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The Diary of a CEOThe Diary of a CEO

Joe Navarro: How an ex-FBI agent reads comfort and control

Through decades of espionage casework, separate genuine comfort from rehearsed cues; a shaking cigarette at one name exposed a major American spy.

Joe NavarroguestSteven Bartletthost
Apr 21, 20252h 25mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:11

    Intro

    1. JN

      I was in the FBI for 25 years. I have sat with spies and enemies of this country, and I learned a lot about human behaviors. Imagine being able to read other people and circumstances faster. It gives you a tremendous advantage in your life.

    2. SB

      I want to hit everything.

    3. JN

      So one of the first things I teach is...

    4. SB

      Joe Navarro is a former FBI agent turned world-renowned body language expert.

    5. NA

      He helps people decode body language to improve communication, trust, and influence.

    6. JN

      One of the things that I've found in negotiations is we, as humans, communicate quite a lot with our faces. For instance, we push this together when we don't understand something, and then the minute we hear something we don't like, blood actually begins to leave the lips, and then we begin to tighten them. Another behavior is that when there's a lack of confidence, insecurities, people immediately... So once we understand these behaviors, you can take command of any situation.

    7. SB

      Confidence, is this something that you're born with, or do you think confidence can be trained?

    8. JN

      It can absolutely be trained, so the FBI actually teach confidence, and there's a lot of strategies. One of them is the most powerful gesture that we can use, and you see Musk do this a lot, but what I tell people is that the easiest way to learn confidence is to...

    9. SB

      Joe, we actually videoed my interaction with you when I met you, and I've got the video here.

    10. JN

      So one of the things you immediately did was... Don't do that. It's a no-no.

    11. SB

      This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like this show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free, simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is, if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much. Joe, zooming out, if someone asked you in the street and they wanted a two-sentence answer, "Who are you and what have you spent your

  2. 2:11 – 4:16

    25 Years in the FBI – What I Learned About Human Behavior

    1. SB

      life doing?" How would you answer that question?

    2. JN

      With one word: teaching. I think I've spent my whole life teaching. Even, even when I was in the FBI, uh, starting in 1984, a lot of my job was obviously being an FBI agent, investigating crimes, uh, chasing after spies and so forth, but, uh, you know, I hired on in 1978, but as early as '84, I was already teaching, and, um, I love it when, when people get it and they, they see a behavior, they understand the, uh, underpinnings, the foundation of why we do certain things. I'll give you an example. Sometimes you'll come to a horrible, uh, scene and, uh, people immediately (gasps) gasp, they take in air, and then they cover their, their, their mouths, or there's one point difference on the scoreboard and people are like this, and they don't understand. This is, this is, uh, back where we were surrounded by lions and tigers and we learned to cover our mouths so as not to broadcast our breath so that they couldn't see where we were or find us, and uh, and so the human body has, uh, a few shortcuts. I should say the human brain. They're called heuristics. And so one of them is to freeze, uh, so when we hear a loud sound or we see a predator or a dog, we, we, we freeze. Obviously whoever ran 300,000 years ago, uh, was bitten. Um, and so we have these shortcuts and uh, and it's always fascinating to me to share why we have these behaviors and why we... And you realize you just inhaled so you can hold your breath, and then we cover our breath so we don't broadcast for the, the predators to, to smell us.

    3. SB

      You spend your time writing books, you spend your time teaching in various different contexts

  3. 4:16 – 7:01

    The Most Valuable Thing I Give People

    1. SB

      these days, whether it's on stage or in other environments on the internet. What is it that you're giving people?

    2. JN

      That's a profound question that I don't think I've been asked. I think the simplest answer is knowledge. Knowledge that perhaps they didn't have time to acquire. I, uh, I grew up very poor. I was a refugee from Cuba and, um, and I lived in an area of Miami which was mostly elderly people, so I was by myself a lot, so I would go through, uh, uh, garbage bins collecting things, uh, to read. It's that knowledge, uh, that, that I was fortunate enough to acquire, the love of, uh, of reading, and uh, I run into a lot of people who haven't had that benefit. Maybe they don't have a love of, of reading and of learning. I see myself as, okay, I have this knowledge. I, I, I have sat with terrorists, spies, bazooka-yielding enemies of this country, and other people never had that opportunity, and I learned a lot, uh, from that and from my reading, so why not share it, make their life, uh, a little easier?

