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I was in the FBI for 25 years. I have sat with spies and enemies of this
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country and I learned a lot about human behaviors. Imagine being able to read other people and circumstances faster.
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It gives you a tremendous advantage in your life. I want to hear everything. So, one of the first things I teach is
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Joe Navaro is a former FBI agent turned worldrenowned body language expert. He helps people decode body language to
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improve communication, trust, and influence. One of the things that I found in negotiations is we as humans
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communicate quite a lot with our faces. For instance, we push this together when we don't understand something and then
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the minute we hear something we don't like, blood actually begins to leave the lips and then we begin to tighten them.
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Another behavior is that when there's a lack of confidence, insecurities, people immediately. So once we understand these
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behaviors, you can take command of any situation. Confidence. Is this something that you're born with or do you think
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confidence can be trained? It can absolutely be trained. So the FBI actually teach confidence and there's a
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lot of strategies. One of them is the most powerful gesture that we can use and you see Musk do this a lot. But what
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I tell people is that the easiest way to learn confidence is to Joe. We actually
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videoed my interaction with you when I met you. And I've got the video here. So, one of the things you immediately
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did was, "Don't do that. It's a no." No. This has always blown my mind a little
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bit. 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribe to the show. So, could I ask you for a favor
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before we start? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting
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the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team,
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to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback. We'll find the guest
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that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so
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much. Joe, zooming out. If someone asked you in the street and they wanted a two
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sentence answer, who are you and what have you spent your life doing? How
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would you answer that question? With one word, teaching.
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I think I've spent my whole life teaching. Even even when I was in the FBI,
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uh, starting in 1984, a lot of my job was obviously
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being an FBI agent, investigating crimes, uh, chasing after spies and so
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forth. But, uh, you know, I hired on in 1978, but as early as 84, I was already
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teaching. And um I love it when when people get it and they they see a
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behavior, they understand the uh underpinnings, the foundation of why we
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do certain things. I'll give you an example. Sometimes you'll come to a horrible uh scene and uh people
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immediately gasp. They take in air and then they cover their their their mouths or there's one point uh difference on
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the scoreboard and people are like this and they don't understand. This is this is back where we were surrounded by
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lions and tigers and we learned to cover our mouths so as not to broadcast our
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breath so that they couldn't see where we were or find us. And uh and so the
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human body has uh a few shortcuts. I should say the human brain, they're
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called huristics. And so one of them is to freeze. Uh so when we hear a loud
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sound or we see a predator or a dog, we we we freeze. Obviously, whoever ran
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300,000 years ago uh was bitten. Um, and so we have these shortcuts and
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uh, and it's always fascinating to me to share why we have these behaviors and
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why we and you realize he just inhaled so you can hold your breath and then we cover our breath so we don't broadcast
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for the the predators to to smell us. You spend your time writing books. You spend your time teaching in various
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different contexts these days, whether it's on stage or in other environments on the internet.
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What is it that you're giving people?
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That's a profound question that I don't think I've been asked. I think the simplest answer is
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knowledge. Knowledge that perhaps they didn't have time to acquire. I
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uh I grew up very poor. I was a refugee from Cuba and um and I lived in an area
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of Miami which was mostly elderly people. So I was by myself a lot. So I
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would go through uh garbage bins collecting things uh to read. It's that
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knowledge uh that that I was fortunate enough to acquire the love of uh of
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reading. And uh I run into a lot of people who haven't had that benefit. Maybe they don't have a love of of
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reading and of learning. I see myself as okay. I have this knowledge. I I I have
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sat with terrorists, spies, bazooka yielding enemies of this
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country. And other people never had that opportunity. And I learned a lot uh from
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that and from my reading. So why not share it? Make their life uh a little
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easier. When you say make their life a little easier, if I am to receive your knowledge, how would my life be better?
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How would I be more productive? That's a great question. Imagine being able to app perceive
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uh things way ahead of time because you can read other people and circumstances
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faster. Most people see a behavior and they have to sit there and wonder, are
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they upset with me? Are they, as the Brits would say, my wife is a a Brit. Are they taking the piss or something?
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Just uh any number of of things. But imagine being able to look at something
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and decipher it infinitely faster so that you can devote yourself to to other
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things where most of us break down the the face into the forehead, the eyes,
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the ears, and so forth. And uh but imagine being able to assess the whole face, the shoulders, the hands,
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everything all at once and draw inferences from that
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information. It gives you a a a tremendous advantage. And also in
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negotiations being able to read others and uh at the same time we forget that
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others are reading us and what is the perception that we want to uh convey.
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And if I were to attain all of the knowledge that you have to offer and I were to implement it, what areas of my
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life do you believe would improve? First within yourself, uh, for
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instance, being able to assess yourself. So, if if if let's say you you have
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anger issues and and so forth or you you're quick to trigger, well, h how do I deal with that? Well, first you
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assess, you know, uh, what is going on? Your stomach gets upset, chest tightens,
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your emotions, uh, get up. So, what do I do then? Most people aren't taught that.
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So, there's part of that. There's how to communicate for instance uh, more effectively with your children. The
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simple thing that for instance uh and nobody teaches this uh well I do is uh
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that you know if you stand in front of your child like a drill instructor with your neck stiff you're going to get a
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very different reaction than if you stand at an angle slightly further away
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from the child and tilt your head that the communication you will experience
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with that child is so much different just by tilting your head than if you
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are standing directly in front of them that you can enhance communication. And
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then you say, well, what application is that for real life? Well, you can
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actually change the amount of facetime you get from somebody else. Let's say
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you only had two minutes and you want to stretch that by just tilting your head.
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We've demonstrabably shown that you can change the amount of facetime that somebody's willing to give to you just
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because we show that we're relaxed and that we're not coming at you with an
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agenda that we're willing to um to to listen. It can be transformative if you apply that
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knowledge. Now some people look at knowledge and they don't do much with it but you can you can use it at home you
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can use it at work you can use it in in negotiations for instance one of the
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things that I teach is is the the value of time and time is actually can be used
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as a nonverbal. So when I talk about nonverbals I'm really talking about anything that communicates but is not a
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word. Well, you can use time as a nonverbal to say I'm in charge. Whoever
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dominates and controls time controls. And so even if I change the
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delivery of my message to slow things down, you're already taking charge in
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that negotiation. It's a beautiful thing to
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to to witness when you execute it properly. So there are a lot of
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applications um and you know and obviously like like you you you basically study human
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behavior you are a business person but you're actually really in in the people
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business and once we understand the the the needs and some are biological the
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wants the desires the preferences
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uh the preferences of others how do they like that information delivered? How do
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they like their coffee? All of that. But then what do they fear? Most people don't tell you I have
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fears. They say, well, you know, I'm concerned about that or that I don't know if that's a good investment or uh
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we'll have to do some due dil. That's the the brain only recognizes fear. And
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so once you understand that, it gives you such amplitude to uh to then uh pursue
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whatever it is that you're interested in in doing more effectively. And your
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career. Yeah. So you've been an you were an FBI agent for more than 30 years.
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Well, I was in law enforcement for 30 years. I was in the FBI uh for 25 years
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principally working in the area of counter intelligence but you know in the FBI you never wear one hat. Um I was
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also a pilot so I flew surveillance. I was a SWAT team commander so I uh did
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SWAT stuff and actually worked with the SAS from uh from London. And then I was
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in the um behavioral analysis program. So we use uh that skill set to
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uh to work on uh catching spies. What is the behavioral analysis program? In the
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uh 8990, the FBI developed a very secret program to analyze not uh people that
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were dead, but actually how do we use human behavior to catch spies, to catch
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terrorists, and then once we catch them, how do we get into their heads? How do
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we get them to tell us what what they're up to, what their purpose is, and and uh
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and so forth? So we created this uh this program uh I along with five other agents out of
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12,000 were selected from the FBI to u to become the uh part of this
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new behavioral analysis program which was supposed to be classified except it it was accidentally leaked and our job
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was to look at the threats national security threats and then see how we can
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um use our knowledge of human behavior to then attack that. So when you say your much of your work was to catch
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spies, right? Most of us have only ever heard of spies from watching James Bond and other things like that. So we don't
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actually understand the sort of reality of spies. So if I just play completely
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dumb for a second, other countries send people into other countries like the
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United States or the UK or Australia, Canada, right? To do what? So every
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nation state has uh has interests. A lot of it is obtained through diplomacy. A
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lot of it is now uh obtained through what we called espionage. So uh it's
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nothing like television in the movies. Uh some nations, especially hostile nations, send what we call hostile
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intelligence officers, usually masquerading as a diplomat, but often
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masquerading as students or scientists or businessmen. And their job is to acquire
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knowledge in in specific areas, military knowledge, science and
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research, intentions and plans, military intentions and plans. or they may have
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interest in for instance what is going to be the wheat production in Argentina this year because it may affect the
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price of grain across the world. So there's commercial espionage that uh
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that that goes on and so and every nation uh defends itself by trying to
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identify well who is here uh trying to spy. So that's what we do. That's that
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is that's counter intelligence. That's uh espionage. And it's nothing like the
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movies. We don't we don't we don't jump from buildings. And although we do that
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sometimes, but uh it's it's not as uh as glamorous as as the James Bond stuff.
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So, have you caught spies before? I have. I've arrested spies. Multiple spies. Yeah. Give me the the most
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interesting example of a spy that you identified in court and what were they here doing and which country did they
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come from? Well, as it turns out, it was an American because we also have what we call turncoats.
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So in the case of Rodrik James Ramsay, he was in the an individual who in 1989
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I was asked to go interview because we thought he was a witness um to something
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that had happened in Germany. He had a former army sergeant had been kicked out
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of the army. The military wanted to find out if he knew anything about some
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missing documents, if he had seen anything. During my interview of him,
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which again, I thought he was a witness. He was smoking a cigarette at his house.
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And uh I I just mentioned uh an individual's name that had been at that base, but who had been under
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investigation by German authorities. uh in fact by the uh Bundas Criminal which
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is the equivalent of the FBI. There's no reason why he should
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react to that. It's just a name. But when I mentioned the name, his cigarette
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shook. And um and I knew enough about human behaviors to know that that
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physiological change had to be caused by something significant. Why would a name
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affect him? And uh and so scientific method talked to him for 20 more minutes
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about something else and then I mentioned that name again and sure enough his cigarette shook again. And at
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that point I was convinced that there was something nefarious there. As it turns out the Germans arrested Conrad
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Conrad was there Clyde Conrad. That was the name of the the person that had been
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under suspicion. our our guy that I was interviewing, Rod Ramsay, was uh was not. And so I left
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that interview and then um I persuaded my supervisors to continue to talk to
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Rod Ramsey and that led to a 10-year investigation and the arrest of uh
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three, four, five, six, seven additional individuals. So that Rodri Ramsey guy
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with the shaking cigarette was a he was spying on America. what that he was
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doing. And that's a good question and forgive me for not explaining. While he was in the army, he and Clyde Lee Conrad
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were they were stealing military secrets from from the US Army. They they were
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taking US Army secrets and then selling it to the Soviet Union through the
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Hungarian intelligence service. So he was a traitor of the United States. So he was a traitor and that is often the
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biggest problem for any nation state is the traitors from uh from from within
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and they had elevated espionage to an industrial level. I mean to to the point
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where they actually no longer even use 35mm cameras to photograph the
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documents. They were actually videotaping them so that they could expedite the thousands of pages. It was
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the most damaging espionage case in the history of the United
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States because they had compromised the United States nuclear gods in
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Germany and that left all of Western Europe exposed.
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Nuclear GO codes. Yes. What is that? All of our
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nuclear assets around the world are controlled by two
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things. There is a uh what's called a permissive action link which is like a
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lastm minute safety lock on each device. And then there is the uh go code
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that says there is authority to use this
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weapon. Ramsay was able to steal the
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actual nuclear goat. It's a it's a card. It's made out of a special material
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which I cannot describe. It's made out of special metals and plastics and other
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things. And um the inherent danger in what they did was that not that they
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could initiate a launch that can only be initiated at the national command
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authority level but if this were compromised and given to let's say the
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Russians at the time the Soviet Union this is before
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1989 then a foreign a foreign hostile intelligence service could take that and
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replicate it but put the wrong numbers in there. And by putting the wrong numbers
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in there, if it's in a uh in if it's in a pyramid structure and it's put high
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enough, right? Let's let's say you controlled the all of the East Coast.
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Maybe you don't want to spy for for Russia, but for $100,000, let's say you were willing to
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slip this in there and take the one that's there out. Okay. So maybe that helps your
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conscience in some way, then you basically if it's a pyramid uh sort of
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uh schema, you can paralyze everything below that. Okay? So someone could have
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changed the codes, put a fake one in, which meant that it wouldn't work anymore. that at the highest level then
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nothing would work if you if you had it access at the highest uh level. Did they
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go to jail? Oh yes. Yeah. The shaking cigarette guy went to jail 33
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years. Let me just finish it by saying this. This was this case put of all of
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Western Europe in danger as well as the United States. The general who testified
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in this case said that had hostilities broken out, the defeat of the west would
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have been assured within three days. That's how devastating this
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was. Yeah, let that sink in. Those are his words. The defeat of the West would
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have been assured because of the damage these individuals had done.
