Former FBI Agent: If They Do This Please RUN! Narcissists Favourite Trick To Control You!

I was in the FBI for 25 years. I have sat with spies and enemies of this country and I learned a lot about human behaviors. Imagine being able to read other people and circumstances faster. It gives you a tremendous advantage in your life. I want to hear everything. So, one of the first things I teach is Joe Navaro is a former FBI agent turned worldrenowned body language expert. He helps people decode body language to Improve communication, trust, and influence. One of the things that I found in negotiations is we as humans communicate quite a lot

with our faces. For instance, we push this together when we don't understand something and then the minute we hear something we don't like, blood actually begins to leave the lips and then we begin to tighten them. Another behavior is that when there's a lack of confidence, insecurities, people immediately. So once we understand these Behaviors, you can take command of any situation. Confidence. Is this something that you're born with or do you think confidence can be trained? It can absolutely be trained. So the FBI actually teach confidence and there's a 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 I tell people is that the easiest way to learn confidence is to Joe. We actually videoed my interaction with you when I Met you. And I've got the video here. So, one of the things you immediately did was, "Don't do that. It's a no." No. This has always blown my mind a little 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 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 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, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback. We'll find the guest that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much. Joe, zooming out.

If someone asked you in the street and they wanted a two sentence answer, who are you and what have you spent your life doing? How would you answer that question? With one word, teaching. I think I've spent my whole life teaching. Even even when I was in the FBI, uh, starting in 1984, a lot of my job was obviously being an FBI agent, investigating crimes, uh, chasing after spies and so forth. But, uh, you know, I hired on in 1978, but as early as 84, I was already teaching. And um I love it when when

people get it and they they see a Behavior, they understand the uh underpinnings, the foundation of why we do certain things. I'll give you an example. Sometimes you'll come to a horrible uh scene and uh people immediately gasp. They take in air and then they cover their their their mouths or there's one point uh difference on the scoreboard and people are like this and they don't understand. This is this is back where we were surrounded by lions and tigers and we learned to cover Our mouths so as not to broadcast our breath so that they

couldn't see where we were or find us. And uh and so the human body has uh a few shortcuts. I should say the human brain, they're called huristics. And so one of them is to freeze. Uh so when we hear a loud sound or we see a predator or a dog, we we we freeze. Obviously, whoever ran 300,000 years ago uh was bitten. Um, and so we have these shortcuts and uh, and it's always fascinating to me to Share why we have these behaviors and 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 for the the predators to to smell us. You spend your time writing books. You spend your time teaching in various different contexts these days, whether it's on stage or in other environments on the internet. What is it that you're giving people? That's a profound question that I don't think I've been asked. I think the simplest answer is knowledge. Knowledge that perhaps they didn't have time to acquire. I uh I grew up very poor. I was a refugee from Cuba and um and I

lived in an area of Miami which was mostly elderly people. So I was by myself a lot. So I would go through uh garbage bins collecting things uh to read. It's that knowledge uh that that I was fortunate Enough to acquire the love of uh of 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 reading and of learning. I see myself as okay. I have this knowledge. I I I have sat with terrorists, spies, bazooka yielding enemies of this country. And other

people never had that opportunity. And I learned a lot uh from that and from my reading. So why not share it? Make their life uh a little Easier. When you say make their life a little easier, if I am to receive your knowledge, how would my life be better? How would I be more productive? That's a great question. Imagine being able to app perceive uh things way ahead of time because you can read other people and circumstances faster. Most people see a behavior and they have to sit there and wonder, are they upset with me?

Are they, as the Brits would say, my wife is a a Brit. Are they taking the piss or something? Just uh any number of of things. But imagine being able to look at something and decipher it infinitely faster so that you can devote yourself to to other things where most of us break down the the face into the forehead, the eyes, the ears, and so forth. And uh but imagine being able to assess the whole face, the shoulders, the hands, everything all at once and draw inferences from that Information. It gives you a a a

tremendous advantage. And also in negotiations being able to read others and uh at the same time we forget that others are reading us and what is the perception that we want to uh convey. 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 life do you believe would improve? First within yourself, uh, for instance, being able to assess yourself. So, if if if let's say you you have anger issues and and so forth or you you're quick to trigger, well, h

how do I deal with that? Well, first you assess, you know, uh, what is going on? Your stomach gets upset, chest tightens, your emotions, uh, get up. So, what do I do then? Most people aren't taught that. So, there's part of that. There's how to communicate for instance uh, more effectively with your children. The simple thing that for instance uh and Nobody teaches this uh well I do is uh 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 very different reaction

than if you stand at an angle slightly further away from the child and tilt your head that the communication you will experience with that child is so much different just by tilting your head than if you are standing directly in front of them that you can enhance communication. And Then you say, well, what application is that for real life? Well, you can actually change the amount of facetime you get from somebody else. Let's say you only had two minutes and you want to stretch that by just tilting your head. We've demonstrabably shown that you can

change the amount of facetime that somebody's willing to give to you just because we show that we're relaxed and that we're not coming at you with an agenda that we're willing to um to to Listen. It can be transformative if you apply that 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 can use it at work you can use it in in negotiations for instance one of the things that I teach is is the the value of time and time is

actually can be used as a nonverbal. So when I talk about nonverbals I'm really talking about anything that communicates but is not a Word. Well, you can use time as a nonverbal to say I'm in charge. Whoever dominates and controls time controls. And so even if I change the delivery of my message to slow things down, you're already taking charge in that negotiation. It's a beautiful thing to to to witness when you execute it properly. So there are a lot of applications um and you know and obviously like like You you you basically study human

behavior you are a business person but you're actually really in in the people business and once we understand the the the needs and some are biological the wants the desires the preferences uh the preferences of others how do they like that information delivered? How do they like their coffee? All of that. But then what do they fear? Most people don't tell you I have 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 we'll have to do some due dil. That's the the brain

only recognizes fear. And so once you understand that, it gives you such amplitude to uh to then uh pursue whatever it is that you're interested in in doing more effectively. And your career. Yeah. So you've been an you were an FBI agent for more than 30 years. Well, I was in law enforcement for 30 years. I was in the FBI uh for 25 years principally working in the area of counter intelligence but you know in the FBI you never wear one hat. Um I was also a pilot so I flew surveillance. I was a SWAT

team commander so I uh did SWAT stuff and actually worked with the SAS from uh from London. And then I was in the um behavioral analysis program. So we use uh that skill set to uh to work on uh catching spies. What is The behavioral analysis program? In the uh 8990, the FBI developed a very secret program to analyze not uh people that were dead, but actually how do we use human behavior to catch spies, to catch terrorists, and then once we catch them, how do we get into their heads? How do we get them

to tell us what what they're up to, what their purpose is, and and uh and so forth? So we created this uh this program uh I along with five other agents out of 12,000 were selected from the FBI to u to become the uh part of this new behavioral analysis program which was supposed to be classified except it it was accidentally leaked and our job was to look at the threats national security threats and then see how we can um use our knowledge of human behavior to then attack that. So when you say your much

of your work was to catch spies, right? Most of us have only ever heard of spies from watching James Bond And other things like that. So we don't actually understand the sort of reality of spies. So if I just play completely dumb for a second, other countries send people into other countries like the United States or the UK or Australia, Canada, right? To do what? So every nation state has uh has interests. A lot of it is obtained through diplomacy. A lot of it is now uh obtained through what we called espionage. So uh it's

nothing like television in the movies. Uh some nations, especially hostile nations, send what we call hostile intelligence officers, usually masquerading as a diplomat, but often masquerading as students or scientists or businessmen. And their job is to acquire knowledge in in specific areas, military knowledge, science and research, intentions and plans, military intentions and plans. or they may have interest in for instance what is going To be the wheat production in Argentina this year because it may affect the price of grain across the world. So there's commercial espionage that uh that that goes on and so and

every nation uh defends itself by trying to identify well who is here uh trying to spy. So that's what we do. That's that is that's counter intelligence. That's uh espionage. And it's nothing like the movies. We don't we don't we don't jump from buildings. And although we do that Sometimes, but uh it's it's not as uh as glamorous as as the James Bond stuff. So, have you caught spies before? I have. I've arrested spies. Multiple spies. Yeah. Give me the the most interesting example of a spy that you identified in court and what were they

here doing and which country did they come from? Well, as it turns out, it was an American because we also have what we call turncoats. So in the case of Rodrik James Ramsay, He was in the an individual who in 1989 I was asked to go interview because we thought he was a witness um to something that had happened in Germany. He had a former army sergeant had been kicked out of the army. The military wanted to find out if he knew anything about some missing documents, if he had seen anything. During my interview of

him, which again, I thought he was a witness. He was smoking a cigarette at his house. And uh I I just mentioned uh an Individual's name that had been at that base, but who had been under investigation by German authorities. uh in fact by the uh Bundas Criminal which is the equivalent of the FBI. There's no reason why he should react to that. It's just a name. But when I mentioned the name, his cigarette shook. And um and I knew enough about human behaviors to know that that physiological change had to be caused by something

significant. Why would a name Affect him? And uh and so scientific method talked to him for 20 more minutes about something else and then I mentioned that name again and sure enough his cigarette shook again. And at that point I was convinced that there was something nefarious there. As it turns out the Germans arrested Conrad Conrad was there Clyde Conrad. That was the name of the the person that had been under suspicion. our our guy that I was interviewing, Rod Ramsay, was uh was not. And so I left that interview and then um I persuaded

my supervisors to continue to talk to Rod Ramsey and that led to a 10-year investigation and the arrest of uh three, four, five, six, seven additional individuals. So that Rodri Ramsey guy with the shaking cigarette was a he was spying on America. what that he was doing. And that's a good question and forgive me for not explaining. While he was in the army, he and Clyde Lee Conrad Were they were stealing military secrets from from the US Army. They they were taking US Army secrets and then selling it to the Soviet Union through the Hungarian