    3. SB

      When you say make their life a little easier, if I am to receive your knowledge, how would my life be better? How would I be more productive?

    4. JN

      That's a great question. Imagine being able to apperceive, uh, things way ahead of time because you can read other people and circumstances faster.Most people see a behavior and they have to sit there and wonder, "Are they upset with me? Are they..." uh, as the Brits would say, my wife is a, a Brit, "Are they taking the piss or something?" Just, uh, uh, any number of, of things. But imagine being able to look at something and decipher it infinitely faster so that you can devote yourself to, to other things. Where most of us break down the, the face into the forehead, the eyes, the ears, and so forth, and, uh, but imagine being able to assess the whole face, the shoulders, the hands, everything all at once, and draw inferences from that information. It gives you a, a, a tremendous a- advantage. And also, in negotiations, being able to read others and, uh, uh, at the same time, we forget that others are reading us and what is the perception that we want to, uh, convey?

  4. 7:01 – 10:58

    Apply This Knowledge & You'll Never Be Manipulated Again

    1. JN

    2. SB

      And if I were to attain all of the knowledge that you have to offer, and I were to implement it, what areas of my life do you believe would improve?

    3. JN

      Uh, first, w- within yourself, uh, for instance, being able to assess yourself. So if, if, if, let's say you, you have, uh, anger issues and, and so forth, or you, you're quick to trigger, well, how, how do I deal with that? Well, first you assess, you know, uh, what is going on. Your stomach gets upset, chest tightens, your motions, uh, get up. So what do I do then? Most people aren't taught that. Uh, so there's part of that. There's how to communicate, for instance, uh, more effectively with your children. The simple thing that, for instance, uh, and nobody teaches this, uh, well, I do, (laughs) is, uh, that, you know, if you stand in front of your child like a drill instructor with your neck stiff, you're going to get a very different reaction than if you stand at an angle slightly further away from the child and tilt your head, that the communication you will experience with that child is so much different just by tilting your head than if you are standing directly in front of them, that you can enhance communication and then you say, "Well, what application is that for real life?" Well, you can actually change the amount of face time you get from somebody else. Let's say you only had two minutes and you want to stretch that. By just tilting your head, we've demonstrably shown that you can change the amount of face time that somebody's willing to give to you just because we show that we're relaxed and that we're not coming at you with an agenda, that we're willing to, um, to, to listen. It can be transformative if you apply that knowledge. Now, some people look at knowledge and they don't do much with it, but you can, you can use it at home, you can use it at work, you can use it in, in negotiations. For instance, one of the things that I teach is, is the, the value of time, and time is actually... can be used as a non-verbal. So when I talk about non-verbals, I'm really talking about anything that communicates, but isn't... not a word. Well, you can use time as a non-verbal to say, "I'm in charge." Whoever dominates and controls time controls. And so even if I change the delivery of my message to slow things down, you're already taking charge in that negotiation. It's a beautiful thing to, to, to witness when you execute it properly. So th- there are a lot of applications, um, and you know, and obviously like, like you, you s- you basically study human behavior. You are a business person, but you're actually really in, in the people business. And once we understand the, the, the needs, and some are biological, the wants, the desires, the preferences, uh, the preferences of others, how do they like that information delivered? How do they like their coffee? All of that. But then what do they fear? Most people don't tell you, "I have fears." They say, "Well, you know, I'm concerned about that or that. I don't know if that's a good investment or, uh, we'll have to do some due dil-" But that's... The, the brain only recognizes fear. And so once you understand that, it gives you such amplitude to, uh, to then, uh, pursue whatever it is that you're interested in, in doing more

  5. 10:58 – 11:47

    My FBI Career

    1. JN

      effectively.

    2. SB

      And your career.