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Not all cases are as significant in terms of catching spies. I was reading about another one where you caught a man
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because of the way he held some flowers. Yeah. The uh you know, a lot of times
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it's it's just based on uh on on the behavior. You know, you you see how uh
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how often somebody looks at their watch, right? But maybe when they're operational, they look at their watch
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more often. And uh they filmed this guy who we thought was uh what we call an
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illegal. And in in the parliament of espionage, an illegal is someone who
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magically appears in the United States and pretends to be an American, has
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always been an American, like the series, The Americans. But we had some clues from one of our sister services
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from another country and said we think this individual may be uh someone who
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you need to look at that is uh pretending to be an American. We're looking at the the the unit we bring the
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the whole team together all six of us and we're looking at the at the movie and um you know and it was filmed uh
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just serendipitously. It was filmed on Valentine's Day and uh so we see him
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entering a flower shop and leaving the flower shop when he exited. I said um
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definitely he's not an American. You know, everybody looked at me like, "Excuse me?" I said, "He he's not
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from here." And um he said, "How?" And he says, "Look how he's carrying the the
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bouquet. Americans carry the bouquet bouquet up. Eastern Europeans carry it
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bouquet down and uh and continued to carry it
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that way. So I I did what's called a presumptive. So we stopped him one day
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and and I said, you know, I'm with the FBI and um and I said, "Do you want to know how
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we know?" And that was the the the first trigger I
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was looking for to see how he reacts to it. And he fell for it. And he said, "Go on." Most people
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would say, "Get out of here. Go away." And uh and I said, "It was how
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you carried the flowers." His chin came down. His
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eyelids went heavy. as he was evaluating everything he had done, you
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know, they he had practiced everything. His his English was immaculate. You know, he sounded like a Midwesterner and
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all that. After a few hours of having a nice
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really a nice chat, he agreed to work with us and admitted everything. What
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did he admit? That he had been sent here by a foreign government. that his job as
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a as an illegal was to be in the United States uh act as an American. And most
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people don't understand, well, why would a country, a nation states spend so much
00:25:05
money training these people to be like an American? And what they don't understand is their purpose here is for
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when hostilities break out. They can report on for instance uh train traffic,
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what trains are carrying munitions, what airports are being used for what
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purposes. Um many times, as he later told us, they're given caches of
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explosives so that they can then blow up certain things that no missile would be
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able to uh uh to do. So, uh, that's their role in in in hiding in America.
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It's not to commit espionage. It's to be here in, uh, in case hostilities break
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out. So, you flipped him to working with the FBI. Correct. And does that mean he
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doesn't get punished? Well, he doesn't get punished because he
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didn't commit any crime other than immigration uh uh violation, but what he
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was able to reveal to us was nothing short of breathtaking.
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Which nation was this? I cannot say. But obviously, they would have to have
00:26:20
enough money and enough interest to uh carry out an operation like this. If you
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had to hazard a guess how many people that live amongst us have been sent from a foreign nation and are
00:26:36
spies, how many do you think it is? Well, let's let's define that. you know,
00:26:43
I if if they're if they're hostile intelligence officers, um it can be anywhere from uh 3% of the
00:26:52
diplomatic staff to as many as at one time the Soviet Union
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85% of their staff were uh were conducting
00:27:03
espionage. Um I think numbers So you have those. Now, if you're referring to like how many illegals, I would say at
00:27:12
least you would have at least two two dozen in the UK, uh maybe a dozen in
00:27:18
France, and you know, you would have a whole host, a constellation of them in the
00:27:25
United States be simply because we span five time zones. I believe the UK only
00:27:30
spans one. I think I asked this in part because I was I was reading something that said much of the the um illegal
00:27:38
immigrants that had come across the southern border of the United States, many of them were were Chinese. And
00:27:43
there was an article about questioning whether that was potentially an an intentional act to get illegal Chinese
00:27:52
um people into the United States for some future purpose. Yeah. You know, big
00:27:58
claims require big evidence, and I haven't seen that. In my experience, the
00:28:04
Chinese Intelligence Service uh prefers to use students and scientists. We have
00:28:09
approximately 80,000 Chinese students here at any one time. Um I know that for
00:28:16
instance in the early 80s and early
00:28:21
90s, they would be given allowances. It always impressed me that they were given
00:28:27
small allowances for meals but large allowances for uh photocopying in the
00:28:33
library. U we call that a clue in the FBI. So they'd be given like $150 for
00:28:41
for eating, but they would be given thousands of dollars so that they could copy as much as they could from uh from
00:28:48
the libraries. It is much easier for them for any nation to send people here students and
00:28:56
for instance go into engineering or uh any of those things. On this um
00:29:03
subject of body language, it's it's highly contested because some people say body language
00:29:10
does give us clues, some people say it doesn't give us clues because there's cultural differences. Is body language important?
00:29:18
Well, let me address what you just asked. Well, number one, body language is is is supremely important because we
00:29:25
we are born without the capacity to talk and so we have to read the baby in front
00:29:34
of us. to argue that body language a doesn't matter or it's subject to
00:29:41
interpretation. I would argue that uh that would be a
00:29:47
minuscule sentiment around the world amongst people who really have studied
00:29:52
this and I'll and I'll say why. So a baby is born without the capacity to to
00:29:58
speak. But the mother quickly learns through nonverbals whether that child is
00:30:05
calicky, whether or not that child needs just to be reassured,
00:30:12
uh whether they're cold or hot and so forth. There's a lot of junk out there.
00:30:19
And um that is probably the cleanest word that I can use about uh body
00:30:24
language that this means that or whatever. But we're exquisitely prepared
00:30:30
to communicate at any time whether or not we're comfortable or
00:30:36
uncomfortable, whether we're confident or uh not understanding. We had to
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evolve that precisely because we were always surrounded uh by predators. For
00:30:48
instance, Stephen, when you have doubts or you want followup to questions that I
00:30:54
ask, you use your eyes exquisitly. You furrow your gloella, one eye rises, the
00:31:00
other one lowers it. You're an easy read. And so I follow it up with information. Now, you didn't have to
00:31:06
teach me that. Now, what I would argue is, am I seeing uh constraint? Am I
00:31:13
seeing um contempt or disdain? Well, that's a silly argument. We didn't
00:31:19
evolve to have perfect answers. Evolution is about
00:31:25
approximation for success. In other words, if I can be
00:31:31
accurate, 75 to 80% of the time, that's actually good enough. It's good enough. And so, you
00:31:40
know what I teach is, do you see comfort or discomfort? psychological, physical
00:31:45
and so forth. Do I see as in psychology we say um is it positively veanced or
00:31:52
negatively balanced? Balanced. You see deferrowing your globella. What what does a veilance
00:31:59
mean? Veilance really means is balanced or how much electricity goes this way or
00:32:05
this way. Is it what's the veilance of it? So positively veance. What does that mean? positively veence. You're going to
00:32:12
see gravitydefying behaviors. You're going to see emphasis. You're going to see uh a lot of humor and elacrity and
00:32:22
broad gesture so forth. If it's negatively balanced, it's, you know,
00:32:27
restraint. You're going to see the uh the furrowing of the gloella. You're going to see the tightening dim the
00:32:35
diminition of the the lips. You're going to see a lot of facial touching. I don't know right all all these uh
00:32:43
pacifiers and so I would argue that stop looking for uh perfection in fact Dr.
00:32:51
Ambati at Harvard unfortunately she passed away she found that we as humans are
00:33:00
going to be accurate 75% of the time in our assessment of each other.
00:33:08
That's an extraordinary number. Her research is is ample. You can look up
00:33:13
her research. It's it's uh it was all done on the the opaces of looking for
00:33:18
what she called thin slice assessments. Thin slice assessments. All
00:33:25
of your viewers should know because th it it it showed us that from as little
00:33:31
as three milliseconds, we actually get a pretty good assessment of each other. And we're
00:33:39
right 75% of the time with three milliseconds. Yes. So they did several experiments.
00:33:45
They had people go in and watch a teacher, for instance, by just opening
00:33:52
the door to the classroom, watching her for a few seconds and closing the door. They rated that teacher the same as
00:34:00
people who had sat in that classroom all semester long in terms of
00:34:07
are they a nice teacher? Are they a warm teacher? Are they an an empathetic
00:34:12
teacher? Are they a competent teacher? and so forth. It's as you rub your face
00:34:18
because there's a lot of incredility there, you have to appreciate this
00:34:24
experiment was done over and over and over in many areas. I was thinking as
00:34:30
you said it, I was thinking hell. Like I was thinking um if someone reads you that quickly, I was thinking
00:34:37
about how easy it is to leave a bad first impression. Yeah. Well, you know,
00:34:42
when I started in studying body language, which was formally in
00:34:49
1971, had no appreciation for uh for school work. So, I created my own uh
00:34:56
study program. So, when I started taking a look at at body language in
00:35:02
1971, I remember people saying, you know, the first 20 minutes are the most
00:35:08
important for making an impression. Then years later was 15 minutes. By the
00:35:14
1980s, somebody had said, "Well, it's the first four minutes." Well, time
00:35:21
out. That's ancient information. We now know that that assessment is made in the
00:35:28
first three milliseconds. That's faster than your blink rate. And you can begin
00:35:35
to do things uh poorly and badly and begin to negatively affect
00:35:43
others in that amount of of time because the subconscious is assessing others uh
00:35:49
more quickly. And by the way, I didn't mention this. We are even before we're
00:35:55
born, we are assessing the world around us to the point that for survival
00:36:02
purposes, a baby in udo begins to assess the world around by the amount of noises
00:36:11
and by the cadence and manner of speech of the mother. So that when that baby is
00:36:18
born and you can look up the research, the baby will be born
00:36:26
uh mirroring the native tongue. So that as researchers found a baby with a
00:36:33
German mother will cry differently. The lilt l i lt t the lilt of that baby will
00:36:40
be different than a French baby. What does that tell us? that we are already
00:36:47
programmed to adapt to that which dominates so that we can
00:36:54
fit better. And this goes right from from that to business because synchrony
00:37:00
is harmony. The the the faster we can synchronize, the faster we can
00:37:07
harmonize. And so we are pre-programmed. So if your viewers are interested in that, they they can look at the uh the
00:37:14
research that's been done on the uh lilt of crying babies. How does one
00:37:20
synchronize? So if synchrony equals harmony, yeah, i.e. if we synchronize with each other,
00:37:27
then we're going to be harmonious in business or in life or whatever, right? How do I synchronize with somebody when
00:37:32
I meet them? The first thing is at a distance. Um, if I saw you walking down
00:37:38
the hallway and and you say, "Hey, Joe." You know, and I say, "Steve, how are you?"
00:37:43
Right? I'm mirroring you. You know, this goes back to the work of Carl Rogers in
00:37:49
the early 1960s. And he found that synchrony puts us in sort of locks us in
00:37:58
into this binding, psychological binding of where you greet with your hand and
00:38:04
arch your eyebrows. Hey, well that sends powerful messages. So if I do it, can
00:38:09
you imagine if you greeted me like this? And I went, "Yeah, how you doing?" Yeah.
00:38:14
It's like we're totally out of out of harmony. We're totally out of synchrony. So um we begin with uh with the
00:38:23
non-verbals. We begin, for instance, with the clothing. you know, if you go to a meeting, you know, we would
00:38:30
probably dress the same way or approximate e each other. Um, we would
00:38:36
probably have this, look at us right now with our hand gestures. We're literally mirroring each other's hand gestures to
00:38:43
to the point where our thumbs are precisely uh the same way. Why? Because we're comfortable with each other. We
00:38:50
would lean in if we are um in in in good synchrony. our speech pattern uh would
00:38:58
would synchronize and um and to the point where you can actually work with
00:39:04
individuals to calm them down or to see things your way or to appreciate let's
00:39:10
say in negotiations to begin to be more receptive. People are more receptive if
00:39:18
they can mirror your uh behaviors. So people are more receptive if they can
00:39:24
mirror your behaviors. So if I let you mirror my behavior, then you're going to
00:39:30
be more receptive to what I have to say. Is that what you're saying? In general, we cannot be mimicking each
00:39:37
other like it's a game. It becomes ridiculous. But there's no way we can
00:39:44
negotiate if you're screaming and I'm stoic. Yeah. it it just it doesn't
00:39:51
happen. For instance, you and I probably are doing a pretty good job of
00:39:56
just mirroring each other in the in the in the conversation. We are likely more
00:40:02
likely to be successful, have more facetime, and achieve more. If we can
00:40:08
talk to each other this way, then if all of a sudden I decide to sit
00:40:14
sideways, kick my feet up and lean on my and my and my elbow, that gesture alone,
00:40:22
even though it's a comfort display, doesn't put us in synchrony. And
00:40:27
everything that I have ever found was even when I was talking to terrorists,
00:40:34
even when talking to terrorists who absolutely hated me, hated a lot of other
00:40:40
things, if I could just get them grounded to the point where we are
00:40:46
talking basically the same way and using the same words. If if they say my
00:40:55
family, don't say wife and kids. Use family. Don't use terms of
00:41:01
art. You know, if they say, "Well, what's the price?" Don't come back and say, "Well, the the the the uh the the
00:41:07
points on this are that that's not what they asked." That's a great way to demonstrate that you're not um that
00:41:14
you're not uh listening. And and the other thing I I always emphasize is that
00:41:21
for years people said well try to reduce everything that's emotional
00:41:27
uh so that it doesn't interfere. That's not how we evolved.
