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Oct 24
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361: Communicating In the Language of Leadership with Chris Westfall

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Chris Westfall says: "Common ground is what creates uncommon results."

Communications expert and pitch champion Chris Westfall illustrates how leadership is a language of the heart and how to achieve it through a perspective change.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The three ways that people listen to each other
  2. Two ‘you’ phrases that will help you get what you want
  3. The thought that makes the impossible possible

About Chris

Chris is national pitch champion and an award-winning MBA instructor at a top-20 program, He’s the official ‘pitch coach’ at the fifth-largest university in the USA – where his strategies have helped raise over $30 million for student start ups. Originally from Chicago, Chris resides in Houston, TX with his wife and two daughters, and is an avid supporter of the performing and visual arts.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Chris Westfall Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Chris, welcome back to the How to Be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Chris Westfall
Pete, I am super excited to be here. Thanks for having me again.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m so excited to have you again. We’ve come a long way since episode five here at your first appearance. You’ve also come a long way in your career when you used to be a professional stuntman. I don’t think we covered that last time. Let’s hear the story.

Chris Westfall
Well, it’s absolutely true. I was a professional stuntman. In fact, Pete, that was what I had to stand up in front of my entire MBA class and tell them – much to everyone’s chagrin and surprise – because they ask us in a prompt, they said “Tell us what was your last fulltime job before you came back to graduate school.”

Everybody is standing up and they’re saying, “I was a professional engineer,” or “I worked at a big four consulting firm,” and that kind of thing. Then it’s my turn and I get to stand up and say “Well, I was a professional stuntman.” “Everybody is like how did he get in this room?”

Pete, quite frankly I was asking myself the same thing. Now, look, I studied for the GMAT. I had good grades and all that kind of stuff, but my background was wildly different than what I wanted to do.

Maybe folks listening to this podcast are thinking about a transformation for themselves in their career, I tell you, for me, going from the green room, being a stuntman and trading fake punches to going into the boardroom and really wrestling with some real business issues was the career transition that I had to make.

But I was part of a stunt show at a local amusement park. I was part of the Batman stunt show, Pete. I wasn’t Batman, but I was the host of the show and then I played one of the villains in the stunt show. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So as a stuntman it was in sort of live shows as opposed to film and TV?

Chris Westfall
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, interesting.

Chris Westfall
Which means it’s much more dangerous, much more risky because you’re doing it live and the pyrotechnics are live. If you miss a punch and hit somebody in the mouth or something, it’s happening live right there.

I learned a lot about risk and about calculated risk and about safety and also about capabilities because when you have to – again, this was in a southern state. I was performing in – it was 110 degree-heat and doing stuff outside in front of 3,000 people every day. You learn a few things in that kind of environment as you can imagine.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s so cool. Well, you’ve got a fun history. You’re doing fun work. Recently engaging with the Navy SEALS. That’s awesome. It seems like they always get the best people, so kudos on that get. That’s awesome. Then you’ve got a recent book, Leadership Language. What’s this all about?

Chris Westfall
Well, Leadership Language is a look at how people can change the conversation and change their results.

For folks who are looking to be awesome at their job, being awesome means leading others, whether that means that you are a leader in title and you actually have direct reports or you are someone who is aspiring to lead or maybe just to influence your boss to give you a raise or to buy into your ideas, all of those objectives, they all start with your story and the way that you communicate.

That’s what Leadership Language is all about. It’s about communication, it’s about connection, and it’s about leading across the generation so that your best ideas can come to life.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Can you unpack some of that for us in terms of what’s often the holdup when it comes to doing that connecting and inspiring?

Chris Westfall
Well, a big part of communication and connection is listening. This may sound counterintuitive, because I mean I’m like you, Pete, I talk for a living, but I also listen. I help my clients to learn how to listen and to be receptive. When you understand how to leverage listening, it’s the first step in leadership.

And I’ll tell you why, because none of us is as smart as all of us. The person who thinks they have all the answers and doesn’t need to listen, that’s the first mistake.

I talk about in the book that there are three ways to listen. The first is to listen to affirm, in other words to listen to confirm something you already know, like, “Oh, I think what he’s saying – I think Stephen Covey said that and probably said it better.” To confirm something that you already know, that’s one way to listen.

But when you listen that way, you’re really just listening to make yourself feel better about your education or your experience. You’re not really moving the conversation forward.

The second way to listen is the way lawyers listen. That’s to listen to defend, in other words you’re taking a position. You’re taking a position. No matter what comes out of your mouth, I’m going to take – it’s the discussion across the aisle in politics. It’s the “If you don’t see things the way I do, I’m going to take a defensive posture.” When you take a defensive posture, by nature you close yourself off to new ideas.

If the leadership conversation is about innovation, is about changing the status quo and challenging the status quo and making things better, you have to identify with the third way to listen and that is to listen to discover, which hopefully is the way that people are listening to this podcast.

It’s to discover something new, is not to affirm something you already know, but to find that new thing, that next thing, that discovery that’s going to propel your career forward, that’s going to make you have a greater impact and that’s going to make you more awesome at your job.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that little framework there. It reminds me of some of my coaching training about different kinds of listening. I guess this starts I guess in a way – these three forms of listening are first of all presuming that you’re paying attention to the words coming out of the other person’s mouth. That’s a decent start, actually, and not something you can just assume in the age of everyone’s got their smartphone or even just they’re hungry for lunch.

Their attention might not even by on the words, but once they are, I think that’s a nice reality check in terms of if you’re sort of thinking about yourself and your situation relative in a conversation, say “Wait a minute, what am I really doing here?”

I suppose there may be times when you need to listen to defend like you are a litigant, you’re in a criminal or civil suit situation, but certainly listen to discover sounds a lot more fun and useful in the majority of contexts.

Chris Westfall
Well, I think that’s what you’ve been sharing with folks on this podcast. If I can just pay you a compliment, the discoveries that you’ve shared with others and the guests that you bring on, that’s where the value comes from.

And for the folks that are listening to this, think about where your value comes from. It can really start with being a good listener and taking in information and then sharing that information in a way that’s compelling.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. It starts with the listening and then what would you say is the next step?

Chris Westfall
Well, the next step and this is counterintuitive, but if you want to be awesome at your job and create a greater impact for yourself, you’ve got to take your attention off of yourself because if you’re talking to someone, you’re talking to your boss, someone you wish to influence, you wish to have an impact in some way and you’re thinking “How am I doing?”

It’s like playing a game looking at the scoreboard or running a race when you’re looking at the clock. The real game is how is the person right in front of you doing, how is your boss doing, how is your team doing, how are you making them the hero of your story.

So many times when we have objectives for ourselves, we begin by focusing on “Well, I need this raise. I need this to happen. I need this idea to come forward,” but what happens when you flip the script and you think about what your ideas, your raise, your emotion, whatever the case may be, means to the person right in front of you?

When you phrase your goals and desires in terms of the impact that it means for others, you exhibit the four words that represent in my mind one of the key leadership skills. Here are the four words: “I’ve thought this through.” When you think through – you see what I’m saying?

Pete Mockaitis
I remember last time I was like, oh yeah. I was like wait a minute, are those the four words. There’s a contraction in there, is that five, four and a half.

Chris Westfall
There it is.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve thought this through.

Chris Westfall
This time – in the book Leadership Language I talk about not only saying ‘I thought this through,’ but ‘I thought this through for you’ because leaders look in the direction of impact. They talk in terms of outcomes and they think about impact and impact not just for themselves, but for the people that they serve.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you give us maybe some examples of sort of non-I-thought-this-through communication, what that sounds like versus “Oh, having taken it to the next level, I have thought this through,” communication and what that might sound like?

Chris Westfall
The communication that thinks it through, you’re actually looking – there’s one word you can look for and it’s a pronoun. It’s the pronoun ‘you.’ If people use ‘you’ language, what that means is they’re not just talking about how “I’m very customer focused” or, “I really pay attention to service,” no, they’re starting with the most important person, which when you use the word ‘you,’ you make the second person first.

When people are only talking about themselves, that’s your clue. When you’re using words like I, me, my, we, our, you’re only focused on your own objectives. What about the objectives of the people who are right in front of you? What are the … for your boss, your board of directors, your investors, your team and how can you express that using ‘you’ language?

I talk about it at length in the book and show several different examples because it’s one thing to say, “Let me tell you what you don’t know about engineering.” Well, that’s a nonstarter. “Let me present myself as the expert,” also a nonstarter, also instantly exhausting.

But when you say something like, “You know how.” If I say to you, “You know how, when you’re in Evanston in the winter, it’s going to be cold.” Instantly, you’re like, “Of course, it’s cold in Evanston in the winter. I know that. Of course.”

But what I’m doing—and this is a very simple example, I apologize it’s so simple—what I’m doing is I’m acknowledging your expertise. I’m creating common ground. I’m not trying to show off what I know; I’m trying to demonstrate what we know together. That’s the power in ‘you’ language.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. What’s so funny is it’s almost like a Jedi mind trick as you say it. It’s like I am poised to hear the next thing you say. It’s like, “Well, yeah. Totally, I’m right with you. Where are we going now?”

Chris Westfall
That’s the whole idea. If it comes from a place of sincerity without an agenda on it, it’s a place of connection. If you put a spin on it, then it’s called manipulation. But what you’re looking for is a reason for people to say yes because here’s the thing, common ground is what creates uncommon results. You want people to see that commonality instead of your expertise.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. I’m with you when it comes to the agenda. You’re right. People can sense if you’re trying to tie them down to a position or sort of box them into something using a series of Socratic questions.

We had Chris Voss, the FBI agent negotiator and his book, which is awesome, Never Split the Difference, talking about how yes makes people kind of nervous, like, “What am I committing to? What’s going on here?” But when it’s kind of innocuous, and as you mentioned, without an agenda, it’s sort of like, “Well, yeah, okay. Sure. Understood. Acknowledged. We’re on the same page, where are we going now?”

Chris Westfall
Exactly. That connection is really key to any leadership initiative that you wish to undertake and also to creating greater collaboration within your team, within your organization. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you maybe give us another example of applying the ‘you know how’ in sort of a workplace scenario and how that will come across way better than an alternative, which may be a common mistake?

Chris Westfall
In order to do that I need to have an objective for the workplace, but I think I can do it, Pete. I think I can. Think about how you can create something that everyone in the workplace is going to say yes to. You can use a ‘you know how.’ The other one you can use to introduce it is ‘doesn’t it seem like.’ “Doesn’t it seem like we need to make a change in … here.” I’m going to struggle with the speak because I don’t have necessarily a workplace agenda, but I …

Pete Mockaitis
Oh sure thing. We’re looking to convince the boss to let us work from home one day a week or one day a month or something.

Chris Westfall
“Doesn’t it seem like office space is kind of at a premium here in the office?” “Doesn’t it seem like the investment we just made in the video conferencing software, we should really take advantage of it?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love it.

Chris Westfall
I don’t know.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re like a pitch champion or something, Chris.

Chris Westfall
Pete, I am a professional. Don’t try this at home. But that’s the idea is turning it into something that people see because here’s the thing people think sometimes that a conversation needs to be adversarial or if I have a point of view that it’s going to be opposed to someone else. That can make you hesitate. That can make you stop.

In fact, the Harvard Business Review, there was an article that I read that says that 69% of managers are uncomfortable talking to employees for any reason.

Pete Mockaitis
Say that again. 69% of managers-

Chris Westfall
69%. I’ll send you the link

Pete Mockaitis
-are uncomfortable talking.

Chris Westfall
I’ll send you the link. Yes, sir. Can you imagine-

Pete Mockaitis
That’s your whole life is talking to employees. Do you mean their own direct reports or any employees? Please explain.

Chris Westfall
For any reason.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Chris Westfall
This is the thing that was so startling about this. I’ve got to send you the link.

Pete Mockaitis
This is nuts. Okay, we’ll definitely link to this in the show notes.

Chris Westfall
But yeah, everyone, sure, everyone wants – they have to talk to their employees, but the survey says they don’t like it.

Pete Mockaitis
Do we know why?

Chris Westfall
Do we know why?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Chris Westfall
That’s a great question. I’d have to pull up the article to tell you what they say, but as I recall, Pete, it’s very broad. It’s very general. Again, for any reason, so it’s not just performance reviews or corrective action. I think that maybe the survey was purposefully left very broad. Maybe that’s why they go that number, that’s nearly 70%. It’s over two-thirds of managers are uncomfortable talking to employees.

What this points to is that there’s never been a greater need for us to take a look at the way that we communicate and if our focus is on a conversation that we believe is going to be confrontational, it’s going to be something that we should fear, well, look at the common ground. What is it that you have in common with your boss, with your employees, with your team? What is that shared objective? Because that shared objective is called success.

Does it have to be a fight? Sometimes. Sometimes there is going to be something that you need to defend. There is going to be a time to have that hard conversation. But does it have to start there? If you say, “Well, yes, it does,” my second question would be why.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. That’s great. Okay, so we talked about the listening and we talked about the positioning things effectively in terms of how or ‘doesn’t it seem like,’ so what are some of your other top best practices in terms of this leadership language stuff?

Chris Westfall
Well, I think that one of the things that is key for people to understand the leadership language is where leadership really lives. One of the things that I went through Pete as I was writing this book is I was doing my research and reading what others had said and all the gurus, what they had to say about leadership, and it left me feeling – it left me feeling less than.

It left me feeling like I don’t have the same skills as that guy that landed that plane on the Hudson River. I don’t have the same skills as these various leaders in businesses and stuff like that.

But I look at that and I said wait a minute, how is it that I don’t have enough when I’ve been able to create lead teams all over the world? How is it that I don’t have enough when I’ve been able to lead my clients to help them to find over 50 million dollars in investment capital and coach my clients under Shark Tank and Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank Australia. How am I able to do this if I’m so much – there’s so much lacking in who I am?

Here’s what I discovered Pete is that leadership is not something that’s out there. It’s not something that’s reserved for those guys or those gals or those folks that went to that Ivy League school or that went to some other college. It’s not about that. Leadership lives inside of all of us.

For everyone who’s listening to the sound of my voice, if it looks at leadership as something that is outside of you, look again because leadership language is the language of the heart. It is a language that is sincere and authentic and it requires you to get clear on the things that you want, not only for yourself, but for the people that you serve.

One of the key takeaways that I can share with you is – and I talk about this in the book – is to think about the people around you as your clients. I don’t mean clients that you’re trying to sell something to or that you’re consulting with your clients or something like that. I mean clients as the people on whom your success depends. They’re the people on your team. They’re the people on your board of directors. They are the investors in front of you who can fuel your idea or pull the plug on it.

That is a very useful focus because when you have intelligent people – I’m assuming the folks listening to this podcast are intelligent people – you don’t…when they understand how things work, then they understand how to make things work for them.

Looking inside of yourself at that internal place where leadership lives and taking a moment to really question your thinking because if you’re thinking, “Ah, leadership, I don’t know. I don’t know if I have those capabilities,” let me tell you, you do.

Because remember – when you were in third grade, did you think, “Do I have the capabilities necessary to lead these people in a game of tag?” No, no. You just play the game. But we grow up, we have responsibilities, we lose that sense of playing the game, but leaders play the game. Leaders play to win.

That’s not to say that they’re trying to game people or manipulate them. That’s not what I’m pointing at. But I’m talking about having fun. I’m talking about enjoying life and playing the game of life so that you can create the impact that you want without a lot of the other stuff on it. Does that make any sense at all?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. Talk about the leadership being internal. It’s sort of the language of the heart and you want to be coming from a place that’s sincere, authentic and clear.

I’m with you that, one, you can just sort of chuck aside the notion that “Oh, I don’t have leadership. I don’t have those capabilities.” It’s sort of you’ve got it inside if you’re accessing it. Maybe we can dig in a bit in terms of what are some of the road blocks and how does one go about accessing sort of potent levels of sincerity, authenticity, and clarity?

Chris Westfall
Well, let me point to a couple of things. First of all, a quote from Tim Ferriss, who said, “What might this look like if it were easy?” I think – that’s from Tribe of Mentors. I think that that’s a very powerful quote because so many times we look at situations in our jobs and in our careers and we get lost in our thinking. Everything looks – it looks impossible, it looks tough. Sarah in accounting won’t listen to me. It looks impossible.

But Tim Ferriss says, “What would it look like if it were easy?” I wanted to explore this idea of an effective approach to very, very difficult conversations, so I found someone who was in an incredibly difficult conversation – excuse me, I said conversation – I found someone who in an incredibly-

Pete Mockaitis
Who’s a real pain.

Chris Westfall
Yes, that’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
They’re always in your-

Chris Westfall
It hurts. I’m trying to listen, but it hurts. No, he was in an incredibly difficult situation. I was speaking to someone in an incredibly difficult situation. His name is Murray Wilcox and he is an extreme surfer. This guy, he lives in Cape Town, South Africa. He goes off the coast of Africa searching for waves that are 15 to 25 feet high.

Now, I know – I’m not a surfer myself, but I know from what I’ve read that even a 10 foot wave can weigh much as 400 tons. A 10 foot wave can kill you. Murray, my friend Murray, he’s on top of a 15 – 20 – 25 foot wave.

I ask him, “Murray, when you’re at the top of that wave, it literally is a matter of life and death—what is going through your mind?” Because I want to know, what is the mindset that allows you to survive in this extreme, incredibly difficult situation. “What is your mindset, Murray?”

Here’s what he said. “My mindset is nothing. Do you want to know what’s on my mind? There’s nothing on my mind. I’m not plugging in some attack pattern. I’m not trying to maneuver. I’m simply in the moment.”

I thought about that for a second. I went “Well, of course you are because you don’t know whether that wave’s going to break left or break right. You don’t know what is going to show up. The only way that you can survive – in fact, the only way that you can be at your best is when you have as little on your mind as possible.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That’s cool. Certainly. So that is powerful with regard to being able to respond and react appropriately, not getting sort of caught up in your own stuff and mental chatter, having some clarity and presence and awareness in that moment. That’s cool. Can you tell me more about this notion of how this question, “What might this look like if it were easy?” creates transformations?

Chris Westfall
It really does Pete. The question that also shows up that kind of points in this direction is this one, ‘How big is a problem when you’re not thinking about it?’ Think about that. Are you with me?

Pete Mockaitis
It’s intriguing because it’s sort of – the immediate answer is well, it’s like it doesn’t even exist, but then the implication is not, I imagine, oh, so then just ignore them and you’ll be fine.

Chris Westfall
But here’s the thing that it points to. It’s not ignore your problems and you’ll be fine. I’m not trying to say ignorance is bliss. Although, it may be.

But the point is this, what – consider the impact that our thinking has and when Murray, my friend, is at the top of a wave, what he’s trying to think about is as little as possible. He’s not plugging in an attack pattern. When we’re not thinking about our problems, they seem to cease to exist, which points toward this idea that our thinking is what is creating our experience.

That is what – by the way, if that’s not true, then how can you be super busy and not feel stressed or not really have a lot on your plate and yet feel extremely stressed. If it comes from our external circumstances, then we should all go out and try to self-medicate or buy toys until those feelings go away.

But you know as well as I do that when you’ve got the toys and you’ve created the life that you’ve dreamed of, happiness may or may not follow. Why is that? This is one of the aspects that I point to is the role that thought plays in people being able to access their authentic leadership skills and to really be at their best.