intelligence service. So he was a traitor of the United States. So he was a traitor and that is often the biggest problem for any nation state is the traitors from uh from from within and they had elevated espionage to an industrial level. I mean to to the point where they actually no longer even use 35mm cameras to photograph the documents. They were actually videotaping them so that they could expedite the thousands of pages. It was the most damaging espionage case in the history of the United States because they had compromised the United States nuclear gods

in Germany and that left all of Western Europe exposed. Nuclear GO codes. Yes. What is that? All of our nuclear assets around the world are controlled by two things. There is a uh what's called a permissive action link which is like a lastm minute safety lock on each device. And then there is the uh go code that says there is authority to use this weapon. Ramsay was able to steal the actual nuclear goat. It's a it's a card. It's made out of a special material which I cannot describe. It's made out of special metals and

plastics and other things. And um the inherent danger in what they did was that not that they could initiate a launch that can only be initiated at the national command authority level but if this were compromised and given to let's say the Russians at the time the Soviet Union this is before 1989 then a foreign a foreign hostile intelligence service could take that and replicate it but put the wrong numbers in there. And by putting the wrong numbers in there, if it's in a uh in if it's in a pyramid structure and it's put high

enough, right? Let's let's say you controlled the all of the East Coast. Maybe you don't want to spy for for Russia, but for $100,000, let's say you were willing to Slip this in there and take the one that's there out. Okay. So maybe that helps your conscience in some way, then you basically if it's a pyramid uh sort of uh schema, you can paralyze everything below that. Okay? So someone could have changed the codes, put a fake one in, which meant that it wouldn't work anymore. that at the highest level then nothing would work if

you if you had it access at the highest uh level. Did they Go to jail? Oh yes. Yeah. The shaking cigarette guy went to jail 33 years. Let me just finish it by saying this. This was this case put of all of Western Europe in danger as well as the United States. The general who testified in this case said that had hostilities broken out, the defeat of the west would have been assured within three days. That's how devastating this was. Yeah, let that sink in. Those are his words. The defeat of the West would Have

been assured because of the damage these individuals had done. Not all cases are as significant in terms of catching spies. I was reading about another one where you caught a man because of the way he held some flowers. Yeah. The uh you know, a lot of times it's it's just based on uh on on the behavior. You know, you you see how uh how often somebody looks at their watch, right? But maybe when they're Operational, they look at their watch more often. And uh they filmed this guy who we thought was uh what we call

an illegal. And in in the parliament of espionage, an illegal is someone who magically appears in the United States and pretends to be an American, has always been an American, like the series, The Americans. But we had some clues from one of our sister services from another country and said we think this individual may be uh someone who You need to look at that is uh pretending to be an American. We're looking at the the the unit we bring the 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 just serendipitously. It was filmed on Valentine's Day and uh so we see him entering a flower shop and leaving the flower shop when he exited. I said um definitely he's not an American. You know, everybody looked at Me like, "Excuse me?" I said, "He he's not from here." And um he said, "How?" And he says, "Look how he's carrying the the bouquet. Americans carry the bouquet bouquet up. Eastern Europeans carry it bouquet down and uh and continued to carry it that way. So I I did what's

called a presumptive. So we stopped him one day and and I said, you know, I'm with the FBI and um and I said, "Do you want to know how we know?" And that was the the the first trigger I was looking for to see how he reacts to it. And he fell for it. And he said, "Go on." Most people would say, "Get out of here. Go away." And uh and I said, "It was how you carried the flowers." His chin came down. His eyelids went heavy. as he was Evaluating everything he had done, you

know, they he had practiced everything. His his English was immaculate. You know, he sounded like a Midwesterner and all that. After a few hours of having a nice really a nice chat, he agreed to work with us and admitted everything. What did he admit? That he had been sent here by a foreign government. that his job as a as an illegal was to be in the United States uh act as an American. And most People don't understand, well, why would a country, a nation states spend so much money training these people to be like an

American? And what they don't understand is their purpose here is for when hostilities break out. They can report on for instance uh train traffic, what trains are carrying munitions, what airports are being used for what purposes. Um many times, as he later told us, they're given caches of explosives so that they can then blow up Certain things that no missile would be able to uh uh to do. So, uh, that's their role in in in hiding in America. It's not to commit espionage. It's to be here in, uh, in case hostilities break out. So, you

flipped him to working with the FBI. Correct. And does that mean he doesn't get punished? Well, he doesn't get punished because he didn't commit any crime other than immigration uh uh violation, but what he was able to reveal to us was nothing Short of breathtaking. Which nation was this? I cannot say. But obviously, they would have to have enough money and enough interest to uh carry out an operation like this. If you had to hazard a guess how many people that live amongst us have been sent from a foreign nation and are spies, how many

do you think it is? Well, let's let's define that. you know, I if if they're if they're hostile intelligence officers, Um it can be anywhere from uh 3% of the diplomatic staff to as many as at one time the Soviet Union 85% of their staff were uh were conducting espionage. Um I think numbers So you have those. Now, if you're referring to like how many illegals, I would say at least you would have at least two two dozen in the UK, uh maybe a dozen in France, and you know, you would have a whole Host,

a constellation of them in the United States be simply because we span five time zones. I believe the UK only spans one. I think I asked this in part because I was I was reading something that said much of the the um illegal immigrants that had come across the southern border of the United States, many of them were were Chinese. And there was an article about questioning whether that was potentially an an intentional act to get illegal Chinese Um people into the United States for some future purpose. Yeah. You know, big claims require big evidence,

and I haven't seen that. In my experience, the Chinese Intelligence Service uh prefers to use students and scientists. We have approximately 80,000 Chinese students here at any one time. Um I know that for instance in the early 80s and early 90s, they would be given allowances. It always impressed me that they were given Small allowances for meals but large allowances for uh photocopying in the library. U we call that a clue in the FBI. So they'd be given like $150 for for eating, but they would be given thousands of dollars so that they could copy

as much as they could from uh from the libraries. It is much easier for them for any nation to send people here students and for instance go into engineering or uh any of those things. On this um Subject of body language, it's it's highly contested because some people say body language does give us clues, some people say it doesn't give us clues because there's cultural differences. Is body language important? Well, let me address what you just asked. Well, number one, body language is is is supremely important because we we are born without the capacity to

talk and so we have to read the baby in front Of us. to argue that body language a doesn't matter or it's subject to interpretation. I would argue that uh that would be a minuscule sentiment around the world amongst people who really have studied this and I'll and I'll say why. So a baby is born without the capacity to to speak. But the mother quickly learns through nonverbals whether that child is calicky, whether or not that child needs just to be reassured, Uh whether they're cold or hot and so forth. There's a lot of junk

out there. And um that is probably the cleanest word that I can use about uh body language that this means that or whatever. But we're exquisitely prepared to communicate at any time whether or not we're comfortable or uncomfortable, whether we're confident or uh not understanding. We had to evolve that precisely because we were always Surrounded uh by predators. For instance, Stephen, when you have doubts or you want followup to questions that I ask, you use your eyes exquisitly. You furrow your gloella, one eye rises, the other one lowers it. You're an easy read. And so

I follow it up with information. Now, you didn't have to teach me that. Now, what I would argue is, am I seeing uh constraint? Am I seeing um contempt or disdain? Well, that's a silly argument. We didn't Evolve to have perfect answers. Evolution is about approximation for success. In other words, if I can be accurate, 75 to 80% of the time, that's actually good enough. It's good enough. And so, you know what I teach is, do you see comfort or discomfort? psychological, physical and so forth. Do I see as in psychology we say um is

it positively veanced or negatively Balanced? Balanced. You see deferrowing your globella. What what does a veilance mean? Veilance really means is balanced or how much electricity goes this way or this way. Is it what's the veilance of it? So positively veance. What does that mean? positively veence. You're going to see gravitydefying behaviors. You're going to see emphasis. You're going to see uh a lot of humor and elacrity and broad gesture so forth. If it's negatively balanced, it's, you know, Restraint. You're going to see the uh the furrowing of the gloella. You're going to see the

tightening dim the diminition of the the lips. You're going to see a lot of facial touching. I don't know right all all these uh pacifiers and so I would argue that stop looking for uh perfection in fact Dr. Ambati at Harvard unfortunately she passed away she found that we as humans are going to be accurate 75% of the time in Our assessment of each other. That's an extraordinary number. Her research is is ample. You can look up her research. It's it's uh it was all done on the the opaces of looking for what she called

thin slice assessments. Thin slice assessments. All of your viewers should know because th it it it showed us that from as little as three milliseconds, we actually get a pretty good assessment of each other. And we're Right 75% of the time with three milliseconds. Yes. So they did several experiments. They had people go in and watch a teacher, for instance, by just opening the door to the classroom, watching her for a few seconds and closing the door. They rated that teacher the same as people who had sat in that classroom all semester long in terms

of are they a nice teacher? Are they a warm Teacher? Are they an an empathetic teacher? Are they a competent teacher? and so forth. It's as you rub your face because there's a lot of incredility there, you have to appreciate this experiment was done over and over and over in many areas. I was thinking as you said it, I was thinking hell. Like I was thinking um if someone reads you that quickly, I was thinking about how easy it is to leave a bad first impression. Yeah. Well, you know, When I started in studying body

language, which was formally in 1971, had no appreciation for uh for school work. So, I created my own uh study program. So, when I started taking a look at at body language in 1971, I remember people saying, you know, the first 20 minutes are the most important for making an impression. Then years later was 15 minutes. By the 1980s, somebody had said, "Well, it's the first four minutes." Well, time Out. That's ancient information. We now know that that assessment is made in the first three milliseconds. That's faster than your blink rate. And you can begin