00:41:32
That is absolutely not how we evolved. We evolved to deal with emotions because
00:41:38
emotions keep us alive. When our amygdala uh senses a threat, it is there
00:41:46
to uh deal with that. And anything negative rises to
00:41:52
prominence. That's one of the first things I teach. If if it's really negative, it's it rises to prominence.
00:41:59
We assess for it first. We deal with that first. And often in business, what
00:42:04
we see is, you know, somebody had a hard time uh finding your location. They had
00:42:10
a hard time parking. Then they had to go to your receptionist who was on the
00:42:15
phone and took about 7 minutes to even say good morning. And when they did,
00:42:21
they did it with no elacrity. Then they have to go through security. Then they have to take the elevator that's crowded
00:42:29
and then finally get to your office. And you want them to jump right into the
00:42:35
meeting without all that ne negativity that has been
00:42:41
acred. That's not how humans evolved. That is absolutely not how our species
00:42:47
evolved. Our species evolved to deconlict that to diminish that by first
00:42:56
dealing with that. That's where storytelling in part came from where we came and said you know I chased it I was
00:43:03
able to he attacked me then I attacked back and you know and then we we go through that whole storytelling which
00:43:10
has mythical proportions and mythical aspects as archetypes and if you
00:43:16
subscribe to Yungian psychology one of the arguments that I
00:43:21
always use is this. How many of you have been in an argument and then 30 minutes
00:43:27
later you remember all the clever lines you should have said? We all have. And
00:43:33
that's because the emotional brain hijacks neural activity. If you want the best out of
00:43:40
people, if you want the best out of a relationship, vent that. Get that
00:43:45
out. Give it time. Okay? And yes, you're going to have to invest that time. and
00:43:51
then move forward so that you can uh uh deal with the the the the transactional
00:43:58
the business and uh and so forth. You um you've referenced a few times different types of body language that
00:44:05
I've exhibited that help you understand what I'm thinking and going through. Um I think a second ago you referenced
00:44:11
glabula and this brings me to something I read in your work about eyebrow knitting. Yeah. What is eyebrow
00:44:17
knitting? So this little area uh between your eyes is called the gloella. And the gloella
00:44:25
is great because at at about well we I've seen it in babies as early as 3 or
00:44:33
4 days. But uh very early on we begin to furrow. In other words, we push this
00:44:40
together when we have doubts or we don't like something or we don't understand
00:44:46
something. So we we furrow the gloella. Uh some people call it uh eyebrow
00:44:51
knitting because we are uh we have nicer eyebrows nowadays, not bushy like the
00:44:56
old days. They don't come together like they used to. Um so we uh a lot of those
00:45:05
expressions of I don't understand we we use with the squinted eyes
00:45:12
um the the furrowed gloella. You know sometimes we'll we'll touch our face or
00:45:17
or scratch our face babies at 47 seconds
00:45:23
which I have directly observed uh if you shine a light at a newborn baby it will
00:45:30
furrow the chin that they don't like it and uh in my presentations I have a m a
00:45:38
matching one of a 47y old man and a 47 second old baby both doing the same
00:45:44
thing when they hear things they don't they don't like. So we we begin to
00:45:50
communicate quite a lot uh actually with with our faces. What about eyelid touching?
00:45:56
Yeah. So for a long time including in some of my writing um the theory was a
00:46:03
lot of people cover their eyes, touch their eyes when they hear bad news. If you said, "Hey Joe, can you help me move
00:46:10
this weekend?" Oh geez, Steve. uh right you you see a lot of that and I started
00:46:17
to think about that uh uh about five or six years ago and so I took some classes
00:46:24
in anatomy human anatomy and I'm I'm pretty much convinced now that a lot of
00:46:32
the facial touching including the you know touching of the eyes and so forth
00:46:37
has to do with the intervation of the fifth cranial nerve and the seventh
00:46:42
cranial nerve. Now, some of your viewers may find this interesting. That nerve
00:46:48
which goes to our forehead and actually goes into our eyelids and so forth. And
00:46:54
the seventh which is the facial is very short in distance to that
00:46:59
part of the brain where it is received. And so I think and you know I've
00:47:05
postulated I wrote for psychology today that a lot of the reasons why we touch our face and why we uh touch our eyes oh
00:47:14
no uh is because that pressure uh immediately goes to uh the brain and
00:47:23
helps to relieve stress and because the nerve is so short right we could massage our feet and achieve the same but it's
00:47:29
very far away. So I think a lot of facial touching including eye touching we do because of uh of its ability to
00:47:38
anytime there's stress we pacify ourselves and and by the way it's very interesting in
00:47:45
1974 I was uh bored at the university so there was a lab where you could actually
00:47:50
watch children and study them at play and they had some children there that were born blind so they had never seen
00:47:57
and I was just blown away the first time I I saw a blind child who had never seen
00:48:04
heard some news that was not very good and immediately covered their eyes
00:48:09
having never seen. And that's when I realized okay we are 2.4 million years
00:48:16
old. This is uh hardwired in our DNA. This is part of our paleo circuits as
00:48:22
Dr. David Given later taught me and it has to do with how it feels and that's
00:48:27
why we touch our faces so much. So, it's typically a negative emotion and a form of self soothing for that negative
00:48:34
emotion. I think that's a good synopsis. But also keep in mind how often we touch our faces when we're having a nice time.
00:48:41
Like when I'm reading, I find myself turning pages. Uh because I read very
00:48:46
fast. I turn with my left hand, but I pacify or soothe myself by touching my
00:48:51
my, you know, it's a pens of uh pose. Women will play with their hair all day
00:48:58
long. our brain is asking us to do things to contribute uh to that. But
00:49:05
when there's something stressful then for instance we go from like in negotiations when somebody throws a
00:49:11
number we don't like we'll go from touching our face to scratching our face because the brain is saying hey do
00:49:18
something more powerful that will keep me in what we call homeost uh stasis.
00:49:25
So, um, to answer your question, yes, but it also applies to when we're really enjoying a moment. What about our lips?
00:49:32
You talked a second ago about like pursed lips and stuff. What kind of clues does do the lips give away? Yeah. So, for me, the lips are the
00:49:40
um the seismograph. The the lips are like the emotional seismograph of the
00:49:46
body. When we are comfortable and confident, our lips
00:49:52
are full of blood. their color changes. The minute we hear something we don't
00:49:57
like, blood actually begins to leave the lips and they become narrower and then
00:50:03
we begin to tighten them. You know, if somebody says something I don't like, I might
00:50:08
go right or we begin to bite the lip
00:50:13
because we're stressed or we pluck it, pull on it, do all all sorts of of
00:50:20
things to to soothe it. But the lips get very uh show a a lot of nervous emotion
00:50:27
when we're under stress. So they're they're very much re as is the jaw. Like for instance, if you said something I
00:50:34
might not agree with my I probably shift my jaw because when you shift your jaw,
00:50:41
it puts pressure on the TMJ and that alone says to the brain go somewhere
00:50:47
else. Don't don't uh you know don't struggle too much with that. So um we're
00:50:53
always doing something physical to counter anything that the brain might be undergoing.
00:51:00
Tell me about the supernal notch. What the hell? So the supernal notch um it
00:51:06
has other names. You could call it the little neck dimple. Uh this little area
00:51:12
right at the bottom of your your throat. It's a a deep uh
00:51:17
indentation. This is the most vulnerable part of the human body. All air, food,
00:51:24
nutrients, blood, electricity, oxygen, everything goes through there. And what happens is, and
00:51:32
one of the things that I found was that there was nothing in the literature in 197576. I'm looking and I'm noticing
00:51:40
that when people are nervous, they immediately cover their neck. They touch their neck. You know, in the literature
00:51:47
you hear about, oh, she um, you know, clutched her pearls, right? Um, rubbing
00:51:54
that men tend to do it more robustly because of testosterone. Women tend to
00:51:59
more directly touch the superernal notch. And what I found is when there's
00:52:05
a lack of confidence, insecurities, fear, apprehensions, or concerns that people will go, "Oh my god, did you see
00:52:13
that?" Right? Oh, it's gone. It's back. And you know, why is it all directed at
00:52:20
this little area of the neck? And why do men clutch their necks and massage their
00:52:25
necks when they're It's the worst thing you can do in negotiations, by the way, is touch your neck. Because what you're
00:52:32
transmitting is weakness. Somebody whose confidence just never touches the neck.
00:52:38
You just don't you don't go anywhere near the neck and you don't ventilate because you're what you're saying is
00:52:44
you're you're getting to me. Ventilating behaviors. Wait, sorry. When you say ventilate, you mean giving yourself air?
00:52:51
Yeah. So it could be so to ventilating behaviors, okay, are behaviors of
00:52:56
weakness because your body temperature has changed at 1 250th of a second and
00:53:02
what you're revealing is something negative is getting to you. So you you you don't do that. But here's the
00:53:08
behavior, the neck touching, neck covering covering of the supernal notch. And there's another behavior. You know
00:53:15
earlier we talked about we were surrounded by predators and one of the behaviors we did was to cover our mouths
00:53:22
or hold still when we hear a noise. The third behavior is to cover the neck. To
00:53:29
cover the neck because large felines always go for the neck. And so the the
00:53:37
brain didn't doesn't have a closet full of ties. It has about four
00:53:44
choices. And those four behaviors are exquisite. It's proven over time that if
00:53:52
we cover our mouth, cover the neck, don't move, they work pretty well. So, we
00:53:58
don't have to choose a lot of colors. And the other thing sometimes you'll see people do is when um you see this here
00:54:06
in Florida and we certainly saw it in November after the hurricane, people come to see their house and they cover
00:54:12
their their head. Hands are up here. Oh my god. You know why? Why? Why do we do
00:54:18
that? Again, large felines. These are shortcuts. This is huristics that have
00:54:25
prevailed and say, "Oh no, right. And you and and you say, 'Well, we're no
00:54:32
longer surrounded by them. Well, go to India. There were 238 attacks last
00:54:39
year. It is in our DNA. It is performed out of necessity to uh to to keep us
00:54:46
alive. So, we have these um these reactions. But um so, I look at the I
00:54:51
certainly I look at the uh at the lips and the and the neck as uh as good
00:54:57
places for information. I was just thinking then about why yeah you hold your head but you also hold your head
00:55:02
when you see something that's fallen over. So if like you seen like a building falling down in an earthquake you immediately the other day it was an
00:55:10
old car and it was and was parked at an angle on a road that was at an angle and
00:55:15
they forgot to set the the brake and I'm watching it slowly slide.
00:55:21
And I found myself I teach this stuff with my hands up here and uh
00:55:27
unfortunately it was across the street and I couldn't get to it uh fast enough and it didn't do any damage. But but you
00:55:33
realize these uh these shortcuts uh are with us for a purpose. Much of the work
00:55:40
you do as an FBI agent is some form of negotiation and you spend a lot of time teaching people how to be good
00:55:46
negotiators as well. You mentioned negotiation a second ago. I'm a business person. I do lots of
00:55:52
negotiations, whether it's with clients or suppliers or interviews. You know, I'm interviewing people all the time,
00:55:57
which I consider to be a negotiation. How do I improve my negotiation skills? What are the things I should be thinking
00:56:03
about as I go into the negotiation? Well, uh, you know, they warn me. You ask profound questions.
00:56:10
Um, and you're right in in the FBI. I mean, when you're trying to convince someone to tell us the truth and put
00:56:19
themselves in jeopardy, that is nothing but negotiations. you may look at as
00:56:25
interviewing but like you said even a conversation you know I look at
00:56:31
negotiations in the same way that I look at interviewing it's in in in the simplest
00:56:38
form it's effective communication with a
00:56:44
purpose. So you say well that's highly simplistic. I've never heard that. Well think of it. Well what is the purpose?