What I learned from Murray and from others that I feature in the book is that this idea of creating a mindset for success, so many people are chasing and here it comes Pete, call me a liar if you want, but that idea of chasing a mindset is actually the exact last thing that we need to be doing especially when the stakes are high. To be at our best, we need to be in the moment. We need to be able to access who we are.

If you think about it, you think about your favorite sports teams, the players that you admire, and any game, whatever that game might be, the people who are at their best, they aren’t following the playbook per se, they’re reacting in the moment to what’s in front of them.

That is something that is a capability that’s not reserved for great athletes or extreme surfers off the coast of South Africa. That’s something that’s inside you and me and when our thinking quiets down, we have the opportunity to see it.

There’s not a six-step process to make your thinking quiet down. It’s actually one step. It’s simply seeing that your thinking is just there, that your thinking is just thinking. Here it comes, just because a train of thought shows up, doesn’t mean you have to ride that train.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. There’s a lot here. There’s a lot here. What I’m gathering here is that that question, ‘What might this look like if it were easy,’ isn’t so much a prompt to spark a clever process innovation or new approach to doing something, so much as a reminder that “no, no, it’s just your brain and the way you’re thinking that’s making it hard” and you can choose to let go of that at any moment.

Chris Westfall
I can tell you story after story of things that looked impossible, things that – if you had caught me at a moment in time and said this never could have happened. This book at one time looked impossible. I thought there’s no way. There’s no way that I can do this. There’s no way that I can write this. Well then what changed?

What’s funny is that when my thinking settled down and I said, “What might this look like if it were easy? What would happen if I looked at this in a different way? What would this look like if it weren’t impossible? Is there another way of looking at this?”

If that sounds like a process, I’m saying it wrong because really all I’m doing is identifying that I have some thinking about a subject. It’s that thinking that colors it. I think it was Shakespeare that said “There’s nothing neither good nor bad in this world, but our thinking makes it so.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. You mentioned that it’s not a six-step process. It’s a one-step process. You’re just noticing that you’ve got some thoughts and that you don’t have to ride the train. If folks have a little bit of difficulty with train of thought, they always can’t seem to resist hopping aboard and taking every train where it cares to go, what do you recommend for these folks?

Chris Westfall
First of all, I would recommend that they hear me say this, me too, I’m the same way. I’m a planner. That’s the way that we are. As human beings we are wired to plan and to think things through and to roil around and to create scenarios in our minds so that we can do the mental equivalent of working through pi, trying to solve for pi. You know that it just keeps going, and it keeps going, and it keeps going.

If it’s true that our thinking is defining our experience, the key is to simply identify that the thing that’s making that look impossible – whatever that situation might be, it’s just a thought. A thought can’t hurt you. A thought is fleeting. In a few minutes or a few seconds even, another thought is going to come along. Have you ever had something where you’re so frustrated and just going crazy and then five minutes later you’re like “what was that all about?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Chris Westfall
Where did it go? Where did it go? The situation is still the same. That guy still – he did cut you off in traffic.

Pete Mockaitis
But now there’s a great song on, Chris.

Chris Westfall
Exactly. And now we’re experiencing something different. I think that that is also a message for how to be awesome at your job is to remember that as intense as things might be, you can step back at any time.

You can – you don’t have to go a beautiful part of the world. You don’t have to jump on an airplane. You don’t have to go for a hike or go skiing or whatever your flavor is of getaway. What you’re looking for is never more than one thought away.

I talk about that in Leadership Language. It’s understanding the nature of thought. There’s no process. It’s an understanding. When you have that understanding, you see that that reset, that place where you need to be is never more than one thought away. Often taking a look in the direction of what this might look like if it were easy, can point you towards a new perspective and ultimately new result.

Pete Mockaitis
It reminded me of another question I picked up. I think it was from Tony Robbins, which was ‘What’s great about this?’  When you’re freaking out about something that just seems like the worst and you say, “Oh, I guess it’s pretty great that I’m working with an opportunity so big that this is my worry. I can only imagine having opportunities so big and worries this big five years ago in my career,” or in whatever context.

Chris Westfall
Sure, absolutely. It’s like the old saying, “How would you feel about having to pay 100,000 dollars a year in taxes?” Pete, I would say I’ll take that all day long because you know how much money I would be making?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yes, more than 300,000 dollars.

Chris Westfall
You see what I mean? You would think, yeah. More than six shekels, which is what I have now. No, you see what I’m saying.

Sometimes success or fear of success is what stops us. Again, the question, ‘what would this look like if it were easy?’ Would it be okay if the thing that was so scary was actually just a thought? If it’s just a thought then a thought could change. When thoughts change and new thoughts show up, guess what? New perspective, new results, new opportunities.

The blockage, the thing that’s stopping you, the thing that’s holding you back goes away. Because here’s the thing, Pete, if something’s holding you back from something that you want, you have to ask yourself what you’re doing to enable that situation to exist.

Pete Mockaitis
What’s intriguing about this is that you’re a communications expert. You’ve done all this research and dug into it. It seems like what you’re saying is the heart of having these connecting, inspiring conversations isn’t so much about following a certain framework or process or protocol so much as just getting your brain in a place where you’re cool going there.

Chris Westfall
Yeah, because, again, leadership is not an external journey. It’s not a place that you visit or that other people know better than you. Leadership is something that – again, the world according to Chris, this is the way that I see it – leadership is something that exists inside of all of us.

When we understand the nature of the human condition and the way that our minds work, what we can do is create a natural enthusiasm, that contagious engagement that you’re talking about. What would happen if this were really great? How would I approach this situation?

That’s what comes through when our thinking dies down. That’s a big part of the work that I do in my consulting and my coaching is to take a look at the obligations and labels and the way that things look, which is really – it’s our thinking. It’s the way that we approach the world.

Those thoughts can appear so real and so restrictive. I know because I have them too. I’m wired the same way. I’m talking about myself. But actually I’m talking about all of us because this is – at its core, Leadership Language is a book about human nature and how to tap into that potential that’s inside of all of us.

When we understand the way that we work, the way that things that work, the idea is that you can make the things work for you and for the people that you care about, the people that you wish to influence. That’s really the nature of the connection and authenticity that’s at the heart of Leadership Language.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Well, Chris, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Chris Westfall
Well, I just want to make sure that people are aware that – of the resource that’s available on my YouTube channel. I don’t know if that’s – this is the time to talk about that or if we want to hit that in the end, but it’s YouTube.com/WestfallOnline. I’ve got over 200 videos on there. It’s a great resource that people can check out if they’re curious to learn more.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Chris Westfall
Something that I find inspiring. I’m going to go with Nelson Mandela, “It always looks impossible until it’s done.”

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. How about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Chris Westfall
Favorite study and bit of research is the Harvard Business Review’s study that you’ll find in the link down here on the page where this podcast will be located.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. That just makes me chuckle a little in terms of I’m uncomfortable about talking to employees about anything.

Chris Westfall
The thing that I love is mind-boggling research that points toward something and you’re like, “No way can that be the numbers.”

Ellen Langer is another one. She’s a Harvard researcher that did – she did research into the nature of mindset as well as the nature of agreement and stuff like that. Ellen Langer has done some interesting stuff as well with some numbers that are startling, but you’ll have to check that out to find out.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh sure. Well, you don’t have to drop us the specific number, but if you could just tell us for example, crazy number blank. Is there something that strikes you?

Chris Westfall
I’ll give it to you real quick. Ellen Langer and her team of researchers, they want to know what makes people say yes. They were looking at agreement and compliance. Here’s what they did.

They go into libraries. This was a few years back, Pete. This was a few years ago. They go into libraries where people are lined up to use the copy machine. They walk in and they say, “Excuse me, do you mind if I cut in line? I have to make five copies.” What percentage of the time do you think people said “Yeah, sure. Go ahead. You can make copies.” What do you think?

Pete Mockaitis
I think this is ringing a bell. That one was small because they were missing a key ingredient, Chris.

Chris Westfall
Which was?

Pete Mockaitis
The word because.

Chris Westfall
You’re exactly right. You’re on it. You’re on it. Actually the number – it wasn’t small. It was actually kind of surprising. It was 60% of the people said, “Yeah, sure, you can make copies.” But you’re exactly right, Pete. They went back in and they offered a reason and it changed the statistic from 60% to 94% of the time people said, “Yeah, sure. You can make copies.”

They introduced a number of other variables as well around this idea of saying the word because and offering a reason. But the key takeaway is that people want to know, not just your why, but your because.

It’s like that great book, Start With Why by Simon Sinek. Love that book. But I read that book and I’m like, well what’s step two. Step two according to Ellen Langer and her researchers, because. Offering a reason can be the key to being more persuasive. Anyway, that’s another little piece of research that I find very interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. How about a favorite book?

Chris Westfall
Favorite book, I love To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink. I also really like Impossible to Ignore by Carmen Simon.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah, we had her on the show. She’s wonderful.

Chris Westfall
Did you?

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hm.

Chris Westfall
Oh, she’s terrific. I quote her in Leadership Language quite a bit. She is terrific. Really like her perspective.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. How about a favorite tool?

Chris Westfall
If I say iPhone, that’s just too broad, isn’t it, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we’ve heard it a time or two before, Chris, so I might challenge you to up the game a little bit. Maybe there’s a particular app or innovative way you use your iPhone.

Chris Westfall
Sure. Well, let me say this. The app that I like the most is probably vCita, which is like Calendly. It’s a scheduling tool. It allows people to connect with me and see my calendar online and set up times for us to have a conversation. As a guy who is all about helping people to change the conversation, anything that can help me to create that conversation for others is a very useful tool.

Pete Mockaitis
What I find awesome about you – if I can just brag for a moment is that that’s just wide open on your website. It’s just like anyone can go up and schedule some time with Chris, which I think is massively generous of you. Maybe it’s the cynic or the business strategist in me is like, a decent percentage of those must convert into paid gigs or else how could you invest that time in that way?

Chris Westfall
Sure. It’s true, Pete. But I’ll tell you what, like I say, I’m all about the conversation. Isn’t that what we – maybe not for every business, but certainly for mine, I’m very interested in a time to talk, so I take the time. If people want to – you can pepper me with whatever you want for 30 minutes. You can ask me anything and I’ll do my best to tell you what I can. Try to help.

Pete Mockaitis
What a guy.

Chris Westfall
Look, leadership is about service. Life is about service. What we’re doing here is to try to serve others and help them be more awesome at their job. That’s my way of serving. I can’t heal the sick, but I can help with communication.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Well, it’s appreciated. Thank you. I encourage folks to check that out. It’s pretty cool. That’s the tool. How about a habit?

Chris Westfall
A habit that I have is to make sure that every day is different, that I don’t fall into a pattern. I’ll tell you why Pete and I’ll tell you why this is so important. I’m not just trying to be kicky here.

Imitation is not innovation. Every day I’m looking to discover something new and to create something new and to be better than I was yesterday. That means that today can’t look like yesterday. That also points towards resourcefulness for me of being able to not get locked into a pattern, to make sure that my thinking is expansive. My habit is not to get trapped into a habit.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s so meta.

Chris Westfall
I know it. I know it. Sorry to be so meta.

Pete Mockaitis
Tell me, is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks? They retweet it and they quote it back to you.

Chris Westfall
Well, this idea that where you are is not who you are is something that seems to resonate with folks. That means that where you are in your life, your relationships, your career, that doesn’t define you. It may look like it does, it may look like that is the box that you are in.

But if you think about it, Drew Brees is the top passer of all time in the NFL. His first play as a professional quarterback, he was sacked and he fumbled. From those humble beginnings, he’s become the greatest passer in the history of the NFL.

Whether you are someone who just got sacked and fumbled or you’re a stuntman, where you are is not who you are. It does not define you. Pointing people towards that internal resourcefulness and that internal journey is part of the work of Leadership Language and one of the things that I think people always need to remember, where you are is not who you are.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Chris, you mentioned the YouTube Channel. Any other key places that folks might go if they want to reach out or get in touch?

Chris Westfall
Well, you can find me on the Gram, Instagram. You can also find me on Twitter. Everything is WestfallOnline. My last name is like the direction and the season Westfall. That’s also where you can find me on LinkedIn, so WestfallOnline. My website is WestfallOnline.com. Those are some of the resources that are out there.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Chris Westfall
Say the most honest thing that you can. I’m not suggesting you walk into your boss’s office and go, “You know what? You need to lose weight.” I’m not suggesting that. But think about the most honest thing that you can say.

I want to challenge people to have the conversations that need to take place to face whatever fears might be holding you back from the thing that you need to say and do. Take that action because the only way that you change your results is by taking the action that brings your story to life.

If you’ve got great ideas, take the first step. That first step 99 times out of 100 is a conversation, a conversation with someone that can help you bring your ideas to life. Say the most honest thing that you can and see what happens.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Chris, this has been a lot of fun. I hope you have a smashing success with Leadership Language book and many engaging, and empowering, and lucrative conversation flowing through vCita on your website. Yeah, just good luck with all you’re up to here.

Chris Westfall
Well, thank you Pete. It’s always a pleasure to talk with you. You’re a great interviewer and great questions. Again, thanks for having me back on the show. I really appreciate it.

Oct 19
0

359: Overcoming the Fear of Speaking Up with Karin Hurt

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Karin Hurt says: "Be the leader you want your boss to be."

Karin Hurt discusses how the fear of speaking up hampers organizational growth and what you can do about it.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Three steps for overcoming the fear of speaking up
  2. Approaches to encourage others speak up using the only UGLY framework
  3. The primary way we dampen the willingness of others to speak up

About Karin

Karin has over two decades of experience in customer service, sales, and human resources. She’s the award-winning author of two books: Winning Well: A Manager’s Guide to Getting Results-Without Losing Your Soul and Overcoming an Imperfect Boss.

A former Verizon Wireless executive, Karin transformed customer service outsourcing (96M calls/year) to reach parity in quality with internal centers and developed a leading sales team that won the President’s Award for Customer Growth.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Karin Hurt Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Karin, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Karin Hurt
Thanks so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, first thing I want to hear about you is that I understand in your life you were struck by lightning. What is the story behind this?

Karin Hurt
Yeah. People tell me that explains a lot about my personality actually. It was not one of my brighter moments. I was a manager of a pool, and I closed the pool because of lightning, like you’re supposed to, and then proceeded to go sit down at a metal table to wait the storm out. And so the lightning got attracted to the metal table, split a brick in half that was right in front of me, and propelled me about five feet against a wall. But I was fine. Yeah, it was really crazy.

Pete Mockaitis
So, did it strike you directly or did it strike the brick in front of you?

Karin Hurt
It hit the brick and then the momentum of it, it ricocheted into me. So I didn’t get hit directly. Yeah, it was crazy. And I was sitting next to a guy who was like 300 pounds, and he flew too.

Pete Mockaitis
That is wild.

Karin Hurt
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And so you went to the hospital, or how did this end up unfolding at the end?

Karin Hurt
I went to the ER, but they didn’t keep me or anything. It was fine.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Wow, that’s wild. I always wonder if people take that personally, like with you and God: “Is there a message here, because this feels very intentional and targeted?”

Karin Hurt
Yes, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Did you choose to interpret it in any particular way, or you just said, “Hey, man, stuff happens”?

Karin Hurt
Just took the story and ran with it.

Pete Mockaitis
And you’ve been using it on podcast interviews years later. I’m glad that you’re safe and well. And how about the other gentleman? Did he turn out okay?

Karin Hurt
Yeah, he’s fine too.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. All right, cool.

Karin Hurt
Well, I don’t know. I mean, he was kind of a jerk.

Pete Mockaitis
Was he a jerk before lightning struck him?

Karin Hurt
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so maybe the lightning was directed at him and I was just in the crossfire.

Pete Mockaitis
[laugh] Oh, that’s good. Thank you. So, tell us a little bit – you are the chief executive officer of the organization Let’s Grow Leaders. What is this organization about?

Karin Hurt
We are an international leadership development company, so we do long-term leadership development programs, short programs as well. We work both with corporate clients and also government clients, and we also do keynote speaking and a little bit of strategic consulting.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. That’s a nice lineup. And so, you’ve packaged some of the wisdom in your book Winning Well. What’s this book all about?

Karin Hurt
It’s called Winning Well: A Manager’s Guide to Getting Results – Without Losing Your Soul. And so, it’s how do you get breakthrough results and remain a decent human being along the way? And it’s really focused on extremely practical tools to do that. So, how do you win well when you have to have a tough conversation with an employee, or when you need to terminate someone, or when you’re running a meeting? How do you do that in a way that really both builds results and gains better relationships?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh boy. There’s so much we could talk about there, and I want to hit a little bit there and in particular dig into a term you’ve turned into an acronym – the fear of speaking up, or FOSU. Is that how you pronounce it? Okay, I was wondering.

Karin Hurt
Like fear of missing out, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
We talked to Patrick McGinnis, who apparently coined that phrase – fun fact – in a previous episode. He didn’t coin it in the episode, but in a previous episode we talked to him and he coined it. He also said he had “fear of a better option” – FOBO – and that never really caught on.

Karin Hurt
So funny. Well, we’re hoping FOSU will catch on.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s catchy and I think it’s a real phenomenon. Now we’re talking about it, so let’s talk about that now. So, what caused you to focus in on this phenomenon? Could you orient us to some of your research or findings or discoveries on this concept?

Karin Hurt
I will tell you that we were noticing a really significant pattern when we would go in and work at multiple levels of an organization. So, we would talk to the C-level. You go and you talk to the CEO or the senior vice presidents and they say, “I just wish our employees at the frontline or our first level supervisors would tell us when they see these issues or when they see that we have negative things that are impacting our customers” or, “I wish they would think more creatively or solve more problems on their own. I don’t know why they just keep their heads down, do their work and don’t speak up.”
And then we’d go in to do work at the frontline and we hear employees say, “Nobody cares about what I think. Every time I bring an issue to my supervisor, they tell me not to worry about it, just keep focused on my job.” And so, there was this massive disconnect within the same organization. And so, we started then looking at other organizations where that wasn’t the case, where people really were speaking up and what was the difference.
And so, we also have developed some very specific tools that we use to help encourage senior leaders to ask, or middle managers to ask, and make sure they are encouraging people to bring forth problems and to bring forth their ideas in a very strategic way. And then we also have tools where we help the frontline position their ideas in a way that can be heard, because there’s this other dynamic, and sometimes people blame the Millennials, but I don’t think it’s just the Millennials, or anything is just one generation’s issue.
But people say, “My problem is my employees are speaking up, but they’re not doing it well.” And so they’re just blurting out their ideas and they’re not positioning them well, so that they’re being rejected. And that’s another dynamic. So, really have been working on how do you get senior leaders and middle managers to ask, and how do you help frontline and lower level management to position their ideas in a way that they are well received? And that’s been a lot of fun and we’ve really been learning a lot about what works the best.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. This feels like a really big, important topic and I’m excited to dig into some of the practical how-to’s, but I’d love to get your take on this issue. How big is it, how important is it to tackle this, as opposed to any other matters of communication, collaboration, culture, stuff in the work environment? Have you made some discoveries in terms of the gravity of this issue?