to do things uh poorly and badly and begin to negatively affect others in that amount of of time because the subconscious is assessing others uh more quickly. And by the way, I didn't mention this. We are even before we're born, we are assessing the world around us to the point that for survival Purposes, a baby in udo begins to assess the world around by the amount of noises and by the cadence and manner of speech of the mother. So that when that baby is born and you can look up the research, the baby will be

born uh mirroring the native tongue. So that as researchers found a baby with a German mother will cry differently. The lilt l i lt t the lilt of that baby will be different than a French baby. What does that tell us? that we are already Programmed to adapt to that which dominates so that we can fit better. And this goes right from from that to business because synchrony is harmony. The the the faster we can synchronize, the faster we can harmonize. And so we are pre-programmed. So if your viewers are interested in that, they they

can look at the uh the research that's been done on the uh lilt of crying babies. How does one synchronize? So if synchrony equals harmony, yeah, i.e. if we synchronize with each other, then we're going to be harmonious in business or in life or whatever, right? How do I synchronize with somebody when I meet them? The first thing is at a distance. Um, if I saw you walking down the hallway and and you say, "Hey, Joe." You know, and I say, "Steve, how are you?" Right? I'm mirroring you. You know, this goes back to the

work of Carl Rogers in The early 1960s. And he found that synchrony puts us in sort of locks us in into this binding, psychological binding of where you greet with your hand and arch your eyebrows. Hey, well that sends powerful messages. So if I do it, can you imagine if you greeted me like this? And I went, "Yeah, how you doing?" Yeah. 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 Non-verbals. We begin, for instance, with the clothing. you know, if you go

to a meeting, you know, we would probably dress the same way or approximate e each other. Um, we would probably have this, look at us right now with our hand gestures. We're literally mirroring each other's hand gestures to to the point where our thumbs are precisely uh the same way. Why? Because we're comfortable with each other. We would lean in if we are um in in in good Synchrony. our speech pattern uh would would synchronize and um and to the point where you can actually work with individuals to calm them down or to see things

your way or to appreciate let's say in negotiations to begin to be more receptive. People are more receptive if they can mirror your uh behaviors. So people are more receptive if they can mirror your behaviors. So if I let you Mirror my behavior, then you're going to be more receptive to what I have to say. Is that what you're saying? In general, we cannot be mimicking each other like it's a game. It becomes ridiculous. But there's no way we can negotiate if you're screaming and I'm stoic. Yeah. it it just it doesn't happen. For instance,

you and I probably are doing a pretty good job of just mirroring each other in the in the In the conversation. We are likely more likely to be successful, have more facetime, and achieve more. If we can talk to each other this way, then if all of a sudden I decide to sit sideways, kick my feet up and lean on my and my and my elbow, that gesture alone, even though it's a comfort display, doesn't put us in synchrony. And everything that I have ever found was even when I was talking to terrorists, even when

talking to terrorists who Absolutely hated me, hated a lot of other things, if I could just get them grounded to the point where we are talking basically the same way and using the same words. If if they say my family, don't say wife and kids. Use family. Don't use terms of 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 points on this are that that's not what They asked." That's a great way to demonstrate that you're not um that you're not uh

listening. And and the other thing I I always emphasize is that for years people said well try to reduce everything that's emotional uh so that it doesn't interfere. That's not how we evolved. That is absolutely not how we evolved. We evolved to deal with emotions because emotions keep us alive. When our amygdala uh senses a threat, it is there To uh deal with that. And anything negative rises to prominence. That's one of the first things I teach. If if it's really negative, it's it rises to prominence. We assess for it first. We deal with that

first. And often in business, what we see is, you know, somebody had a hard time uh finding your location. They had a hard time parking. Then they had to go to your receptionist who was on the phone and took about 7 minutes to even Say good morning. And when they did, they did it with no elacrity. Then they have to go through security. Then they have to take the elevator that's crowded and then finally get to your office. And you want them to jump right into the meeting without all that ne negativity that has been

acred. That's not how humans evolved. That is absolutely not how our species evolved. Our species evolved to deconlict that to diminish that by first Dealing with that. That's where storytelling in part came from where we came and said you know I chased it I was able to he attacked me then I attacked back and you know and then we we go through that whole storytelling which has mythical proportions and mythical aspects as archetypes and if you subscribe to Yungian psychology one of the arguments that I always use is this. How many of you have been

in an argument and then 30 minutes Later you remember all the clever lines you should have said? We all have. And that's because the emotional brain hijacks neural activity. If you want the best out of people, if you want the best out of a relationship, vent that. Get that out. Give it time. Okay? And yes, you're going to have to invest that time. and then move forward so that you can uh uh deal with the the the the transactional the business and uh and so forth. You um you've referenced a few times different types of

body language that I've exhibited that help you understand what I'm thinking and going through. Um I think a second ago you referenced glabula and this brings me to something I read in your work about eyebrow knitting. Yeah. What is eyebrow knitting? So this little area uh between your eyes is called the gloella. And the gloella is great because at at about well we I've seen it in babies as early as 3 or 4 days. But uh very early on we begin to furrow. In other words, we push this together when we have doubts or we

don't like something or we don't understand something. So we we furrow the gloella. Uh some people call it uh eyebrow knitting because we are uh we have nicer eyebrows nowadays, not bushy like the old days. They don't come together like they used to. Um so we uh a lot of those expressions of I don't understand we we Use with the squinted eyes um the the furrowed gloella. You know sometimes we'll we'll touch our face or or scratch our face babies at 47 seconds which I have directly observed uh if you shine a light at a

newborn baby it will furrow the chin that they don't like it and uh in my presentations I have a m a matching one of a 47y old man and a 47 second old baby both doing the same thing when they hear things they don't they don't like. So we we begin to Communicate quite a lot uh actually with with our faces. What about eyelid touching? Yeah. So for a long time including in some of my writing um the theory was a lot of people cover their eyes, touch their eyes when they hear bad news. If

you said, "Hey Joe, can you help me move this weekend?" Oh geez, Steve. uh right you you see a lot of that and I started to think about that uh uh about five or six years ago and so I took some classes In anatomy human anatomy and I'm I'm pretty much convinced now that a lot of the facial touching including the you know touching of the eyes and so forth has to do with the intervation of the fifth cranial nerve and the seventh cranial nerve. Now, some of your viewers may find this interesting. That nerve

which goes to our forehead and actually goes into our eyelids and so forth. And the seventh which is the facial is very short in distance to that Part of the brain where it is received. And so I think and you know I've 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 no uh is because that pressure uh immediately goes to uh the brain and helps to relieve stress and because the nerve is so short right we could massage our feet

and achieve the same but it's very far away. So I think a lot of facial touching including eye touching We do because of uh of its ability to anytime there's stress we pacify ourselves and and by the way it's very interesting in 1974 I was uh bored at the university so there was a lab where you could actually watch children and study them at play and they had some children there that were born blind so they had never seen and I was just blown away the first time I I saw a blind child who had

never seen heard some news that was not very good And immediately covered their eyes having never seen. And that's when I realized okay we are 2.4 million years old. This is uh hardwired in our DNA. This is part of our paleo circuits as Dr. David Given later taught me and it has to do with how it feels and that's why we touch our faces so much. So, it's typically a negative emotion and a form of self soothing for that negative 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. Like when I'm reading, I find myself turning pages. Uh because I read very fast. I turn with my left hand, but I pacify or soothe myself by touching my my, you know, it's a pens of uh pose. Women will play with their hair all day long. our brain is asking us to do things to contribute uh to that. But when there's something stressful then for instance we go from like in negotiations when somebody throws a Number we don't like we'll go from touching our face to scratching our

face because the brain is saying hey do something more powerful that will keep me in what we call homeost uh stasis. So, um, to answer your question, yes, but it also applies to when we're really enjoying a moment. What about our lips? 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 Um the seismograph. The the lips are like the emotional seismograph of the body. When we are comfortable and confident, our lips are full of blood. their

color changes. The minute we hear something we don't like, blood actually begins to leave the lips and they become narrower and then we begin to tighten them. You know, if somebody says something I don't like, I might go right or we begin to bite the lip Because we're stressed or we pluck it, pull on it, do all all sorts of of things to to soothe it. But the lips get very uh show a a lot of nervous emotion 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 might not agree with my I probably shift my jaw because when you shift your jaw, it puts pressure on the TMJ and that alone says to the brain go somewhere else. Don't don't uh you know don't Struggle too much with that. So um we're always doing something physical to counter anything that the brain might be undergoing. Tell me about the supernal notch. What the hell? So the supernal notch um it has other names. You could call it the little neck dimple. Uh this little area right at the bottom of your your

throat. It's a a deep uh indentation. This is the most vulnerable part of the human body. All air, food, Nutrients, blood, electricity, oxygen, everything goes through there. And what happens is, and one of the things that I found was that there was nothing in the literature in 197576. I'm looking and I'm noticing that when people are nervous, they immediately cover their neck. They touch their neck. You know, in the literature you hear about, oh, she um, you know, clutched her pearls, right? Um, rubbing that men tend to do it more robustly Because of testosterone. Women

tend to more directly touch the superernal notch. And what I found is when there's a lack of confidence, insecurities, fear, apprehensions, or concerns that people will go, "Oh my god, did you see that?" Right? Oh, it's gone. It's back. And you know, why is it all directed at this little area of the neck? And why do men clutch their necks and massage their 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 transmitting is weakness. Somebody whose confidence just never touches the neck. 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 you're you're getting to me. Ventilating behaviors. Wait, sorry. When you say ventilate, you mean giving yourself air? Yeah. So it could be so to ventilating behaviors, okay, are behaviors of weakness because your body temperature Has changed at 1 250th of a second and what you're revealing is something negative is getting to you. So you you you don't do that. But here's the behavior, the neck touching, neck covering covering of the supernal notch. And there's another behavior. You