00:56:51
Okay. Well, we'll get to that in a minute. Either you have something I need or want or that, but there has to be
00:56:59
communication and there has to be an understanding of of what I mean and what
00:57:05
I uh intend and and so forth. So, for me, it's a reminder when I first came
00:57:11
into the FBI, an old-timer said to me, "Intering
00:57:16
isn't about the confession." And I looked at him like, "What? What do you
00:57:22
excuse me? What do you mean not about the confession? He says you'll get the confession. Interviewing is about
00:57:31
facetime. If you can get people to talk to you for two hours, three hours, four
00:57:36
hours, in one case, I I interviewed an individual for for 12 hours. We, you
00:57:44
know, they'll tell you everything you need to know, but you got to keep them in the room. And so I always view
00:57:50
negotiations of number one is how do I communicate with you in a way that
00:57:57
you'll want to talk to me for however long it takes to get to
00:58:02
that purpose which is the transaction. Now,
00:58:08
you know, if if I'm evaluating you to for your services or if I'm negotiating
00:58:14
for for for prices, you know, I want to hear what you have to say and I want to
00:58:20
lay out what um I'm interested in achieving and then reconciling or
00:58:27
working around whatever discrepancies or issues they there may
00:58:34
be. I think when we look at negotiations that way, we can say, well, that means I
00:58:42
got to do a lot of stuff up front, which is who am I communicating with? Who am I
00:58:48
going to negotiate with? What's their negotiating style? Are they stoic? Do they come in? Are they do they throw
00:58:54
things down? I mean, I've I've been I've been in negotiations where opposing counsel came in and literally walked
00:59:01
into the room, didn't even say good morning, just threw the things down and said, "I want to hear the
00:59:08
numbers." Okay, then how do we begin to deal with that? Because someone that
00:59:16
comes in and is aggressive and so forth, you've got to deal with. What do you do? Do you rise to their aggression or do
00:59:22
you try and bring them down to your position? Great question that the worst thing you can do is rise rise to that.
00:59:29
You begin to dominate them by taking control of
00:59:35
time. Whoever controls time controls. And so they come in, they
00:59:43
throw the things down. So usually, you know, we'll start with Well, good
00:59:49
morning to you, too. Uh yeah. Yeah. Let's let's let's cut to the
00:59:57
chase. And then the whole team I'm working with knows we're going to slow things down. We are not going to be
01:00:04
working at that pace because if you work at that pace, they're taking control.
01:00:10
And so we slow things down. And there's several strategies.
01:00:15
you can become all of a sudden you can become very visual and say all right
01:00:21
we're going to you know write this down and we're going to put this here we're going to put you know and then this is
01:00:28
this is the difference of you know there's a lot of strategies but the first thing is you we've got to get that
01:00:35
person to understand that we negotiate hopefully as
01:00:42
equals but if the perception is always that that person is negotiating as the
01:00:50
bully or is always in charge, you're never going to have uh equity. Now, I've
01:00:57
had a lot of clients that that have said, "Hey, you know, I've tried all your strategies and you know, this this
01:01:04
guy I'm dealing with is is just he's crass. He's just a bully. he comes in
01:01:09
and he stuff like and I and so one of the questions I always ask is is he the
01:01:14
only source? Is is he or she the only source? Number one. And number two is
01:01:21
how long are you willing to tolerate this person? Because we failed
01:01:27
to to look at that. He gives you headaches. You don't sleep well every time you go to this. I'm thinking of one
01:01:32
client in particular. You come away with a nervous stomach. He and you know how
01:01:39
long are you willing to tolerate that? If you're willing to tolerate it, then you know he's not going to change his
01:01:45
style. Then you come in and we we change our exposure. So we're not going to
01:01:52
expose all of our staff to that kind of negativity. Uh we send in our first
01:01:57
person and say, "Look, here are the numbers." And we work with that. But there are ways to to to to dealing with
01:02:04
the with the very toxic. uh but we don't allow them to get away
01:02:09
with everything nor think that uh they're in charge and we do it in in in subtle ways and we uh sort of derail
01:02:17
their agenda. Maybe their agenda based on past meetings was to come in and just
01:02:24
throw these things at us uh very quickly. Then we have to adjust uh to
01:02:30
that. So there has to be rehearsed strategies for for dealing with that.
01:02:35
One of the things your work made me think about is how important it is to literally like write down the goal of my
01:02:43
negotiation before I go into the negotiation. Or else you might get swept up in the emotion of it and the the sort of heat of the m the moment. Yeah. You
01:02:50
you wouldn't be the first one to find yourself in a meeting negotiating and all of a sudden you're you know it's
01:02:57
like what are what are we actually negotiating for? And um and so that's why I like the the
01:03:05
simplicity of um effective communication with a purpose as a form of uh
01:03:11
negotiations but to also understand what is my role. What is my role and what is
01:03:18
my purpose in being there? Because many times we go into negotiations and the chief financial officer is there. Ding.
01:03:26
Uh sometimes we go in there and you know your first assistant is always uh there
01:03:32
also but you also have uh in office counsel that is in attendance. What's
01:03:37
their role? And what is my role? You know something so simple as what are you
01:03:43
going to do? Look straight ahead the whole time um your c you know your
01:03:48
attorney is speaking or are you going to look at him? Well, we know from the research that by looking at uh the
01:03:56
person who's actually talking on your side actually potentiates the gravity of
01:04:02
what he's saying that uh at the most emphatic points that when that attorney
01:04:08
makes um and you did this earlier, you want to steeple because steeple is the
01:04:14
most powerful gesture that we have to convey confidence. steepling is in this
01:04:19
sort of hand is this is is this former German chancellor Angela Merkel did this a lot. You see uh Musk do this a lot.
01:04:27
You see uh Steve Jobs used to a lot of pictures of Steve Jobs doing that. But
01:04:32
you know you reserve that for that point in time when you want to
01:04:38
emphasize and so the worst thing you can do is just to sit there uh dormant. And
01:04:44
in fact, we have research and it's called the stillface experiments. And
01:04:49
that is that the worst thing you can do is sit at a meeting and hold a still
01:04:54
face. You're perceived as a threat. You are perceived as less trustworthy.
01:05:01
You're perceived as insignificant. Corner of your mouths are down. I roll to the to the right,
01:05:07
Stephen. That's how you're perceived. And that's and that's what
01:05:12
happens. uh the experiments which were done first with babies found that if you
01:05:18
take a baby and it's called the stillface experiments. If you take a baby and uh you look away and look back
01:05:25
and uh and smile the baby's content. You can do that several times but on the last one you turn around and you hold
01:05:31
very still. The babies become incontrollable. They they they
01:05:38
have fits. They're really troubled by that. So the experimenters said, "Well, yeah, but at what age does that uh leave
01:05:45
us?" So they decided to do it with adults. Adults do the same thing. If you
01:05:52
and I are talking and we're exchanging faces, the worst thing I can do is then sit there.
01:05:59
It is. You see, you you find it disconcerting. Yeah. and what the brain perceives is a
01:06:05
threat and you lose trustworthiness because you can't read what this person's thinking either way. I'd rather
01:06:12
you be up unhappy then at least I can put that in a box. Well, that's one way to to look at it. I'm not sure that
01:06:18
anybody knows the the precise reason for it. But what we do understand is that
01:06:25
the still face which if you're in a virtual call you want to nod you want to
01:06:30
tilt your head you want to make uh different gestures but the the worst thing you can do is hold still and then
01:06:37
in negotiations when you're talking to the team and saying look when we're going in there you know I don't want
01:06:43
anybody to just sit there I want expressions uh and I and when someone is
01:06:48
speaking you know you're looking at them uh in the same way that the other side would do. But you have to plan. Now, the
01:06:56
other thing I find with negotiators, uh, one thing I did in the FBI is I
01:07:01
always planned my interviews in exquisite detail. Who would enter the
01:07:07
room first, who would say what, where I would sit, who gets offered water, and
01:07:13
when, because I need to be in control. Who's going to say what?
01:07:21
These are things people don't think about. But at the levels with the people that I deal with, you have to have a
01:07:28
certain amount of advantage. You have to have a certain amount of psychological leverage to say,
01:07:36
"Look, you may be the world's largest manufacturer of this, and I'm just
01:07:41
starting out, but I am not down here."
01:07:48
And so I would appreciate if you would begin to value me and I do that by doing
01:07:55
certain things in the manner that I walk in. Who walks in first? Where do I
01:08:01
sit? What gestures do I use to point? Right? So you never use your finger. You
01:08:07
always use the full hand in the vertical position. You take command of the
01:08:14
situation and it looks aesthetically pleasing. Oh, isn't it nice? He's
01:08:19
offering me something to drink. Or the assistant or someone says, "Uh, what
01:08:25
would you would you like some tea? How would you like it?" And so forth. And what we're actually witnessing is the
01:08:32
transformation of I you have now become the dominant person by
01:08:40
becoming the archetypal the father or mother figure because you're offering
01:08:45
something because you're offering it and you're in control of of of the food and and the brain. You know, people often
01:08:52
wondered, well, why, you know, why was it in Stockholm uh Sweden back in the 70s that the Stockholm syndrome took
01:08:59
hold so fast with those bank robbers where they had such an effect on their
01:09:04
victims that within hours the the the victims were defending the the bank
01:09:11
robbers. It was very simple. They became the father figure and the hostages
01:09:17
became the children. So, I actually don't know that story. What happened was there was a bank robbery and in
01:09:24
Stockholm and uh the bank robbers went in held the the the victims hostage.
01:09:31
Eventually uh they were rescued but what they found was that in in a matter of
01:09:36
hours the victims were rising to the defense of the criminals and it became
01:09:44
known as the Stockholm syndrome. And what it showed us was the robbers became
01:09:51
the archetype of the parent and the hostages became the children and in an
01:09:57
instant they became uh sub subservient. Is that what happens in domestic abuse
01:10:03
cases as well? Yes, you nailed it. You nailed it beautifully. Yeah, you're the
01:10:09
the first person to get that right away. And and that's why you often see this in
01:10:15
domestic abuse cases and you say, "How can she just got beat up? How can she
01:10:20
defend him, usually the the case, and you realize, oh my god, we have a like a
01:10:27
Stockholm syndrome where he's the provider, he's the only one working or this or that." But, you know, getting
01:10:33
back to negotiations, I think it's it's one of those things that I insist that
01:10:40
if you go into negotiations that you be treated at least as an equal and that
01:10:45
the minute people start to look down on you, it makes for a very difficult uh
01:10:52
conversation. So, when you're thinking about walking into the room and all these where you sit, if you're walking
01:10:58
into the room to interview a terrorist, right, are you trying to walk into the room first or are you trying to walk
01:11:04
into the room last? Do you send your team in to walk in first, then you show up last? And where what are you thinking
01:11:10
about seating positions? Right. So, one of the things that I always insisted is
01:11:16
I would walk into the room first. So, they would already be in there. No,
01:11:22
no, no. I we would we would walk to the room with them with them and then I
01:11:27
would just make them wait there a minute. I'd open it. I'd take a look and I'd say just want to make sure the room
01:11:32
is safe and there's nobody in here. You know, I've walked into people before. That begins to establish my
01:11:40
dominance. And then I would say, um, why don't you take a a seat uh right there?
01:11:48
You know, people ask me, "Well, why, you know, why are you being so nice to these
01:11:53
uh the these criminals?" Well, first of all, I go back to what that old-timer
01:11:59
said. I want facetime. I don't care what it takes to get facetime, but I also
01:12:04
want to be in charge. And if by being nice to him and pointing to the nice
01:12:10
chair there achieves that, then uh so much for me. And then I
01:12:17
always try to sit in in a in a way that uh I sit higher. Now, in the case of
01:12:23
Ramsay, we'd literally get the room ahead of time and we would change the the the furniture so that I always set
01:12:30
an about an inch to two inches higher than he did. He never noticed that. Ramsey was the the guy whose cigarette
01:12:38
was quivering was quivering. In the end, we ended up doing uh 37 interviews and
01:12:44
they were all done in hotel rooms mostly in the Orlando area and we would go in
01:12:50
ahead of time and uh we would just uh arrange the furniture or bring in
01:12:56
furniture, but I always sat higher than him. He never understood that. He always sat on the couch, which um somehow uh
01:13:05
about an about that much was shaved from the couch. so that it always set um a
01:13:11
little lower. And so um he was always literally slightly looking up to us and
01:13:19
then we controlled when we would take breaks and I I you know and I was always attentive and I would say you know would
01:13:26
you like something to drink now? I said, "Well, this is such a good subject. Why
01:13:31
don't we take the break now and you you have the drink now and then we'll so we
01:13:38
can uh continue." What he didn't realize was that um I was establishing uh
01:13:45
control over him by sort of dictating. Uh it it's it it would be no, you know,
01:13:52
I'm sure your listeners might be saying, "Boy, that's manipulative." Yeah, but in in the transactional phase, it's no
01:13:59
different than you you saying to your crew, I need to take a break right now and go to the restroom. Okay, take a
01:14:06
break. I don't I don't think that much of it. But over time, what happens is he
01:14:12
begins to relinquish a lot of that forcefulness that he'd love to exhibit.
