it is a very common habit. So what should you do? If you find you have locked eyes with someone who you feel is threatening (or just about anyone else for that matter) it is a good idea to hold their gaze for a second. And we do mean a second literally, as in one-one thousand. Holding a gaze, or staring, for several seconds or longer can be construed as a challenge. It is possible to gather a lot of information about someone in one second. Once you have held their gaze for a second, move your eyes away calmly in a HORIZONTAL direction. This sends the message to someone that you see them, and you are unafraid. In others words, you are not being submissive.

Practicing this is actually rather easy. Simply go out and do it. Here is how:

Try it a few times in the mirror. You don’t have to go overboard here; just try to get the hang of what a confident gaze looks like for you.

Start with your friends to get the hang of it. By the way, they don’t even have to know you are doing it. You might be surprised at how they react.

Next, move on to strangers or anyone else who makes you uncomfortable. This should be a little difficult at first. You want to get used to feeling uncomfortable so that it ceases to be uncomfortable at all anymore. This can be done just about anywhere. A good place to practice is in a car where people are naturally reticent about looking at the person next to them.

Continue practicing this until you have made a habit of it.

You are on the way to controlling the message you send with your eyes.

If there was one thing you should recognize when it comes to reading someone else’s eyes, it is what is called the ‘hard stare’. The hard stare is a determined look that someone is mentally prepared for a fight. It is a reflection of what has gone on in their mind, locking out distractions and trivialities, focusing purely on the task at hand which is intently watching the target.

The hard stare is easy to recognize and will probably flip a subconscious mental trigger in you that something is wrong. The stare itself is identified by the eyes being open slightly wider than usual and lack of blinking. The eyes will lock on the target and not stray. The facial muscles and chin will tighten with a stony expression, which looks more like pure determination than anger. Once you see a hard stare you will recognize it instantly. It means the decision has been made and the eyes are issuing the challenge. This is a clear sign saying “I am ready to fight you right now.” You should treat this signal as what it is: a very clear signal of imminent threat.

Along with the stare, usually the aggressive party will usually stand up or already be standing. You’ll notice the body will go into a fairly prepared stance with the knees bent and the chest will face the target. Again, this is how the brain subconsciously prepares for battle. The time for sweet talking is over and you should either calmly depart or prepare quickly for a fight. This means get near an exit, with as many friends as possible, and among cover to keep from being surrounded.

Those first moments of eye contact will leave an impression, we cannot help that. What we can do is make sure we are sending the right message, not one which looks inviting to a potential predator. We wish to send the message that we are not prey by not using the same body language that prey uses.

You could call this the external benefit of eye contact: how others see you from the outside. Next we will cover the internal aspect, which is the benefit you receive when you learn to use your eyes well.

m time to time. If you are sitting hunched over a book or cell phone and glance up momentarily and down, then you are missing two points: posture and observation. These two should work together.