Karin Hurt
Yeah. So, I think it’s getting more and more important. It’s always been an issue. This is not new, but why is it so important now? And as we go into an age where so much is being automated – the easy stuff is getting automated – if you want to provide effective customer service and it’s about something easy, you drive it to self-serve and people do it online. But by the time they get to a human being, they are needing more sophisticated conversation and they want somebody who can really hear their ideas.
So now you’ve got these folks at the frontline who are really getting to the heart of what your customers’ concerns are, and if they don’t feel empowered to do the things they need to do or to raise the issues upwards and let people know what that customer experience is like, you’re not going to have the innovation you need for your company. So, I would say that is definitely a piece of it.
Another is employee engagement continues to be a challenge. There’s the Gallup research that says 70% of managers are feeling disengaged or severely disengaged at work, and where does that disengagement come from? A big part of that is people who feel like they’re not being heard. And so, when you can give people a voice, that really helps create a deeper connection to the work that they’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful. That makes me think about Google’s work, associated… Is the project Aristotle? I always get it mixed up – associated with psychological safety and teams being the thing that differentiates the high-performing teams from the not so high-performing, in which people just feel safe and comfortable expressing just what they think. And you had some research I saw on your Twitter, I believe, or somewhere in my research about you – you discovered that, was it less than 1% of employees felt very confident and comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas? Could you unpack this stat for us a little bit?

Karin Hurt
Yeah. So, this wasn’t from our original research, but this was just some of the work that we were doing to understand what was happening. It was actually some work that VitalSmarts did. It was their survey. But we’re actually in the process right now of doing a big, deep study with University of Northern Colorado, so I’ll have more of our own statistics soon.
But this basically said people are afraid to really say what they feel. And I’ll give you an example, a very real example of how this played out just a couple of weeks ago with a client we were working with. So, it was a big software implementation that had been done companywide, and throughout they had had user groups, user experience calls every single week. And the users would raise any issues that they had, and then they would knock them out. And they thought everything was going fantastic.
And then the vice president said, “Okay, great. I’m just going to go now, do some management by walking around, going to the fields, see how things are going.” And she sat next to a representative who brought up the software. And it took five minutes for the first page to load, and then it took another five minutes, which is not how this experience should be. And the software company had promised that this new system would be seven times faster than what they were working with previously. And here this was radically slower.
And so, she said to the representative, “Is it always like this?” And she said, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But it has a lot of other great features.” And she said, “No, it’s not supposed to be like this. Why didn’t you say something?” And she said, “Because my manager said, ‘The company has invested a lot in this software,
so whatever you do, just tell everybody how wonderful it is and how grateful you are to have it.’”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh boy, sabotage.

Karin Hurt
And as it turned out it was just that the network couldn’t support it. They needed to do a network upgrade. There was nothing wrong with the software. They needed to do a network upgrade, which is not a big deal. And they were able to fix it within 24 hours. But these representatives have been suffering with the lost productivity of this for a month. And so, that’s the kind of thing where, who was scared there? Well, probably that person’s immediate supervisor. And you can’t have an environment like that if you really want to get to the root of problems quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, we talk about fear there. Can you maybe unpack that, in terms of what is the specific fear, and how real is it, versus imaginary?

Karin Hurt
Yeah. And that is a lot of what we’ve really been thinking a lot about. How real is it? So I think people are afraid. You can’t get in trouble for not doing anything or not saying anything, but you can get in trouble if you say something that people think is dumb.

Pete Mockaitis
Fair enough. A safer bet is to keep your mouth shut.

Karin Hurt
Safer bet is to keep your mouth shut, exactly. And so, that is part of it. And also I believe sometimes it’s fear at the middle management level, which then trickles down. And so people say, “Don’t go to my… Don’t bother them with this.” So they keep the ideas down.
And then a big part of this fear, which we find, is that somewhere along the line somebody spoke up a long, long time ago, and it didn’t go well. Either I’m a manager and I used to have a terrible boss and I wasn’t allowed to speak up, and now I have a new boss, but I’m not giving my new boss the benefit of the doubt because I’ve learned these old habits.
I was working in one organization and it was so crazy. They were all telling these stories to me about how nobody ever listens and you could really get in trouble if you try to raise issues. And so I started saying, “How long ago was that?” And, “Well, that was 10 years ago. It was 15 years ago, but it’s still the same now.” They couldn’t come up with a current example, but it was so deeply embedded in this culture. And so, for that organization, we really had to give the management team very specific tools that they could use to encourage people to speak up and really come out and say, “No, the culture is different now.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I dig that. So, when the bad things happen, could you unpack a little bit? Let’s just take a good, hard look at the worst case scenario when it comes to speaking up. So, in terms of someone just yells, like, “Don’t bother me with this! Handle it yourself, Karin, I’m busy!” Or what does it sound like in practice when it goes wrong?

Karin Hurt
Or, “That’s a dumb idea.” Or, “We’ve tried that before.” “That will never work.” “This is out of your swim lane.” You hear that. “Stay in your lane. Don’t worry about that. That’s not your issue to deal with.” Usually when you hear stuff like that, it’s coming from an insecure manager.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. But what’s interesting is – call me an optimist – but none of those reactions were extreme, like, “You’re fired” or, “If you ever mouth off in this sort of a way, suggesting that all of the ways we’ve worked and the processes that we’ve implemented are inadequate for your higher standards and you’re ungrateful, then you could just find the door over there.” So, it sounds like it’s sort of dismissive, it’s kind of disrespectful, it would make you feel like… I’m hearing the Charlie Brown music in my head, like, “Oh, bummer.” But it’s not, brutal. It’s just sort of unpleasant and it just makes you feel not so good.

Karin Hurt
I totally agree with you. And that’s really the point. I think that a lot of this fear people have exaggerated in their heads, or they’ve extrapolated from one bad experience and then forgotten the other 99 good experiences they had when they did speak up.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So then, let’s dig into a little bit of the how-to. So, if you’re experiencing some fear of speaking up, maybe how do you tackle the emotional element of that, and then how do you actually do the positioning of the issues?

Karin Hurt
Yeah. So I would say first and foremost it’s, how do you connect your “What” to your “Why”? What is it that you want to say, and why is it so important? Because if you can ground in the greater good that you’re trying to accomplish, you’re going to get some courage from that. Another element in terms of overcoming the fear is, think about some times that you did speak up, and what did you do to make that work, and what was the impact? Rather than thinking about maybe the one-off circumstance where you spoke up and it didn’t go well. One of the best ways to build confidence is to recall on past experiences that were successful.
And then the next is to use some tools to do it well. And one of the most important techniques that we teach is, how do you initiate the conversation? So, you’ve got some hard news or some bad news that you need to give to your boss, or some feedback that you are worried is not going to be received well. Start by making a real genuine connection: “I really, really care about you and your career. I care about this team and I care about the projects that we’re working on, and I really want us all to be successful. I’ve had some observations. Do you have a minute?”
It’s very hard for anybody to become defensive when you start like that. So, start by creating the genuine connection. And then from there, make sure that you’re doing this in private. If you’re talking about something controversial, nobody wants to be confronted in front of a bunch of other people. This is different than if your boss is in a team meeting and says, “Does anybody have any suggestions?” That’s different, because they’ve invited it in. But if you are the one initiating it, it’s always better to take it offline and have that conversation.
And then the next piece is to really consider what is the person you’re trying to persuade – what’s big on their mind? What is their most important things and how can you position what you’re looking to accomplish in a way that relates to that? If their most important focus is the financial bottom line, how can you position what you’re worried about in terms of the impact it’s going to have on the financial bottom line? If they’re are most worried about the customer experience, how do you position what you’re going to say in the way that what you’re worried about is negatively impacting the customer experience?
And then the other is stakeholdering. Often there are other people who you can gather information from, or you can help engage in your argument, that may have more credibility on the subject than you. So, I’ll give you an example on that one. I worked at Verizon for 20 years, and at one point I was leading a 2,200-person sales team. We had had a particular month, where like Murphy’s law, everything that could have possibly gone wrong, did. We had several feet of snow, just a bunch of different things.
And it was very clear to me that there was no salesperson on my entire team that was going to make quota. And if you don’t make quota, if you don’t get to a certain threshold, you really don’t get any compensation additional to your salary. And this is a huge deal for salespeople. And so, what I was worried about was that if people were beginning to look towards the end of the month and they said, “There’s no way I’m going to make any commission this month”, they were going to sandbag and save all their sales for the following month, which would have been terrible for our revenue numbers.
But I really couldn’t go to my boss, who was the regional president and say, “We need to lower quotas”, because that looks self-serving, because if I lower my team’s quotas, my quota goes down. So instead, I went to our finance director and I explained to him and I did the math and I showed him how we would actually get more revenue and more margin, even if we paid out more commissions by lowering the quotas. He got the math, he said, “I think you’re absolutely right.” He went to the regional president and explained it, and they lowered quotas. So, I think sometimes so long as you get what you want, it doesn’t matter if you get the credit for the idea. So yeah, I think that’s also part of it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool, and very sensible and proactive, to identify that and get that going. I’m fixated. Now, the snow – I know I did some work with wireless companies in training. So the snow impacts the quality of the signal, but are you talking about just their ability for people to get to their meetings?

Karin Hurt
To a store. So, I was retail sales, so I had all the Verizon Wireless stores in Maryland, DC and Virginia. So if you have three feet of snow, customers are not coming to your stories, even if you’re open.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. Thank you.

Karin Hurt
At least not to buy a new phone. They may be coming for something to repair, but that doesn’t create revenue.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Okay, so we talked about the individual professional raising an issue upward to management. So now, what if you are the manager and you want to encourage people to speak up effectively? How do you do that?

Karin Hurt
A couple of different ways. One tool we use and I have created is called “Only UGLY”. And so, this is just four very easy questions that you can ask your team. What are we underestimating? That’s “U”. “G” – What’s got to go? “L” – Where are we losing? And “Y” – Where are we missing the “Yes”? So, an example of this – we did an “Only UGLY” conversation; it was a company that had grown from five people to 110 people in five years.
So, as they were growing, people were coming from other companies and they were bringing their favorite project management software, their favorite communication tools, and they just kept adding more and more tools to the mix. And so, we were doing this strategic offsite and we broke the team up into the four conversations. And the “What’s go to go” group listed every communication tool and project management tool that they had, and they listed like 27 of these.
And then they gave everybody in the room a dot and said, “Put a dot next to three of these that you think are the ones we should keep, that you use every day.” And all the dots clustered in the same couple of tools. So then they said, “What would happen if we got rid of everything else?” And everybody in the room was like, “Yes, thank God.” Then they looked back at the chief operating officer, and they thought he was going to be furious because they thought he wanted these tools. And he said, “Oh my gosh, I thought you wanted these tools. You know how much money we’re going to save if we don’t have to pay the licensing on all this?”
And then they simplified, because what they were finding is that people were spending as much time updating software and programs as they were working on the work. So, that was a quick, easy example. If you ask people, “What do we need to stop doing? Where are we missing the ‘Yes’?” Ask your team, “Where are there opportunities that you may not be thinking about here that could really add additional revenue or improve the customer experience?”
Every single time we use this exercise with teams, it is fascinating to me how fast how many ideas get into the room. We were working the other day with a company and we just spent two hours doing this exercise, and they came up with a list of a whole easel sheet of things that they could immediately implement within the next 30 days that would really make life better. And then they came up with three strategic projects that they would work on for the next year. A good investment of two hours.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely, yes. So let’s review. So, we’ve got four components – the UGLY. Can we hear them again?

Karin Hurt
What are we underestimating? So maybe we’re underestimating competitive pressures; maybe we’re underestimating the shift in the job market; we’re underestimating this new call center that’s opened up down the street that’s going to take all of our best talent because they’re paying $2 more per hour. “G” – What’s got to go? What do we need to stop doing? “L” – Where are we losing? Where are we losing to our competition; maybe where are we losing talent; why are we losing talent? And then “Y” – Where are we missing the “Yes”? This is, where are there real strategic opportunities that we could be focused on that we’re not?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. And it reminds me of a powerful question we picked up from Jason Nazar, who founded Comparably. We interviewed him some episodes ago, and his power question was, “What am I pretending not to know?” That’s potent. And you’ve even made it all the more richer, more robust with subcategories of the ways we pretend not to know things. That’s cool. Thank you.

Karin Hurt
Sure. So the other thing I would say is if you really want people to tell you the truth – it’s not just management by walking around MBWA, but one of the things we often see, we call it, “Oh crap, here they come” – OCHTC. And how are you showing up? When people see you coming, are they excited to tell you what they’re working on? Are they knowing that you’re genuinely interested in hearing what’s working and what your ideas are? Or are you showing up pointing out everything that’s wrong, telling them your point of view, and shutting things down? And in every organization we see some of both. And so, just how do you show up in a way that is really curious? And when people really believe that you are genuinely interested, they’re going to want to show you what they’re doing, and that’s where you’re going to really get some of the best practices.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m curious, you mentioned being curious and best practices. Are there some more practices, some key things folks do that maybe subtly or not so subtly just kill that willingness to speak up from others?

Karin Hurt
The very best way to kill that is to ask people for their ideas and feedback, and then not do anything with them. You’ll see the employee suggestion boxes or the electronic version of that, where these ideas go to die. And so, even if you can’t implement the idea, somehow acknowledging: “Hey, we’ve heard you. Thank you so much for your input.” Really recognize people who are speaking up and bringing ideas forward. And even if you can’t, then you at least explain why: “This is a great idea. This is why we can’t do this at this time, but thank you. And please, keep these ideas coming because I’m sure you’re going to have one that will be exactly what we need.” And just really being encouraging of that.
I read an article the other day and I think it was Harvard Business Review, where they were talking about, this company had a recognition program for, if you stole somebody else’s best practice and implemented it and it was really successful, the person whose idea you stole would get recognized, and you would also get recognized. So people were really encouraged to not just keep doing their own things in their own teams, but to share with other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s great. Well, Karin, tell me – anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Karin Hurt
I think that’s good.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, great. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Karin Hurt
Eleanor Roosevelt, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” I think that’s very relevant to what we’re talking about here, because half the time when we do things we realize that they weren’t as scary as we really thought.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And how about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Karin Hurt
I am a real big believer in the diffusion of innovations, which is old; it dates back to the ‘60s. But I find that theory has been one of the most grounding theories for me in large-scale change efforts. And the idea there is, who are your change agents? How do they influence people? Who are your early adopters? How do you get them involved in spreading the word early on? Who were the people who were reluctant? And really mapping out in any change, where do different people who you must influence fit in this change curve? And then what are the strategic ways that you can make sure that you are bringing people along and giving them what they need to feel comfortable about your change?

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Karin Hurt
I love almost anything written by Seth Godin, but my favorite is Tribes. One of the keynotes that I do is Turning Your Volunteers into Brand Ambassadors or Building Your Army of Brand Ambassadors, depending on whether you’re talking about internal or associations. I really believe in his theory of how do you make genuine connections, one person at a time, in order to build tribes that are meaningful, in order to influence the large-scale change that you’re trying to accomplish?

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite tool?

Karin Hurt
Our blog is my favorite tool, I would tell you that. I believe that content marketing is just so important to be able to serve people and show what it is that you have to offer to add value every single day. So, I would say my WordPress blog is certainly my favorite tool.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Karin Hurt
Exercise. That is the only way I can manage all of the stress of being an entrepreneur and keep the level of energy up, for sure. So, I’m a big fan of kickboxing and running and pretty much anything that keeps me moving.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, then they quote it back to you?

Karin Hurt
Yeah. The big thing is really being willing to show up authentically. In so many of our keynotes, that’s really one of the most important messages, is how do you ground yourself in who you really are, and show up with confident humility in that way? And when you can do that, and balance the confidence, the humility and the focus on results and relationships, which those are the four components of our Winning Well model – people will follow you, and you will be able to accomplish great things, and you will have more influence.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, Karin, where would you point them?

Karin Hurt
Our website is LetsGrowLeaders.com, and you could subscribe to our free blog. We write two articles a week, and that’s a lot of powerful tools there. And also our book is available on Amazon and just about everywhere, and that’s called Winning Well.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Karin Hurt
I would really love for people to take something they really, really believe in and have the courage to position that argument well, to speak up, and to be the change. And we like to say, be the leader you want your boss to be.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Karin, this has been a lot of fun. I wish you tons of luck and success with your speaking and your books and all that you’re up to!

Karin Hurt
I really, really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. Thanks so much.

Oct 17
0

358: Solving the Five Problems of Virtual Communication with Dr. Nick Morgan

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Dr. Nick Morgan says: "We need to put... care for each other's emotions and reactions... back into virtual communication."

Communication expert Dr. Nick Morgan describes how the five problems of virtual communication have made the world angrier over the last decade, and what to do about it.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The magic question that bridges much of the virtual gap
  2. How bad online behavior is leaking into face-to-face communication
  3. How video calls confuse our sixth sense and exhaust us

About Nick

Dr. Nick Morgan is one of America’s top communication theorists and coaches. A passionate teacher, he is committed to helping people find clarity in their thinking and ideas – and then delivering them with panache. He has been commissioned by Fortune 50 companies to write for many CEOs and presidents. He has coached people to give Congressional testimony, to appear on the Today Show, and to deliver an unforgettable TED talk. He has worked widely with political and educational leaders. And he has himself spoken, led conferences, and moderated panels at venues around the world.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Dr. Nick Morgan Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Nick, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Nick Morgan
Pete, it’s a great pleasure to be with you again. We talked a while back.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Indeed. It was such a treat then because your book Give Your Speech, Change the World was such a hit with me and with many, many readers. You’ve got a new one coming out all about connecting in virtual spaces. First, I’ve got to see if you have seen this clip from the TV series Silicon Valley about the holographic communication chamber.

Nick Morgan
No, I haven’t, but it sounds cool.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh my gosh. Well, the thing that gets me is that they start with – and we’ll link to it in the show notes – they start in a fancy holographic chamber and then it’s not working. Someone sticks his face up near the camera trying to fix. It was like, “Oh, we don’t have enough bandwidth.” They get on to a Skype-like program and then it sort of freezes up. It’s like, “Oh, you’ve got to update your software.” Then they’re on a cellphone and the connection goes bad.

It was like that is wise in terms of no matter what technology you’ve got, something can go awry technically. Then you’re speaking about things that aren’t quite working even beyond the technical difficulties. What’s the scoop in the book, Can You Hear Me?

Nick Morgan
That’s right. The technical stuff is what people tell me about first and of course, that’s very irritating as you just described it. That was sort of a great compendium of all the things that might go wrong. As we all know, they do. They do on a regular basis. Calls get dropped, the audio conferences mute button doesn’t work. The video conference is exhausting for some reason where it freezes up because there isn’t enough bandwidth. These things – it’s the stuff of daily life.

What’s fascinating to me is that people just sort of accept that. They don’t talk about it much except of course as it’s happening.

It’s a little bit like – I was reading about traffic jams the other day and it turns out that if you measure people’s blood pressure while they’re stuck in a traffic jam it goes way up, but as soon as the traffic starts moving, their blood pressure comes back down. They don’t stay that angry. That’s really interesting to me because it suggests that we have this tolerance for sort of low level, hassle at the technical level.

But what’s going on beneath that and what I found in doing the research for the book is that each of those forms of virtual communication basically strips out the essential thing that humans need to communicate with each other, which is clues that you get when you’re face to face and talking to someone easily and naturally about their intent.

That’s what we care about. We care about what is that other person thinking/feeling, what does that other person mean when they say what they say.

If you’re sitting across from somebody and they say, “Your hair is on fire,” and you know them, you can tell immediately whether they’re kidding or whether you actually need to get a fire extinguisher. Online, you can’t tell.