    3. JN

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      So you've been an... You were an FBI agent for more than 30 years?

    5. JN

      Well, I was in law enforcement for 30 years. I was in the FBI, uh, for 25 years, principally working in the area of counterintelligence, but y- you know, in the FBI, you never wear one hat. Um, I was also a pilot, so I flew surveillance. I was a SWAT team commander, so I, uh, did SWAT stuff and actually worked with the, uh, SAS from, uh, from London, and then I was in the, um, behavioral analysis program. So we used, uh, that skillset to, uh, to work on, uh, catching spies.

  6. 11:47 – 14:47

    Inside the FBI's Secret Behavioral Program

    1. SB

      What is the behavioral analysis program?

    2. JN

      In the, uh, '89, '90, the FBI developed a very secret program to analyze, not, uh, uh, people that were dead, but actually how do we use human behavior...... to catch spies, to catch terrorists. And then once w- we catch them, how do we get into their heads? How do we get them to tell us what, what they're up to, what their purpose is, and, and, uh, and so forth? So we created this, uh, this program, um, I along with five other agents out of 12,000 were selected, uh, from the FBI to, uh, to become the, uh, part of this new behavioral analysis program, which was supposed to be classified, except it, it was accidentally leaked. And our job was to, uh, look at the threats, national security threats, and then see how we can, uh, use our knowledge of human behavior to then, uh, attack that.

    3. SB

      So when you say your, much of your work was to catch spies-

    4. JN

      Right.

    5. SB

      ... most of us have only ever heard of spies from watching James Bond-

    6. JN

      (laughs)

    7. SB

      ... and other things like that, so we don't actually understand the sort of reality of spies. So if I just play completely dumb for a second, other countries send people into other countries, like the United States or the UK or Australia, Canada-

    8. JN

      Right.

    9. SB

      ... to do what?

    10. JN

      So every nation state has, uh, has interests. A lot of it is obtained through diplomacy. A lot of it is now, uh, obtained through what we call espionage. So, uh, it's nothing like television and the movies. Uh, some nations, especially hostile nations, send what we call hostile intelligence officers, usually masquerading as a diplomat, but often masquerading as, uh, students or scientists or businessmen, and their job is to acquire knowledge in, in specific areas. Military knowledge, science and research, intentions and plans, military intentions and plans. Or they may have interests in, for instance, what is gonna be the wheat production in Argentina this year because it may a- affect, uh, the price of, uh, grain across the world. So there's commercial espionage that, uh, that, that goes on. And so a- every nation, uh, defends itself by trying to identify, well, who is here, uh, trying to spy? So that's what we do. That's, that is, uh, that's counterintelligence. That's, uh, espionage, and it's nothing like the movies. We don't, (laughs) we don't, (laughs) we don't jump from buildings and... although we do that sometimes, but, uh, we, it's, it's not as, uh, as glamorous as the, as the James Bond stuff.

    11. SB

      So

  7. 14:47 – 21:54

    How I Caught Real Spies

    1. SB

      have you caught spies before?

    2. JN

      I have. I have arrested spies, multiple spies. Yeah.

    3. SB

      Give me the, the most interesting example of a spy that you identified and caught, and what were they here doing, and which country did they come from?

    4. JN

      Well, as it turns out, i- it was an American because we also have what we call turncoats. So in the case of Roderick James Ramsey, he was in the, an individual who, in 1989, I was asked to go interview because we thought he was a witness, uh, to something that had happened in Germany. He ha- a former army sergeant. Uh, had been kicked out of the army. The m- military wanted to find out if he knew anything about some missing documents, if he had seen anything. During m- my interview of him, which again, I thought he was a witness, he was smoking a cigarette at his house and, uh, I, I just mentioned, uh, an individual's name that had been at that base, but who had been under investigation by German authorities. Uh, in fact by the, uh, uh, Bundeskriminalamt, which is, uh, the equivalent of the FBI. There's no reason why he should react to that, it's just a name, but when I mentioned the name, his cigarette shook, and, um, and I knew enough about human behaviors to know that that physiological change, uh, had to be caused by something significant. Why would a name affect him? And, uh, and so scientific method, talked to him for 20 more minutes about something else, and then I mentioned that name again, and sure enough, his cigarette shook again. And at that point, I was convinced that there was something nefarious there. As it turns out, the Germans arrested Conrad.

