FAQ

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It is important not to mislead people about what the consultant is there for and to be proactive is explaining the value to everyone of moving more speedily and easily to an agreement based on the best understanding of what people want and value. The consultant can interact openly, offering suggestions or rewording comments to help tease out what works best, or can communicate privately through breakouts. Use of text messages is possible but must be done with care to avoid unease in the other party. Video calls present an easy solution, with options to stand back with video off, to communicate directly (on the shared medium or on a different side channel). Whatever the approach, the only premise for MIS is in helping to support a win/win situation. Helping clients and their clients work out how to get to the win/win is one of our core values. As a communications expert I can help everybody understand the unspoken content in meetings. It is very normal for meetings to be held with consultants on either side of the table.

Some are instinctively better at this than others. If you are one of the more able, that is a great start. In situations where even a 10% improvement might have a big impact – whether avoiding adverse situations, supporting your greater success, or backing you up and providing objectivity to your decisions – then it’s worth getting in touch.
Meeting Insight Support – Understanding the nuances of the face and facial expressions comes from 1,000’s of hours of practice and 1,000s of faces analysed. Experience comes not only from facial analysis; I also have 20 years’ worth of corporate experience applying this analysis – and can do this effectively in real-time.
Key Image Analysis – There are many components to creating Key Visuals. Working with global brands on their campaigns for the last 5 years has confirmed to us the value in aligning and optimising the components that will resonate with your audience;

Alignment
Authenticity
Emotional engagement levels
Relevancy
Messaging
Consumer psychology

You don’t yet know what you don’t yet know. As part of your successful career you probably have a fair awareness of facial expressions, emotions and consumer psychology – think how much more effective you could be if you can leverage the 20 years I have spent in training and building experience across thousands of analyses. This can save you time, money, resources and help you create campaigns that resonate and more than double the impact.

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Taking the guesswork out of the Key Visuals for a marketing or advertising campaign that are based around images of people. We help you understand the emotional messages and likely emotional engagement of your audience to create campaigns that resonate and lead to the desired reaction of the consumer.

The non-verbal communication is uncovered so that no meeting is a guessing game anymore. Often when you come out of an important meeting you may not feel completely confident that you understand how the other party feels and how they are likely to behave after the meeting is ended. Many people relate to situations where they thought someone was enthusiastic only to receive a negative response afterwards. Did they feel unable to say what they thought in the meeting? Were they uncomfortable speaking their mind? Will they really get back in touch? “Time to think things over” – is this positive or negative? Are they likely to sign on the dotted line? We can help find the answers to these questions.
 
Absolutely, if you prefer to receive the training yourselves, we can facilitate this, so you and your team become proficient at reading people. Do note that it takes some time to move from understanding the science and being able to perform analyses to a position where experience is enough to be able to promptly and confidently perform in a business environment.
 
Adrianne is normally introduced to the team and meeting attendees as a consultant working on the project to help us and optimise outcomes, seeking creative solutions that both parties benefit from.
 
There are many case studies from corporate clients with great results. In some cases, simply the business relationship has been strengthened due to understanding the unspoken messages. We have helped a client get a listing in one of the big 4 supermarkets by understanding what their client wanted and needed to be able to agree a deal. See case studies. How about a trial to see if it could work for you?
An untrained observer of faces has an accuracy rating of approx. 48% which rises to up to 80% when fully trained in the facial action coding system. The more a person practises and develops experience, the higher the levels of accuracy.
 
There are many cultural differences for people expressing facial expressions and body language and this is an aspect that must be considered in analysis. However, there are 7 scientifically proven facial expressions that seem to be culturally and universally global; Fear, Surprise, Happiness, Sadness, Contempt, Disgust, Anger. The triggers will be very different for all individuals, but the prototypical facial expressions are universal.
 

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Facial expressions are one of the more important aspects of human communication. The face is responsible for communicating not only thoughts or ideas, but also emotions – mostly subconsciously. If you don’t understand the different emotions displayed on the face, you may be sending out the totally wrong subconscious message to your audience. When you select the best facial expression for a KV you can more than double the impact on the audience.

We can often by misled by the words a person says but the body language and facial expressions are generally the truth of what is really going on in a situation – because whilst people can control what they say, it is far harder and unusual to be able to control subconscious facial and body responses. Start training your powers of observation. Pick an emotion or a body language movement a week and concentrate on being aware of that and whether it matches the words spoken. You will start to do this naturally and become a super communicator and really understand when someone’s words don’t match their body language or facial expression.
 
Facial fillers, Botox and plastic surgery of the face has a massive effect on being able to read facial expressions. The muscle movements become restricted and hard to read.
Researchers have found that when the ability to make facial expressions has been hindered, individuals are less able to interpret other people’s facial expressions and experience related emotions.
There is no scientific evidence for looking right for lying or left for telling the truth. This comes from a premise in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and has been misquoted and misused the world over.
The latest research says there are over 16 different types of smiles, with only 6 of those related to happiness. The rest happen when we’re in pain, embarrassed, uncomfortable, horrified or even miserable. For example, think of the phrase ‘To grin and bear it’ – this has nothing whatsoever to do with happiness.
For further reading have a look at this BBC web page.
If you only listen and respond to the words given, you are losing a lot of communication. Listening to the words and observing the facial expressions gives you a lot of information that can help you respond in a way that is best for the relationship (professional and personal).

There are three main benefits from understanding what people really mean:

  1. It helps avoid unnecessary conflict – faces will tell you how the people around you really feel and helps improve communication skills, empathy and build rapport.
  2. Emotions drive decision making – understanding others and how they feel can help you understand behaviour which shows itself, you can then adapt or walk away as best fits the situation
  3. Avoid fraud/detect insincerity – all people leak information when they say one thing but feel another. Understanding facial expressions and what they mean can help you sort the truth from deceit.