Most of our virtual communications, therefore, are endlessly frustrating and endlessly misunderstood because of that lack of emotional information, that lack of human intent. We imagine that we’re communicating the same way. We’re all generals fighting the last war.

We talk to each other via email, via audio conference and even via video conferences, which we can get into assuming that it’s the same as face to face because we don’t really think about it. We don’t know any other way to communicate. As a result, we communicate assuming that everything’s getting through, our intent is getting through and it actually isn’t.

We can offend the other person or the other person misunderstands us. Then we don’t quite understand why and we get cranky as a result and welcome to the virtual world. That was the territory that I discovered as I began my research.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s intriguing. That assertion there is that what we fundamentally want to know is the intention of the person on the other side. We’re sort of – you’re suggesting your research reveals that we’re going to be more interested in what the human is thinking/feeling/believing than in the sort of word content that they’re projecting.

Nick Morgan
That’s absolutely right. We care about their emotions. It’s the emotions tell us how important is this communication. Is this person trying to get something across to us that’s desperately important? Is this person just making chit chat? Is this person flirting with us? Is this person angry at us? Is this person a threat?

All of those kind of questions play constantly in our unconscious minds. We want to know the answers to those things. When we don’t get the answers, then that makes us uncomfortable.

Here’s the added twist about this that I discovered. Imagine the human brain as a multi-channel organism that’s constantly seeking for other people’s intent and attitude. Then imagine that that attitude doesn’t come through, the intent doesn’t come through because it’s stripped out by virtual communication.

Then what happens is the brain doesn’t like empty channels, so it fills the channels with memories and assumptions and stuff it makes up. But, and here’s the thing, it fills it with negative information because it makes sense in evolutionary terms to assume the worst.

If you’re walking through the savannah and you see a shadow, it makes sense for your brain to assume that it’s a tiger and to make steps to get out of the way before you’re killed rather than to assume it’s just a friendly rabbit or something. Our brains do the same thing when we don’t get other people’s intent, we assume the worst.

That’s why virtual communications are always turning into trolling situations or people are always getting angry at you or you make what you assume is a joke in say, email, and the other person is offended for some reason. You think, “How could they be so stupid? I didn’t mean that at all.” Then you get angry at them. Then you have to spend six more emails straightening out the mess that’s been created.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is fascinating in terms of just fundamental human nature. I did not know that in terms of we are naturally filling in the empty channels and we have a strong bias for filling it in in a negative way. I guess I see that all the time, but I guess I didn’t stop to think that that is kind of hardwired into most people as opposed to, “Oh, I bumped into a couple touchy characters in my day.”

Nick Morgan
Sure. There are of course human exceptions, but what we’re talking about here is not the out loud things that people say. People are often more or less like Mr. Rodgers in that situation. We’re talking about the unconscious assumptions, of course. Those we’re less aware of, but they exist very powerfully nonetheless. They influence our decision making. They influence how we react to other people.

The brain is out there always asking “Is this person friend or foe? What’s this person’s intent?” When we’re not getting a clear answer, we assume the worst. That’s the nature of virtual communications. That’s the problem – in fact that’s the first of five problems that I talk about in the book that lead to so much of our frustration in the virtual world.

The reason why I think a large part of why so many people have noted that the world has turned angry in the last five, ten years and it’s a phenomena that many people ask about. They say, “Why is everybody so angry these days? Why is the conversation, the political conversation, the business conversation, why are all these things turned so sour?”

Hello, it’s because for the past ten years we’ve switched from mostly face to face communications to half virtual, half face to face or maybe it’s more like three-quarters virtual, a quarter face to face. It’s a huge unregulated social experiment that’s been going on for about a decade now since the mobile phone became ubiquitous. We’re only just now beginning to wake up to the dangers associated with it.

At first, the advantages were obvious. It’s easier to communicate, much less friction to use the Silicon Valley term. I can send out thousands of emails, it doesn’t cost me anything. I don’t have to lick any stamps. I don’t have to walk to the post office. There are all kinds of – there are unquestionable benefits with audio conferences and video conferences and email. I don’t travel as much so that cuts down on wear and tear. It saves the travel budget.

There are powerful incentives to use virtual communication. That’s why, especially as I say it the last ten years, that’s why it’s just swept the planet and swept the human race. But only now are we starting to wake up to the fact that there are some downsides.

For me the single most alarming statistic that captures this is that when a group of psychologists studied teenage girls and their time on cellphone. What they found was there’s a straight line relationship between the number of hours you spend on your mobile phone and the likelihood that you’re depressed.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh wow.

Nick Morgan
It just goes straight up. It goes straight up. Every hour you add – and it’s typical for a teenage girl to spend six hours on a cellphone.

Pete Mockaitis
In a day?

Nick Morgan
In a day. Yeah. The rates of depression are rising at a really alarming rate and suicide too tragically.

Pete Mockaitis
That is striking. Do you happen to recall – I’m such a dork for the data – roughly, what’s an extra hour do in terms of my odds for depression?

Nick Morgan
Well it’s – at the top end it’s like 30% of the cohort are depressed, so do the math backwards. That’s around six hours per day on the cellphone.

Pete Mockaitis
That is striking.

Nick Morgan
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
As you were sort of talking about this human nature stuff with emails, it reminds me one of my very first corporate internships, I remember, I was at Eaton Corporation, a diversified manufacturing. I had not heard of them before. I was like, “Oh wow, this is like a Fortune 500 company. This is pretty large and established.” It was cool.

It was like, oh man, it reminded me of – it was funny – I was familiar with Office Space before I had actually been in a cubicle-like environment. It was like there we were. I actually had a lot of fun. It was interesting characters and intellectual challenges. I was like, “Oh, working is fun. This is kind of cool.”

But one thing that really tripped me up was the emails because it’s sort of like when I would get an email, like, wait is that person – are they trying to – do they think that I’m not doing my job. I would have all these sort of paranoid thoughts pop in.

Nick Morgan
Right, right.

Pete Mockaitis
Then when I would send an email, I’d have a couple times in which someone seemed kind of rankled with me. I remember my buddy Dan and I, we sort of partnered up with each other. We called it PCS, Political Consulting Solutions, in which we would preview each other’s emails and provide feedback on how it could be misconstrued in a way that’s going to really upset the other person. We spent a lot of time on this. It was wild.

Nick Morgan
That’s such a great example of what I’m talking about. I love that. Your solution is one, broadly speaking, that I suggest, which is you begin to create a community that discusses the implications of this.

The reason why most people don’t do that is that one of the unintended consequences of making email easy compared to office memos back in the day or inner office mail or whatever it was people used to do, is that we get tons of it now. We’re buried. Everyone talks about information overload, that’s because it’s easy to do.

We have a difficult time just coping with it all, so we tend to go through it very quickly. We just react emotionally. We actually are using that unconscious brain in a way that also has its unintended consequences and leads to negativity and suspicion and paranoia and all those juicy things. Yeah, that’s a great example.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. You say you’ve laid out five key problems associated with this. I’d love to get your view on what are the problems and your sort of favorite practice to ameliorate that problem or to address it a bit.

Nick Morgan
Yeah, sure. The first one I talked about is this lack of feedback is the fact that I can’t detect what you’re intending toward me. It’s a like a sensory deprivation chamber, most virtual communications, in one form or another. Email is the worst because that’s just words, black and white marks on a screen.

Of course, audio conference, you’ve got a little bit of the people’s intent through the voice. Actually some of that is stripped out and I can talk about the technical reasons for that. That gets a chapter in my book. Audio conferences are worse than you think, which is why we find them so boring. Nonetheless there’s a little bit of information there.

And we get a little bit more in a video conference. But on the whole, video conferences, people think, “Well, I’m actually seeing the other person,” you have to remember, it’s still just a two dimensional representation of a three-dimensional person. It’s still screening out things that you get easily and instantly face to face that you don’t get in video conferencing, which is why video conferencing is so tiring for most people. That’s the first big problem is the lack of feedback.

The second one is that as a result of that lack of feedback, we lack empathy. Normally, say if you’re standing with somebody, you’re having a quick conversation and you say something sarcastic and you see the pain in their eyes, you can do something instantly, and people mostly do, nice people on the whole, they’ll pat you on the arm or say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,” because they’ll see the reaction in your eyes. They’ll get right away that your intent back to me is “Oh, you hurt my feelings.” People can repair that because we have that empathic connection.

That’s the second big problem is that empathic connection is just largely gone.

The third problem is that you don’t have any control over your own persona or not enough control because what happens online since it’s done by machines for machines through machines is that it remembers forever.

The classic example of this is the drunken frat boy and the sorority girl pictures on Facebook that come back to haunt you when you’re trying to get your first job. We all can appreciate that that sometimes things happen in social media or online that we wish would go away.

Some governments around the world have started to rewrite the rules so that you are allowed to insist that information like that be pulled down, but it’s not universal yet. It’s very hard to do. It’s time consuming and a struggle. Lack of control over your persona, the information that’s out there, is a problem.

This is an interesting one because when I first started talking about this with my publishers, their reaction was, “Well, that doesn’t seem all that important really,” until I said – they said, “You might want to leave that one out.” I said, “Well, come on now. Think of the number of times in a day that somebody Googles you.”

They hadn’t really thought about it before, but people Google you now when they meet you. If you’re a potential customer or if they’re going to be your customer, you Google them. If you’re going to date a relative of theirs, they’ll Google you. People Google each other now often and on and on and on. The result is that there is information about you out there online, sort of whether you’re aware of it or not.

The other thing that happens is for people who do take control of this and create a website and a persona and you Google their name and up comes something that looks sort of bright and breezy and professional and interesting, compare that with somebody else who you Google and maybe there’s three or four different Nick Morgan’s that come up.

One of them looks a little sketchy. The other one might be me and whatnot. Then you think, “Oh, this person doesn’t exist. What’s the matter with them? Why don’t they have a website?”

In a way it’s also the competition that if you don’t control your persona, then people see you as less than human. That’s the third big problem.

The fourth problem, and this is a really subtle one, is that when you take out these emotions as I’ve been describing, then it actually makes it hard to make good decisions. The reason for that is we like to think of ourselves as logical beings who make logical decisions, but in fact, most of our decisions are based on emotions.

There’s a famous case of a stroke victim named HM, whose initials are used in the medical literature because he’s so famous. But he was kept anonymous, but his initials were used. He had a stroke which paralyzed his emotional centers of his brain. He was therefore unable to make decisions because it’s emotions we use to rate the importance of something.

This is easy to understand if you go back to a very simple example from your childhood that hopefully this never happened to you, but let’s pretend you walked up to a stove at age two and you saw this bright, glowing orange thing and you thought, “Oh, that looks cool,” and you put your finger on it.

Then what happened? Well, then suddenly you were subsumed with rage, and pain, and anger, and fear, and terror. You started screaming for your mother and all kinds of things happened. You never forgot that moment if that happened to you. You made a decision right then and there and you always followed it ever since never put your finger on a glowing hot stove ever again.

That goes up there because so much pain is associated with it as a very high and important decision. It sounds silly, but that’s the way in which our brain creates structures in order to allow us to make decisions. We rate things on their importance based on the number of times they come up in our memory and the amounts of emotion that are attached to them.

If you think of remodeling, recently we were remodeling our kitchen, there’s a ton of decisions you have to make when you’re remodeling a kitchen. You have to decide how much the surface is and what are the cabinets going to look like.

Pete Mockaitis
The knobs. There’s so many choices of knobs.

Nick Morgan
There are whole stores just devoted to knobs, Pete, it’s crazy. You can lose your mind trying to make these decisions.

Well, how do you make those decisions? Ultimately you start out all happy to do it. Let’s pick the best one and you do a little research. Then after a while you’ve made about 50 decisions, you just can’t stand it anymore. You just start going, “That one.” You just point and you say, “I’ll take that one.”

What are you basing it on? You’re basing it on some kind of emotional memory. That drawer pull reminded you of one that you used to have in your home when you were a kid and you loved it or you want one that’s different from the one you used to have in your home when you were a kid because you hated the home when you were a kid. That’s how we make those kind of decisions. We make them based on emotions and memories.

Pete Mockaitis
Or even if you’re imagining the future in terms of – or likening it too – it’s like, “Oh man, that’s so futuristic. That’s like some cutting edge Star Trek space-age knob there. I want to be like Captain Picard when I’m opening my drawer.”

Nick Morgan
That fits my image of myself or the image that I want to be.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally.

Nick Morgan
Yeah, that’s the fourth problem.

Then the final one is that when you compromise this kind of decision making and emotional connection then what happens is people don’t commit in the same way. This is where we get into the whole trolling problem and the fact that we’ve all experienced at a very simple level if – contrast say the Amazon website, most of shop on Amazon and we keep going back to Amazon. Why? Because they’re completely obsessive about making that experience work for us.

But think about another shopping website that you’ve gone to that the experience wasn’t that great. Maybe the response was slow or it was hard to find the right product or in the end they sent you the wrong one and you had to send it back and that was an incredible hassle. How many times are you going to go back to that website? Never. You’re one and done.

That’s the nature of the online world is one and done compared to a face to face world where if you have a convenient coffee shop, maybe one time the barista screws up the coffee and gives you something that doesn’t taste very good, but you forgive him because he’s a human being and it’s local and convenient and you’re going to go back there again. If it happens enough times, maybe you won’t. You’ll find another place.

But face to face the experience is very different. We have a much higher tolerance and a much stronger sense of commitment to people that we meet face to face. That’s the final problem, just the online commitment, the online connection between people is very fragile and very transient.

If we try to communicate, and this is my main point in the book, is we’re still trying to communicate as if we were living in a face-to-face world, so we assume those kinds of connections are made on the same basis as they are in the real face-to-face world and they’re not.

I go into an email conversation. In a way I haven’t really reflected on kind of assuming the other person knows my intent. Why? Because when I talk to them face to face, they pick up my intent without any effort, so I don’t have to put a lot of that into my email if I’m thinking in those terms.

But in fact, I do and that’s really the beginning of the solution is I say, you need to start putting in the emotions and the clarity and intent, specifically the human intent into your email. It feels strange at first.

But I say it all begins with a question, which a neuroscientist told me he thinks about under the circumstances, which is “How does what I just said make you feel?” As soon as you ask that question, then the whole game changes and we can begin to turn virtual communications into something that words not quite as well as face to face, because of the way our unconscious minds are wired, but it’s going to work reasonably well. But that’s the key thing.

There are two implications of that. First of all, it allows you to tell me how you’re feeling emotionally because it gives time for that and it gives the space for it. But second, it also gives you the respect to say “I care about how you feel.”

Now face to face, I can’t help but care because if I say something and then that hurts your feelings and I see the pain in your eyes, then I’m hardwired to care about that because we humans are decent, most of us. The number of psychos, thank God, are fairly small. Most of us are hardwired to respond sympathetically that we have empathy, so we care.

But online, we don’t. That’s why we need to ask that question, “How does what I just said make you feel?” It’s about taking the time to do that and also showing the other person the respect and the empathy and the caring that says “I want to know these things. I’m going to take a moment to do that.”

It involves a real shift. It’s not difficult to understand or technically difficult to do, but it involves a huge shift in just the way we think about communication because essentially what we’re doing is putting back in the emotional connection, the intent, the clarity of that intent, which we do reasonably well most of the time face to face and we do horribly online, horribly.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s striking in terms of I can see – you made a compelling case here for why this is extra critically necessary when it comes to the online dimensions.

Although I don’t think it’s a bad question for in-person contexts either because I think a lot of times – we’re not, even though there’s – I guess for example, if you’re looking at a room of a dozen people in a conference room and you’re presenting something, it can be hard to kind of keep your eye on all of them at the same time.

Nick Morgan
That’s right. That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
It would be great to get some of that feedback. What’s great is it can even surface information that’s not yet conscious I’d say. I’m just imagining this playing out.

Nick Morgan
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
To the person you’re saying it to because, “How does this make you feel?” Then especially if they’re on the spot and they can’t squirm out and say “Nothing,” they might say – if you have a decent relationship, I guess some people would just not say anything. Because I can imagine a lot of times they’ll say “How does it make you feel?” and they’re like, “Yeah, it’s fine, I guess,” it’s just like the emotion is sort of like uninspired.

Nick Morgan
Right, but then you’ll know.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Nick Morgan
Then you’ll know that. Right.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like this proposal-

Nick Morgan
You can tell by the reaction.

Pete Mockaitis
-is fine I guess. It will probably get the job done, but it’s not going to inspire tremendous energy and enthusiasm and commitment from the people on my team. Are we okay with that or are we not okay with that?

Nick Morgan
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Now there’s a whole other conversation that maybe needs to be had.

Nick Morgan
That’s right and it’s a good thing to have. I think one of the things you’re pointing to is that what’s happening is that some of our bad behavior that we’ve learned online is in danger of leaking back into our face to face.

We’ve all complained about this when we go to a meeting and half the people are on their cellphones. You’re going, “Wait a minute, don’t you even have the courtesy to put down the cellphone and talk to me. Here we are face to face. We’ve gone to all the trouble to get together face to face and you’re still on your cellphone. Come on, that isn’t acceptable behavior.” Some people surface that and insist that people leave their cellphones at the door or turn them off or whatever.

I’ve noticed more and more and I know many other people have as well, I’m sure you have, bad behavior from virtual communications were leaking back into face to face and in effect making – the worst possible outcome would be if face to face were dragged down to the level of virtual communications.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m just imagining we’d pull out an emoji notecard from our pockets and just display that. “This is my response to what you’ve said.”

Nick Morgan
Well, I say in the book that we’re in danger of raising a generation of people who are uncomfortable communicating face to face and incompetent communicating online.

Pete Mockaitis
That is quotable, Tweet that and spooky.

Nick Morgan
Yeah, scary.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to kind of hit something you said earlier before it disappears. I was quite intrigued. You mentioned that because of our kind of false assessment of what’s being transmitted in audio, that leads to it being very boring. Because of our false assessment with video, that results in a 2D versus 3D, that results in it being very tiring. Can you explain that pathway a little bit more in these two dimensions?

Nick Morgan
Yeah, sure. This involves a slightly technical explanation, but I’ll make it as simple and brief as I can.

What happens when the phones were invented and the engineers said we’ve got to get the human voice into twister copper pair, that was the original phone line, was that they studied the human voice and realized that the human voice covers three bands of sound.

There’s the basic pitch at which say you and I are speaking. If I held one of the vowels that I’m saying out loud and made kind of a note out of that, so nooo, if I held that tone, we could find that on the piano. We could find that pitch. The pitch at which people speak exists within a pretty narrow band of about around 200 Hertz. It goes up to about 300 – 350 and goes down to about 100, but it’s a pretty narrow band, several hundred Hertz wide.

The human – if you think about human hearing, one of the extraordinary things is we can hear up to 20,000 Hertz when we’re young and healthy. As time goes on if we listen to too much loud rock music, we lose a bit at the top. But the basic human hearing range is 20 Hertz to 20,000 Hertz.

Now you think about why did we evolve to do that and the reason is something quite extraordinary about the human voice, we can identify other people’s voices without any apparent effort at all. That’s an extraordinary achievement when you think about it.

As soon as you pick up the phone and it’s your significant other calling or a family member, your mother, your father, friends, family, or if you hear politicians or famous actor’s voices on television or on the radio, you instantly know who all these people are. You know without any effort several hundred voices. It’s an extraordinary thing when you think about it.