    5. SB

      Conrad was the...

    6. JN

      The, the... Clyde Conrad, that was the name of the, the person that, uh, had been under suspicion. Our, our, uh, the guy that I was interviewing, Rod Ramsey, was, uh, was not. And so I left that interview and then, um, I persuaded my supervisors to, uh, continue to talk to Rod Ramsey and that led to, uh, a 10-year investigation and the arrest of, uh, three, four, five, six, seven additional individuals.

    7. SB

      So that Rod-

    8. JN

      Uh, uh-

    9. SB

      ... Roderick Ramsey guy with the shaking cigarette was a... he was spying on America?

    10. JN

      What he was doing, and that's a good question, and forgive me for not explaining. While he was in the army, he and Clyde Lee Conrad were sta- uh, were stealing military secrets.

    11. SB

      From?

    12. JN

      From the US Army. They were, they were taking US Army secrets and then selling it to the Soviet Union through the Hungarian Intelligence Service.

    13. SB

      So he was a traitor of the United States?

    14. JN

      So he was a traitor, and that is often the biggest problem for any nation state, is the traitors from, uh, from, from within. And they had elevated espionage to an industrial level. I mean, to, to the point where they actually no longer even used 35-millimeter cameras to photograph the documents. They were actually videotaping them.... so that they could expedite these thousands of pages. It was the most damaging espionage case in the history of the United States because they had compromised the United States' nuclear go codes in Germany, and that left all of Western Europe exposed.

    15. SB

      Nuclear go codes?

    16. JN

      Yes.

    17. SB

      What is that?

    18. JN

      All of our nuclear assets around the world are controlled by two things. There is a, uh, what's called a permissive action link, which is like a last-minute safety lock on each device, and then there is the, uh, go code that says, "There is authority to use this weapon." (sighs) Ramsay was able to steal the actual nuclear go code. It's a, it's a card. It's made out of a special material which I cannot describe. It's made out of special metals and plastics and other things, and, um, n- the inherent danger in what they did was that, not that they could initiate a launch, that can only be initiated at the national command authority level, but if this were compromised and given to, let's say, the Russians, at the time, the Soviet Union, this is before, uh, 1989, then a foreign h- a foreign hostile intelligence service could take that and replicate it, but put the wrong numbers in there. And by putting the wrong numbers in there, if it's in a, uh, in, if it's in a pyramid structure and it's put high enough, right? Let's, let's say you control the, all of the East Coast. Maybe you don't want to spy for, for Russia, but for $100,000, let's say you were willing to slip this in there and take the one that's there out.

    19. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    20. JN

      Okay, so maybe that helps your conscience i- in some way. Then you basically, if it's a pyramid, uh, sort of, uh, schema, you can paralyze everything below that.

    21. SB

      Okay, so someone could've changed the codes, put a fake one in, which meant that it wouldn't work anymore.

    22. JN

      That, uh, uh, at the highest level, then nothing would work, if you, if you had it, access at the highest, uh, level.

    23. SB

      Did they go to jail?

    24. JN

      Oh, yes. Yeah. Uh-

    25. SB

      So the shaking cigarette guy went to jail?

    26. JN

      33 years. Let me just finish it by saying this. This was, this case put of all of Western Europe in danger, as well as the United States. The general who testified in this case said that had hostilities broken out, the defeat of the West would have been assured within three days. That's how devastating this was. Yeah, let that sink in. Those are his words. "The defeat of the West would have been assured because of the damage these individuals had done."

    27. SB

      Not all cases

  8. 21:54 – 26:28

    A Spy Exposed by a Bunch of Flowers

    1. SB

      are as significant in terms of catching spies. I was reading about another one wh- where you caught a man because of the way he held some flowers.

