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It's about being our best

We often have to deal with high stakes situations and difficult conversations on the spot. Our effectiveness is determined by how we deal with others when everything is on the line.

But is our best 'available'?

When confronted with risk, our reactions can be compromised. There are some psychological and physiological reasons why otherwise smart performers can underachieve during these all too important interactions:

• Our Amygdala (fight or flight response) gets fired up. This sends a flood of hormones into the body.
• Due to the influx of hormones, the Prefrontal Cortex (in charge of higher reasoning) gets less resources sent to it, meaning some of our capacity for complex thought is hampered.
• We can wind up following a pattern of response rather than using our reasoning to find the best solution, or, when trying to reason it out, we can get hampered by the lack of resources available and choke.

There is a solution:

High-stakes professionals like Police, Doctors, Custom Agents and Crisis Workers, have all incorporated live simulations into their training programs instead of role-playing to ensure that when a lot is on the line these professionals have practiced in similar conditions and have good patterns of response to rely on. This frees up higher reasoning to work on solutions for the complex situation at hand.