I recently attended a seminar on Body
Language that was an interesting refresher on what I know but in doing some
preparation for that seminar I learned something new.
The new fact was that generally, people
walk on the same side of the road that they drive. Something I had not been consciously aware of
before so I decided to begin my own observational study.
There are two critical factors to my study;
first in the Philippines people drive on the right-hand side of the road,
whereas in London where I lived prior to coming to Manila they drive on the left and second there are
more people in Manila, per square meter than there are in London.
Armed with this new piece of knowledge I
began to observe peoples’ patterns of walking behavior when in large crowds of
people and yes, it seems that people do generally walk on the right-hand side
of the pavement (sidewalk if you are reading this and not based in the
UK). There are no rules about this but
generally there is a two-way flow of people on one pavement and the unwritten
code does seem to be that people walk on the right-hand side, just as if they
were driving.
So how does this knowledge help me in my
world of training and development. Well,
it seems that people are not genetically predisposed to walking on a particular
side of the pavement. We were not born
knowing which side of the pavement we should walk on. We learn by observing and through experience
particular patterns of behavior that become habitual. Of course the key factor is that we can adapt
our behavior in unfamiliar surroundings, given a reason, motivation and desire
to achieve an end result. A small, but
important lesson I try to emphasize when working with organizations on ‘Change’ issues.
Now does this all this new realization make
me a better person? No, but it explains
why I keep bumping into people when walking in to work!
Gill
Manila
12 March 2015