The way you know that is there’s the basic pitch that people speak, but every human voice is like a fingerprint in that it’s individual and it’s characterized by a certain set of overtones over the basic pitch and undertones under the basic pitch.

There are three bands, as I said, there are the overtones, that your voice makes, which we can’t hear consciously but are fed into the sound of Pete’s voice or Nick’s voice, and then there are the basic pitch at which we’re speaking, and then there are the undertones.

Now, what the engineers realized was you could leave off the overtones and undertones and you’d still be able to understand the basic pitch. You’d be able to hear and understand what people were saying. They noticed that the human voice became a little less distinctive. It was a little harder to tell people apart, but not impossible because you still got some of that sound richness even in the narrow band.

Okay, that’s what people did for telephones and then the same thing happened – there was never a time when it suddenly became convenient to put massive more bandwidth into the sound of the human voice. Once the original science had been done, nobody ever thought let’s redo this and suddenly increase the ear buds and the speaking phones and everything so they can get 20,000 to 20 Hertz.

They never did that. As a result, the sounds are vastly restricted to that narrow band of the basic pitch.

Now here’s why that’s important. When you take out the undertones especially, also the overtones to a certain extent, but when you take out the undertones, then you take out the emotion. Emotion is conveyed in the undertones.

Now, because of our earlier discussion, you’ll know that that’s very important. As soon as you take out the emotions, then it gets hard to make good decisions and it’s also very boring because emotions, other people’s intent, are what we care about.

Basically the simple way to put this is when you’re on a regular team meeting with your team, which is spread out all over the world, then your boss is droning on about something, you can’t tell as well what the emotions are being conveyed in his or her voice because the undertones are taken out. They’re edited out. As a result your boss is both boring and you can’t read him or her as well.

That’s why there’s the stories of what people do on audio conferences in order to stay human, alive and on the planet are hilarious and …. The vast majority of people as soon as they get in an audio conference put their phone on mute and start doing their email. They’re only half there.

Then there are lots of good stories when I was doing the research I came up with a number of hilarious stories about gross and disgusting things, some of which I couldn’t put in the book, that people do when they put the phone on mute instead of listening on the audio conference.

Pete Mockaitis
We can’t let that go. Give us just one or two examples please.

Nick Morgan
Of course, people go to the bathroom and then forget

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah, bummer.

Nick Morgan
Make revolting noises.

Pete Mockaitis
Embarrassing.

Nick Morgan
Yeah, embarrassing noises. But my favorite, people have sex believe it or not. Sometimes that gets overheard. While you’re on the boring audio conference, imagine somebody else is having a good time.

But my favorite one, my favorite one is there was a team that had a group based in South America, in Brazil I think it was, and a team in Asia and a team in the United States.

Obviously everybody except whoever the poor soul was that was talking had their phones on mute because an earthquake happened to the Brazilian team. They left their phones on mute and fled the building and didn’t come back and nobody noticed. The rest of the world didn’t know. The rest of the team had no idea that their teammates in Brazil were suffering an earthquake. That tells you just how dissociated and ridiculous audio conferences are.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh man.

Nick Morgan
somewhere else on the phone can have an earthquake and you don’t even know, I mean come on.

Pete Mockaitis
That is wild. It’s not just one person. It’s numerous.

Nick Morgan
Right, there were several people sitting around that conference room table, which was by then shaking obviously.

Pete Mockaitis
That is wild. Well, thank you for that. Now these undertones, overtones business now I hear that, have a mental image I guess, audiogram, audio picture of what that sounds like in terms of when I’m speaking on the phone with someone or a conference call. But if I’m using something like a Zoom or a Skype, are we kind of collecting the full range from an audio bandwidth signal?

Nick Morgan
It depends a lot on the technology. What happens is though even if you use a good microphone, then the person at the other end may not be getting all of the information because of what he or she may be listening on.

If you’re listening on ear buds, ear buds are the worst, even good ones. Of course, they use this kind of trick technology. They don’t actually produce the low notes. They use a trick of the human ear to make you think you’re hearing it, by suggesting by doubling up on the note.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, so I’m not actually hearing the real stuff, but it’s kind of trying to-

Nick Morgan
No, your brain is filling it in.

Pete Mockaitis
-give me something that resembles it. Whoa.

Nick Morgan
Right, the brain is filling it in to a certain extent. You’re not actually – we’re having this lovely conversation, Pete, but you’re not actually hearing my voice. You’re hearing a kind of memory and a construction of my voice.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting. I want to get your quick view then on, while we’re on that subject, I’ve used a lot of meeting platforms in my day and you’ve done a boatload of research. I know that different circumstances and contexts call for different solutions, but if you had to give me your personal favorite in the world of Zoom versus BlueJeans versus GoToMeeting versus Adobe Connect, which one would you say reigns supreme?

Nick Morgan
What I’m liking is – there are some Zoom setups that I’ve seen – Zoom seems to be the easiest to me just of all the ones I’ve used. I’ve used them all. I have no particular beef or no investment in any particular one. But Zoom seems to be the easiest.

Some Zoom setups are starting to build in better speakers so that you can get a broader range of response built into the room for example. I’m in favor of those kind of setups where we start to put back in the sounds that have been stripped out.

But understand one other thing we were going to talk about, videos. Let me just quickly say the issue with video, and that’s another interesting one. We humans are brought up to think about the five senses. That’s sort of what we imagine we have. There’s actually a sixth sense that all of us have, which works very, very hard and that’s called proprioception.

Proprioception is the effort that your mind and my mind make to track our location in space and the location of everybody around us.

Just to pick a fun example, that’s why most people find cocktail parties so exhausting because there are a lot of people milling around. You keep track of where are all those people are. Your unconscious mind is keeping track of where all those people are even if you can’t see them, so even the ones behind you. you’re doing it with a little bit of sort of weird sixth sense again that people have of – you know the prickly feeling you have at the back of your neck. You kind of know somebody’s behind there so maybe you sneak a little look.

It’s a combination of looking and sort of the feeling that you get when there’s somebody behind you and physical sensation and shadows. You use all the means at your disposal. Proprioception is a very hardworking little sense to keep track of where everybody is.

Well, on video that doesn’t come through. Once again, that channel is emptied out pretty much because you can’t tell where that other person actually is in space because they’re sitting on a two dimensional screen, which is maybe four or five feet from your face. But you know they aren’t kind of there because you only see their head and shoulders.

You know they aren’t actually four feet away from you, but you don’t know where they are. Are they ten feet, twenty feet? Your brain works really hard and assumes that that person is both more dangerous than they actually are and farther away or closer than they actually are. You don’t get a good read on it. Your brain is working extra hard and it is again filling that channel with information which is made up essentially.

We find that very exhausting. That’s why people often end up shouting at each other on video conferences or report themselves fatigued after an hour of video conferences. It’s very hard unless you’re really practiced at it, to do a long, long video conference. Whereas, most people if they’re enjoying the conversation, wouldn’t mind an hour or two conversation face to face.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re bringing me back to some days which I’ve done 11 hours of video coaching calls in a day and I can confirm that tuckered me out good.

Nick Morgan
Wow. There you go. I’m impressed you went that long. That’s really-

Pete Mockaitis
I’m used to the load in video sense. Um, so—

Nick Morgan
Well, just remember, you’re making your unconscious brain work very hard. I talk in the book about things you can do to improve it.

One of the things – it sounds trivial, but it’s really not – is you can do this on your end, is set up your video conferencing to give the other person subtle clues as to the depth perception involved in the room.

I say have something that’s near you that they can easily estimate the size of and then put something like a plant a few feet back. Then have a wall clearly behind that with things on it that will help them size what they’re seeing.

If you give people those three layers of depth, then that’s actually visually very helpful for them. They’ll find talking to you much less stressful than they otherwise would. It takes a certain amount of effort.

And of course, adequate lighting. Everybody has heard that I’m sure now about video conferencing. It takes – because it’s just a camera, a TV camera, and it takes a lot of light to reproduce enough through the pixels that you need a lot of extra light. That’s something that most people don’t do, so we’re squinting into the gloom and we can’t see the other person very well.

Adequate lighting and a sense of depth perception really go a long way to improving that sense of ease that you’ll give the other person. Now that won’t help you unless the other person does the same thing, but at least you can be kind to whoever you’re talking to.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now part of me is wondering if you did the reverse in terms of I put a giant can of Coca Cola just to really mess with their whole ….

Nick Morgan
You see that wicked thought, Pete, that comes from online communication. There you go.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh man.

Nick Morgan
You’re prone to misbehave online.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m guilty. Well, tell me anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about a couple of your favorite things and see if there’s any new favorite things since last time?

Nick Morgan
Yeah, sure. I would just say one of the other quick fixes that I talk about, which I recommend very highly for anybody who has an ongoing team audio conference, that sort of arrangement, where you have people in Singapore and the US and Europe say and you talk to them all every week all the time and you need to keep an ongoing happy relationship with them.

Then at the beginning of every call, do the virtual temperature check is what I call it, where you ask them – think of a stop light, red, yellow, or green. You can also say amber if you like amber better, red, amber or green.

Red means “This is an awful day. There’s disaster. You probably should let me off this call.” Yellow means “I’m having a stressful day but I’m okay to be on the call, but cut me some slack.” Green means everything is great.

What you find is if you ask people just to do that simple check, they feel they have permission to do that, whereas often what happens on audio conferences is your world may be falling apart around you, but you get the … audio conference because you have to do it. It’s your job. You don’t feel comfortable saying online, on an audio conference like that, “Well, actually life’s awful right now and here’s what’s going on.”

That audio conference set up because it’s stripped of emotion, doesn’t give us the permission to do that typically. Audio conferences often get off to a bad start because half the team is missing in action literally or figuratively and nobody knows. Resentment builds up and misunderstandings build up.

This is a way of just getting clear and allowing whoever the team leader is to say if somebody does say red, say “Well, okay, sorry to hear that. Do you want to talk about it? Do you want to be let off the call? Shall I get back to you later? Do you want to have a side conversation?” It allows you just to handle that in a compassionate and thoughtful way.

Same with yellow. You can say, “I’m sorry that it’s not green. Do you want to talk about it or is it good enough that you can get along?” They’ll make a choice. Then do the same thing at the end of the call. It’s very quick. It’s easy to do. Yet it allows you to put some of that emotional connection back in that the internet and virtual communication has taken out.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Thank you. Well, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Nick Morgan
I always come back to “The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.” That’s my favorite all time quote. I probably said that the last time, but I’m still – that’s still my all-time favorite quote.

I use that with clients all the time when we’re talking about asking does this speech have enough impact. Is it going to change the world? Of course, that means for a specific audience and specific moment. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be a politician announcing world peace or something like that. People can change the world in small but important ways.

I think it’s a great quote and a great test for any kind of public communication.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite book?

Nick Morgan
Favorite book, I just read the 12 Rules for Life, the Peterson book. I think that’s very thoughtful. It’s not that the 12 rules are so surprising. They aren’t. They’re basically the Golden rule and a few others of decent behavior to each other.

But what’s really incredible about that book is the discussion leading up to each of the 12 rules. It’s just very deep, thoughtful examination of human frailty and the nature of evil in the world and why we do the things we do and how we need to treat each other, just a very deep and important book I think. I got a lot out of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you.

Nick Morgan
Like I said, the rules won’t surprise you, but it’s the discussion that’s thoughtful and useful.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite habit?

Nick Morgan
A favorite habit?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Nick Morgan
Besides coffee? Coffee and cookies. My new favorite habit is I’ve started to do more yoga and tai chi because tai chi is beautiful. It’s kind of like organized slow dance. I was never a very good dancer, so tai chi sort of gives me the illusion that I can kind of control my body in space.

My only fear about it is it doesn’t feel like much exercise. I’m not working up a sweat doing tai chi, but my tai chi instructor keeps telling me, “No, this is very good for you. This will be very good for your circulation and your balance and all kinds of good things.” I’ve really been enjoying tai chi. I recommend it highly, very good way to de-stress and to do a different thing than your normal day-to-day life, which involves much virtual communication.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. If folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Nick Morgan
PublicWords.com is our website, P-U-B-L-I-C-W-O-R-D-S. There’s a contact form on there. You can reach out or just shoot me an email at Nick@PublicWords.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Nick Morgan
Yes, I do. If you’re spending any kind of time communicating virtually, then I challenge you to think about how am I going to make clear what my intent is in these conversations and these communications and how am I going to give other people the respect to find out what their intent or reaction is.

It begins with asking yourself the question and asking other people around you the question, “How did what I just say make you feel?” and proceeding from there. But we need to put that respect and care for each other’s emotions and reactions back into virtual communication.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Nick, this has been a real treat. Thanks again for coming on back. I wish you tons of luck with Can You Hear Me? and all the good stuff you’re doing.

Nick Morgan
Pete, thank you so much. It’s always great to talk to you. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Sep 05
0

341: Decoding Body Language with ex-FBI Special Agent Joe Navarro

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Joe Navarro says: "We are always transmitting information."

Joe Navarro shows how to get to the bottom of body language and why observing it can better your relationships at work and at home.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why it’s so hard to tell if someone’s actually lying
  2. Four key, reliable body language cues
  3. The one good mannered behavior everyone should know and use

 

About Joe

For 25 years, Joe Navarro worked as an FBI special agent in the area of counterintelligence and behavioral assessment. Today he is one of the world’s leading experts on nonverbal communications and lectures and consults with major corporations worldwide. He is an adjunct professor at Saint Leo University and frequently lectures at the Harvard Business School.

 

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Joe Navarro Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Joe, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Joe Navarro
It’s great to be here, Pete. It’s a long time coming.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah. Well, I’m super excited that I’ve been a fan of your work from afar for a good long time, so now here we are. But first I want to hear about how you got a pilot’s license when you were 17. Is that even legal or what’s the backstory here?

Joe Navarro
I don’t know how you dug that up, but not many people know that. That’s true. It was a funny thing. A lot of people make fun of our school systems, public schools in particular, but I was fortunate to go to a public school where the science class that was offered was aeronautics.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding.

Joe Navarro
No, it was great. It was in Miami, Florida and you could study ground school, basic ground school. I took that when I was 16. Then once I turned 17 then I could begin to take flight lessons and I did, which you say, “Well, what do you do with that?” Well, interestingly enough, when the FBI came looking for me that was one of the things that set me apart.

Pete Mockaitis
Interesting, so during your time in the FBI did you do some piloting?

Joe Navarro
Yeah. In the Bureau, you wear a lot of hats. The first four or five years, it was pretty much about learning the business of being an FBI agent, working counter-intelligence, but along about the fifth or sixth year there was a real shortage of pilots. We used aircraft for surveillance. They knew I had a license, so I did. I got somewhere around 2,000 hours.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh cool.

Joe Navarro
Yeah, it was pretty nice.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is cool. I have very little piloting experience, but I had a buddy who had a little four-seater Cessna in San Francisco. I’ve only piloted for like five minutes, but part of it was over the Golden Gate Bridge. It seems like that would be hard to top. It was just breathtaking.

Joe Navarro
Oh, it’s just a lot of fun. Once you get up to altitude and you can relax, you’re not worried about other aircraft, it really does give you a different perspective on the world. I used to take the airplane over to Miami Beach and fly along the coastline. It was – you’re 17 years old and you say, “This is pretty good. This isn’t bad.” Yeah, it was fun. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. You’ve written 13 books now and were a special agent with the FBI and are quite an authority on body language. I want to get into some particulars of body language signals and how to read it, what to do with it.

But first, I’d love it if you could set the scene for us with some drama. We had Chris Voss on the show. I’m just going to go out on a limb and say FBI agents make great podcast guests. Two for two so far. I asked him if he could give us a dramatic tale to kick us off, so I’ll put you on the same spot.

Can you think of a time where, boy, a body language signal or insight just sort of changed the whole story for an interrogation or an investigation or something you were working with?

Joe Navarro
Yeah. One of the books that I wrote was Three Minutes to Doomsday. In that book, I talk about this individual who was willing to cooperate or seemed to want to cooperate with the FBI, but he was hiding a lot of information. When we asked him to come forward and tell us the truth because he didn’t really have all the access to classified material that we knew had been stolen, he said he wasn’t going to reveal their names.

One of the things that we decided to do since we understood body language was to basically not trick him into revealing it, but getting him to reveal it at a subconscious level. What we did was we wrote the names of everybody that could possibly be involved on a three-by-five card. As we showed him each three-by-five card, we said, “Will you tell us a little bit about what their personality was like?”

What he didn’t realize was that when you see something that can hurt you, your pupils squint. His pupils and his eyes squinted on two names of the 32 that we presented. Then we sent agents out with the army to two military bases, one in Alaska, one in Georgia. On the two names that he squinted, both of them confessed.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh wow. That’s good.

Joe Navarro
What’s interesting, Pete, is he wasn’t lying. He said, “Look, I’m not going to tell you anything.” What he didn’t know was how he was going to react.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Joe Navarro
We know from studies of babies, eight – nine months old, when they see somebody they don’t like or they see something that is not pleasing to them, oftentimes they will squint, turn away, or their pupils will actually constrict.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve got a little seven-month-old at home. I hope he doesn’t do that to me shortly.

Joe Navarro
No, that will come when they’re 14.

Pete Mockaitis
Daddy, I’m tired of you.

Joe Navarro
Pete, you’ve got 14 years.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh cool. You’re latest here is called The Dictionary of Body Language. How would you frame or position this one in terms of kind of the main idea and how does it kind of fit into your opus and the catalogue of the other books?

Joe Navarro
Well, that’s a great question, Pete. It was one of these things where when I wrote What Everybody is Saying, which became the number one-selling body language book in the world years ago. It’s been at the top for the last eight years. There were only 140 behaviors in there.

Two years ago I was talking to my agent, Steve Ross, at Abrams. He said, “I’m looking at your book.” I said, “Well, I hope you’re learning something.” He said – he kind of said, “Is that all there is?” I said, “No, that’s not all there is.” He says, “Well, how many behaviors do you think are important and we should know about?” I said, “Well, the problem is, is how do we write it? There’s many behaviors.” I said, “Let me look through my notebook.”

I’ve been keeping notebooks on behavior for years and years and years. I went through and I said, “Well, I’ve got about 600 in here.” He said, “Well, let’s talk about it.” We talked about it and then we reduced it down to just over 400 because some of them replicate because they’re similar behaviors.

He said, “Have you ever thought about writing a book, but making it like a field guide, where you can quickly look something up and there’s a paragraph and it says, ‘if you see this, then you can interpret it this way?’” He liked the idea. He took it to Harper Collins and Harper Collins said this would be a great follow-on to go from 140 behaviors to over 400. That was – there is your opus, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. That’s cool. That’s cool. So good. I loved What Everybody is Saying. I’m looking to forward to getting into all the more depths of The Dictionary of Body Language. Thank you for writing it. It’s just fun.

I’ve got a ton of things I’d love to dig into. Maybe I’d like to hear your take on – so when it comes to sort of gauging people’s true intentions, and I know that’s one of the juiciest areas of the body language stuff, it’s like, “How do I know when someone’s lying?” That seems to be popular for your poker books as well as maybe sort of untrusting partners or any number of contexts.

Why don’t we go with that first? How do you get to the bottom of people’s true intentions and whether they’re being honest with you?