01:14:19
He'd love to be in charge, but I'm not permitting it. And sometimes he he he
01:14:26
would say, "Well, I could use a smoke break right now." And I'd say, "Hang on a second because what you just said was
01:14:33
really interesting." And my partner, Mrs. Terry Moody, I I loved her. She was
01:14:39
a great partner. She'd looked at me like, "Really? You're going to push it that much further?"
01:14:44
But it worked uh to the point where um I mean here's a guy who had his attorney's
01:14:51
phone number on him at all times and he never used that. You mentioned the height of the chairs.
01:14:58
What what does height matter in this context? Because I was thinking as well about Zoom and the interesting thing
01:15:04
about now about Zoom and we were talking about this before we started recording and the fact that most of our conversations are happen happening
01:15:09
digitally now is we don't often think about height and I I'm sometimes on a
01:15:15
call uh with one of my colleagues or partners and I'll often ask them before
01:15:20
the client or whoever we're doing business with joins the call to adjust the height because they are like they're
01:15:26
like looking down into the lens or they're looking up into the lens which I think is also Suboptimal. Good term,
01:15:32
suboptimum. There's a lot to be said about height. Just as there is a beauty
01:15:38
dividend, right? So, the beauty dividend, and you can look this up, the beauty dividend, well researched,
01:15:45
basically says you're going to earn 8% per year the rest of your life just if you
01:15:54
are good-looking. That's the beauty dividend. You can go online and look at all the studies and the statistics that
01:16:00
go with it. There's also a height dividend and it is universal.
01:16:06
If you look at Americans that are 6'2 inches, so a little taller than me,
01:16:11
accounts for about 3% of the population, unless you go to the Fortune
01:16:19
500 companies and then they account for 39% of all CEOs at
01:16:28
62. Whoa. That my friend is an order
01:16:34
of increase. And you say, are taller people
01:16:39
smarter? Uh, no. No. It has to do with the benefit of
01:16:45
of being tall. There is a dividend. And so we
01:16:51
tend to see that across the world. The word dividend, for anyone that doesn't
01:16:57
know, basically means a like a benefit or a reward. One could think of it as an advantage. You you have an advantage. So
01:17:04
with Ramsay, what was the the dividend by you making your chair just an inch taller? What were you doing, Tim? You're
01:17:09
taking away his power a little bit, making you more powerful. I had to because he had all the cards. He was the
01:17:17
spy. He had all the evidence in his head or in his
01:17:22
possession or the Russians had it. The Russians weren't going to give it to us. They're the enemy. They said, "Too bad,
01:17:29
mates. We've got all your secrets." They had so many secrets that they measured it in weight, not just in pages. The
01:17:35
other problem I was dealing with was is his IQ. He had the second highest IQ in the
01:17:44
that the army ever recorded since World War II. He could talk on any subject,
01:17:50
quantum physics to whatever. when you have a superior
01:17:55
intellect in his case which was true or you're dealing with someone let's say
01:18:01
who is malignant narcissist so they account for about 2% of the population
01:18:07
but about 20% of CEOs so your m your malignant narcissist
01:18:13
who overvalues themselves and tends to devalue others
01:18:19
and in my case with him he had narcissist istic traits which I could I could deal with but his superior
01:18:27
intellect was breathtaking and he had perfect recall. Uh so in a way it was
01:18:34
frightening because all he had to do was transport himself to another country and
01:18:39
he could sell all the secrets that he had memorized. So I had to play a a
01:18:45
certain role, but I also couldn't let him take charge of the investigation and
01:18:50
not one that had put England, Germany, all of Western Europe in
01:18:57
jeopardy as well as Canada and the United States. I could not afford, the
01:19:03
United States government couldn't afford to have him uh be flippant with the
01:19:09
knowledge that um that he knew, especially once we knew that he had compromised the nuclear go- codes. Do
01:19:16
you mind if I pause this conversation for a moment? I want to talk about our show sponsor today, which is Shopify.
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shopify.com/bartlet. What about posture? Because that's kind of one way to make yourself taller.
01:20:16
Yeah. Um, are there any clues in someone's posture? And how important is sort of playing with our posture to
01:20:22
create a different impression? Yeah, absolutely. Not just not just posture
01:20:27
but uh territory. So I look at posture as you know when we when we look
01:20:35
confident shoulders back our breathing to me posture starts with the brain how
01:20:41
calm we are in our breathing. I was again in Valencia at this uh this event
01:20:47
and and uh a lady came up to me and she says, "You're getting ready to go on the stage. H how can you not be nervous?"
01:20:54
And I said, "Well, I am nervous. I'm just hiding it. I'm acting like uh I'm
01:21:00
I'm in control." But I've I've learned to do that because you don't want to look like a nervous FBI agent. Trust me,
01:21:08
you want to look cool, calm, and collected in negotiations.
01:21:13
um you don't want to uh look uh needy. You don't want to
01:21:18
look desperate. Um and at the same time, you don't want to come across
01:21:27
as you're indifferent. And sometimes that demeanor, that posture,
01:21:33
those gestures, the the totality of it has a lot of meaning. Now, you have to keep in mind a lot of successful
01:21:40
businessmen I'm running into are actually on the spectrum, right? So, the autism spectrum and so they don't make
01:21:47
as much eye contact. They may have behaviors that are irregular. I have one I deal with who has aspberers and so he
01:21:55
uh sometimes jerks and so there's a lot of uh discomfort I find from others in
01:22:01
reading him. I don't have any problem. I just see it. Okay, this is his uh normal behaviors and we get around. But you can
01:22:09
tell a lot uh about a a a person. When you've invested in things, you're doing
01:22:14
your diligence and you're talking to people. Yeah, you can look at the numbers all day long, but you also are
01:22:22
looking at the non-verbals and saying, you know, uh are they communicating
01:22:28
confidence or are they communicating uh desire or need or um or any kind of
01:22:35
frailty? I I was just reflecting on a few of the interviews I've had recently. We've been interviewing for one
01:22:40
particular very very senior role. Yeah. And there were two final stage candidates and I was just reflecting as you were saying how one of the final
01:22:46
stage candidates was extremely calm and sat back in their chair and the other one was very much leaning forward. And
01:22:53
upon reflection the second candidate wanted the job a lot more. But the first candidate was probably more experienced,
01:23:01
more confident and had higher selfworth. and their ability to be so relaxed in that environment and kind of own the
01:23:08
chair in in my boardroom was actually it actually made me kind of want them more
01:23:16
because they were signaling to me that they had lots of options. They weren't intimidated. They weren't scared. They
01:23:22
weren't nervous about this opportunity. You know, that's an interesting observation, Stephen. And it's and it's
01:23:28
a it's very good that you observe the the discrepancy. One of the things that
01:23:33
I look for is what is their role going to be? I I don't mind that somebody is
01:23:41
nervous. Um I myself early on coming from a humble background was often
01:23:49
nervous. I tend to focus on the things that most
01:23:56
organizations don't put into their plan to look for.
01:24:01
One of them is problem solving. Give me a list of the problems
01:24:07
you have solved. Most qu most people when they
01:24:12
hire they never ask that question. They tell you know I can do Excel. I I know
01:24:17
Microsoft I that's great. Please tell me what problems you have
01:24:22
solved at at at your last uh job and and you know how efficiently did
01:24:30
you do it? How do you know if they solved the problem or they were on a team where someone else solved the problem? Because one of the things that
01:24:37
I said, you know, look for is is how many instances they tell and how they
01:24:43
describe it. Because here's what's interesting. The person who solves the
01:24:48
problem goes into the detail and feels the emotion of the person that's telling
01:24:55
the story only conveys it but doesn't know the emotion that is attached to solving
01:25:02
it. Mhm. So when you when that little child finally figures out how to, you
01:25:09
know, you give them a trick lock where wood things have to go this way or this
01:25:15
way and then the little thing opens. When they come back and tell you that, you see the gravitydefying behavior, the
01:25:21
arching of the eyebrows, the bright eyes and saying, "I solved it. I solved it. I got in there." Yeah. Right. The problem
01:25:29
the person that's just telling you this story doesn't know the emotion that goes with it. The other thing that you know I
01:25:37
I I look for is and they may be nervous or whatever is how good are are they at
01:25:46
observing. This is the one question that um has uh actually saved a lot of
01:25:55
companies when I say make sure that from now on you ask how good are you observing and they'll say well observing
01:26:01
what everything that matters people events
01:26:08
opportunities right if you come to me and say well I can code this okay that's
01:26:13
great but in the position that you're going to be in you're going be managing people. How good are you at observing
01:26:20
people? The great thing about companies that that seek this is all right. So
01:26:28
when you go and you business your you go see your subsidiary, what are you what are you
01:26:33
looking for? What are you observing? Well, when I look at the books, how about the attitude of the
01:26:40
people? Are people content? Are they happy? Or do they all look like they're constipated? I mean, I've been into
01:26:46
companies that the minute I walk in, I go, "Oh, geez, you got management problems here." And the guy goes, "Who
01:26:52
did somebody tell you?" I I I said, "Well, you know, I'd have to be clinically stupid not to recognize that
01:26:59
all these people are walking around with their heads hung low, that they make no eye contact, nobody they pass each other
01:27:05
in the subway and they don't talk to each other. You got management issues here." M
01:27:11
and you know and it's like they hired for this
01:27:17
skill but is that really what you need when you actually need somebody that is
01:27:23
a great observer? What about confidence? Is this something that you're born with
01:27:28
or do you think confidence can be trained into somebody? I think confidence can absolutely be
01:27:35
trained. coming from Cuba where we lost everything arriving as a refugee having
01:27:40
nothing and then all of a sudden uh the FBI asked me to become I mean I didn't
01:27:46
apply to the FBI the FBI actually came to me and asked me to apply and then all
01:27:52
of a sudden I said are are you guys serious is like I'm 23 years old you
01:27:58
know I'm barely learning how to shave and with no confidence whatsoever
01:28:05
and they teach you to be confident. You can teach confidence. And
01:28:12
what I tell people is the easiest way to learn confidence is to be confident
01:28:20
about one thing. I don't care if it's you stack
01:28:26
papers better than anybody else. I don't care if it's the way you make
01:28:33
your your bed, any small
01:28:39
thing. Show me that you're confident. Show me that that's better than anybody
01:28:44
else's. And the minute you can be confident about one thing, now you can
01:28:51
be confident about two things and then you can be confident about three things.
01:28:57
this nonsense that I often see people say, "Well, just come in and be confident." Uh, I think that's nonsense.
01:29:04
I think you have to learn and your your physiology has to learn to be confident
01:29:10
about one thing. You know, with me, I was confident in uh playing football.
01:29:17
Okay? I was fast. I could do certain things. I was confident about that. I I
01:29:22
knew that in basketball I could shoot a three-pointer. Okay, confident about
01:29:28
that, but not confident about a a a host of other things. To be in a room full of
01:29:36
executives, I remember when I had no confidence. So, how do I work on that?
01:29:42
You you cannot unless you're a worldclass actor, you cannot walk into a
01:29:48
place and all of a sudden pretend you're you're confident. I tell people learn to
01:29:54
be confident about one thing. And sometimes it's knowledge. I always there is no meeting
01:30:01
I go into that I am not well read on that subject. If you want to achieve
01:30:08
confidence, know everything that you can about a particular subject. And that
01:30:14
gives you so much great confidence. And I've seen young people come right out of college and they're sitting there, you
01:30:20
know, they're they're they're elbows are in. They're they're almost mousy
01:30:25
looking. They're nervous. They're looking about constantly. They don't know where to look. And you know, and I
01:30:32
and I tell them, "Know your subject. Know your subject." because the minute
01:30:37
they begin to talk about that they begin to flower and and and change. So So it's
01:30:44
competence in a particular area or vertical creates confidence which then
01:30:49
kind of permeates. Yes. And and that's what the milit in the you know the military you know like
01:30:56
the British military that's what they they take young people 17 18 19 years
01:31:01
old and they say you know we're going to change you into a warrior. Well, how's
01:31:06
that? By running, by by getting you to climb up that rope, by doing any number
01:31:14
of things where you come can come away and feel uh that confidence. You talked
01:31:19
in a video that I watched um for Wired about a variety of different ways we can exhibit and be more confidence and show
01:31:26
confidence. One of them is really looking at the leaders in your life who are confident and trying to sort of
01:31:31
replicate some of those confident behaviors, right? Um the other one was about your voice. Use a deeper voice and
01:31:38
do not rise at the end of the sentence as if it's a question. Right? So let me talk about those. Don't try to reinvent
01:31:48
what's successful. A confident person doesn't have to talk fast and doesn't talk high.
01:31:55
Right? I remember the first arrest I made and I said, "Stop. This is the FBI." My voice was Nobody was gonna
01:32:01
stop. Nobody. Nobody. And the guys that were with me said, "Joe, you got to work
01:32:07
on your voice. You have to have a command voice." Well, a command voice is down. Like, like, stop right there. I
01:32:16
I'll give you an example. You talk to most executives and you say, "Um, no,
01:32:21
that's not acceptable. It's too high." No is always said down. No. Are
01:32:28
we are we gonna No, that sounds like a complete sentence.
