Warren Lamb facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Warren Lamb
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Warren D. Lamb
28 April 1923 Wallasey, England
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| Died | 21 January 2014 (aged 90) |
| Spouse(s) | Barbara Lamb |
Warren Lamb (born April 28, 1923 – died January 21, 2014) was a British expert. He helped businesses understand how people move. He was a pioneer in studying nonverbal behavior. This means looking at how people move their bodies.
Warren Lamb learned from Rudolf Laban. Laban was a famous dance pioneer. Lamb then created a system called Movement Pattern Analysis. This system helps to understand and explain how people move. It has been used in many areas. These include helping companies, hiring new staff, and even in therapy.
Lamb used his system to advise large companies. He also worked with government groups. He believed that understanding movement was key. It was not about simple "body language" gestures. Instead, it was about the dynamics of how someone moves. Lamb thought that everyone moves in their own special way. These unique movement patterns show how a person thinks and acts. They can even predict how someone will behave.
His system, Movement Pattern Analysis, helps find these patterns. It connects them to how people act. The goal is to guess how people will behave in different situations. This is based on their unique movement styles. Recent studies by Harvard University and Brown University showed his system works well. It can reliably predict behavior.
Early Life
Warren Lamb was born in Wallasey, England. This town is close to Liverpool. When World War II started in 1939, Lamb was only 16 years old. He joined the Royal Navy.
He was on active duty until 1944. He mostly served in the Mediterranean Sea. During this time, he was in many battles. In one battle, all the ships in his fleet were sunk. The destroyer ship he was on was the only one that survived.
Career Beginnings
After the war, Lamb followed his father's advice. He joined Lloyds Bank. He thought he would build his career there. But then, Lamb heard about a lecture. It was by Rudolf Laban, a German dance expert. Laban had recently moved to England.
Lamb went to the lecture. He had never been involved with dance before. But he was very interested in what Laban said. Soon after, he quit his secure job at Lloyds Bank. He joined the Art of Movement Studio in Manchester. This was a new modern dance school. Laban and his partner, Lisa Ullmann, ran the school. Lamb trained in modern dance there. He also performed with the Studio's dance group.
Developing Movement Analysis
After three years, Lamb started working with Laban. He also worked with F.C. Lawrence. They worked in factories. Laban and Lawrence were finding new ways to write down and study movement. They advised companies that each person moves in a special way. They believed it was better to organize work to match a person's natural movement. This was more efficient than trying to make movements smaller.
Lamb helped them write down workers' movements. He helped find and record their unique patterns. He also helped Laban and Lawrence create a clear way to record movement. This was called the Laban Lawrence Personal Effort Assessment.
Lamb built on Laban's ideas. He thought that these unique movement patterns might be linked to how people think and make decisions. He believed they could show how managers behave. Lamb started studying managers, even top leaders. This was different from just studying factory workers.
From the early 1950s, Lamb began to advise leaders. He helped them understand their decision-making. This was based on his movement analysis. More and more clients hired him. By the 1960s, Lamb was advising many famous companies. He even worked with their chief executives. Lamb later said that most leaders were puzzled by his system. But they hired him because they saw good results.
Later Work and Legacy
Rudolf Laban passed away in 1958. After that, Lamb focused on something called the Effort/Shape concept. He helped develop this idea further. Other people who studied with Laban also worked on it. These included Irmgard Bartenieff and Judith Kestenberg.
Warren Lamb's work changed how people understood movement. His system helps us learn about how people think and act.