Joe Navarro
I knew you were going to hit me with this because you always ask profound questions.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh shucks.

Joe Navarro
Let’s divide it up because when we’re talking about intentions, for instance, you’re talking to somebody and they’re right foot begins to orient towards an exit. Usually we begin to communicate, ‘I have to leave’ with our feet. Before they even look at their watch, before they say anything, we show intentions by foot orientation.

We show intentions such as ‘I really like that cake’ by literally leaning towards it. You see that in courtship behaviors. I’ve certainly sat at enough cafes and bars studying individuals and you can tell when they’re interested in each other.

But the more profound question is, well, what about detecting deception. I have to say both as someone who has been intimately involved in all aspects of forensic interviewing and in doing research for the books and for teaching that as Dr. Mark Frank at University of Chicago says, there is no Pinocchio effect. There is really no single behavior indicative of deception and we need to get away from that because we do a disservice to ourselves and to others.

I think it’s been too easy to say, “Well, I think you’re lying.” “Well, why do you think that?” “Oh, because I asked you a question and you were touching your mouth.”

Well, the fact of the matter is, both the honest and the dishonest do it and we do it because maybe we don’t like the question, we thing the question is too intrusive, maybe we think that you are not entitled to ask that question because of social status or whatever.

There’s – what I found interesting in doing an article for Psychology Today is I looked at the 261 DNA exonerations. As I delved deep and I contacted the people that had done the research, looked at the case work of the police officers, every one of them thought that the suspects were guilty and lying when they said they didn’t do it.

What’s interesting is not one police officer could identify who was telling the truth, but they all thought they could identify somebody that was lying. What does that tell us? What it tells us is that as Paul Ekman found in 1986, humans are terrible at detecting deception. We really shouldn’t be in the business of detecting deception.

Now, so what is it that we’re looking for? What’s interesting is, is that humans are actually very good at detecting when something is wrong, when there’s an issue. The question is we don’t know why.

Babies are born communicating comfort and discomfort. We humans immediately reveal discomfort through our bodies, whether it’s a heightened heart rate, a pulsing vein, pacifying behaviors, but what we don’t know is the why.

If I can tell you an FBI story, I was at – I worked mostly counter-intelligence. We were short of personnel one time and I was asked to do an interview of a white-collar criminal. This woman is called in and usually we spend the first 20 – 30 minutes getting people to calm down because obviously when you get called in by the FBI, it’s pretty nerve racking.

But as I’m talking to this lady, she seems to be demonstrating more and more behaviors of nervousness and tension. She’s biting her lip, she’s grabbing her collar, she’s squeezing her hands together. Finally, I said, “Ma’am,” I’m thinking to myself Joe, you’re the Bureau’s expert on body language, surely you know what’s going on here, so I thought I’d cut to the chase. This is a lesson in humility.

I said, “Ma’am, you look like you need to get something off your chest.” She said, “Oh, thank God Mr. Navarro because when I parked downstairs I only had a quarter in the meter.” Here were all the behaviors of nervousness and tension and anxiety, but what was the cause? The cause was she didn’t want to get a ticket, didn’t want to have to pay a fine.

As it turns out somebody had stolen her identity and filed some bogus claims, insurance claims and that’s why she was being called in. It was a – it really taught me a lesson about humility and saying all we can really say is that I’m seeing behaviors, they’re indicative of psychological discomfort. The question is what’s driving that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Then what’s interesting is some people can just be anxious in general I imagine. That is sort of who they are all the time and they’re just not that comfortable in their own skin or talking to other people or talking to strangers or talking to official people like judges and FBI agents.

Joe Navarro
Oh sure. Look, and not even nervousness, there’s people who don’t like to make eye contact, that really feel uncomfortable being questioned and so forth.

The investigator has to look at that and say, “All right, who am I dealing with? What are the baseline behaviors?” Then if they do notice behaviors – I mean if you ask somebody “Where were you last night?” and if a question like that causes them to look like they’re doing trigonometry, the question then becomes, why does a simple question cause so much mental turpitude? Why is there so much cognitive loading going on? But then that’s for the investigator to figure it out.

As an agent, I can tell you that no matter what people said, we always had to prove what they said. It was a matter of if I asked a question, how did they react to that question. No matter what their reaction was, I needed to pursue it anyway.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Although, what’s cool though is with those 32 names because you got an indicator you were able to really accelerate that hypothesis, like we have a good reason to suspect these are the two to go after rather than going through all 32.

Joe Navarro
Right, well, it’s because I understood that when an object or a name or something is a threat to you, that you react to it. Now, what was important was not to give any indication of – that anyone of these individuals was any more special than the others. It was just a matter of what can you tell me about their personalities and then watching for their reactions. We lucked out with that.

Now, if the two men hadn’t confessed, certainly we couldn’t go to court and say, “Well, Judge, we think they’re guilty because this guy blinked.” It doesn’t work that way.

In the same way that when a child comes home and – or a spouse comes home and they’re having some sort of difficulty. Maybe it doesn’t help to ask any more questions at that moment. Maybe it helps to delay it to another time so when they’re relaxed you get a better read to find out, “Oh, is somebody bullying you at work or at school or somewhere else?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Okay, so that being established in terms of it’s hard to know whether someone’s lying or deception, but rather you just kind of get a sense for what’s causing discomfort. I’d love to hear out of the 400-ish behaviors, what are some of those that are kind of like the most reliable, like, “Pete, over 90% of the time when I see this behavior, it tends to mean that thing.”

I remember from What Everybody is Saying, you said some things to say about feet and how it’s absurd that in interrogation rooms there are opaque desks and they need to be transparent so that we can observe their feet.

It was like this is a guy who speaks from experience because I’ve never seen anyone or heard anyone go on a rant quite like that. I dug that. Tell me is it the feet or what are some of the most reliable tell-tale things to look toward?

Joe Navarro
Well, actually one of them you just did. You did what’s called eyelid flutter.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh boy, what’s it mean?

Joe Navarro
Eyelid flutter we do when we are emphasizing something, when we feel negative about something, when we’re flustered by something. You were channeling me there quite accurately.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.

Joe Navarro
When I wrote about interviewing and how you’re a paid observer and here you’re sitting for an interview and the person’s hiding behind a desk and you cannot even see their feet or their hands or their torso. I was like I cannot believe that you as a professional cannot see the object of the interview and they’re hiding behaviors that are critical.

As you were channeling that, your eye – you did the eyelid flutter. Eyelid flutter is very accurate when we’re struggling with something.

But you mentioned the feet and I think this is one of the things that was astonishing. There’s a really good section in the new book, The Dictionary of Body Language, dealing with the feet because I got so many questions over the years after I wrote that of people saying, “Well, is there anything more about the feet?” I said, “The feet are very accurate because they reveal our emotions and we tend not to hide them.

In the same way that we might do a social smile, the feet, if they don’t like you or if you don’t like someone, your feet will move you away from that person. You will immediately rotate away. If you’re excited and happy to see someone, you can hide a smile, but try to hide the feet of a child.

I was just at the airport the other day and a little kid arrived with a family. They were going to Disney. Every time the mother mentioned Disney World, the child’s feet were jumping up and down. She had happy feet. You can’t hide that.

Even with adults, poker players soon found out that you can see the happy feet of a player that has a monster hand just by the shirt shaking. The feet certainly have a lot of information.

You were talking about what are some of the more accurate significant ones. There’s another one that you do, which is great. It’s the gravity defying behaviors of the eyebrows.

Pete Mockaitis
I just did that before you – the first – we don’t have the video for the listeners. It’s fun that you started with the video. It should have occurred to me, of course he wants the video.

Joe Navarro
Yeah. Well, because it’s very instructive. You can see how excited you are about things because you arch your eyebrows and you go, “Well, what about this and what about that?”

Think about the times when you greet somebody and they arch their – they flash their eyebrows and they go, “Hey, how are you?” and compare that to other times when you greet someone but you don’t have those behaviors and you realize, “Oh, that just doesn’t feel the same. There’s something going on here.”

I often get this with – when – I’ve taught many clinicians over the years. They say, “A lot of times these couples come in and they say, ‘Well, I had no clue that she didn’t love me anymore or he didn’t love me anymore,’” I say stop right there. There were plenty of clues. You just didn’t see them. You just didn’t see them.

You didn’t see the eyes that never flash when they see you.  You never saw that two years ago she was touching you with her fingertips rather than with her full palm hand. You didn’t notice that rather than smiling at you, it was more of a little smirk and the corner of her mouth was pinched, which shows disdain and so forth. I said there’s always behaviors there. The question-

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so sad.

Joe Navarro
Well, it is, but the argument that I never saw it coming.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Joe Navarro
One of the important things I really believe Pete is that if we’re sensitive to other people’s body language, we make better friends and better mates because we early on can begin to sense “Oh, there’s an issue. Something is wrong.” To wait for something six months, two years on, is sometimes too late.

I think if you begin to sense that “Oh, my partner, she’s bored watching TV another night and when I mention going out, her eyes light up.” Well, that’s a clue.

In the same way that as parents we look at the baby for every single little sign of a smile, of any kind of discomfort because we transmit information fairly much in a binary fashion, comfort, discomfort. The same thing applies in real life. That’s part of having that social intelligence, but it’s also about equity, what we bring to the table as a partner and as a parent to ensure that those we love are cared for.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful, yes. It’s funny, I’m thinking about my buddy Muhammed, who’s going to be on the show a little later. It’s exciting. That is one – I always feel very – I don’t know, I guess, welcomed or liked, appreciated when he greets me because his eyebrows really do do that. I guess I have not articulated or thought of that specifically until we really got precise about that fact just now. That’s intriguing.

We’ve got some feet. We’ve got the eyelid flutter. We’ve got the arching and lifting of eyebrows for excitement. What are some other big ones?

Joe Navarro
Let me give you – yeah. Let me give you one that is just a remarkable behavior. It really stands out with women. In part because oftentimes their necks are more exposed than men because we tend to wear shirts that have high collars or we wear a tie and a coat or – and so forth. Women have more of an open neck.

The behavior is covering of the lower neck area. There’s a little dimple there called the suprasternal notch. The suprasternal notch is just above the sternum and that’s why it’s called the suprasternal.

Pete Mockaitis
… Okay, yeah.

Joe Navarro
Invariably when someone is struggling with something, having difficulties, is insecure, there’s a little bit of fear, they will immediately bring their hand up and cover this very sensitive area of the neck. Men, we tend to mask it by grabbing our necks more robustly and grabbing our shirts. Women tend to just put their finger on it.

In fact, just the other day, in fact I think the day we talked or we emailed each other, there was an attack on a speech that was being given in Venezuela, on the President of Venezuela. It was a drone attack of some sort. While all the soldiers stood there at attention, being mindful of their duty, the First Lady, as soon as she sensed that something wrong, her hand immediately went to the suprasternal notch to cover it.

This is a very ancient behavior. This has to have been with us for tens and tens of thousands of years. Maybe even longer because it’s seen in every society. It’s been seen in every culture. Interestingly enough, it’s been seen even with children who are born blind, who have never seen the behavior and yet they perform this behavior when they feel threatened or scared.

I would say it’s one of those behaviors that it’s probably in the 95 to 96 percentile of communicating that something is wrong.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a good one.  That’s a good one. Any other sort of top, top probability items coming to mind?

Joe Navarro
Yeah. One of the ones that I talk about in the new book is – has to do with what is in essence a reserved behavior. Reserved behaviors are those behaviors that we really hold back until something is really stressing us and then they come out. We don’t tend to do them every day, but every once in a while when something is really bad.

One of those reserved behaviors is with the fingers. Now in the previous book I talked about steepling, that’s where you put your fingertips together and you straighten them up and it looks like a church steeple.

Pete Mockaitis
It makes me think of evil genius.

Joe Navarro
Right, like Mr. Burns.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent Joe.

Joe Navarro
But this behavior is very similar, except that the fingers are rigid straight and they interlace and the person sort of rubs them back and forth with very straight fingers. And I started to see this behavior probably in the ‘80s, with people in – who were going to be interviewed, people who were in trouble.

I also verified it by looking at these very old videos. They weren’t even videos; they were 35 millimeter movies from the 1950’s of couples in therapy. One of the things that I found was that when they were about ready to say, “Look, this relationship is over,” they would often do this behavior.

I call it teepee hands because when they interlace and the fingers are straight, if you were to hold it right in front of you, it looks like the top of teepee with the poles sticking out.

I tell parents, “Look if you’re talking to a child and they start to do this behavior, because they do it subconsciously, put your iPhone away and pay attention because something is significant here.” This is a reserve behavior.

We have another reserve behavior, which is kind of interesting. I hadn’t written about it before, but it’s in the new Dictionary of Body Language, and that’s called facial denting.

Facial denting is – you often see this at sporting events where the score is really close and you’ll see people squeeze their cheeks to the point where as you look at them you say, “Surely, that’s got to hurt. They’re going to pop a tooth.” They’re squeezing themselves so tight.

That’s one of those reserve behaviors for when we’re dealing with a lot of stress and we don’t know what the outcome is going to be.

Why we do that it hasn’t really been very well studied. I’m hoping – one of the things that I’m hoping – you were asking me earlier what are some of my hopes for this book. My hope is that researchers will look at it and say, “Okay, so here are things that this FBI guy over 40 years picked up by watching people. Let’s go and test it. Let’s go and verify it. Let’s go validate it.”

I hope they tear into it and they try to demonstrate that it’s universal or not universal, that it’s peculiar to this area of the world or that world or that it’s used when we’re stressed or unstressed or whatever. But I’m hoping that the average person can use it to learn, but I’m also hoping that the researchers will look at things that they’ve never looked at before.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really cool. Just to note, that if you’re seeing the teepeeing or the facial denting that we’re dealing with something serious here.

Joe Navarro
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s funny. I can think of a buddy who everything was going wrong on his wedding day in terms of things coming together. So and so didn’t pick up his tux and this person’s late and he’s getting all these texts. It was a lot of stuff. He was sure doing some good squeezing there. That all makes sense that it was intensely troublesome for him, but it all worked out. They got married. They’re happy and it’s good.

But that’s cool. Well, I’d love to hear maybe precisely or more specifically when it comes to in the world of professionals in their day-to-day job/career lives, what do you think are some of the most helpful things to be on the lookout for in terms of what you’re observing or what you’re projecting.

I’m thinking about things like maybe someone is bored or thinks that idea is wrong and just a terrible – I think that happens a lot in meetings. Someone says something and someone thinks, “That is a terribly bad idea,” but they don’t say anything because they don’t want to stick their neck out. That’s the big boss. They don’t want to offend or insult. Are there any indicators along those lines or other helpful kind of career scenarios?

Joe Navarro
Well, I’m glad you asked that question because it’s really a good question. I would have to say number one, if you’re taking notes, write this one down. We are always transmitting information.

A lot of people think, “Oh, I’m in the parking lot. Nobody’s going to notice me,” or “I’m in the elevator. Nobody’s going to notice me,” or “I’m sitting outside for an interview. Nobody’s noticing me,” or “I’m at the end of the table. Nobody’s going to notice me.” Stop right there. Welcome back to Planet Earth. The fact of the matter is that you are being observed constantly. People are picking up on everything.

Let’s go through a few of the things that you probably never thought about. Good manners. Manners are non-verbals, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, thank you, sir.

Joe Navarro
If you see a piece of paper on the floor and you pick it up and you put it in the garbage can, that is a behavior. You don’t have to talk to do that one.

How you talk to people, your intonation, how quickly you respond, do you face them or do you roll your eyes before you answer them and so forth. Good manners is a non-verbal.

The fact of the matter is, is that we’re all being scrutinized. People look at us and they notice how well groomed we are. Walk into an office and change your haircut. People will – “You’ve got a different haircut.”

You probably have gone through your life thinking, “Nobody notices me.” No, everybody notices. They notice if you’re wearing glasses. They’re noticing if you wear new glasses, if you change your hairdo, your color, if you’re not well-groomed, if all of the sudden you’ve gone from really nice clothing to really tattered clothing. They notice-

Pete Mockaitis
They’re noticing the wrinkles in my Polo shirts, Joe? Do I have to start ironing these things?

Joe Navarro
Yeah. It makes you think. Shakespeare was right, life is theatre and we’re on stage.

For a lot of jobs, how we look may not matter, but the fact of the matter is that for a lot of jobs it does matter. It matters how we, as clinicians say, how we present. Are we on time? Are we eager? Are we leaning forward? Are we interested?

Something so simple. We were talking earlier about great behaviors. Here’s one behavior that you need to build into your repertoire.

That’s when people are talking to you that you tilt your head slightly because we know that from a very young age babies respond to this and it’s a behavior that says “I’m listening to you. I’m interested. I don’t have an agenda for the moment and I’m actively listening.” It’s a very easy behavior to emulate, especially with children and loved ones.

I live in a community not far from central command where there’s a lot of Navy SEALS. These guys have great bodies. They’re like world-class athletes. But I notice how they talk even to their spouses and they look like drill sergeants. It’s like they can’t stand down.

I think one of the things that enhances communication, especially with loved ones, is if we can stand down and relax and tilt that head and just say, “I’m listening and tell me about your day,” and not look like we’re looking for the next marching orders.

I have to say a lot of executives come home and do the same thing. They have that very stern, I’m in charge sort of look. We know that humans respond to that look of interest and kindness.

Pete Mockaitis
Interest, kindness, kind of letting go and not being in charge, tilting the head. Any other kind of indicators of “I’m listening. I’m interested. I’m not bored. I’m not formulating a response. I’m not getting my argument ready?”

Joe Navarro
Yeah. I’m on the road all the time and I’m giving presentations all over the world. You’re running – one day you’re in Germany, the next day you’re in Romania, then you’re back in Chicago, and then you’re on the West coast and you’re talking to people – and Beijing. You’re talking to people from all over the world. What’s interesting is is what seafarers found 400 – 500 years ago, that affability, having a smile.

One of the things that works really well and I encourage young business people to do this is don’t feel like you have to stand directly in front of another person. That in fact we tend to increase the amount of time we are with others if we will just slightly angle to them so that we’re not directly in front of them. We’re just at a slight angle to them. By angling, we increase what’s called face time. Obviously, for business, this is really critical is increasing face time.

I have found this works in every culture wherever I’ve been. Instead of just standing right in front of them, I – you greet them, you angle to the side and there’s a sense of harmony.

We have to remember that when the conquistadores arrived in the New World they saw the same behaviors here that they had seen in Queen Isabella’s court. The king had better clothing. He sat higher. He had an entourage. He couldn’t be touched, blah, blah, blah. Everything in Queen Isabella’s court.

These are universal things that are endearing, such as giving people the requisite amount of space. In fact, I just wrote an article about that for Psychology Today because I go around asking folks “How far away do you like people to stand near you?” It’s kind of shocking to listen to what they say. It’s always greater than where people are standing next to them.

They say, “You know three to four feet,” and some people want even more. Be sensitive to the spatial needs of other people, that some people just don’t like others to be too close.

Be yourself. Be natural. Not everybody’s going to be an alpha. There will always be omegas. There’s a place for everybody. But also, be mindful that if you have something important that you should be heard.

One of the things I notice a lot with, especially with young women coming into business is that often they sit rather demure at their seat. Then almost the meeting is over and they don’t have an opportunity to talk. Oftentimes, they’re not giving away the cues that say, “I have something important to say.”