01:32:35
Do you get you you get them to practice saying no? Absolutely. I I did it at you know for 10 years every every February
01:32:43
the guy that uh Brian Hall who encouraged me to write my one of my books called Louderder Than Words
01:32:50
invited me to go to Harvard and I I'll never forget I had a a complete Harvard class. I think there were 76 students
01:32:58
and and I had them all saying the word no no going going lower. He had stepped out
01:33:05
of the room for to to take a call. When he came back he he he thought I had a
01:33:10
cult going. I said no Brian I just I'm teaching them the right way because
01:33:17
these are going to be future executives that you don't say no no no no.
01:33:24
Now, that sounds like a complete sentence. No, no, that's not how it's gonna work. And and it's always uh
01:33:31
lower. So, we work on the words. More importantly, uh we work on the on the gestures, how
01:33:37
much territory you occupy because the territory that you occupy, if you're
01:33:42
here sort of like shriveled and tight, you're shriveled. Uh you want to you don't want to be excessive. You don't
01:33:49
want to look like a clown, but you you you want to have the the space that you're entitled to. And then I think
01:33:56
it's very important to learn to speak in cadence. When you speak in cadence, and
01:34:02
I do it, is people listen. They have time to process what you're saying, but
01:34:10
they can also attach the emotion that goes with it. Who spoke in cadence?
01:34:16
Churchill. Uh Martin Luther King, I have a dream that one day one day
01:34:24
this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its
01:34:31
creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created
01:34:37
equal. Powerful. Imagine if he stood up there say I have one dream that one day might
01:34:43
it's like who would listen to that? But he was a preacher and he knew how to command an audience. And when Churchill
01:34:50
said, "We will fight them in the air. We will fight on the beaches. We shall
01:34:55
fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.
01:35:01
We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender." The cadence is uh not just seductive, it
01:35:11
is powerful. And a lot of executives don't know how to use it. They just I I
01:35:18
I've been to presentations where people just let go. They're not
01:35:24
even listening to what's being said. And yet somebody begins to talk to them in
01:35:30
cadence and says, "This is our offer. It is not
01:35:35
final, but for the moment, it is our best offer." Now you're paying attention.
01:35:42
you're paying attention not just to what I said but the emotion behind it. That's a lot better to say, well, this is not
01:35:50
our last offer, but uh you know, we there's a real authority when you
01:35:55
slow things down just that little bit and provide the gaps, which goes back to what I said, who controls time controls.
01:36:07
You're establishing control over the theater of the negotiations. They don't teach that.
01:36:14
Your hand gestures as well. You've got very complimentary hand gestures to what
01:36:20
you're saying. Even as you're speaking to me, you just went who controls time controls controls and and so it's I'm
01:36:27
wondering how I and my fingers are spread out establishing how much we care
01:36:34
about something. When we fear, our fingers come together. And when we fear a lot, our thumbs tuck in. I' I've seen
01:36:40
people in negotiations give up a lot of information because all of a sudden they they tuck their thumbs in. I Okay,
01:36:46
they're scared because dogs tuck their ears in, humans tuck their the hands, no
01:36:54
matter how dark you are, your hands, the palm of the hands are very
01:37:01
visible. that evolved with us because they're
01:37:06
expressive. So even in low light, we can use our hands to
01:37:13
communicate. The more confident we are, the further our fingers are. I care.
01:37:19
Imagine if I said I care about you versus I care about you. There's a big
01:37:25
difference. So in the first example, you kind of had your fingers together. In the second, you spread them out. this, I care about
01:37:33
this. And so they potentiate the message. Um, and the human brain evolved
01:37:40
also to look for the hands because the hands number one can be used as a
01:37:46
weapon, but number two, they are also emblematic of the emotions that um that
01:37:54
we feel and eye contact. Yes, lots been said about eye contact and the importance of it. What should I
01:38:00
understand about eye contact confidence? Eye contact in some ways is uh I mean we
01:38:06
could spend about 40 minutes on it because and I as a teacher I can tell
01:38:11
you because you want to have good eye contact. For instance, if you're dealing with a woman, you don't want it to go,
01:38:18
you know, normal eye contact is here. You don't want it going down to here to the breasts. Okay? So, you want to stay
01:38:24
looking at the face, right? So you want to keep it uh in in the face, but you also don't want to intimidate unless you
01:38:31
want to intimidate. Um so you have to uh employ things like eye gaze behavior.
01:38:37
You have to employ things such as looking away. Now you and I both look away as we're thinking about examples
01:38:44
and and and different things. You can use eye contact for uh
01:38:51
emphasizing. Look how often we use eye contact or our eyes to communicate
01:38:58
opinions. Maybe with your partner, you said, "What do you think?" And and immediately they'll look he or she may
01:39:05
may look at your partner, not yours specifically, but somebody you live with and they go, "No." Right? So with our
01:39:12
eyes, with our eyes, we often give our opinions. So in negotiations, it's uh
01:39:19
it's an important area. One of the things I think a lot about is about rapport building very very quickly. You
01:39:26
know, someone that does this podcast a lot. I sometimes I overthink it a little
01:39:31
bit, especially when I'm meeting people like you because I'm like, "Oh my god, this guy's going to be reading everything about me and d So, so
01:39:38
sometimes I'm like I think I overthink it when I meet someone like you, a body language expert, someone who's good at behavioral science." Um, I want to talk
01:39:44
about rapport building. We actually videoed our interaction today. So when when I walked in Yeah. and I've got the
01:39:50
video here. Let me have a look at this. See if there's We'll put it on the screen for anyone that's watching. But I just want you to analyze my interaction
01:39:57
with you when I met you and tell me how it could have been better. All right. Hello. So first of all, you were waiting
01:40:03
for me with arms of Kimbo, which is I'm in charge. I'm the big guy. And so your
01:40:08
arms were here. Yeah, I got it. Okay. Okay. But you know, I actually do remember that. I remember thinking, get
01:40:14
your hands off your hips. No, no, no. But but but it's fine. This is your domain. I expect this from you in
01:40:21
your domain. But one of the things you immediately did was you immediately went
01:40:27
around the table and you went forward to shake my hand. Right? So one of the
01:40:34
things that I say is how much people matter to us is determined by how fast
01:40:40
we act. Okay. So the fact that you actually went from there to here and you
01:40:46
did it immediately, it demonstrates that you care. As early as 11 months, a baby
01:40:54
will recognize individuals or even inanimate objects that care just based on how
01:41:01
quickly they move towards them or towards them to do something for them.
01:41:08
Okay? It's called a pro-social act. and babies as young as 11 months recognize
01:41:13
that. So, this is something that uh I it doesn't surprise me because you've been
01:41:18
successful. You know, the the success is for me is measured on how well people uh
01:41:24
get along with others. Thank you for the work. Appreciate you. Thank you. You're very very smart. You
01:41:30
look like someone who uh who worked in the FBI. I uh it's the FBI uniform. This
01:41:36
is the Well, uh will I be miked or is it just this? Just that one. Just Just that one. Perfect. Okay. You said something
01:41:44
charming about how I I I was dressed, which I uh appreciated. Uh this is
01:41:50
always a good reminder to me of how old I look now. And uh and uh the only note
01:41:58
that I would I would add is I would have remained standing a little longer. Ah
01:42:05
okay. and then made sure that you know as I'm sitting then you sit at the same
01:42:12
time. Okay. So invite you to sit and sit with you at at the same at the same time
01:42:17
rather than allow me to all now if you can see in that instance I'm actually
01:42:23
still over you while you're already uh seated that is in
01:42:28
negotiations that would be as we say contraindicated. What does that mean? It is. It's a no
01:42:35
no. It's a big word. It's a big word for Steve. Don't do that. Okay. What about
01:42:43
taking notes? This is something that I've started doing actually in the last six months when I'm in meetings in my
01:42:48
companies in the UK. Um is I have an iPad now and when someone's speaking it
01:42:54
actually helps me because of the way that I think and process and learn and it helps me also to not be listening to
01:43:00
speak i.e. if they say something and I immediately have an idea that I'm worried I'm going to lose instead of,
01:43:06
you know, that kind of behavior, I can write down what I'm about to say and it gives me more time to listen. But but
01:43:12
one of the things I noticed in your work is you say that in terms of showing someone you care, taking notes is a
01:43:17
really effective way to do that. Well, what I what I would say to you is what I
01:43:22
would tell the therapists, one of the biggest mistakes therapists have started making is they sit there and because a
01:43:31
lot of them are earning a lot less money and they don't have a secretarial pool like they used to, they now
01:43:38
type their observations as they're talking to their client. I think that's a big mistake.
01:43:45
And from my the studies that my company did in surveying uh not the therapists
01:43:53
but their clients, the ones that were willing to talk. It's terrible. What I tried to emphasize is
01:44:01
um have material in front of you and if there's a particular note uh
01:44:08
write a little something or if you have somebody with you that's uh going to be the the notetaker.
01:44:15
I don't want to miss anything. If you're writing, you're not observing. And observing is actually more important
01:44:22
than writing. Now, if you started talking and mentioned, if you had mentioned the uh supernal notch, I I
01:44:29
might have, okay, is that super or supra sternal notch? Okay, that's a worthy
01:44:35
note. And then I come back and revisit. But if I'm writing all the time, I you
01:44:42
know, I I have young people tell me, "Well, you're just an old-timer. This is how we've grown up." I can tell you that
01:44:50
from an evolutionary standpoint, we cannot outdo our DNA. We just cannot
01:44:57
simply, for instance, schools come in and say, you know, well, you can't hug the students anymore. Okay?
01:45:05
don't expect you know why you know why do we have depressed students why do we I
01:45:12
there's any number of things but I can tell you this we evolved to hug to touch
01:45:18
to greet each other you know your best mate all that stuff when we used to wrestle with our buddies right uh that
01:45:26
that play that play wrestling all that is is is covert
01:45:32
touching it's because our species needs it. Humans need to touch. There are
01:45:39
certain things that humans need and that one of them is this facial interactions.
01:45:44
When you're focused on writing, you're actually taking away from that. How do
01:45:50
you think about handshakes then? Because handshakes are how we kind of touch strangers in a socially acceptable way.
01:45:55
Is there a good way to handshake? There is. Um and and there's bad ones. So I
01:46:01
always say when you shake hands the fingers are down right a lot of people
01:46:06
put their finger up and so when they shake hand let's see if we can reach each other and so when they go like this
01:46:13
now you have their finger in this er this is an erogenous area of your body
01:46:18
this is what you kiss yeah well the the the inside of the wrist uh is an erogenous area and so now
01:46:26
you have this man's finger here and it's and it's just weird. So the fingers are low and the pressure is applied equally.
01:46:34
So you don't try to Donald Trump hit the squeeze. Yeah. Don't don't don't do a Donald Trump handshake or don't don't
01:46:42
jerk the hand. Don't squeeze it too tight. Don't play jujitsu. Uh people my
01:46:48
age have arthritis. Uh I'm never impressed. I've had, you know, men come in and they're big and burly and they
01:46:55
squeeze my hand and it's like, are you serious? What about the cupping where they they cup with so cupping of the
01:47:01
hand is okay with really people you know but uh most people don't like to have
01:47:08
their hands engulfed if you want to touch somebody else's hand so you shake the hand and then you touch the upper
01:47:15
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01:48:18
I've got another video for you here. So, he starts out with an arm down, but he's
01:48:24
he's touching his neck, covering his neck. He's crimping the left side of his face, and he's massaging his forehead
01:48:31
and his neck. So, I mean, we look at and we say, "Okay, these are all emblematic of psychological discomfort." Now, why
01:48:39
that is, uh, we see his blink or eyelid flutter, uh, he's touching his face. Why
01:48:48
is that? I I don't know. It's not now there's a cathartic exhale. Looks like
01:48:53
he's reading one of my books. What I would tell you is is these are all the behaviors you wouldn't want from a
01:48:59
leader. You would certainly you see that from a follower but not a leader. You'll
01:49:04
never see a general do any of that. Certainly not in the US Army or the the
01:49:09
uh the British army. All the behaviors that he's doing which are pacifyings or
01:49:16
indicators of uh some sort of psychological discomfort are also all
01:49:21
the behaviors that we equate with lack of confidence.
01:49:26
Leaders are often exceptional and you say that exceptional individuals are made not born and that's a good thing
01:49:33
because that puts this level of excellence within reach of you and me and you've identified several traits
01:49:40
that make someone an exceptional person. Yeah. Um one of those is selfmastery. self-mastery whether it was
01:49:48
Alexander the Great who sought the the learnings of let's see Socrates taught
01:49:55
Plato who taught Aristotle who Alexander so Aristotle taught Alexander the great
01:50:02
and he pursued the knowledge Thomas Edison one of the greatest inventors in America 1300
01:50:09
patents left school at age six sought the knowledge I mean as humble as I came
01:50:15
from we were so poor I literally had to go to garbage cans to steal books and
01:50:21
magazines to to to learn. You can create your own apprenticeship program and you
01:50:28
can learn to master a skill or a knowledge or an athletic move whatever.