    2. JN

      Yeah, uh, the, uh, you know, a lot of times, it's, it's just based on, uh, on, on the behavior, you know? You, you see how, uh, how often somebody looks at their watch, right? But maybe when they're operational, they look at their watch more often. And, uh, they filmed this guy who we thought was, uh, what we call an illegal, and in, in the parlance of espionage, an illegal is someone who magically appears in the United States and pretends to be an American, has always been an American, like the series, uh, The Americans. But w- we had some clues from one of our sister services from another country and said, "We think this individual may be, uh, someone who you need to look at that is, uh, pretending to be an American." We're looking at the, the, the uni... We bring the, the whole team together, all six of us, and we're looking at the, at the movie, and, um, you know, and, and, and it was filmed, uh, just serendipitously, it was filmed on Valentine's Day. And, uh, so we see him entering a flower shop and leaving the flower shop. When he exited, I said, um, "Definitely he's not an American." (clears throat) You know, everybody looked at me, like, (laughs) "Excuse me?" I said, "He, he's not from here." And, um, and he said, "How?" And he says, "Look how he's carrying the f- the bouquet. Americans carry the bouquet bouquet up. Eastern Europeans carry it bouquet down, and, uh, and continued to carry it that way." So I, I did what's called a presumptive. So we stopped him one day and, and I said, you know, "I'm with the FBI," and, um, and I said, "Do you want to know how we know?" And th- that was the, the first trigger I was looking for to see how he reacts to it, and he fell for it. And he said, "Go on." Most people would say, "Get out of here, go away." And, uh, and I said, "It was how you carried the flowers."His chin came down. His eyelids went heavy as he was evaluating everything he had done. You know, they, he had practiced everything. His, his English was immaculate. You know, he sounded like a Midwesterner and all that. After a, a few hours of having nice, really a, a nice chat, he, uh, agreed to work with us and admitted everything.

    3. SB

      What did he admit?

    4. JN

      That he had been sent here by a foreign government, that his job as a, as an illegal was to, uh, be in the United States, uh, act as an American, and, uh, most people don't understand, well, why would a country, a nation's state sp- spend so much money training these people to be like an American? And what they don't understand is their purpose here is for when hostilities break out. They can report on, for instance, uh, train traffic, what trains are carrying munitions, what airports are being used for what purposes. Um, many times, as he later told us, they're given caches of explosives so that they can then blow up certain things that no missile would be able to, uh, uh, to do. So, uh, that's their role in, in, in hiding in America. It's not to commit espionage. It's to be here in, uh, in case hostilities break out.

    5. SB

      So, you flipped him to working with the FBI?

    6. JN

      Correct.

    7. SB

      And does that mean he doesn't get punished?

    8. JN

      Well, uh, uh, he doesn't get punished because he didn't commit any crime other than immigration, uh, uh, violation, but what he was able to reveal to us was nothing short of breathtaking.

    9. SB

      Which nation was this?

    10. JN

      I cannot say.

    11. SB

      Hmm.

    12. JN

      But obviously, they would have to have enough money and enough interest to, uh, carry out an operation like this.

    13. SB

      If you had to

  9. 26:28 – 29:02

    How Many Spies Are Hiding Among Us?

    1. SB

      hazard a guess how many people that live amongst us have been sent from a foreign nation and are spies, how many do you think it is?

    2. JN

      Well, let's, let's define that. Uh, y- you know, if, if, if they're, if they're hostile intelligence officers, um, it can be anywhere from, uh, 3% of the diplomatic staff to as many as, at one time, the Soviet Union, 85% of their staff were, uh, were conducting espionage. Um, I think numbers... So you have those. Now, if you're referring to, like, how many illegals, I would say at, uh, at least you would have at least two, two dozen in the UK, uh, maybe a dozen in France, and, you know, you would have a whole host, a constellation of them in the United States be- simply because we span five time zones. I believe the UK only spans one.

    3. SB

      I think I ask this in part because I was, I was reading something that said much of the, the, um, illegal immigrants that come across the southern border of the United States, many of them were, were Chinese, and there was an article about questioning whether that was potentially an in- an intentional act to get illegal Chinese, um, people into the United States f- for some future purpose.

