How do you assess people ?
How quickly do you assess people ?
I can see you all nodding and saying , almost instantly we just know when things are not quite right.
Have you heard of the saying never judge a book by its cover?
You should never make a judgment ?
Well that’s fine but think about our models of risk High and Unknown risk.
At Protaris work on fact we set systems in place so that our very first observation gives us enough details so that we position ourselves in way that is not only safe for you but also a place where you can reduce risk to you.
In essence we do judge a book by its cover its natural. have you ever met somebody before and you just get this feeling, something about them. - never ignore your instinct
You could assess people by these catagories:-
• Age
• Size
• Attire
• Culture
• Body language
• Gender
There you go that’s the Protaris list does that all make sense to you.
Comprehensive, exhausted and unique – “NOT”.
So in order to make it all make sense we have to break it down so that it does become comprehensive, exhaustive and unique.
Person Risk categories broken down:-
Age – Who would you rather deal with somebody our age which is 21 or an older person let’s say for arguments sake the Protaris teams combined age 35 +
Most people say the older person, we say the younger person!
Strange I know but here are our reasons and an initial introduction to Neuroscience, for those who don’t know what neuroscience is its apparently it’s stuff to do with your brain.
How many of you are scared of spiders or snakes ?
Lots i bet, anything bigger than a communal garden worm and most of the Protaris team will leave smoking boots as they hit the speed of sound running.
You know there is a reason whilst these insects and serpents cause us fear it’s all down to one of the oldest parts of human development our use of instinct and how we react to fear.
In order to understand this im going to swap the word instinct to the word Amygdala, (Latin for 'Almond' I have never pulled mine out of my head, but apparently its also the size of an Almond.
In basic terms this is an area of the brain that is active as soon as you are born it’s an area of the brain that has kept us as a race of people alive for millions of years.
It’s the part of the brain that instantly makes you aware of danger, you guessed it it’s the area of the brain that you all said you felt when things didn’t seem quite right it sits in the Limbic area of the brain.
If we were to go back millions of years we listened to it and used it religiously let’s face it trying to reason with a spear and loin cloth whilst faced with a tyrannosaurus rex was not always advisable.
What it gave us was a unique defence system that has served us well throughout history.
In modern times however the likely hood of walking down the road and turning a corner and coming face to face with a marauding dinosaur is highly unlikely.
Due to the way we live now, we have grown to ignore the Amygdla response sometimes referred to as the 6th sense. Now that all makes sense.
But it still serves us well, a lot of people have a fear of snakes and spiders, that fear comes from the reponses to danger housed within the Amygdala.
Even though snakes and spiders are rarely seen we still fear them from the most primitive part of our brain, the inbuilt defence system provided by the Amygdala makes us fear the things that killed lots of people and still do.
The mighty t-Rex was extinct millions of years before man was walking the earth, so a big risk to us was the spider and the snake that’s why you still fear the little critters for those of you that like spiders and snakes you are obviously from a different planet.
We will add to the area of the brain where the Amygdala (almond) sits and extend it to an area called the limbic part of the brain.
The two areas in the limbic sytsem are the Hippocampus which is described as a Seahorse shape so let’s call it Seahorse rather than a hippo-thinga-me-bob and the Amygdala which is Latin for Almond, as you know.
So let’s get back to the age assessment. We have discussed that as an infant our almond is very active to protect us from danger as soon as we are born.
The other part of the brain that we are interested in is the prefrontal cortex – theirs a clue in that the prefrontal the front part of your brain this is the area of the brain that thinks and decides often called the rational side of the brain, in essence this part of the brain is often referred to as the learned part of the brain.
As an example a child will touch a hot BBQ and get burnt mum or dad blows on the child’s hands and says "Hot hot there there" , the infant then learns that’s it’s not a good idea to touch a hot BBQ, in fact if you think about it the front part of our brain is key to our decision making it’s a slower process than the Almond, its slower and makes sense out of risks.
I remember when one member of the Protaris team was operational in the Steaming jungles of Latin America, the Protaris ranger had a very acute fear of snakes.
Whilst he was resting one of the team put a piece of rope over his boots and then uttered the words "Snake don’t move"!.
I’ve never seen anything like it smoking boots was an understatement leaves vines and equipment were all propelled into the thick jungle with the Protaris team member sprinting at high speed into the undergrowth.
A short while later he came back looking like the most ancient part of the forest, “It was a piece of rope” said one of the team his prefrontal cortex replied “I know that”. Incidentally we are still finding leaves on him now.
So where are we going with this and in particularly how do we use this information to risk assess age. - Next week we will look at this ( my fingers are getting sore typing)