know earlier we talked about we were surrounded by predators and one of the behaviors we did was to cover our mouths or hold still when we hear a noise. The third behavior is to cover the neck. To Cover the neck because large felines always go for the neck. And so the the brain didn't doesn't have a closet full of ties. It has about four choices. And those four behaviors are exquisite. It's proven over time that if we cover our mouth, cover the neck, don't move, they work pretty well. So, we 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 in Florida and we certainly saw it in November after the hurricane, people come to see their house and they cover their their head. Hands are up here. Oh my god. You know why? Why? Why do we do that? Again, large felines. These are shortcuts. This is huristics that have prevailed and say, "Oh no, right. And you and and you say, 'Well, we're no longer surrounded by them. Well, go to India. There were 238 attacks last year. It

is in our DNA. It is performed out of necessity to uh to to keep us alive. So, we have these um these reactions. But um so, I look at the I certainly I look at the uh at the lips and the and the neck as uh as good places for information. I was just thinking then about why yeah you hold your head but you also hold your head 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 old

car and it was and was parked at an angle on a road that was at an angle and they forgot to set the the brake and I'm watching it slowly slide. And I found myself I teach this stuff with my hands up here and uh 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 realize these uh these shortcuts uh are With us for a purpose. Much of the work you do as an FBI agent is some form of negotiation and you

spend a lot of time teaching people how to be good negotiators as well. You mentioned negotiation a second ago. I'm a business person. I do lots of negotiations, whether it's with clients or suppliers or interviews. You know, I'm interviewing people all the time, which I consider to be a negotiation. How do I improve my negotiation skills? What are the things I should be thinking about as I go into the negotiation? Well, uh, you know, they warn me. You ask profound questions. 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 themselves in jeopardy, that is nothing but negotiations. you may look at as interviewing but like you said even a conversation you know I look at negotiations in the same way that I look At interviewing it's in in in the simplest form it's effective communication with a purpose. So you say well that's highly simplistic. I've never heard that. Well think of it. Well what is the purpose? 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 communication and there has to be an understanding of of what I mean and what I uh intend and and so forth. So, for Me, it's a reminder when I first came into the FBI, an old-timer said to me, "Intering isn't about the confession." And I looked at him like, "What? What do you excuse me? What do you mean not about the confession? He says you'll get the confession. Interviewing is about facetime. If you can get people to talk to you for two hours, three hours, four hours, in one case, I I interviewed an individual

for for 12 hours. We, you Know, they'll tell you everything you need to know, but you got to keep them in the room. And so I always view negotiations of number one is how do I communicate with you in a way that you'll want to talk to me for however long it takes to get to that purpose which is the transaction. Now, you know, if if I'm evaluating you to for your services or if I'm negotiating for for for prices, you know, I want to Hear what you have to say and I want to lay

out what um I'm interested in achieving and then reconciling or working around whatever discrepancies or issues they there may be. I think when we look at negotiations that way, we can say, well, that means I got to do a lot of stuff up front, which is who am I communicating with? Who am I going to negotiate with? What's their negotiating style? Are they stoic? Do they come in? Are they do they throw Things down? I mean, I've I've been I've been in negotiations where opposing counsel came in and literally walked into the room, didn't even

say good morning, just threw the things down and said, "I want to hear the numbers." Okay, then how do we begin to deal with that? Because someone that 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 you try and bring them down to your Position? Great question that the worst thing you can do is rise rise to that. You begin to dominate them by taking control of time. Whoever controls time controls. And so they come in, they throw the things

down. So usually, you know, we'll start with Well, good morning to you, too. Uh yeah. Yeah. Let's let's let's cut to the chase. And then the whole team I'm working with knows we're going to slow Things down. We are not going to be working at that pace because if you work at that pace, they're taking control. And so we slow things down. And there's several strategies. you can become all of a sudden you can become very visual and say all right 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 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 person to understand that we negotiate hopefully as equals but if the perception is always that that person is negotiating as the bully or is always in charge, you're never going to have uh equity. Now, I've had a lot of clients that that have said, "Hey, you know, I've tried all your strategies and you know, this this guy I'm dealing with is is just he's

crass. He's just a bully. he comes in And he stuff like and I and so one of the questions I always ask is is he the only source? Is is he or she the only source? Number one. And number two is how long are you willing to tolerate this person? Because we failed 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 client in particular. You come away with a nervous stomach. He and you know how long are you willing to tolerate that?

If you're willing to tolerate it, then you know he's not going to change his style. Then you come in and we we change our exposure. So we're not going to expose all of our staff to that kind of negativity. Uh we send in our first person and say, "Look, here are the numbers." And we work with that. But there are ways to to to to dealing with the with the very toxic. uh but we don't allow them to get away 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 their agenda. Maybe their agenda based on past meetings was to come in and just throw these things at us uh very quickly. Then we have to adjust uh to that. So there has to be rehearsed strategies for for dealing with that. One of the things your work made me think about is how important it is to literally like write down the goal of my 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 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 like what are what are we actually negotiating for? And um and so that's why I like the the simplicity of um effective communication with a purpose as a form of uh negotiations but to also understand what Is my role. What is my role and what is my purpose in being there? Because many times we go into negotiations and the chief financial officer is there. Ding. Uh sometimes we

go in there and you know your first assistant is always uh there also but you also have uh in office counsel that is in attendance. What's their role? And what is my role? You know something so simple as what are you going to do? Look straight ahead the whole time um your c you know your Attorney is speaking or are you going to look at him? Well, we know from the research that by looking at uh the person who's actually talking on your side actually potentiates the gravity of what he's saying that uh at the

most emphatic points that when that attorney makes um and you did this earlier, you want to steeple because steeple is the most powerful gesture that we have to convey confidence. steepling is in this 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. You see uh Steve Jobs used to a lot of pictures of Steve Jobs doing that. But you know you reserve that for that point in time when you want to emphasize and so the worst thing you can do

is just to sit there uh dormant. And in fact, we have research and it's called the stillface experiments. And that is that the worst thing you can do is sit at a meeting and hold a still Face. You're perceived as a threat. You are perceived as less trustworthy. You're perceived as insignificant. Corner of your mouths are down. I roll to the to the right, Stephen. That's how you're perceived. And that's and that's what happens. uh the experiments which were done first with babies found that if you take a baby and it's called the stillface experiments.

If you take a baby and uh you look away and look back 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 very still. The babies become incontrollable. They they they have fits. They're really troubled by that. So the experimenters said, "Well, yeah, but at what age does that uh leave us?" So they decided to do it with adults. Adults do the same thing. If you and I are talking and we're exchanging Faces, the worst thing I can do is then sit

there. It is. You see, you you find it disconcerting. Yeah. and what the brain perceives is a threat and you lose trustworthiness because you can't read what this person's thinking either way. I'd rather 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 anybody knows the the precise reason for It. But what we do understand is that the still face which if you're in a virtual call you want to nod you want to tilt your head you want to

make uh different gestures but the the worst thing you can do is hold still and then in negotiations when you're talking to the team and saying look when we're going in there you know I don't want anybody to just sit there I want expressions uh and I and when someone is 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 other thing I find with negotiators, uh, one thing I did in the FBI is I always planned my interviews in exquisite

detail. Who would enter the room first, who would say what, where I would sit, who gets offered water, and when, because I need to be in control. Who's going to say what? These are things people don't think about. But at the levels with the people That I deal with, you have to have a certain amount of advantage. You have to have a certain amount of psychological leverage to say, "Look, you may be the world's largest manufacturer of this, and I'm just starting out, but I am not down here." And so I would appreciate if you

would begin to value me and I do that by doing certain things in the manner that I walk in. Who walks in first? Where do I sit? What gestures do I use to point? Right? So you never use your finger. You always use the full hand in the vertical position. You take command of the situation and it looks aesthetically pleasing. Oh, isn't it nice? He's offering me something to drink. Or the assistant or someone says, "Uh, what would you would you like some tea? How would you like it?" And so forth. And what we're actually

witnessing is the transformation of I you have now become the dominant person by Becoming the archetypal the father or mother figure because you're offering something because you're offering it and you're in control of of of the food and and the brain. You know, people often wondered, well, why, you know, why was it in Stockholm uh Sweden back in the 70s that the Stockholm syndrome took hold so fast with those bank robbers where they had such an effect on their victims that within hours the the the victims were defending the the bank Robbers. It was very

simple. They became the father figure and the hostages became the children. So, I actually don't know that story. What happened was there was a bank robbery and in Stockholm and uh the bank robbers went in held the the the victims hostage. Eventually uh they were rescued but what they found was that in in a matter of hours the victims were rising to the defense of the criminals and it became known as the Stockholm syndrome. And What it showed us was the robbers became the archetype of the parent and the hostages became the children and in

an instant they became uh sub subservient. Is that what happens in domestic abuse cases as well? Yes, you nailed it. You nailed it beautifully. Yeah, you're the the first person to get that right away. And and that's why you often see this in domestic abuse cases and you say, "How can she just got beat up? How can she defend him, usually the the case, and You realize, oh my god, we have a like a Stockholm syndrome where he's the provider, he's the only one working or this or that." But, you know, getting back to negotiations,