    4. JN

      Yeah. You know, big claims require big evidence, and I haven't seen that. In my experience, the Chinese intelligence service, uh, prefers to use students and scientists. We have approximately 80,000 Chinese students here at any one time. Um, I know that, for instance, in the e- early '80s and early '90s, they would be given allowances. It always impressed me that they were given small allowances for meals, but large allowances for, uh, photocopying in the library. Uh, we call that a clue in the FBI. So, they'd be given, like, $150 for e- for eating, but they would be given thousands of dollars so that they could copy as much as they could from, uh, from the libraries. It is much easier for them, for any nation, to, uh, send people here as students and for instance, uh, go into engineering or, uh, uh, any of those things.

  10. 29:02 – 34:29

    Why Body Language Could Save or Destroy You

    1. JN

    2. SB

      On this, um, subject of body language, it's, it's highly contested because some people say body language does give us clues, some people say it doesn't give us clues because there's cultural differences. Is body language important?

    3. JN

      Well, let me address what you just asked. Well, number one, body language is, is, is supremely important because we, we are born without the capacity to talk, and so we have to read the baby in front of us. To argue that body language, A, doesn't matter or it's subject to interpretation, I would argue that, uh, that would be a minuscule sentiment around the world amongst people who really have studied this, and I'll, and I'll say why. So, a baby is born without the capacity to, to speak, but the mother quickly learns through non-verbals whether that child is colicky, whether or not that child needs just to be reassured, uh, whether they're cold or hot and so forth. There's a lot of junk out there-... and, uh, that is probably the cleanest word that I can use about, uh, body language, that, uh, this means that or th- or whatever. But we're exquisitely prepared to communicate at any time, whether or not we're comfortable or uncomfortable, whether we're confident or, uh, not understanding. We had to evolve that, uh, precisely because we were always surrounded, uh, by predators. For instance, uh, Steven, when you have doubts or you want follow-up to questions that I ask, you use your eyes exquisitely. You furrow your glabella, one eye rises, the other one lowers, it- you're an easy read. And so, I follow it up with information. Now, you didn't have to teach me that. Now, what I would argue is, am I seeing, uh, constraint? Am I seeing, um, contempt or disdain? Well, that's a silly argument. We didn't evolve to have perfect answers. Evolution is about approximation for success. In other words, if I can be accurate 75 to 80% of the time, that's actually good enough. It's good enough. And so, you know, what I teach is, do you see comfort or discomfort, psychological, physical, and so forth? Do I see ... As in psychology, we say, um, is it positively valenced or negatively valenced? Valenced. You see? You furrowing your glabella?

    4. SB

      Wh- what does a valenced mean?

    5. JN

      Valence really means it is balanced, uh, or how much, uh, electricity goes this way or this way. Is it? What's the valence of it? It's just a-

    6. SB

      So if something's positively valenced, what does that mean?

    7. JN

      Positively valenced, you're gonna see gravity-defying behaviors. You're going to see emphasis. You're going to see, uh, a lot of, uh, humor and alacrity and broad gestures, so forth. If it's negatively valenced, it's, you know, restraint. You're gonna see the, uh, the furrowing of the glabella. You're gonna see the tightening, dimin- the diminution of the, the lips. You're gonna see a lot of facial touching.

    8. SB

      Hmm.

    9. JN

      Uh, I don't know, right? Uh, all, all, all these, uh, pacifiers. And so I would argue that, uh, stop looking for, uh, uh, perfection. In fact, Dr. Ambady at Harvard, unfortunately she passed away, she found that we, as humans, are going to be accurate 75% of the time in our assessment of each other. That's an extraordinary number. Her research is, is ample. You can look up her research. It's, it's, uh, it was all done on the, the auspices of looking for what she called thin-slice assessments. Thin-slice assessments, all of your viewers should know, because thi- it, it, it showed us that from as little as three milliseconds, we actually get a pretty good assessment of each other.

    10. SB

      And we're right 75% of the time with three milliseconds?