Those things are instead of leaning back, leaning forward and in when you have something ready to say, making direct eye contact with the person that is either presently speaking or is the moderator to let them know, “Hey, I have something to say.”

The other one is not steepling. Steepling, and that’s where the fingertips are together, is the really the only universal sign that we have of confidence, that we’re confident about what we’re thinking or about to say. I think-

Pete Mockaitis
So we should not steeple?

Joe Navarro
No, we should when we have something important to say. You don’t want to do it all the time.

What I found in my studies was that oftentimes women will do it low on their lap or not very high. When in fact, they should do it so it’s visible so that it communicates to everybody this is important and I’m very confident at this moment.

Look at Angela Merkel, over in the UK – or in Germany, sorry. She steeples all the time, but then she is a – she has a doctorate in engineering and she is very confident. You see those behaviors. I used to see them also with Margaret Thatcher and others.

It’s a behavior you want to emulate. You want to use it at the right time and the right place, but you also need to communicate “I want to be heard.” Those are some I think good indicators there.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, thank you. Now tell me, Joe, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Joe Navarro
I think one of the important things about body language is that I continue to be a student of it. I’d like to one day be able to say yeah, I have the definitive expertise. I’m reluctant to do that because I’m learning things all the time. I’m observing things all the time.

I think it behooves us to learn this language that is so part of us as humans and it’s the primary way that we demonstrate love and empathy. That’s pretty important.

It’s also the way that we sense and detect danger. We’re at an ATM machine. We’re looking over our shoulder. It’s late at night. We’re looking for somebody sneaking up on us.

It’s the number one way that we choose our mates. We don’t ask for a resume. We look at them. We smell them. We touch them. We watch them and we make decisions based on nonverbal.

A lot of people think, “Well, is it really that important?” Well, I can’t think of anything more important than safety, child rearing, and mate selection. That pretty much hits it out of the park.

Pete Mockaitis
Well said. Thank you. Well, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something that you find inspiring?

Joe Navarro
Yeah, I think one of my favorite quotes, and I know a lot of people will hear this who have been to my seminars, it’s – I’m going to paraphrase, but it comes to us from Carl Sagan, Carl Sagan the cosmologist, absolutely brilliant, taken from us at too early of an age. He said, “We’re really not who we think we are. But if you were to ask what are we. We’re the sum total of our influence on others.”

I think it’s very true. You, yourself, with your podcast, sharing knowledge, sharing ideas, that’s influential. I look at the people that have influenced me in life and I think what was it that was great about it? Could they build something? Could they do this? Yeah, we love people that are skilled with a craft, but we’re mostly influenced by those that are influential and they do that by how they live their lives.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Thank you. How about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Joe Navarro
One of my favorite ones came out a few months ago. It just goes to show how sensitive we humans are to the smallest of little details.

They grabbed somebody and they put a green sweater on him. They said, “Go out and ask for favors.” They did. Then they took the same person and they – on the sweater, they put the logo of a high-end clothing manufacturer. It was only a half-an-inch logo.

They sent him out to go and ask people for favors, like, “Can I use your phone? Can I park here? Can I come inside?” and all this stuff. The times when he wore the logo 52 – 53% of the people agreed to help out. When he didn’t wear the logo, only 13% would help out.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh my gosh. Wow.

Joe Navarro
What does that tell – that tells social scientists – and I’ve done this experiment, interestingly enough, with people just wearing beach shoes, flip flops, ones that cost $1.99 and then ones that were from a famous manufacturer.

Pete Mockaitis
So they’re still flip flops, but just different – yeah.

Joe Navarro
They’re still … but different manufactures. Invariably in my non-scientific study, those that wore the nicer got better treatment.

What does that tell us that anthropologists and biologists would say look, we’re primates. We’re very sensitive to hierarchy and we’ll always be sensitive to hierarchy and the markers of well, who is the alpha, who’s the silverback and who is everybody else. We cannot escape that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s powerful. Thank you. How about a favorite book?

Joe Navarro
My favorite writer is Steinbeck, so Grapes of Wrath.

But the one book that I return to over and over and over again is the Histories by Herodotus. It’s the only book that I’ve actually read six times. Here’s the father of history writing 2,500 years ago. He’s telling us about the world as it existed then. It’s just exquisite in its breadth.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite habit?

Joe Navarro
Favorite habit, it has to be going out for a walk with my family at night. I love them dearly, my wife, my dog. I enjoy their company.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate? Folks retweet it. They quote it back to you often.

Joe Navarro
Yeah, there’s one in particular. I’m glad you asked that. I put it out there many, many years ago when I first started on Twitter. I didn’t know I would become that significant. It’s – someone told me that it may have been not necessarily borrowed, but it’s a variant of what somebody else had said. It probably is since there’s nothing new under the sun.

But basically what it says is that what we do in private when nobody is watching us is more important than when we’re in public and that when we help those who can do absolutely – can do nothing for us, that is the true measure of our humanity because there is no expectation of any kind of reward. For some reason that seemed to resonate with a lot of people.

Pete Mockaitis
And Joe, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Joe Navarro
Very easily, my website, JNForensics.com. My books are at all the major retailers. Certainly they’re available on Amazon or they can come to your website.

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hm, sure thing.
Do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks who are seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Joe Navarro
I do. Become better observers and you’ll become better humans. You cannot attend to others if you can’t observe them. I think most of us know how to look, but very few of us know how to observe.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Joe, this has been such a treat. Thank you for taking this time and good luck with The Dictionary of Body Language and all that you’re up to here.

Joe Navarro
Well, thank you Pete. It’s a pleasure and an honor to be on your show.

Aug 15
0

333: Better Negotiation with Greg Williams

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Greg Williams says: "Remember 'no' only means 'no for the moment.' Don't let 'no' stop you for the moment."

Greg Williams reveals several secrets to negotiating for what you want effectively and respectfully.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Three points to remember when negotiating with bullies
  2. Six common body language cues in American culture
  3. How to get productive outcomes through open communication

About Greg

Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator and Body Language Expert, has studied and practiced negotiation tactics and strategies for more than 30 years. He’s spent over 20 years studying the way body language can affect negotiation outcomes. Greg’s education and experience come from formal negotiation settings, universities, governmental municipalities, seminars, and the school of hard knocks. He’s served on numerous corporate, business, and governmental boards.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Greg Williams Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Greg, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Greg Williams
Hey, you’re more than welcome, Pete, and thank you for the invitation.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you have many credits to your name. It’s like the Master Negotiator and Body Language Expert is right next to it. But even more so, I saw you were honored as the Business Man of the Year by the United States Congress. I didn’t even know Congress issued such honors. What is the story here?

Greg Williams
Actually, that was several years ago. When one does a lot in the community, one gets recognition for what it is that the value add happens to be.

At one particular point in time I had been appointed chairman of the New Jersey Development Authority by then governor Whitman. That authority addressed the needs of small, minority- and women-owned enterprises throughout the state of New Jersey.

That was part of the catalyst, the activities that I engaged in during that time, that actually allowed Congress to bestow such an award upon me of which I was very honored to receive.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s just fun to hear you tell the story. Your voice has some music in it and the word choice is distinctive, so I think it’s going to be a very enjoyable conversation. Congratulations and thank you for your service. That’s really cool.

Greg Williams
Thank you very much also, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, so you’re a negotiation whizz. Can you share with us maybe to kick us off, could you maybe give us a fun story of how a negotiation got transformed or how someone was really worried things were not going to go so well, but then with some pro-tips, things turned out amazingly?

Greg Williams
Well, first of all, one should always understand the mindset that one possesses before entering into any negotiation situation because if you experience a sense of angst, you need to identify why you have such feelings.

Is it because you perceive the other entity as having so many more resources than you do that there’s no way you can actually come out ahead or even even with them? Is it the fact that there is something else that’s causing you to have the feelings that may disallow you from being as vibrant in the negotiation as you otherwise would be?

Once you identify those feelings, deal with them and deal with them to the point that they are reality or just thoughts in your mind. The reason it’s so important to do so is because the feelings you carry into a negotiation will to a great degree determine how you will negotiate in that particular situation.

Let me tell you of a story real fast also, Pete, to actually highlight the point. I recently stayed at one of the five star hotels. I thought, “Hm,” one day they didn’t clean the room. I had called down and I came back to the room at three something in the afternoon. The room had still not been cleaned. I had a black-tie event to attend at night.

I told them, “Please clean the room after six o’clock in the evening.” They said it would be taken care of. Well, I returned something after ten that evening and the room had not been cleaned. You know how people tell you, “Oh, we value you as a customer.” My response to that is “Okay, I’m from Missouri. Show me.” I’m not from Missouri, but that’s the cliché.

First of all, when you’re negotiating you always plan for what might occur and how you might respond. I thought to myself, “Okay, well these guys are saying I’m a valued customer to them. How would I like to position them, first of all, such that they have the opportunity to show me through their actions that I’m a valued customer?”

What that also means is I’d have to come across in my own mindset what it is that I would want from them versus what they might actually offer. I weighed those thoughts.

I called the front desk. I asked to speak with the service – the front desk manager and told him the situation that I had just cited a moment ago. Sure enough, he said, “Well, you’re a valued customer of ours.” I’m thinking to myself, “Are you serious? Okay.” I said, “Well, what does that mean?” He said, “I beg your pardon?”  I said, “What’s your definition of a valued customer?”

Pete Mockaitis
I like that.

Greg Williams
Yes. Here’s the thing, Pete. When you ask such a question, people usually get caught off guard because people usually say, “You’re a valued customer,” and they’ll usually take the floor.

Listen also when people start to talk to you as far as the cadence, the pace in which they speak, because you’ll also be able to glean insight per their nonverbal communications, the pauses, as to what their thought process might be.

Anyway, he said, “Well, that means that we want to make sure that you are satisfied and happy with your stay at our property.” I said, “Very, very good.”

I said, “Well, I’ll tell you what would really make me happy in this situation.” He said, “Well, what would that be, sir?” I said, “If you could just deduct a night’s stay as a result of this mishap because after all, you’d expect something like this,” and I’m not denigrating any hotel chain, but I said, “You would expect something like this or could possibly expect something like this at a Hotel Six, but definitely not at-“ I named the other hotel.

What I did there was positioned in his mind a Hotel Six, and again, not denigrating Hotel Six chain, but in comparison to this particular hotel chain, they were substantially at a higher end as it were.

I heard the pause. He didn’t say anything for a moment and I thought to myself, “Okay, he’s in thought mode.” He said, “Sir, I can definitely do that.” Well, that allowed me to get a few extra hundred dollars that I otherwise would not have had.

Now, that’s one particular way that you can position someone, number one, as far as what you wish them to compare themselves too based on what they’ve already said, thus to get them to show in action what it is that they mean by in this case a valued customer.

But even more so had he said too quickly, “Sir, no problem, we’ll definitely give you that,” and I was someone that wanted to take advantage of the situation, I then could have said, “Oh, and I’ll have a bottle of Dom Perignon also if you don’t mind sending that up to the room.” I state that simply to say, you have to always be aware of how quickly someone responds to a request or a concession that you made.

That’s just a short story just to highlight those points.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Now, in the course of that conversation, when did you explain the problem? They mentioned that you’re a valued customer, was that sort of before or after you kind of laid out the picture?

Greg Williams
I had laid out the picture and then he said, “Well, you’re a valued customer.” You’re right about that because you also have to set the stage as it were for how you would wish the negotiation to progress. By setting the stage, by telling him of the circumstances that had occurred earlier in the day and the evening, I also had positioned him to think, “Oh God, this guy has really gone through a whole lot.”

Mind you, oh boy, again, never try to take advantage of any particular situation in a negotiation because it could always blow up in your face and you can have all kinds of retributions to pay as a result of doing so.

Mind you at check in time, and this particular hotel had one organization that had about two or three thousand folk from a different organization that was already there. I was part of an organization that had another fifteen hundred people or so. Even at the check in I heard the day before it was a 90 – 9 – 0 minute wait just trying to check in.

I had already invoked that when I did check in. Mind you, I was checking in the day after that, but I had already invoked that thought process and got upgraded to the executive suite as a result of doing so. Again, don’t try to take advantage of situations, but when they are there for you to address, if you choose, do so.

Pete Mockaitis
With the room not being clean, so I mean in a way that could be a big deal or not at all a big deal.

Greg Williams
Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
How’d you go about describing that it was substantial?

Greg Williams
Well, all I said to him was – first of all, I talked about the fact that I had arrived earlier or I should say got up earlier in the morning and left around nine o’clock or so and did not come back until something after three in the afternoon. I paused. Then I said, “And the room had not been cleaned at that time, which surprised me.”

Now notice how I said, “which surprised me.” Again, I paused just to let it sink in. Number one, I let it sink in and I also wanted to hear how he might … respond.

He said, “Sir, we can send someone up right away.” I said, “Well, no, I have to get ready for a black tie event a little later on this afternoon and I need to take a quick nap. How about if you get the room cleaned after six PM?” He said, “Okay, well that will be fine also.”

Again, after all of that did not occur and I talked to – then it was the night … was actually on, night desk manager, front desk manager. I told him about the whole scenario of what had occurred and the fact that the room was supposed to have been cleaned after six o’clock between the time that I left after six and returned. It was positioned just right, just right.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s also interesting the comparison to a Motel Six, which I have stayed in once or twice in my day as situations warranted it.

Greg Williams
Me too.

Pete Mockaitis
I think is probably has a strong reaction … “Whoa, no. Never us. Not that.” That’s interesting because it’s not aggressively cruel to say that, but it’s honest. You might expect that from a Motel Six and you wouldn’t expect that here, so you’re just sort of sharing that honestly.

Tell me a little bit about your tone. You sound friendly as we’re speaking. Did you deliver the message in a similar tone there?

Greg Williams
Yes, because I did not want to come across as being overly demanding or be someone that was perceived as a jerk. I basically – I almost used the tone that I’m using right now. Number one, this type of tone will elicit empathy from the right person because had this been –

Had he, as an example, Pete, had he said, “Sir, okay, we’re sorry, the room didn’t get cleaned. I apologize. That’s the most I can do.” I would have adopted a completely different tenor and tone with him.

First of all I would have let a pause hang out there to see what else he would have said, to get him to negotiate against himself. “Well, sir, are you still there?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m here or not. I heard what you said, but even the tone at which you said to me depicted the fact that I guess customer service really doesn’t mean a whole lot at this fine chain that I’ve been very accustomed to having top-notch service at other property. Is it just your property that I’m going to have a challenging situation this time?” It would have been completely different.

With my latest book, Negotiating with a Bully, I talk about just that, using the right tonality in a situation such that you don’t become overly confrontational initially unless you have to be, want to be perceived as such.

You always want to match the tenor of the individual with whom it is that you’re negotiating such that you don’t … push them away or push them too hard or whatever be the case because if you push someone into a corner that’s mild and meek, they may come out of that corner doing unexpected things that you were not/are not prepared to deal with and thus you have to be very mindful of that also.

Pete Mockaitis
So you say matching the tone, that’s your perspective that if they come at you aggressive, that’s appropriate to respond with an aggressive tone?

Greg Williams
Well, it can be. What you need to do first is find out exactly what they plan to do with that tone. Some people may use it just to back you down. “Well, Greg, I tell you, I don’t think there’s anything that we can do.” “Oh, really?” “Yes, there’s nothing that we can do in this case.” “Hm.”

“Well, Greg, are you still there?” “Yes, I am, but I’m trying to decide to whom it is that I should speak since you can’t satisfy this particular situation, that might be able to lend me some form of satisfaction. Can you tell me the general manager of the property or better yet, the regional vice president of the property? I’m sorry, let’s just skip the small steps. I’ll go right to the president of the chain. Can you tell me who that might be because I need to talk with someone that can get this done?”

Now what I have implied with that, like, “Uh oh, maybe this guy’s not going to be the pushover that I thought he may have been and this guy appears to be willing to take this to higher levels that may cause more trouble for me than is warranted because I really do have the ability to go ahead and address the situation.”

I’ll tell you I’ve used the situation in a lot of situations, even with the products that were on sale whereby the sale had ended.

You walk into an environment and you say to a sales clerk, “I’d like to have this item.” “Oh, no problem, sir.” “Oh, no, no, no, I mean for the price that it was advertised.” “Oh, well sir, that sale ended yesterday.” “Oh, well that’s fine. You’re empowered to give me this at the same price, right?” “No, I’m not, sir.” “Oh, so I know that means your manager can give it to me at that price, right?” I shake my head yes as I’m saying right.

The salesperson will usually say, “Well,” if he says yes, okay, he’s backed himself into a corner because – and, again, I never try to get anybody into trouble, but now he’s put his sales manager on the line for being able to deliver this. Again, it goes back to how you wish to position someone such that you let them know you’re going to be somewhat persistent while not being overly bearing ….

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that. It reminds me – I was once a consulting with a call center op situation. I remember it was interesting that inside the customer service reps scripts, it was like, “If a customer says any of these magic words, then they will get immediately elevated to someone else to help out.” I think some of the magic words were, ‘lawyer, FCC, FTC, media.’

Sometimes – I’ve done this only a couple of times just like, “Well, if you can’t do anything, who would I have to reach out to to get resolution? Would it be the FTC, the FCC, the lawyer, the media?” and just throw them all into one sentence to see what happens.

Greg Williams
Exactly. You know Pete, to that end you have to be aware to whom you’re making such a statement because if you’re dealing with someone that really either can’t or doesn’t care about what you do, you’re wasting time. … when you’re negotiating, you always need to be negotiating with an entity that can really give you what you need or want or at least provide a stepping stone to the resource that can do something.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Greg, thank you. Well, so your specific book here is called Negotiating With a Bully. I’d like to get your sense first of all, how do you define bully and how do you know if you’re dealing with a bully?

Greg Williams
It goes to how you feel. Each and every individual has to be able to sense to a degree the way he or she feels as though he or she is being bullied because here’s the thing Pete.

You and I may be engaged in a negotiation. I may all of the sudden drop the tone of my voice and because of some trigger that that reacts or I should say that that creates in your thought process, it may remind you of a time when you were in school and someone with a deep voice did such and such to you and thus you may think subliminally, “Uh oh, I’m getting ready to be bullied or something to that nature.”

Meanwhile, someone may drop their tone with me and I may think “Okay, so the guy has a frog in his throat,” or something like that.

I say that to say, when you feel as though you’re being bullied, you can do one of a few things. You can actually say to the other individual, “You know, I feel like something has changed all of the sudden. I sense you’re being more aggressive at this time.”

That person may say, “Oh,” and just I know you can’t see me Pete, but I literally as I did that, I genuinely touched my chest near my heart, which is a sign of sincerity saying, “Oh no, that was not my intent. I apologize.” Even if you noticed the tonality of my voice offered ever so slightly too.

Well, that individual more than likely was not really trying to be – not attempting to be a bully in that particular case. The person may have been passive aggressive at that particular time, but nevertheless, once you told that person what you were sensing, if that person’s intent was not to convey such actions or sentiment, that person will change his or her behavior.

Okay. Let’s take a situation where someone says to you, “Yeah, okay, so what?” Well, that’s – now you know exactly what you’re dealing with.

Pete Mockaitis
“You’re darn right, Greg. If you’re going to come after my company’s reputation, you’re going to have me gunning for you.”

Greg Williams
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now you have a better idea of exactly what you’re dealing with and the intent of that person.

