Body Language: The Key to Improving Communications, Addressing Conflicts, and Growing Connections

Why does communication break down and lead to conflict? Can we find a way to harness emotions for good? Or are we always doomed to division and misunderstandings? These are questions that have come up time and time again throughout history, and which have been asked by everyone from presidents and dignitaries to manufacturing leaders trying to resolve everyday conflict within their team.

Emotional intelligence might be the answer! On my Mindfulness Manufacturing podcast, I was joined by Dr. Irvine Nugent, an emotional intelligence coach and body language expert. As someone who grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, Irvine is no stranger to big questions about communications and conflict. Like he does in his book, Leadership Lessons from the Pub, he shared some of his top insights on why emotional intelligence is the key to addressing conflict, finding more productive outcomes, and building more meaningful connections.

Leadership Lesson #1: The Importance of Presenting Emotions

Improving your own behavior plays a big role in growing your leadership and increasing your impact. This includes the way you present your own emotions. For example, if you are someone who becomes angry or defensive when given feedback, others on your team might begin to stop voicing their ideas or concerns. By being aware of your emotions—and mindful about how you present them—you can find productive ways to improve your behavior and show up for your team.

Leadership Lesson #2: Increasing Self-Awareness

While it’s important to be mindful of your emotions, it’s also important to remember that you can’t always control how you feel. However, you can control your self-awareness and manage your own emotions. In his episode, Irvine offered a simple tip for managing emotions. Before entering a room or situation, take a one-minute pause. Process your emotions and think about what emotions you don’t want to bring into the room. Then, you can get yourself in the mindset you need to move forward in a productive, healthy way.

Leadership Lesson #3: Learn the Seven Universal Emotions

Through his experiences during the Troubles and his own research into body language, Irvine has become very familiar with the seven universal emotions: anger, fear, disgust, contempt, surprise, happiness, and sadness. These emotions manifest in their own unique ways, like through body language and facial expressions. By learning to recognize facial expressions and body language, you can become better at understanding when you need to ask deeper questions or start a deeper dialogue with a team member.

Learn More on the Podcast

To learn more great insights about emotional intelligence and body language—and some of his stories about growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles—be sure to check out my Mindfulness Manufacturing episode with Dr. Irvine Nugent, which you can find here.

At Manufacturing Greatness, Trevor Blondeel works with manufacturers to connect the top to the shop. If you’re ready to improve your own organization, contact Trevor to learn how Manufacturing Greatness can help you build stronger leaders and develop a dynamic, high-performing workplace.

Mindfulness Manufacturing

Our show is about providing listeners with real stories that come from a place of experience, transparency, and authenticity. Most importantly it’s about what we learn from these stories and applying Mindfulness in our everyday work and personal lives.
Our intention is to create an environment where people can learn through open honest discussions on how we apply Mindfulness. Although our experiences and stories come from time in a manufacturing environment hence the title “Mindfulness Manufacturing”, we still see our discussions and topics relatable to any organization or profession.

When a mistake occurs on the plant floor, your mind might jump to one question: who caused this issue, and should I write them up for their mistake? But there’s a more productive approach you could be taking—and in this episode of Mindfulness Manufacturing, guest Dr. Jake Mazulewicz breaks it all down!

With a background as a firefighter, EMT, and military paratrooper, Jake knows the challenges of high-hazard industries, and works with organizations to reduce errors and create safer, more reliable workplace environments. In this episode, Jake shares why you can’t procedularize everything, including the way you handle errors and accidents, and offers great insights and stories about how to use connection and curiosity to improve safety, address errors, and strengthen your organization.

3:35 – Procedures and policies are the work that is imagined, and on the floor is how the work actually gets done

4:19 – The work as-done is almost always radically different than the work as-imagined

5:20 – Even when you have standards and people show up wanting to do a good job, you can still see issues that need to be addressed

6:44 – There will always be areas that absolutely need to have procedures in place

8:02 – There are also adaptive jobs, which leans less into procedures and more intro troubleshooting and tacit human knowledge

10:56 – In an ideal environment, both mechanistic and adaptive models are used and respected and needed

12:11 – There are four levels, ranging from strict procedurals to looser guidelines that show what to do, but not how to do it

15:36 – Tacit knowledge gets shared through conversations

16:22 – A way to share important information is to have frontline experts record videos sharing their insights to problems, especially those that are not covered in procedures

19:44 – Through conversation and connection, more knowledge is shared

21:58 – Debriefing also plays a central role

23:45 – If you have strong discipline, you’ll find more freedom

25:31 – In most situations, errors are signals, not defects

27:07 – When an error occurs, be curious and find the deeper cause of the problem

Connect with Jake Mazulewicz

Find him on Linkedin

Visit his website