I think it's it's one of those things that I insist that if you go into negotiations that you be treated at least as an equal and that the minute people start to look down on you, it makes for a very difficult uh conversation. So, when you're thinking about walking into the room and all These where you sit, if you're walking into the room to interview a terrorist, right, are you trying to walk into the room first or are you trying to walk 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 about seating positions? Right. So, one of the things that I always insisted is I would walk into the room first. So, they would already be in there. No, no, no. I we would we would walk to the Room with them with them and then I 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 is safe and there's nobody in here. You know, I've walked into people before. That begins to

establish my dominance. And then I would say, um, why don't you take a a seat uh right there? You know, people ask me, "Well, why, you know, why are you being so nice to these uh the these criminals?" Well, first of All, I go back to what that old-timer said. I want facetime. I don't care what it takes to get facetime, but I also want to be in charge. And if by being nice to him and pointing to the nice chair there achieves that, then uh so much for me. And then I always try to

sit in in a in a way that uh I sit higher. Now, in the case of Ramsay, we'd literally get the room ahead of time and we would change the the the furniture so that I always set An about an inch to two inches higher than he did. He never noticed that. Ramsey was the the guy whose cigarette was quivering was quivering. In the end, we ended up doing uh 37 interviews and they were all done in hotel rooms mostly in the Orlando area and we would go in ahead of time and uh we would

just uh arrange the furniture or bring in furniture, but I always sat higher than him. He never understood that. He always sat on the couch, which um somehow uh About an about that much was shaved from the couch. so that it always set um a little lower. And so um he was always literally slightly looking up to us and 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 you like something to drink now? I said, "Well, this is such a

good subject. Why don't we take the break now and you you have the drink now and then we'll so we can uh continue." What he didn't realize Was that um I was establishing uh control over him by sort of dictating. Uh it it's it it would be no, you know, I'm sure your listeners might be saying, "Boy, that's manipulative." Yeah, but in in the transactional phase, it's no different than you you saying to your crew, I need to take a break right now and go to the restroom. Okay, take a break. I don't I don't

think that much of it. But over time, what happens is he begins to Relinquish a lot of that forcefulness that he'd love to exhibit. He'd love to be in charge, but I'm not permitting it. And sometimes he he he 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 really interesting." And my partner, Mrs. Terry Moody, I I loved her. She was a great partner. She'd looked at me like, "Really? You're going to push it that much further?" But it worked uh

to the point where um I mean here's a guy who had his attorney's phone number on him at all times and he never used that. You mentioned the height of the chairs. What what does height matter in this context? Because I was thinking as well about Zoom and the interesting thing 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 Digitally now is we don't often think about height and I I'm sometimes on a call uh with one of my colleagues

or partners and I'll often ask them before the client or whoever we're doing business with joins the call to adjust the height because they are like they're like looking down into the lens or they're looking up into the lens which I think is also Suboptimal. Good term, suboptimum. There's a lot to be said about height. Just as there is a beauty Dividend, right? So, the beauty dividend, and you can look this up, the beauty dividend, well researched, basically says you're going to earn 8% per year the rest of your life just if you are good-looking.

That's the beauty dividend. You can go online and look at all the studies and the statistics that go with it. There's also a height dividend and it is universal. If you look at Americans that are 6'2 Inches, so a little taller than me, accounts for about 3% of the population, unless you go to the Fortune 500 companies and then they account for 39% of all CEOs at 62. Whoa. That my friend is an order of increase. And you say, are taller people smarter? Uh, no. No. It has to do with the benefit of of being

tall. There is a dividend. And so we Tend to see that across the world. The word dividend, for anyone that doesn't know, basically means a like a benefit or a reward. One could think of it as an advantage. You you have an advantage. So with Ramsay, what was the the dividend by you making your chair just an inch taller? What were you doing, Tim? You're taking away his power a little bit, making you more powerful. I had to because he had all the cards. He was the spy. He had all the Evidence in his head

or in his possession or the Russians had it. The Russians weren't going to give it to us. They're the enemy. They said, "Too bad, mates. We've got all your secrets." They had so many secrets that they measured it in weight, not just in pages. The other problem I was dealing with was is his IQ. He had the second highest IQ in the that the army ever recorded since World War II. He could talk on any subject, Quantum physics to whatever. when you have a superior intellect in his case which was true or you're dealing with

someone let's say who is malignant narcissist so they account for about 2% of the population but about 20% of CEOs so your m your malignant narcissist who overvalues themselves and tends to devalue others and in my case with him he had narcissist istic traits which I could I Could deal with but his superior intellect was breathtaking and he had perfect recall. Uh so in a way it was frightening because all he had to do was transport himself to another country and he could sell all the secrets that he had memorized. So I had to play

a a certain role, but I also couldn't let him take charge of the investigation and not one that had put England, Germany, all of Western Europe in jeopardy as well as Canada and the United States. I could not afford, the United States government couldn't afford to have him uh be flippant with the knowledge that um that he knew, especially once we knew that he had compromised the nuclear go- codes. Do you mind if I pause this conversation for a moment? I want to talk about our show sponsor today, which is Shopify. I've always believed that

the biggest cost in business isn't failure. It's the time you waste trying to make decisions. Time spent hesitating, overthinking, or waiting for the right moment. When I started my first company at 20 years old, I had no experience and no money. What I did have was an idea and the willingness to move fast, and that made all the difference. If you've been thinking about starting your own business, Shopify makes this entire process so much easier. With thousands of customizable templates, you don't need coding or design skills. You just Need a willingness to start. Shopify connects

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look at posture as you know when we when we look confident shoulders back our breathing to me posture starts with the brain how calm we are in our breathing. I was again in Valencia at this uh this event 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?" And I said, "Well, I am nervous. I'm just hiding it. I'm acting like uh I'm 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, you want to look cool, calm, and collected in negotiations. um you don't want to uh look uh needy. You don't want to Look desperate. Um and at the same time, you don't want to come across as you're indifferent. And sometimes that demeanor, that posture, those gestures, the the totality of it has a lot of meaning. Now, you have to keep in mind a lot of successful businessmen I'm running into are actually on the spectrum, right? So, the autism spectrum and so they don't make as much eye contact. They may

have behaviors that are irregular. I have one I deal with who has aspberers and so he uh sometimes jerks and so there's a lot of uh discomfort I find from others in 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 tell a lot uh about a a a person. When you've invested in things, you're doing your diligence and you're talking to people. Yeah, you can look at the numbers all day long, but you also are looking at the non-verbals and

saying, You know, uh are they communicating confidence or are they communicating uh desire or need or um or any kind of frailty? I I was just reflecting on a few of the interviews I've had recently. We've been interviewing for one 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 stage candidates was extremely calm and sat back in their chair and the other One was very much leaning forward. And upon reflection the second candidate wanted the job a lot

more. But the first candidate was probably more experienced, more confident and had higher selfworth. and their ability to be so relaxed in that environment and kind of own the chair in in my boardroom was actually it actually made me kind of want them more because they were signaling to me that they had lots of options. They weren't intimidated. They weren't scared. They Weren't nervous about this opportunity. You know, that's an interesting observation, Stephen. And it's and it's a it's very good that you observe the the discrepancy. One of the things that I look for is

what is their role going to be? I I don't mind that somebody is nervous. Um I myself early on coming from a humble background was often nervous. I tend to focus on the things that most organizations don't put into their plan To look for. One of them is problem solving. Give me a list of the problems you have solved. Most qu most people when they hire they never ask that question. They tell you know I can do Excel. I I know Microsoft I that's great. Please tell me what problems you have solved at at at

your last uh job and and you know how efficiently did 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 I said, you know, look for is is how many instances they tell and how they describe it. Because here's what's interesting. The person who solves the problem goes into the detail and feels the emotion of the person that's telling the story only conveys it but doesn't know the emotion that is attached to solving It. Mhm. So

when you when that little child finally figures out how to, you know, you give them a trick lock where wood things have to go this way or this way and then the little thing opens. When they come back and tell you that, you see the gravitydefying behavior, the arching of the eyebrows, the bright eyes and saying, "I solved it. I solved it. I got in there." Yeah. Right. The problem 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 I I look for

is and they may be nervous or whatever is how good are are they at observing. This is the one question that um has uh actually saved a lot of companies when I say make sure that from now on you ask how good are you observing and they'll say well observing what everything that matters people events opportunities right if you come to me and say well I can code this okay that's Great but in the position that you're going to be in you're going be managing people. How good are you at observing people? The great thing

about companies that that seek this is all right. So when you go and you business your you go see your subsidiary, what are you what are you looking for? What are you observing? Well, when I look at the books, how about the attitude of the people? Are people content? Are they Happy? Or do they all look like they're constipated? I mean, I've been into companies that the minute I walk in, I go, "Oh, geez, you got management problems here." And the guy goes, "Who did somebody tell you?" I I I said, "Well, you know, I'd

have to be clinically stupid not to recognize that all these people are walking around with their heads hung low, that they make no eye contact, nobody they pass each other in the subway and they don't talk to Each other. You got management issues here." M and you know and it's like they hired for this skill but is that really what you need when you actually need somebody that is a great observer? What about confidence? Is this something that you're born with or do you think confidence can be trained into somebody? I think confidence can absolutely

be trained. coming from Cuba where we lost Everything arriving as a refugee having nothing and then all of a sudden uh the FBI asked me to become I mean I didn't apply to the FBI the FBI actually came to me and asked me to apply and then all of a sudden I said are are you guys serious is like I'm 23 years old you know I'm barely learning how to shave and with no confidence whatsoever and they teach you to be confident. You can teach confidence. And what I tell people is the easiest way to