Another scenario that you could adopt at that particular point and time is – okay, … the exact same … said to me … role play.

Pete Mockaitis
I said, “You’re darn right, Greg. If you come after my company or my reputation, you’re going to get me fighting right back.”

Greg Williams
“Oh, Pete, can you tell me more about what it is that you mean by that, ‘fighting right back’? What does that mean?”

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m going to make your stay as obnoxious as possible.”

Greg Williams
“Oh wow. Well, Pete, I really don’t want you to do that. What might I do to avoid that?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Well, you can conclude this conversation and we’ll go our separate ways.”

Greg Williams
“And that will satisfy you?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Yes.”

Greg Williams
“Okay, well I’ll tell you what, Pete. How about if I tie you down instead and now that I know exactly what you want, I’m going to make you give me everything I want before I let you go. How does that sound to you?”

Now, let’s break out of the role play for a moment. That was a little quick scenario. What I just found out through the words that you made a moment ago was the fact that. You want to exit.

Suppose you were in my environment and I’ve been in environments where some folks have done some real sneaky things to the other negotiator. Turn the heat up when the person was not being agreeable to the negotiator in whose building or environment the negotiation was being held. Turn the air up so it can get cooler, more comfortable when things are going good, etcetera, etcetera.

Literally put time blockages in front of someone. If I know you have a deadline to get a negotiation finished with me because before another session segment … be created with your team members you have to wrap this up and all of the sudden you come at me the wrong way as it were, I will start speaking a little slower, I’ll become a little more ….

I may do the exact same thing if I know you’re one of those individuals that love to talk fast and try to show a lot through movements of your hands and your body language displays that you’re really ‘let’s get it done move, move, move.’ I may intentionally slow you down to irritate the heck out of you.

There are all kinds of mind games that can be played. Some verbally, some non-verbally, but the point is you need to know what that other person’s restrictions are. … he … of the negotiation, the timeframe in which he’s willing to engage you to do so.

Here’s something else also Pete that I’d like all of your listeners to always remember, my tagline is ‘Always be negotiating.’ That means what you do today influences tomorrow’s outcome.

Even if you’re negotiating with a bully to the degree that you let … push you around and you don’t do anything to push back on him, you set yourself up to be pushed around tomorrow, the day after that, … in any environment you’re in with him and thus you have to set the stage properly to deal with people not only for today, because in so doing today, you … tomorrow. That’s point number one.

Point number two, I don’t care who you’re negotiating with … see yourself as being so insufficient, so lacking of resources that you immediately feel as though you have to subjugate yourself in order to get what it is that person is negotiating with you for because if the person is negotiating with you, there’s a purpose that they have in mind.

If you uncover the purpose, if you understand who’s not at the negotiating table that’s motivating that person to enact the actions that that person engages in, you will have a better insight also as to how to manipulate that person. By the way, manipulation is not a bad word, so just keep that thought in mind too.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure, well, can you – let’s hear about that a little bit. Manipulation is not a bad word; how should we think about it?

Greg Williams
Well, we think about it based on what action is performed.

In theory, you’re in New York City. Traffic is whizzing by. You’re looking at your phone and you’re just sending text messages or whatever, not really paying attention. You go to step off the curb right in the flow of traffic and I manipulate your body out of the path of oncoming traffic. Have I done a good thing by possibly saving your life? I think you’d say yes.

The point is the definition that you give to a word or words has specific meaning at the time that the word is being implemented. I use the word manipulation sometimes knowing that some people have a negative connotation of that word and I may say something along the lines of, “Are you trying to manipulate me?” Now did you even notice how my voice went up a little bit?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Greg Williams
Just to explain, when we get a bit excited, our voices will tend to rise. “Are you trying to manipulate me?” Again, you can’t see my body language, but my eyebrows became somewhat furled also.

Again, … I’m focusing on this particular situation, so again, nonverbal cues and body language play an added role to give additional leverage to the words that you use, but by doing that, you give more insight about what it is that you’re thinking of.

If used the word manipulation in that particular situation and that person has a negative connotation associated with that word, that person then knows that, “Wait a minute now, he thinks I’m trying to negatively influence or impact him, his thoughts, his decisions, his actions, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.” That’s one mild way of really pushing someone back away from you.

Again, you need to know what certain words mean to someone. I said a moment ago, my tagline is ‘you’re always negotiating.’ There are times I will be in environments where I will just observe who is sitting with whom, just to observe the relationships that are formed by those individuals knowing later on that I have to engage with either those parties.

If I know that X is associated with Y, I then know that hm, I may be able to get Y, use Y as a leverage to influence X also. I’ll go into an environment sometimes and I’ll just watch how people use their body language.

Pete, I’ve consulted with large corporations I appear to be the person sitting off to the side taking notes, meanwhile what I was really doing was observing the body language of who it was that was supposed to be leading the opposing groups negotiation efforts and what … that person was taking from someone else at the table that was the real source of power for that particular team or that particular side of those that were negotiating.

Again, you can pick up on so many different cues if you but pay attention to what’s going on in you environment. If you’re going to be in a negotiation environment, get there early also, just so you can pick up on some of those cues.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, talk about cues. I also want to get your take on – body language can be a little bit tricky and ambiguous subject, what do you see are some of the most reliable body language signals, like if I see this, it quite probably means that?

Greg Williams
Well, let’s set culture aside for a moment. The reason I want to set culture aside for a moment is because I want to speak generically first.

In let’s say the American society, taller people will usually be perceived as being more influential etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, than people that are not as tall as they are. Attractive people will also be perceived as having this extra oomph as it were than people that are not as attractive.

If you’re negotiating with someone that’s taller than you and you’re literally standing face to face, one of the things that you can do is literally stand closer to them and see what they do with that. Basically what you’re saying with that little, small gesture is “I’m willing to come into your space because I’m not afraid of you.” You … take notice to whether or not they take a step back or something of that nature.

Now, if they take a step back, dependent upon where you are in the negotiation – and that body language, by the way, of taking a step back, literally says, “You’re in my comfort zone. I’m not comfortable with you standing this close as I am and therefore I’m going to put a little bit of distance between the two of us.”

You as the shorter of the two individuals send a signal, as I said a moment ago, of “Hey, I’m not afraid of you. You have more resources than I do, but so what? I will still come into your environment.”

Shaking hands. I don’t want to get into presidential politics, just take note – well, take note, first of all, when you’re shaking hands and if both hands are perpendicular to one another, the two individuals are saying, “Hey, I’m equal to you. You’re equal to me. I recognize that fact in you. You recognize that fact in me.”

If one hand is on the bottom and another hand is on top, literally the hand on top is indicating, “I’m hands above you.” That indicates a power position in that particular situation. Thus, I always take note of when any political leader allows his hand to be on the bottom as opposed to on the top because that also signals – now, it can be a ploy from time to time too.

Again, in positioning you can literally let someone have their hand on top of yours as you’re shaking their hand just to see exactly what they will do after that.

A lot people, especially politicians, know about the … handshakes, the hidden signals in handshakes so forth and so on. That’s one particular body language gesture that you can look at.

The other that you can look at and you see politicians doing this a lot is while they’re shaking hands, they’ll have their other hand on the person’s elbow or something of that nature. Well, that’s a power move that’s even above the fact that somebody has their hand on top of yours. You’re saying to them with that hand on their elbow, “Okay, I’m going to be in control in this particular situation.”

The counter to that is to literally place a hand on the person’s shoulder. There are also these hidden meanings in body language and those were some just with the handshake of itself.

Here’s something else to note via body language, especially when you’re either standing up – well, when you’re standing up, take note of how an individuals feet are placed as far as their relationship to one another.

When feet are aligned, the two individuals are aligned per what they’re discussing, how engaged they are in that particular conversation, etcetera.

When one foot points in one particular direction by one individual, right then, that person has mentally begun to disengage from the conversation and more than likely that person is going to exit the conversation in the direction that foot is pointed, in the direction that that foot is pointed.

Those are some quick clues. Eye contact, eh. Again, it goes back to culture. But just because someone looks away from time to time does not necessarily mean they’re trying to avoid whatever it is they’re discussing, but you do need to note when they look away.

If someone says to you, “I think you’re the best person I’ve ever met in the world. I think you’re really fantastic,” meanwhile, they’re looking off to the side. Well, hey, the sentence may not convey exactly the meaning the body language is sending because they’re not really sending that to you.

Anytime you have doubts about whether or not someone’s words and body language happen to be matched with – or the two are synchronized, always follow the body language. The body attempts never to lie because the body always wants to be in a state of comfort. Telling a lie puts the body in a state of discomfort. The body will try to adjust.

The wringing of the hands sometimes is the fact that somebody is experiencing some form of angst, some form of anxiety and that’s the way the body tries to calm itself. Touching one’s elbow, one’s wrist, one’s hands, one’s nose, ear, again, those are signals that “Well, I’m a little uncomfortable at this particular point in time.”

Here’s something else to take note of. When people are trying to recall things, they will – and some folks say it depends on whether or not they’re right or left handed, but again, you establish the base with how they act with this action that I’m about to describe in a non-threatening situation first and then you’ll know to what degree they’re really speaking truthfully or not.

But people that are trying to recall things will tend to look up and to the left. If someone says to you, “So Pete-“

Pete Mockaitis
Now, their left?

Greg Williams
Yes, their left. I’m sorry.

Pete Mockaitis
Their left, okay.

Greg Williams
Yes, exactly. Thank you. Thank you. Their left.

If someone were to say to you, “So Pete, what did you do last night?” You say – you look to the left and you go, “Well, I went out to dinner with my wife,” and yada, yada, yada. Okay, that’s one thing.

If on the other hand, the same question was posed to you and you looked up and to the right, your right, that’s the direction in which people look towards the future and thus they are in the process of trying to formulate what they think will really happen to a question that you’ve posed that was supposed to have occurred in the past.

If you take note of that, again, as a negotiator, you don’t necessarily have to say anything, but you can take note of the fact that wait a minute, that person looked up to the right. That’s the creation mode in most cases, so why in the heck was he looking up to the right. You can pose a few more questions towards the same type of environment – about the same type of environment I should say, to see exactly what the person does with his or her eyes.

Then, later on in the negotiation, I might come back to you, Pete, and I say something about, “So Pete-“ now this is called an assumptive question what I’m getting ready to project. “So Pete, you said three nights ago you and your wife actually went to a movie. What was the movie you say?” Then watch the person. If the person then looks back up to the right again, oh my gosh, have I ever caught this person in one heck of a whopper.

Again, you don’t have to let the person know at that particular point in time, but you do know that person is definitely not being 100% truthful with you at that particular time.

Those are some body language gestures that you can take note of. In my prior book, Body Language Secrets to Win More Negotiations, I go into a lot more tactics and strategies that one can uncover just by observing body language.

Pete Mockaitis
You used the word definitely there. Is that sort of after you’ve established a baseline associated with their behavior and the other body language signals?

Greg Williams
Yes. That goes back to what I was saying earlier about the fact that I’ll go into an environment and just observe how someone reacts in different situations where those situations are nonthreatening. Again, when you’re using small talk to gain such insights, you might say something about “So where are you from?” Okay, most of us know where we’re from so forth and so on.

They’ll … say something and … ask a question about “How long have you lived there?” They may look up and to the left because what they’re trying to do is “Gosh, how long have I lived there?” They’re going through that thought process as opposed to looking up and to the right.

Now if they look up and to the right and they say, “You know, I think it’s been about 21 years.” Okay, take note of that. Take note that they didn’t look up and to the left, but instead they looked up and to their right to reference something that occurred in the past. Then you pursue it. You may something along the lines of “Did you play baseball at the high school in such and such a place?” Now let’s say he looks up and to the right again.

Now, notice that’s supposed to be the opposite when they’re doing their recall, but if you notice that they keep looking up and to the right for recall and to the left when they’re trying to think of future things that will occur, you then have the baseline for which to then place your emphasis per whether or not they’re being 100% truthful.

But that’s why it’s so important to understand and establish that baseline, which is why I love to just go into environments and just observe how people are using their body such that they’re conveying different sentiments in nonthreatening environments.

Then I have something to compare their actions to when we enter into what they think is the formal negotiation, but in theory, in reality, you’re always negotiating. You’re giving off clues as to how you will react in different situations any time you’re in an environment where people are observing you.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to talk about some of those dominant signals or gestures. I want to get your take on what strategy is optimal because if someone is doing a lot of dominant stuff with me, I just don’t like that. It makes me feel less rapport because like okay, you have to be in charge.

I think that can really be harmful because in terms of establishing liking, rapport, trust, it’s like, I don’t like this person. But I guess there can be other times in which a dominant strategy is helpful. How do you think about that?

Greg Williams
It definitely can be helpful. Again, dependent upon the individual that you’re dealing with. Pete, some people want to be led because they feel more comfortable being led by others such that they don’t have to make decisions.

Other individuals are the type that you just mentioned a moment ago. “My gosh, hey, don’t be putting my hand on the bottom. Don’t be touching my elbow.” If you sense that type of person, again, you need to match the modality of the person that you’re speaking to in order to get them to do what it is that you want per the outcome that you seek.

Thus if you are too overbearing – if I use the tactics that you just mentioned a moment ago, putting your hand on the bottom, touching your elbow, etcetera, etcetera, even putting my hand on our shoulder, I’d be pushing you away with my gestures and running the risk of turning you into someone that might really come back and undermine my efforts later on, which … be very understanding of how someone wants to be treated and how they want you to interact with them.

Everyone wants to be treated with respect. The degree that you do so per how they perceive you doing so is what you have to be very much aware of. If you’re too aggressive, you’ll scare some people away, other people you’ll make come closer to you because truth be known, they get off on that as they say. That’s what they like. But in other cases, you may just repel someone.

Again, you never want to do so to the degree that you push someone into a corner and have them become irrational because then you truly don’t know what it is that they may do, especially when you’re negotiating with them.

You make a person make one concession after another, after another, after another, after another. Next thing you know they say, “Oh the heck with it. You know what? I don’t give a heck about this whole doggone deal. I’m out of here.” You go, “Whoa, what just happened?”

Well, what just happened, the incremental small steps that you pushed that person into to make them all of the sudden say, “You know what?  The heck with this. My self-pride is at stake at this particular point in time and that’s more valuable to me than the outcome of this negotiation. You go negotiate by yourself.”

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Well, tell me, Greg, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Greg Williams
Well, again, it was my mother many years ago that used to say to me – because I watched her literally, Pete, negotiate for everything. As a little kid I remember one time saying to her, “Mom, that’s embarrassing. You’re always asking people to lower the price, to add a little bit more, my gosh, won’t they think we’re poor?”

She said to me, “What do you care about what other people think of you as long as it is that you’re getting what you want? The more money you save, the more money you’ll have to do with as you choose and please.”

As a kid, seriously, I quickly got over the embarrassment and I learned to ask for whatever it was that I wanted. You have to have a certain thickness of skin not to necessarily allow the thoughts of other people to influence your actions to the degree that they do so and those actions become detrimental to your own well-being.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. I think a large part of it would be a matter of just how important is this sort of long term relationship for you in terms of are you going to see this fancy hotel person. In a way, if he thinks Greg is the most demanding, unreasonable customer I’ve ever encountered based on you wanting a free night for the room not being cleaned and how much is that a downside to you versus your boss or your spouse. It’s a very different game there.

Greg Williams
Pete, you know what? Oh my gosh, you are spot on. Here’s the other potential downside to that.

In that particular situation if I had been so … the individual thought, “Oh my gosh, no problem. Yeah. I’ll give you one night’s remittance. No problem.” Then he puts some remark in my file, in my record that said whatever and then that stayed with me as I went from one particular chain or I should say one particular property in that chain after another.

I go to check in and people are looking at me like I have a third eye in the middle of my forehead. I’m wondering why. I say that to say that’s another reason why you don’t want to be mean or nasty to somebody because you don’t know to what degree they’ll get you back behind your back.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Okay, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Greg Williams
Oh, Lord knows I already gave it. You’re always negotiating.

Pete Mockaitis
Got it.

Greg Williams
Yeah. The reason that’s so inspiring is because it keeps me grounded. Okay, we all go through days … at times we may have an up day, a down day, but life is truly what you make it. Thus, it’s nothing more than perceptional. If you’re the one making it what it is to you anyway, why not choose to make it the greatest that it can be. You’ll live a lot better by doing so.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Greg Williams
There’s all – everything in life revolves around negotiations. If you really wanted to read some additional books on the topic of negotiation, one that I really love is Getting to Yes by William Ury. My gosh, that book is old, old, old, but nevertheless, there’s still some great insights into that.

His more recent book is Getting Past No. A lot of us don’t know what to do when someone says no. Remember no only means no for the moment. Life is ever changing, ever evolving, so be persistent in achieving the goals that you seek to acquire. Don’t let no stop you for the moment.

Another book of mine that I think you may be able to tell that I love negotiations, but Difficult Conversations is another particular book, another old one.

Here’s something, here’s one that I recently started listening to. It’s actually an online course, Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior. Boy, oh boy, you can gain a lot of insight as to why people do what they do based on the emotions that they experience and in the moment and how it is that you can incite certain emotions, certain triggers within someone to get them to either abide by what it is that you’re requesting and/or back off of you if that be your outcome.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite habit?

Greg Williams
Always negotiate. Don’t be afraid to ask for stuff. I will ask for some of the most mundane things just to see the results from time to time. The reason I do so is because I’m always collecting data. Okay, I did this in this particular situation and it worked.

I’ll pick up pennies off of the ground and there have been times when I’ve asked people, “So, you try to achieve wealth. How many of you in here will pick a penny up if you see it lying on the ground?” People will snicker from time to time.

But the point is, we make progress in small steps. A penny is yet another small step towards an overall wealth outcome if that’s what you’re really receiving. Don’t be too pride – don’t have much pride in order to subjugate yourself to goals that you seek because all you’re really doing is holding yourself back.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate and get quoted back to you?

Greg Williams
Well, I love it when people that I haven’t seen for years will come up to me and say things along the lines of “Oh Mr. Williams,” and when they say Mr. Williams, I always say, “No, no, my father is nowhere around right now, just please call me Greg.” They’ll say, “You have helped me so much by teaching negotiation strategies that I’ve been able to use to get a lot more in life.”

… to other individuals, serve other individuals. I attempt to give back to those, especially younger than myself because I’m at a point in life now where one day they will be the rulers of the world that I will have to live in. I hope by giving them insights, instilling in them the knowledge that they can use in order to not only look out for those that they care about, but for other individuals in the world, that the world will become a better place.

Pete Mockaitis
Greg, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Greg Williams
Well, they can go to my website, which is www.TheMasterNegotiator.com. They can send me an email to Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com. They can also reach me via phone at 609-369-2100.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Greg Williams
Yes. Don’t be afraid to negotiate. Go out there and negotiate every doggone day because if you want a raise tomorrow, start positioning yourself to get that raise – I’m sorry if you want a raise in six months, next year whatever, start positioning yourself today to do so.

Understand what it would take from your boss such that you become such a valuable resource that he has to give you the raise that you ask for simply because you are that valuable. Don’t be afraid to negotiate. No only means no for the moment. The more persistent you are about achieving a goal, the more goals you will achieve.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Greg, thank you. This has been a lot of fun. I wish you tons of luck in your negotiations and all you’re up to.

Greg Williams
Thank you Pete … and much more success for you in life because it’s waiting for you.