01:50:34
Someone who is selfmastered what have they accomplished?
01:50:39
They have accomplished something that nobody can take from them. Nobody can take that from me. What is
01:50:46
it? All that knowledge, all that skill, all that experience, nobody can can take from me.
01:50:54
Why is the word self in there? Selfmastery because so much of it nobody, you know,
01:51:02
we were talking earlier and I said I I try to read two books a week so that way I can have read about a thousand books
01:51:10
every decade. Nobody's telling me to do that. And so it's self uh why because I
01:51:17
wanted to know because you know why did why did uh Leonardo da Vinci want to know the eddies water eddies in the
01:51:26
water or the length of a woodpecker's tongue? Who cares? It doesn't matter. It
01:51:32
was self-imposed. And we we in this world are the beneficiaries of Leonardo de
01:51:40
Vishi's interest in water eddies which then helped him to draw hair of the Mona
01:51:47
Lisa were the beneficiaries of that. I think
01:51:53
selfmastery is more important than uh I think what a university can teach you.
01:51:59
It can a university can teach you how to think but it doesn't teach you mastery.
01:52:07
So is this because I'm I'm hearing like obviously learning and the pursuit of knowledge and then there's this other part of selfmastery which feels like
01:52:15
self-awareness being aware of oneself like well I think you're an example of of of selfmastery there it's the only
01:52:23
word around the in the universe of languages that
01:52:29
encapsulates being able to take what is available
01:52:36
and making it a part of your life. And so whether it was my grandmother teaching me how to talk to people or my
01:52:44
mother or my father, my mother showing me how to actually shake hands, my sister showing me how to how to dance.
01:52:52
This is all part of selfmastery. Now, I could have rejected all of that, and a
01:52:58
lot of people do. A lot of people reject science or reject, oh, I I don't want to learn how to dance. I don't want to
01:53:04
learn to do that. Okay, that's your option. But there's there's an exquisite
01:53:10
elegance in being able to look at the world around you and learn from it,
01:53:17
which you have done and say, I'm going to put that to work. Why should I re reinvent what other people have
01:53:24
experienced? I'm going to adopt that which I like and prefer and then I'm going to put it uh to good use. The
01:53:31
second one is observation which I think we've talked about observation you know I the the great
01:53:38
example is uh a parent who can observe uh the the immediate needs of children
01:53:44
and and and so forth and I see people now that they're so I was at the airport
01:53:50
yesterday coming here and there was a family that the whole time they were
01:53:55
waiting not once talked to each other nor were they aware of what the others
01:54:01
were doing. I find that difficult because when my daughter was growing up,
01:54:07
I never took my eyes off of her. I see people on their devices as this whole family
01:54:13
was and they're missing out on uh a lot of things, a lot of in information. The
01:54:20
great inventions are made through observation. The the Velcro, do you know
01:54:25
the story of Velcro? No. In the middle of World War II, a Swiss guy goes up in
01:54:31
the mountains and comes back hiking, right? And he looks at his socks and he
01:54:36
says, "Man, these chiggers, these little uh Is it a plant?" Yeah, it's just the
01:54:42
little seedlings that they give off that stick to things. We here in America, we call them
01:54:48
stickers. There's all sorts of names. And he looks at it under a microscope and he notices that they they don't just
01:54:55
stick out, they're actually curved. and in in curving they get stuck on everything. So he
01:55:02
says I'll just invent this. Now what's interesting we talk about observation is
01:55:08
he had seen this one time. How many millions of people had seen it but it's the
01:55:16
observer that can can capitalize on it. And that's why I tell executives when
01:55:21
you hire hire good observers because they're going to save you. They're the guy ones that are going to say, "Hey,
01:55:28
I'm seeing some trends here that are bad." So, observation is is key. And then we transition right into the next
01:55:35
one is most people think communication is just about words
01:55:41
and communication is principally most effectively and most influential a
01:55:49
non-verbal across every culture. and the the misconception that words
01:55:57
triumph over uh nonverbals. Go to a
01:56:03
funeral. Go to a funeral and see how word how well words work versus putting
01:56:09
your arm around somebody and let them sob on your shoulder. It's the primary
01:56:14
means by which we communicate. It's the primary means by which we show we care and it's the primary means by which we
01:56:21
show empathy. The fourth one is action. And it for me it really links to both the second point
01:56:27
which was observation but also to your story about velcro because there must have been many people that thought oh my
01:56:33
god that thing's sticking to me and they did nothing. Maybe even they maybe even some people who thought oh that could be
01:56:38
useful but then the the hard part often is doing something about it's the action is doing is doing something as I talk in
01:56:46
the book be exceptional do something that is pro-social or beneficial but
01:56:52
don't wait right the the the the worst thing we can do if you want to let people know
01:56:59
that you don't care take your time and this happens all the time you you go to a counter you walk up to a counter
01:57:06
and say, "Hey, you know, I' I'd love some help with this. I, you know," and
01:57:11
then they just, "Well, I don't know. Um, let me check in the back." And they take
01:57:18
their time walking to the back. And then they take time walking back. You might
01:57:24
as well be shouting, "I don't care." What I tell managers is that's your
01:57:30
responsibility. Why did you hire someone who can't move at the speed of light?
01:57:37
Because movement is equated with caring. So, if that's their attitude, you might
01:57:43
as well have a sign that says, "I don't care." Now, you could say, "Well, you know, maybe they have a mobility
01:57:49
problem." Fine. Fronted. I'd say, "You know what? It's going to take me a
01:57:54
minute because I just had my hip replaced, but I'm going to address it right now.
01:58:01
We're we we can forgive but when we when we don't show we care
01:58:07
by action that is so immediate. And the fifth one is psychological comfort. And
01:58:13
you write in the book that this is the most powerful strength humans possess.
01:58:19
Absolutely. What's interesting about humans in the years that I've studied them is that humans don't seek
01:58:26
perfection. the the a baby doesn't care if it's
01:58:31
sucking its own thumb or the or the the twin sister's thumb. They
01:58:37
interchangeable is like humans don't seek perfection. What we seek is
01:58:42
psychological comfort and whoever provides that is the soonest winner. It
01:58:48
is as simple as that. if you can. Um, you're too young, but I remember when
01:58:55
computers came out and they were in ugly boxes and they were in ugly stores and
01:59:03
they were behind the counter and they were ugly. Steve Jobs comes around and
01:59:09
says, "No, we're going to put them on these lab tables like we have and we're
01:59:15
going to make them accessible." So this mysterious device that is such a ugly
01:59:23
word that you forget that people hated computers so much they used to come in at night and cut the cords. That's how
01:59:30
scared people were of of of computing. And he went from 4% shares of the
01:59:38
computer market to whatever it is now 67 or what whatever the number is. Why?
01:59:45
Psychological comfort. And I tell this to businessmen. When you're negotiating, what you're
01:59:52
negotiating for is can you create enough psychological comfort that the other person can live
01:59:59
with that so that I can feel okay maybe I
02:00:04
didn't get everything I wanted but for this period in time I can live with that
02:00:10
psychological comfort. I can go back to the board and report that this was the
02:00:15
best that I can do and so forth. Aim for psychological comfort. And how does one
02:00:21
go about creating psychological comfort in in any context?
02:00:26
You started it today. You welcome me in and then you said, "What would you like to drink? Would you like some water?
02:00:33
Would you like some tea? Would you like some coffee?" That begins the process of psychological
02:00:40
comfort. We're in a quiet environment. Less noise, more
02:00:45
psychological comfort, less lighting. It doesn't hurt the eyes. Anything that
02:00:51
starts at a biological, physical, physiological, and then
02:00:58
cognitive level. So, psychological comfort, we're negotiating. So, you want
02:01:04
to offer 3,000. I think I'm worth 6,000. So, how do we achieve that? Well, I'm
02:01:12
going to let you tell me your side of why you you can only provide 3,000 and I'm
02:01:19
going to provide you my side. Okay? The fact that we actually get to tell our
02:01:26
story begins the process of psychological comfort. Now, in the end,
02:01:32
I may have to abide by that because there's only so much money
02:01:38
And if it's not in the budget, it's not in the budget. But there may be some things that you can add to say, look,
02:01:46
this is all we have at this time, but we're going to re-evaluate this in three
02:01:51
months. And if we can then, depending on earnings, get you another $500 a month,
02:01:58
we will do it. Then we do it incrementally, but always thinking about
02:02:04
what provides psychological comfort. being harsh, being indignant, not being
02:02:13
attentive to needs, wants, desires, and even preferences create psychological
02:02:20
discomfort. In um in 2009, you wrote a book called Narcissists Among Us. Yes.
02:02:28
And earlier on you said that roughly 2% of people are narcissists, but then 25% of CEOs are 22% as high as 22% of CEOs
02:02:37
have narcissistic traits. Yes. Okay. And if someone's dealing with a narcissist,
02:02:42
what do they have to do in order to manage that situation?
02:02:48
Because according to those numbers, roughly like 98% of people um aren't narcissists, but probably will deal with
02:02:54
them in their lifetime. And then you know a significant amount of people work with them. Yeah. Even though they account for 2% of the population,
02:03:03
we will work with or for somebody like that. So what we have to keep in mind,
02:03:10
well, what do we mean by narcissist? We're not talking about the person that looks in the mirror and likes to uh
02:03:15
splash on cologne and comb their hair. This is a person that overvalues
02:03:21
themselves but has to devalue others. This is the person who um only thinks
02:03:28
about themselves and doesn't care of what uh suffering or what's going on through your life. Wants you to be loyal
02:03:36
but is not loyal to you. Is disinterested in your personal affairs
02:03:42
but wants you to be interested in theirs. There is your malignant
02:03:48
narcissist. Oh, and by the way, they inherently tell lies, but expect you to
02:03:55
tell the the truth to them. Now, the effect is, well, if if they're only 2%
02:04:01
of the population, but we see them in a lot of corporations, we're going to work
02:04:06
for them, then, you know, how do we get along? Or first is recognizing that
02:04:12
they're going to devalue us. Now, sometimes they devour you by not inviting you to meetings or sharing
02:04:18
information, but many times it's by the way they treat you, yelling at you, uh,
02:04:24
being disparaging. I mean, I have some things that are horrific. So, what do we do when we have people like that? Number
02:04:31
one is recognize what you're dealing with. And that's why I wrote be the um
02:04:36
dangerous personalities because um I have uh these robust checklists in there
02:04:42
which have been tested many times. So you can see oh wow out of 125 things
02:04:49
this person is has 75 of these traits you've you've got a problem. But
02:04:55
now here's the thing. When we live with somebody like this, let's say you you
02:05:01
you know they can be very charming, but then they turn on you and they become
02:05:06
who they really are. Um then how do you how do you deal with that? What I can
02:05:12
tell you is that the arc of the trajectory does not favor you. That
02:05:19
these individuals are so costic. They're so toxic that eventually uh they will
02:05:25
victimize you physically, mentally, emotionally, uh physiologically or financially.
02:05:32
You'll be victimized. The question then is, and I tell this to a lot of executives who work for these
02:05:39
individuals who they're bullied and this stuff is, how long are you willing to tolerate it? If you can set a number and
02:05:46
say 6 months or a year, okay, but then do something because you will pay a
02:05:51
price. You know, there's a great book called the the the body keeps the score. The body will definitely keeps the
02:05:58
score. you will pay a price for being in the proximity of a toxic individual. And
02:06:04
if you become that person's chew toy, you will suffer uh
02:06:10
immensely. Um and so I say, you know, there's no pill to cure them. There is
02:06:16
nothing you can do to make them like you. They expect no loyalty. Try to get
02:06:21
out as soon as you can. And that's the only advice that uh you know obviously I'm not a clinician u but I think most
02:06:28
clinicians if they're honest will say you got to get out of there. It's this is not tolerable. So don't try and win
02:06:36
in any respect. Don't try and I don't think you can win. First of all these individuals are severely flawed of
02:06:43
character. They have no introspection. They see themselves as perfect. They
02:06:48
don't see any imperfection in in in themselves. And so because they're
02:06:55
flawed of character, you cannot expect normal behaviors uh from them. And so
02:07:02
why expose yourself to them? Um they're they will be like that all their lives.
02:07:09
There's a particular chapter where you say um one is bad, two is terrible, three is lethal.