Learn confidence is to be confident about one thing. I don't care if it's you stack papers better than anybody else. I don't care if it's the way you make your your bed, any small thing. Show me that you're confident. Show me that that's better than anybody else's. And the minute you can be confident about one thing, now you can be confident about two things and then you can be confident about three things. This nonsense that I often see people say, "Well, just come in and be confident." Uh, I think that's nonsense. I think you have

to learn and your your physiology has to learn to be confident about one thing. You know, with me, I was confident in uh playing football. Okay? I was fast. I could do certain things. I was confident about that. I I knew that in basketball I could shoot a three-pointer. Okay, confident about that, but not confident about a a a host Of other things. To be in a room full of executives, I remember when I had no confidence. So, how do I work on that? You you cannot unless you're a worldclass actor, you cannot walk into

a place and all of a sudden pretend you're you're confident. I tell people learn to be confident about one thing. And sometimes it's knowledge. I always there is no meeting I go into that I am not well read on that subject. If you want to achieve Confidence, know everything that you can about a particular subject. And that gives you so much great confidence. And I've seen young people come right out of college and they're sitting there, you know, they're they're they're elbows are in. They're they're almost mousy looking. They're nervous. They're looking about constantly. They

don't know where to look. And you know, and I and I tell them, "Know your subject. Know your subject." because the minute They begin to talk about that they begin to flower and and and change. So So it's competence in a particular area or vertical creates confidence which then kind of permeates. Yes. And and that's what the milit in the you know the military you know like the British military that's what they they take young people 17 18 19 years old and they say you know we're going to change you into a warrior. Well, how's

that? By running, by by getting you to Climb up that rope, by doing any number of things where you come can come away and feel uh that confidence. You talked in a video that I watched um for Wired about a variety of different ways we can exhibit and be more confidence and show confidence. One of them is really looking at the leaders in your life who are confident and trying to sort of replicate some of those confident behaviors, right? Um the other one was about your voice. Use a deeper voice and 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 what's successful. A confident person doesn't have to talk fast and doesn't talk high. Right? I remember the first arrest I made and I said, "Stop. This is the FBI." My voice was Nobody was gonna stop. Nobody. Nobody. And the guys that were with me said, "Joe, you got to work on your voice. You have to have a Command voice." Well, a command voice is down. Like, like, stop right there. I I'll give you an example.

You talk to most executives and you say, "Um, no, that's not acceptable. It's too high." No is always said down. No. Are we are we gonna No, that sounds like a complete sentence. 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 The guy that uh Brian Hall who encouraged me to write my one of my books called Louderder Than Words 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 and and I had them all saying the word no no going going lower. He had stepped out of the room for to to take a call. When he came back he he he thought I had a cult going. I said no Brian I just I'm Teaching them the right way because these are going to be future executives that you don't say no no no no. Now, that sounds like a complete sentence. No, no, that's not how it's gonna work. And and it's always uh lower. So, we work on the words. More importantly,

uh we work on the on the gestures, how much territory you occupy because the territory that you occupy, if you're here sort of like shriveled and tight, You're shriveled. Uh you want to you don't want to be excessive. You don't 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 it's very important to learn to speak in cadence. When you speak in cadence, and I do it, is people listen. They have time to process what you're saying, but they can also attach

the emotion that goes with it. Who spoke in cadence? Churchill. Uh Martin Luther King, I have A dream that one day one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. Powerful. Imagine if he stood up there say I have one dream that one day might it's like who would listen to that? But he was a preacher and he knew how to command an audience. And when Churchill said, "We will fight them in the air. We Will

fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender." The cadence is uh not just seductive, it is powerful. And a lot of executives don't know how to use it. They just I I I've been to presentations where people just let go. They're not even listening to what's being said. And yet somebody begins to talk to them in Cadence and says, "This is our offer. It is not final, but for the moment, it is our

best offer." Now you're paying attention. 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 our last offer, but uh you know, we there's a real authority when you slow things down just that little bit and provide the gaps, which goes back to What I said, who controls time controls. You're establishing control over the theater of the negotiations. They don't teach that. Your hand gestures as well. You've got very complimentary hand gestures to what 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 wondering how I and my fingers are spread out establishing how much we care about something. When we fear, our Fingers come together. And when we fear a lot, our thumbs tuck in. I' I've seen people in negotiations give up a lot of information because all of a sudden they they tuck their thumbs in. I Okay, they're scared because dogs tuck their ears in, humans tuck their the hands, no matter how dark you are, your hands, the palm of the hands are very visible.

that evolved with us because they're expressive. So even in low light, we can Use our hands to communicate. The more confident we are, the further our fingers are. I care. Imagine if I said I care about you versus I care about you. There's a big difference. So in the first example, you kind of had your fingers together. In the second, you spread them out. this, I care about this. And so they potentiate the message. Um, and the human brain evolved also to look for the hands because the Hands number one can be used as a

weapon, but number two, they are also emblematic of the emotions that um that we feel and eye contact. Yes, lots been said about eye contact and the importance of it. What should I understand about eye contact confidence? Eye contact in some ways is uh I mean we could spend about 40 minutes on it because and I as a teacher I can tell 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, 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 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 want to intimidate. Um so you have to uh employ things like eye gaze behavior. You have to employ things such as looking away. Now you and I both look away as we're thinking about examples And and and different things. You can use eye contact for uh emphasizing. Look how often we use eye contact or our eyes to communicate opinions. Maybe

with your partner, you said, "What do you think?" And and immediately they'll look he or she may may look at your partner, not yours specifically, but somebody you live with and they go, "No." Right? So with our eyes, with our eyes, we often give our opinions. So in negotiations, it's uh It's an important area. One of the things I think a lot about is about rapport building very very quickly. You know, someone that does this podcast a lot. I sometimes I overthink it a little 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 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 about rapport building. We actually videoed our interaction today. So when when I walked in Yeah. and I've got the 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 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 for me with arms of Kimbo, which is I'm In charge. I'm the big guy. And so your arms were here. Yeah, I got it. Okay. Okay. But you know, I actually do remember that. I remember thinking, get your hands off your hips. No, no, no. But but but it's fine. This is your domain. I expect this from you in your domain. But one of the things you immediately did was you immediately went around the table

and you went forward to shake my hand. Right? So one of the things that I say is how much people Matter to us is determined by how fast we act. Okay. So the fact that you actually went from there to here and you did it immediately, it demonstrates that you care. As early as 11 months, a baby will recognize individuals or even inanimate objects that care just based on how quickly they move towards them or towards them to do something for them. Okay? It's called a pro-social act. and babies as young as 11 months recognize

That. So, this is something that uh I it doesn't surprise me because you've been successful. You know, the the success is for me is measured on how well people uh get along with others. Thank you for the work. Appreciate you. Thank you. You're very very smart. You look like someone who uh who worked in the FBI. I uh it's the FBI uniform. This 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 Charming about how I I I was dressed, which

I uh appreciated. Uh this is always a good reminder to me of how old I look now. And uh and uh the only note that I would I would add is I would have remained standing a little longer. Ah okay. and then made sure that you know as I'm sitting then you sit at the same time. Okay. So invite you to sit and sit with you at at the same at the same time rather than allow me to all now if you can see in that instance I'm actually Still over you while you're already uh

seated that is in negotiations that would be as we say contraindicated. What does that mean? It is. It's a no no. It's a big word. It's a big word for Steve. Don't do that. Okay. What about taking notes? This is something that I've started doing actually in the last six months when I'm in meetings in my companies in the UK. Um is I have an iPad now and when someone's speaking it Actually helps me because of the way that I think and process and learn and it helps me also to not be listening to speak

i.e. if they say something and I immediately have an idea that I'm worried I'm going to lose instead of, 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 one of the things I noticed in your work is you say that in terms of showing someone you care, taking notes is a Really effective way to do that. Well, what I what I would say to you is what I would tell the therapists, one of the biggest mistakes therapists have started making

is they sit there and because a lot of them are earning a lot less money and they don't have a secretarial pool like they used to, they now type their observations as they're talking to their client. I think that's a big mistake. And from my the studies that my company Did in surveying uh not the therapists but their clients, the ones that were willing to talk. It's terrible. What I tried to emphasize is um have material in front of you and if there's a particular note uh write a little something or if you have somebody

with you that's uh going to be the the notetaker. I don't want to miss anything. If you're writing, you're not observing. And observing is actually more important Than writing. Now, if you started talking and mentioned, if you had mentioned the uh supernal notch, I I might have, okay, is that super or supra sternal notch? Okay, that's a worthy note. And then I come back and revisit. But if I'm writing all the time, I you 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 from an evolutionary standpoint, we cannot outdo our DNA. We just cannot Simply, for instance, schools come in and say, you know, well, you can't hug the students anymore. Okay? don't expect you know why you know why do we have depressed students why do we I there's any number of things but I can tell you this we evolved to hug to touch to greet each other you know your best mate all that stuff when we used to wrestle with our buddies right uh that that play that play wrestling all that Is is is covert

touching it's because our species needs it. Humans need to touch. There are certain things that humans need and that one of them is this facial interactions. When you're focused on writing, you're actually taking away from that. How do you think about handshakes then? Because handshakes are how we kind of touch strangers in a socially acceptable way. Is there a good way to handshake? There is. Um and and there's bad ones. So I Always say when you shake hands the fingers are down right a lot of people 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 now you have their finger in this er this is an erogenous area of your body this is what you kiss yeah well the the the inside of the wrist uh is an erogenous area and so now 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. 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 jerk

the hand. Don't squeeze it too tight. Don't play jujitsu. Uh people my age have arthritis. Uh I'm never impressed. I've had, you know, men come in and they're big and burly and they squeeze my hand and it's like, are you serious? What about the cupping where they they cup with so cupping of the Hand is okay with really people you know but uh most people don't like to have their hands engulfed if you want to touch somebody else's hand so you shake the hand and then you touch the upper arm and all of that for