    11. JN

      Yes. So they did several experiments. They had people go in and watch a teacher, for instance, by just opening the door to the classroom, watching her for a few seconds, and closing the door. They rated that teacher the same as people who had sat in that classroom all semester long.

    12. SB

      In terms of?

    13. JN

      Are they a nice teacher? Are they a warm teacher? Are they, uh, an, an empathetic teacher? Are they a competent teacher? And so forth. It's as you rub your face, because there's a lot of incredulity there. You have to appreciate this experiment was done over and over and over in many areas.

  11. 34:29 – 37:19

    First Impressions Happen in Milliseconds

    1. JN

    2. SB

      I was thinking, as you said that, I was thinking, "Fucking hell." Like, I was thinking, um, if someone reads you that quickly, I was thinking about how easy it is to leave a f- bad first impression.

    3. JN

      Yeah. Well, y- you know, when I started in studying body language, which was formally in 1971, had no appreciation for, uh, for schoolwork, so I created my own, uh, study program. So when I started, uh, taking a look at, at body language in 1971, I remember people saying how the first 20 minutes are the most important for, uh, making an impression. Then years later was 15 minutes. By the 1980s, somebody had, uh, said, "Well, it's the first four minutes." Well, timeout. (laughs) That's ancient information. We now know that that assessment is made in the first three milliseconds. That's faster than your blink rate. And you can begin to do things, uh, poorly and badly and begin to negatively affect others in that amount of, of time because your subconscious is assessing others, uh, more quickly. And by the way, I didn't mention this, we are, even before we're born, we are assessing the world around us to the point that, for survival purposes, a baby in utero begins to assess the world around by the amount of noises and by the cadence and manner of speech of the mother, so that when that baby is born, and you can look up the research-... the baby will be born, uh, mirroring the native tongue, so that, as researchers found, a baby with a German mother will cry differently. The lilt, L-I-L-T, the lilt of that baby will be different than a French baby. What does that tell us? That we're already programmed to adapt to that which dominates so that we can fit better, and this goes right from, from that to business, because synchrony is harmony. The m- the, the faster we can synchronize, the faster we can harmonize. And so, we are pre-programmed. So, if your viewers are interested in that, they, they can look at the, uh, the research that's been done on the, uh, lilt of crying babies.

  12. 37:19 – 44:01

    The Science of Human Synchrony

    1. JN

    2. SB

      How does one synchronize? So if, if synchrony equals harmony-

    3. JN

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      ... i.e. if we synchronize with each other, then we're going to be harmonious in business or in life, or whatever-

    5. JN

      Right.

    6. SB

      ... how do I synchronize with somebody when I meet them?

    7. JN

      The first thing is, at a distance, um, if I saw you walking down the hallway and, and you say, "Hey, Joe," you know, and I'd say, "Steve, how are you?" Right? I'm mirroring you. You know, this goes back to the work of Carl Rogers in the early 1960s, and he found that synchrony, uh, uh, puts us in, uh, sort of locks us in, into this binding, psychological binding of where you greet with your hand and arch your eyebrows, "Hey." Well, that sends powerful messages. So if I do it, oh, can you imagine if you greeted me like this and I went, "Yeah, how you doing?"

    8. SB

      Yeah.

    9. JN

      It, it's like we're totally out of, out of harmony. We're out, totally out of synchrony. So, um, we begin with, uh, with, uh, the non-verbals. We begin, for instance, with the clothing. You know, if you go to a meeting, you know, we'll, we, we'd probably dress the same way or approximate e- e- each other. Um, we would probably have this... Look at us right now with our hand gestures. We're literally mirroring-

    10. SB

      (laughs)

    11. JN

      ... each other's hand gestures, to, to the point where our thumbs are precisely, uh, the same way. Why? Because we're comfortable with each other. We would lean in if we are, um, in, in, in good synchrony. Our speech pattern, uh, would, would synchronize, and um, and to the point where you can actually work with individuals to kind of calm them down or to see things your way, or to appreciate, let's say in negotiations, to begin to be more receptive. People are more receptive if they can mirror your, uh, behaviors.