02:07:16
Oh, you know, people I get this question all the time. Well, can you have multiple traits? Yes, you can have you
02:07:25
can be pathologically narcissistic. So you overvalue yourself and you can also
02:07:32
have traits of the paranoid personality where that um you are very
02:07:42
rigid in your thinking and you're always suspicious of everybody's intentions. In
02:07:49
history you look at Hitler. Hitler was pathologically he was a malignant
02:07:54
narcissist. He was clinically paranoid. Who did he fear? Uh uh minorities, the
02:08:01
the the Roma, the what was then called the gypsies, and of course uh the Jewish
02:08:06
people. That's that is clinical paranoia. And he was a psychopath. Okay,
02:08:13
let's just lay that out there. Uh what is psychopathy? Psychopathy is where you
02:08:18
have no remorse, no empathy, no conscience. You can do whatever you want
02:08:23
and you sleep well at night there. That's your Robert Hair the researcher
02:08:29
is the best one that defines psychopathy. Hitler had it all. There's
02:08:35
a thin line probably there between like narcissism and self-belief because when you're describing narcissism, you're
02:08:40
talking about like overimportance, like really believing one's important. And it sounds somewhat like someone who is extremely self-believing.
02:08:47
Well, narcissism, by the way, narcissism, which has been studied since the 1950s, we now have a narcissistic
02:08:54
society like we we never did before. We see it in the way we talk about ourselves more than anything. We get on
02:09:01
Tik Tok and other forms and we espouse all sorts of things. And so, we're way
02:09:07
more narcissistic now than in the 1950s. They look at even the words we use. Now,
02:09:12
we use the word me and I more than we did in the 1950s. We used to say we and
02:09:18
ours. Now we say me and I. And the true narcissist
02:09:24
um has a belief system that is so corrupt. Um they're truly flawed of
02:09:30
character and they not only have the traits of narcissism, but they truly believe how
02:09:38
they see themselves as infallible as I only have the answers. I'm the person
02:09:44
that can make us great again. And I know what you're gonna ask me next. No, I'm not gonna ask you that. Thank you. Thank
02:09:51
you. But if the traits fit, then you know what I tell people is as you
02:09:56
whether you're going into an organization or if you're looking at who's leading your country, ask
02:10:02
yourself, do they have these traits? And if they have the the the traits, then
02:10:08
it's not a difficult equation. psychology is in especially when it comes to people flawed of character is
02:10:15
not that difficult is do I want to work for somebody that values me or someone
02:10:20
that devalues others and you start with that in all these decades of you doing
02:10:25
all these incredible things hunting terrorist spies aerial surveillance working in partnership with the SAS um
02:10:31
interviewing people chasing down terrorists how has it changed you as a human being how has it shifted your
02:10:37
perception of human behavior and what it is to be a human and meaning and all of these bigger questions of life. I've
02:10:44
never been asked that question. So, thank you for asking a most profound
02:10:52
question. I guess the best answer is that I learned a peace meal and I'm glad
02:10:58
I learned peace meal. And by that I mean that my first homicide was just a
02:11:05
regular homicide that I responded to. My first suicide was which was a police officer was uh you know it was in
02:11:14
increments. I think if I had been presented with everything that I had been presented with all at once I think
02:11:20
I would have had a mental breakdown. I'm glad that it was episodic that I was
02:11:26
able to learn from each. And what I have learned is number
02:11:31
one that who were most of the people that I talked to, the majority were
02:11:37
witnesses or victims. And these were nice people.
02:11:43
They were kind people. Some of the nicest people were these poor farmers out in Arizona. They grow cotton. They
02:11:50
they don't earn very much. They're good people. you you learn that everything
02:11:56
you're doing in law enforcement is really for them. Um you know later on when I got
02:12:03
into counter espionage and now you're dealing with nation states and the equities of different nations and yeah
02:12:09
each country has their own priorities but you realize that when you're dealing
02:12:14
with uh extremists and they have their own belief system and there's nothing
02:12:20
really you can do to change them. But we also have our belief systems. And you
02:12:25
have to realize, okay, I can't fix all the problems. As a
02:12:32
law enforcement agent, I can only attend to that which I can help or resolve or
02:12:41
so forth. I couldn't find all the suspects that either raped or killed or
02:12:51
bombed. I was at Brigham Y Young University when she was uh one a girl
02:12:56
was uh abducted by uh a serial
02:13:01
killer and to this day I am in pain that I was on duty that night when she was
02:13:09
abducted. I still feel it. And these things they weigh on you.
02:13:16
But I'm also very h you know when I get with
02:13:21
students I mentor people. I mentor a lot of executives but I also mentor young people who are
02:13:28
curious and I see the eagerness in which they pursue life and knowledge and that
02:13:35
gives me great hope. Why are you still in pain about being on duty that night? Because you can't get it out of you. I
02:13:43
can't get the smell of. Sometimes you go to a crime scene
02:13:49
and the smell is so bad that you can't wash the smell away. You have to burn your clothes. Forensic examiners know
02:13:58
this. There's just some things that you can, you know, the the first person I saw uh
02:14:05
killed was in Kuwa and you just can't
02:14:10
there's, you know, biologically you have the hippoampi. You have two of them and
02:14:16
that retains everything negative you ever experience. That's why you can't take a pill for post-traumatic stress
02:14:23
because the hippoampi makes sure that the first time you burn yourself
02:14:28
touching that stove doesn't occur again. So all things negative are retained
02:14:34
sometimes forever but usually around a decade. But I'm also enlightened by the
02:14:41
fact that people still pursue good things. You know, I hear from people who
02:14:48
work with dogs or who work with the handicapped with no expectation of of any reward. And I
02:14:56
think most people have a a good heart, a kind heart. And so I tried to focus on
02:15:02
those people that I met which gave me the examples for
02:15:10
uh be exceptional. That woman in Brazil who at the age of six was became blind.
02:15:16
She went on to have 12 children. She had more, but only 12 survived. And who
02:15:21
could still do needle work blind by feeling. I will never forget that
02:15:27
experience either. To sit in her presence was a a a bestowed pleasure upon me. to
02:15:36
understand a woman who has who could sense people moving in and around her
02:15:41
just by how the hairs on her hand moved as they interacted with with this with
02:15:48
the the space around her. It it was a great experience. So, what day of your
02:15:54
career are you most proud of or were you most happy?
02:15:59
Oh, wow. Well, I was uh I'll tell you, I was I
02:16:05
was really happy when I graduated from the FBI Academy. Imagine at any time at any one
02:16:13
time there's 27,000 applicants to the FBI and they
02:16:18
will only accept uh 220 maybe or so a year. Um so I was I was elated. I was
02:16:26
also uh very happy the day I
02:16:33
uh left the FBI because at that point I had done it all and I wanted to do other
02:16:40
things. I wanted to write uh which is very difficult to do when you're in the
02:16:45
bureau and I wanted to uh continue teaching. Yeah. So I think those two
02:16:50
events were uh when it comes to career was uh good times in my life. Joe, my
02:16:57
audience are very much people that want to learn um that love stories that want to change their life, improve their life
02:17:03
so that they can achieve the objectives they have. So you've written a lot of books. I think it's 15 in total. Well,
02:17:10
14 published uh the 15th comes out next year. Y. So my my last question then is
02:17:16
of everything in the 14 pending 15 books that you've written and everything
02:17:22
you've learned, what is the most important thing that I didn't ask you
02:17:28
about that would be helpful to somebody who's looking to improve their life, their communication skills, their body
02:17:33
language to be more effective in the pursuit of their goals that I should have asked you about?
02:17:39
Well, I uh I hate to ruin this for you, but I think you asked really in however
02:17:46
many minutes or hours we've been doing this uh a lot of great questions. And I
02:17:53
think in your questions, the the essence is what is the importance of connecting?
02:18:00
You know, your audience is are all in the people business. I mean unless
02:18:06
they're working as a they write code but even they we're all in the people
02:18:11
business and the the what your questions really circled around is what's the
02:18:18
importance of connecting what's the importance of connecting properly and then how do we make maintain those
02:18:25
connections and we we've talked about this the importance of nonverbals to
02:18:30
communicate I trust you I value you I care about you and all that, but then
02:18:37
creating that psychological comfort that allows us to then have this long time
02:18:44
together that relationships are uh are are invaluable. I think that's the
02:18:50
greatest lesson. Every time I go anywhere, I say we are in the people business. And I think you are exemplary
02:18:59
um in demonstrating what what you can achieve if only you have
02:19:06
that. That's a great compliment. Thank you so much. We have a closing tradition where the last guest
02:19:12
leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question that's been left for you is
02:19:22
H interesting. What do people say that
02:19:27
they like about you? I think that one is easy. And it's
02:19:32
easy because I hear it so often and they say, "You're so approachable."
02:19:38
I think they see pictures of me, you know, where I'm looking sternly or they think an FBI agent and and wherever I go
02:19:47
around the world, they say, "Well, you look so average. You look approachable."
02:19:52
And I've always tried to make myself approachable. Um whether you're a a
02:19:59
student, whether you are the security guard or whatever, I am always
02:20:04
accessible. I'm always approachable and uh and I treat everybody the same. Joe,
02:20:09
thank you. Um it's a really interesting time that we're living in. We talked about it a bit before we started rolling. Um we're more digital than ever
02:20:17
before. We're living behind screens and connection is somewhat of a lost art.
02:20:23
And that's why people are so in so
02:20:28
misunderstood and how to communicate how they truly feel because it's not something that now comes naturally to
02:20:34
this digital from birth generation. Right. And that's something that I think your work does so profoundly. It kind of brings us back to what it is to be
02:20:40
human. That that throughine of anthropology and understanding our evolution and where it all came from as well is the reinforcer of everything
02:20:46
that you say. And um it's incredibly important and it's and so incredibly resonant. I've seen it across the videos
02:20:52
that you've you've been in and the interviews that you've done. They're just so unbelievably resonant. And
02:20:57
that's because people are so thirsty for this information. And many of the problems I think we often find in our
02:21:02
lives stem from um being ineffective at communicating to someone else how we feel and what we truly think. Maybe
02:21:09
because we haven't learned, but also maybe we're learning another behavior and maybe we're becoming more individualistic and more withdrawn and
02:21:14
more um trapped behind screens. So, I really applaud you for the work that you're doing and I highly recommend people go and read these books. There's
02:21:21
a lot of them, but um I'm going to link them all below and with a little synopsis so you can decide which one
02:21:26
best suits you. I read a few of them. One of my favorites is the Be Exceptional One. It's so accessible, but
02:21:32
they're all very good at different things depending on what it is you're looking for in your life. whether it's body language, whether you just you're
02:21:37
the type of person that wants to hear more about um hunting terrorists or understanding psychopaths or um
02:21:44
generally more things about the FBI and the life that you've lived. So, I'll link them all
02:21:49
below. Is there anything we've missed? Well, my wife would tell me, "Please be
02:21:56
nice and say that uh if they can mention my uh I now have a YouTube channel to
02:22:03
address a lot of these things, just go to Joe Navaro.net and uh there's a link there
02:22:10
to my uh my YouTube channel, which you would think I would know, but uh we'll link it below. I don't know." But um I
02:22:18
want to thank you for what you do. You're going to realize one day as I
02:22:24
realize that you're helping to change lives even though that wasn't your
02:22:30
intention. Your intention was probably to educate. But 10 years on, 20 years on, or as I
02:22:39
recently found from 40 years on, somebody will write to you and said
02:22:44
something you said or your example uh affected me and it changed my life. And
02:22:51
you'll go, "Wow, I never thought about that." And that's what you've done. And
02:22:58
uh you'll realize it one day. Thank you. I mean, it's what you're
02:23:03
doing, too. Joe, thank you for being so generous with your time. I really really appreciate it. It's been an honor to reach to to meet you and I'm excited to finish the rest of your books and um to
02:23:10
explore more on your YouTube channel, which I'll link below. You also do lots of speaking. You work a lot with companies and organizations and if
02:23:16
people want to reach you, they should go to your website and send you an email there. AB: Absolutely. Just just through
02:23:22
the website and uh we'll uh we'll attend to it and uh I'm happy to share that knowledge uh journey with uh whoever is
02:23:29
interested. I'm going to let you in to a little bit of a secret. You're probably going to think me and my team are a little bit
02:23:35
weird, but I can still remember to this day when Jamaima from my team posted on Slack that she'd changed the scent in
02:23:41
this studio. And right after she posted it, the entire office clapped in our Slack channel. And this might sound
02:23:46
crazy, but at the Diary of SEO, this is the type of 1% improvement we make on our show. And that is why the show is
02:23:52
the way it is. By understanding the power of compounding 1%s, you can absolutely change your outcomes in your
02:23:58
life. It isn't about drastic transformations or quick wins. It's about the small consistent actions that
02:24:06
have a lasting change in your outcomes. So two years ago, we started the process of creating this beautiful diary. And
02:24:12
it's truly beautiful. Inside there's lots of pictures, lots of inspiration and motivation as well, some interactive
02:24:17
elements. And the purpose of this diary is to help you identify, stay focused on, develop consistency with the 1% that
02:24:26
will ultimately change your life. So, if you want one for yourself or for a friend or for a colleague or for your team, then head to the diary.com right
02:24:33
now. I'll link it below. This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you
02:24:38
that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So, could I ask you for a favor? If you like
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the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my
02:24:49
commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week.
02:24:56
We'll listen to your feedback. We'll find the guests that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much.
02:25:04
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02:25:15
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