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is barista quality matcha straight from the can and it tastes like it's just been made from your favorite cafe. naturally sweet and naturally Creamy in a can. And the reason why I've invested in this company and I drink matcha is because matcha as an energy source gives me lasting energy without the big crashes that I get from other products. Grab their ready to drink canned matcha lattes at Waitros, Tesco's, and Holland and Barrett and Perfect.com where you can use code Steven40 for 40% off your first order. I've got another video for you here. So, he

starts out with an arm down, but he's He's touching his neck, covering his neck. He's crimping the left side of his face, and he's massaging his forehead and his neck. So, I mean, we look at and we say, "Okay, these are all emblematic of psychological discomfort." Now, why that is, uh, we see his blink or eyelid flutter, uh, he's touching his face. Why is that? I I don't know. It's not now there's a cathartic exhale. Looks like 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 leader. You would certainly you see that from a follower but not a leader. You'll never see a general do any of that. Certainly not in the US Army or the the uh the British army. All the behaviors that he's doing which are pacifyings or indicators of uh some sort of psychological discomfort are also all the behaviors that we equate with lack of confidence. Leaders are often exceptional and you Say that exceptional individuals are made not born and that's a good thing because that puts this level of excellence within reach of you

and me and you've identified several traits that make someone an exceptional person. Yeah. Um one of those is selfmastery. self-mastery whether it was Alexander the Great who sought the the learnings of let's see Socrates taught Plato who taught Aristotle who Alexander so Aristotle taught Alexander the great And he pursued the knowledge Thomas Edison one of the greatest inventors in America 1300 patents left school at age six sought the knowledge I mean as humble as I came from we were so poor I literally had to go to garbage cans to steal books and magazines to to

to learn. You can create your own apprenticeship program and you can learn to master a skill or a knowledge or an athletic move whatever. Someone who is Selfmastered what have they accomplished? They have accomplished something that nobody can take from them. Nobody can take that from me. What is it? All that knowledge, all that skill, all that experience, nobody can can take from me. Why is the word self in there? Selfmastery because so much of it nobody, you know, 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 every decade. Nobody's telling me to do that. And so it's self uh why because I wanted to know because you know why did why did uh Leonardo da Vinci want to know the eddies water eddies in the water or the length of a woodpecker's tongue? Who cares? It doesn't matter. It was self-imposed. And we we in this world are the beneficiaries of Leonardo de Vishi's interest in water eddies which then helped him to draw hair of the Mona Lisa were the beneficiaries of that. I think

selfmastery is more important than uh I think what a university can teach you. It can a university can teach you how to think but it doesn't teach you mastery. 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 Self-awareness being aware of oneself like well I think you're an example of of of selfmastery there it's the only word around the in the universe of languages that encapsulates being able to take what is available and making it a part of your

life. And so whether it was my grandmother teaching me how to talk to people or my mother or my father, my mother showing me how to actually shake hands, my Sister showing me how to how to dance. This is all part of selfmastery. Now, I could have rejected all of that, and a 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 learn to do that. Okay, that's your option. But there's there's an exquisite elegance in being able to look

at the world around you and learn from it, which you have done and say, I'm going to put that to work. Why should I re Reinvent what other people have 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 second one is observation which I think we've talked about observation you know I the the great example is uh a parent who can observe uh the the immediate needs of children and and and so forth and I see people now that they're so I

was at the airport yesterday coming here and there was a Family that the whole time they were waiting not once talked to each other nor were they aware of what the others were doing. I find that difficult because when my daughter was growing up, I never took my eyes off of her. I see people on their devices as this whole family was and they're missing out on uh a lot of things, a lot of in information. The great inventions are made through observation. The the Velcro, do you know The story of Velcro? No. In the

middle of World War II, a Swiss guy goes up in the mountains and comes back hiking, right? And he looks at his socks and he says, "Man, these chiggers, these little uh Is it a plant?" Yeah, it's just the little seedlings that they give off that stick to things. We here in America, we call them stickers. There's all sorts of names. And he looks at it under a microscope and he notices that they they don't just Stick out, they're actually curved. and in in curving they get stuck on everything. So he says I'll just invent

this. Now what's interesting we talk about observation is he had seen this one time. How many millions of people had seen it but it's the observer that can can capitalize on it. And that's why I tell executives when you hire hire good observers because they're going to save you. They're the Guy ones that are going to say, "Hey, I'm seeing some trends here that are bad." So, observation is is key. And then we transition right into the next one is most people think communication is just about words and communication is principally most effectively and most

influential a non-verbal across every culture. and the the misconception that words triumph over uh nonverbals. Go to a funeral. Go to a funeral and see how Word how well words work versus putting your arm around somebody and let them sob on your shoulder. It's the primary 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 show empathy. The fourth one is action. And it for me it really links to both the second point which was observation but also to your story about velcro

because there must have been many people that thought oh my God that thing's sticking to me and they did nothing. Maybe even they maybe even some people who thought oh that could be 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 the book be exceptional do something that is pro-social or beneficial but don't wait right the the the the worst thing we can do if you want to let people know 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 and say, "Hey, you know, I' I'd love some help with this. I, you know," and then they just, "Well, I don't know. Um, let me check in the back." And they take their time walking to the back. And then they take time walking back. You might as well be shouting, "I don't care." What I tell managers is that's your responsibility. Why did you hire someone who can't move at the speed of light? Because movement is equated with caring. So, if that's their

attitude, you might as well have a sign that says, "I don't care." Now, you could say, "Well, you know, maybe they have a mobility problem." Fine. Fronted. I'd say, "You know what? It's going to take me a minute because I just had my hip replaced, but I'm going to address it right now. We're we we can forgive but when we when we don't show we care By action that is so immediate. And the fifth one is psychological comfort. And you write in the book that this is the most powerful strength humans possess. Absolutely. What's interesting

about humans in the years that I've studied them is that humans don't seek perfection. the the a baby doesn't care if it's sucking its own thumb or the or the the twin sister's thumb. They Interchangeable is like humans don't seek perfection. What we seek is psychological comfort and whoever provides that is the soonest winner. It is as simple as that. if you can. Um, you're too young, but I remember when computers came out and they were in ugly boxes and they were in ugly stores and they were behind the counter and they were ugly. Steve

Jobs comes around and says, "No, we're going to put them on these lab tables like we have and we're Going to make them accessible." So this mysterious device that is such a ugly word that you forget that people hated computers so much they used to come in at night and cut the cords. That's how scared people were of of of computing. And he went from 4% shares of the computer market to whatever it is now 67 or what whatever the number is. Why? Psychological comfort. And I tell this to businessmen. When you're negotiating, what you're

Negotiating for is can you create enough psychological comfort that the other person can live with that so that I can feel okay maybe I didn't get everything I wanted but for this period in time I can live with that psychological comfort. I can go back to the board and report that this was the best that I can do and so forth. Aim for psychological comfort. And how does one go about creating psychological comfort In in any context? You started it today. You welcome me in and then you said, "What would you like to drink? Would

you like some water? Would you like some tea? Would you like some coffee?" That begins the process of psychological comfort. We're in a quiet environment. Less noise, more psychological comfort, less lighting. It doesn't hurt the eyes. Anything that starts at a Biological, physical, physiological, and then cognitive level. So, psychological comfort, we're negotiating. So, you want to offer 3,000. I think I'm worth 6,000. So, how do we achieve that? Well, I'm going to let you tell me your side of why you you can only provide 3,000 and I'm going to provide you my side. Okay? The

fact that we actually get to tell our story begins the process of Psychological comfort. Now, in the end, I may have to abide by that because there's only so much money 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, this is all we have at this time, but we're going to re-evaluate this in three months. And if we can then, depending on earnings, get you another $500 a month, we will do it. Then we do it incrementally, but always thinking

about What provides psychological comfort. being harsh, being indignant, not being attentive to needs, wants, desires, and even preferences create psychological discomfort. In um in 2009, you wrote a book called Narcissists Among Us. Yes. 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 have narcissistic traits. Yes. Okay. And if someone's dealing with a narcissist, what do they have To do in order to manage that situation? Because according to those numbers, roughly like 98% of people um aren't narcissists, but probably will

deal with 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, we will work with or for somebody like that. So what we have to keep in mind, well, what do we mean by narcissist? We're not talking about the person that Looks in the mirror and likes to uh splash on cologne and comb their hair. This is a person that overvalues themselves but has to devalue others. This is the person who um only thinks about themselves and doesn't care of

what uh suffering or what's going on through your life. Wants you to be loyal but is not loyal to you. Is disinterested in your personal affairs but wants you to be interested in theirs. There is your malignant Narcissist. Oh, and by the way, they inherently tell lies, but expect you to tell the the truth to them. Now, the effect is, well, if if they're only 2% of the population, but we see them in a lot of corporations, we're going to work for them, then, you know, how do we get along? Or first is recognizing that

they're going to devalue us. Now, sometimes they devour you by not inviting you to meetings or sharing information, but many times it's by the Way they treat you, yelling at you, uh, being disparaging. I mean, I have some things that are horrific. So, what do we do when we have people like that? Number one is recognize what you're dealing with. And that's why I wrote be the um dangerous personalities because um I have uh these robust checklists in there which have been tested many times. So you can see oh wow out of 125 things this

person is has 75 of these traits you've you've got a problem. But Now here's the thing. When we live with somebody like this, let's say you you you know they can be very charming, but then they turn on you and they become who they really are. Um then how do you how do you deal with that? What I can tell you is that the arc of the trajectory does not favor you. That these individuals are so costic. They're so toxic that eventually uh they will victimize you physically, mentally, emotionally, Uh physiologically or financially. You'll be

victimized. The question then is, and I tell this to a lot of executives who work for these individuals who they're bullied and this stuff is, how long are you willing to tolerate it? If you can set a number and say 6 months or a year, okay, but then do something because you will pay a price. You know, there's a great book called the the the body keeps the score. The body will definitely keeps the Score. you will pay a price for being in the proximity of a toxic individual. And if you become that person's chew

toy, you will suffer uh immensely. Um and so I say, you know, there's no pill to cure them. There is nothing you can do to make them like you. They expect no loyalty. Try to get 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 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 in any respect. Don't try and I don't think you can win. First of all

these individuals are severely flawed of character. They have no introspection. They see themselves as perfect. They don't see any imperfection in in in themselves. And so because they're flawed of character, you cannot expect normal behaviors uh from them. And so why expose yourself to them? Um they're They will be like that all their lives. There's a particular chapter where you say um one is bad, two is terrible, three is lethal. Oh, you know, people I get this question all the time. Well, can you have multiple traits? Yes, you can have you can be pathologically narcissistic.

