Last week some friends and I went to the Body Worlds 3 exhibition at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. If you live in Houston, you have undoubtedly seen the marketing—the ads, billboards, TV shows—all promoting the exhibit.

It was phenomenal! It exceeded any expectations I had, and I was utterly amazed. The exhibition displays actual human bodies and body parts preserved in a lifelike state by Dr. Gunther von Hagens, who invented a way to preserve the specimens after death but to stop the decay process.

If you live anywhere near Houston, just go. It is fascinating, shocking, and unbelievable. Despite the fact that I have a B.S. in anatomy and physiology, I was completely blown away by seeing in living color and three dimensions things that before now had only been depicted in textbooks. I learned so much just by looking.

But most interestingly, I learned even more from the other museum-goers. I could recognize five categories of visitors from their distinct reactions: the know-it-alls, the comparators, the shocked, the runners, and—the smallest group—the appreciators.

The know-it-alls would say to their companions with great certainty, “There is the superior vena cava, it does so and so and so and so. Oh, and there is the ______; it does this and that.” The interesting thing about the know-it-alls is that they knew it all, and when you know it ALL, there is little opportunity to learn anything new.

The comparators were the people looking at the diseased organs and talking about their own disease, or someone they knew who had that disease. Soon the conversation would degenerate into a morbid, my-diseases-are-worse-than-yours competition. (Maybe we should call this group the “competitors.”)

The shocked were people who were clearly uncomfortable with what they were seeing, but kept looking anyway—part horror, part curiosity. The exhibit was challenging, and it seemed that for some people it was the first time that they were seeing accurate and true representations of their own bodies. It hit me they were completely disconnected from their bodies, so this new information was quite shocking.

The runners were the ones who had the capacity to say, “I can’t take it, I’m outta here.” They exited the exhibit as fast as possible. I even heard one lady say, “Let’s go. I’m hungry.”

And finally the appreciators. These people were curious, completely engaged, and totally fascinated. They looked at the specimens with profound appreciation for how truly amazing the human body is.

What does any of this have to do with leadership or coaching? Well, it seems to me that these same categories could apply to everyday life. It’s been said that how you do anything is how you do everything. That makes me curious: did the intensity of the exhibit simply amplify people’s normal way of being? In most situations, do they run the same patterns?

I believe the answer is yes, but check it out for yourself. Want to learn something about your co-workers, friends, family, or even yourself? Go to Body Worlds 3 and watch carefully. What do you notice? Do you observe any of these reactions, or should we add new ones?