So you overvalue yourself and you can also have traits of the paranoid personality where that um you are very rigid in your thinking and you're always Suspicious of everybody's intentions. In history you look at Hitler. Hitler was pathologically he was a malignant narcissist. He was clinically paranoid. Who did he fear? Uh uh minorities, the the the Roma, the what was then called the gypsies, and of course uh the Jewish people. That's that is clinical paranoia. And he was a psychopath. Okay, let's just lay that out there. Uh what is psychopathy? Psychopathy is where you have

no remorse, no empathy, no Conscience. You can do whatever you want and you sleep well at night there. That's your Robert Hair the researcher is the best one that defines psychopathy. Hitler had it all. There's a thin line probably there between like narcissism and self-belief because when you're describing narcissism, you're talking about like overimportance, like really believing one's important. And it sounds somewhat like someone who is extremely self-believing. Well, narcissism, by the way, narcissism, which has been studied since the 1950s, we now have a narcissistic society like we we never did before. We see it

in the way we talk about ourselves more than anything. We get on Tik Tok and other forms and we espouse all sorts of things. And so, we're way more narcissistic now than in the 1950s. They look at even the words we use. Now, we use the word me and I more than we did in the 1950s. We used to say we and Ours. Now we say me and I. And the true narcissist um has a belief system that is so corrupt. Um they're truly flawed of character and they not only have the traits of narcissism,

but they truly believe how they see themselves as infallible as I only have the answers. I'm the person 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 You. But if the traits fit, then you know what I tell people is as you whether you're going into an organization or if you're looking at who's leading your country, ask yourself, do they have these traits? And if they have the the the traits, then it's not a difficult equation. psychology is in especially

when it comes to people flawed of character is not that difficult is do I want to work for somebody that values me or someone That devalues others and you start with that in all these decades of you doing all these incredible things hunting terrorist spies aerial surveillance working in partnership with the SAS um interviewing people chasing down terrorists how has it changed you as a human being how has it shifted your perception of human behavior and what it is to be a human and meaning and all of these bigger questions of life. I've never been

asked that question. So, Thank you for asking a most profound question. I guess the best answer is that I learned a peace meal and I'm glad I learned peace meal. And by that I mean that my first homicide was just a regular homicide that I responded to. My first suicide was which was a police officer was uh you know it was in increments. I think if I had been presented with everything that I had been presented with all at once I think I would have had a mental breakdown. I'm Glad that it was episodic that

I was able to learn from each. And what I have learned is number one that who were most of the people that I talked to, the majority were witnesses or victims. And these were nice people. They were kind people. Some of the nicest people were these poor farmers out in Arizona. They grow cotton. They they don't earn very much. They're good people. you you learn that everything You're doing in law enforcement is really for them. Um you know later on when I got into counter espionage and now you're dealing with nation states and the equities

of different nations and yeah each country has their own priorities but you realize that when you're dealing with uh extremists and they have their own belief system and there's nothing really you can do to change them. But we also have our belief systems. And you Have to realize, okay, I can't fix all the problems. As a law enforcement agent, I can only attend to that which I can help or resolve or so forth. I couldn't find all the suspects that either raped or killed or bombed. I was at Brigham Y Young University when she was

uh one a girl was uh abducted by uh a serial killer and to this day I am in pain that I was on duty that night when she was abducted. I still feel It. And these things they weigh on you. But I'm also very h you know when I get with students I mentor people. I mentor a lot of executives but I also mentor young people who are curious and I see the eagerness in which they pursue life and knowledge and that 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 can't get the smell Of. Sometimes you go to a crime scene and the smell is so bad that you can't wash the smell away. You have to burn your clothes. Forensic examiners know this. There's just some things that you can, you know, the the first person I saw uh killed was in Kuwa and you just can't there's, you know, biologically you have the hippoampi. You have two of them and that retains everything negative you Ever experience. That's why you can't take a pill for post-traumatic

stress because the hippoampi makes sure that the first time you burn yourself touching that stove doesn't occur again. So all things negative are retained sometimes forever but usually around a decade. But I'm also enlightened by the fact that people still pursue good things. You know, I hear from people who work with dogs or who work with the handicapped with no Expectation of of any reward. And I think most people have a a good heart, a kind heart. And so I tried to focus on those people that I met which gave me the examples for uh

be exceptional. That woman in Brazil who at the age of six was became blind. She went on to have 12 children. She had more, but only 12 survived. And who could still do needle work blind by feeling. I will never forget that experience either. To sit in her Presence was a a a bestowed pleasure upon me. to understand a woman who has who could sense people moving in and around her just by how the hairs on her hand moved as they interacted with with this with the the space around her. It it was a great

experience. So, what day of your career are you most proud of or were you most happy? Oh, wow. Well, I was uh I'll tell you, I was I Was really happy when I graduated from the FBI Academy. Imagine at any time at any one time there's 27,000 applicants to the FBI and they will only accept uh 220 maybe or so a year. Um so I was I was elated. I was also uh very happy the day I uh left the FBI because at that point I had done it all and I wanted to do other

things. I wanted to write uh which is Very difficult to do when you're in the bureau and I wanted to uh continue teaching. Yeah. So I think those two events were uh when it comes to career was uh good times in my life. Joe, my audience are very much people that want to learn um that love stories that want to change their life, improve their life 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, 14 published uh the 15th comes out next

Year. Y. So my my last question then is of everything in the 14 pending 15 books that you've written and everything you've learned, what is the most important thing that I didn't ask you about that would be helpful to somebody who's looking to improve their life, their communication skills, their body language to be more effective in the pursuit of their goals that I should have asked you about? Well, I uh I hate to ruin this for you, But I think you asked really in however many minutes or hours we've been doing this uh a lot

of great questions. And I think in your questions, the the essence is what is the importance of connecting? You know, your audience is are all in the people business. I mean unless they're working as a they write code but even they we're all in the people business and the the what your questions really circled around is what's the importance of connecting what's the Importance of connecting properly and then how do we make maintain those connections and we we've talked about this the importance of nonverbals to communicate I trust you I value you I care about

you and all that, but then creating that psychological comfort that allows us to then have this long time together that relationships are uh are are invaluable. I think that's the greatest lesson. Every time I go anywhere, I say we are in the people Business. And I think you are exemplary um in demonstrating what what you can achieve if only you have that. That's a great compliment. Thank you so much. We have a closing tradition where the last guest 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 H interesting. What do people say that they like about You? I think that one is easy. And it's easy because I hear it so often and they say, "You're so approachable." 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 around the world, they say, "Well, you look so average. You look approachable." And I've always tried to make myself approachable. Um whether you're a a student, whether you are the security guard or whatever, I am always Accessible.

I'm always approachable and uh and I treat everybody the same. Joe, 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 before. We're living behind screens and connection is somewhat of a lost art. And that's why people are so in so misunderstood and how to communicate how they truly feel because it's not Something that now comes naturally to 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 human. That that throughine of anthropology and understanding our evolution and where it all came from as well is the reinforcer of everything that you say. And um it's incredibly important and it's and so incredibly resonant. I've seen it across the videos That you've you've been in and the interviews that you've done. They're just so unbelievably resonant. And that's because people are so thirsty for this information. And many of the problems I think we often find in our lives stem from um being ineffective at communicating to someone else

how we feel and what we truly think. Maybe because we haven't learned, but also maybe we're learning another behavior and maybe we're becoming more Individualistic and more withdrawn and 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 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 best suits you. I read a few of them. One of my favorites is the Be Exceptional One. It's

so accessible, but 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 the type of person that wants to hear more about um hunting terrorists or understanding psychopaths or um generally more things about the FBI and the life that you've lived. So, I'll link them all below. Is there anything we've missed? Well, my wife would tell me, "Please be nice and say that uh if they can mention My uh I now have a YouTube channel to address a lot of

these things, just go to Joe Navaro.net and uh there's a link there 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 want to thank you for what you do. You're going to realize one day as I realize that you're helping to change lives even though that wasn't your intention. Your intention was probably To educate. But 10 years on, 20 years on, or as I recently found from 40 years on, somebody will write to you and said something you said or

your example uh affected me and it changed my life. And you'll go, "Wow, I never thought about that." And that's what you've done. And uh you'll realize it one day. Thank you. I mean, it's what you're 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 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 people want to reach you, they should go to your website and send you an email there. AB: Absolutely. Just just through 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 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 weird, but I can still remember to this day when Jamaima from my team posted on Slack that she'd changed the scent in

this studio. And right after she posted it, the entire office clapped in our Slack channel. And this might sound 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 the way it is. By understanding the power of compounding 1%s, you can absolutely change your outcomes in your life. It isn't about drastic transformations or quick wins. It's about the small consistent actions that have a lasting change in your outcomes. So two years ago, we started the process of creating this beautiful

diary. And it's truly beautiful. Inside there's Lots of pictures, lots of inspiration and motivation as well, some interactive elements. And the purpose of this diary is to help you identify, stay focused on, develop consistency with the 1% that 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 now. I'll link it below. This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly Haven't yet subscribed to the show. So,

could I ask you for a favor? 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 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, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. 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. [Music] [Music]