    12. SB

      So people are more receptive if they can mirror your behaviors. So if I let you mirror my behavior-

    13. JN

      Right.

    14. SB

      ... then you're gonna be more receptive to what I have to say. Is that what you're saying?

    15. JN

      In general. We cannot be mimicking each other like it's a game.

    16. SB

      Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

    17. JN

      (laughs) Right? It becomes ridiculous. But there's no way we can negotiate if you're screaming and I'm stoic.

    18. SB

      Yeah.

    19. JN

      It, it just, it doesn't happen. For instance, you and I probably are doing a pretty good job of just mirroring each other in the, in the, in the conversation. We are likely, more likely to be successful, have more face time, and achieve more if we can talk to each other this way than if all of a sudden I decide to sit sideways, kick my feet up, and lean on my, in my, in my elbow. That gesture alone, even though it's a comfort display-

    20. SB

      Hmm.

    21. JN

      ... doesn't put us in synchrony. And everything that I have ever found was, even when I was talking to terrorists, even when talking to terrorists who absolutely hated me, hated a lot of other things, if I could just get them grounded to the point where we are talking basically the same way and using the same words. I- if they say, "My family," don't say, "Wife and kids." Use family. Don't use terms of art. You know, if they say, "Well, what's the price?" Don't come back and say, "Well, the, the, the, the, uh, the, the points on this are..." Th- that's not what they asked. That's a great way to demonstrate that you're not, um, that you're not, uh, listening. And, and the other thing I, I always emphasize is that for years people said, "Well, try to reduce everything that's emotional, uh, so that it doesn't interfere." That's not how we evolved. That is absolutely not how we evolved. We evolved to deal with emotions because emotions keep us alive. When our amygdala, uh, senses a threat, it is there to, uh, deal with that, and anything negative rises to prominence. Uh, that's one of the first things I teach. Uh, if, if it's really negative, it's, it rises to prominence. We assess for it first. We deal with that first. And often in business, what we see is, you know, somebody had a hard time, uh, finding your location. They had a hard time parking. Then they had to go to the, uh, receptionist who was on the phone and, uh, took about seven minutes to even say good morning, and when they did, they did it with no alacrity.... then they have to go through security, then they have to take the elevator that's crowded, and then finally get to your office a-aaand, eh, you want them to jump right into the meeting without all that inec- negativity that has been accrued? That's not how humans evolved. That is absolutely not how our species evolved. Our species evolved to de-conflict that, to diminish that by first dealing with that. That's where storytelling in part came from, where we came and said, you know, "I chased it. I was able to, he attacked me, then I attacked back at," you know, and then we-

    22. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    23. JN

      ... we go through that whole storytelling, which has mythical proportions and m- mythical aspects as archetypes. And if you subscribe to Jungian psychology, one of the arguments that I always use is this. How many of you have been in an argument and then 30 minutes later, you remember all the clever lines you should have said?

    24. SB

      Hm.

    25. JN

      We all have, and that's because the emotional brain hijacks neural activity. If you want the best out of people, if you want the best out of a relationship, vent that, get that out, give it time, okay? And yes, you're going to have to invest that time and then move forward so that you can, uh, uh, deal with the- the- the- the transactional, the business and- uh, and so forth.

  13. 44:01 – 45:54

    Eyebrow Knitting & What It Reveals

    1. JN

    2. SB

      You, um, you've referenced a few times different types of body language that I've exhibited that help you understand what I'm thinking and going through.

    3. JN

      Yes.

    4. SB

      Um, I think a second ago, you referenced a glabellar, and this brings me to something I read in your work about eyebrow knitting.

    5. JN

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      What is eyebrow knitting?

    7. JN

      So this little area, uh, between your eyes is called the glabella. And the glabella is great because at- at about, well, we, I've seen it in babies as early as three or four days, but, uh, very early on, we begin to furrow. In other words, we push this together when we have doubts, or we don't like something, or we don't understand something. So we- we furrow the glabella. Uh, some people call it, uh, eyebrow knitting because we are, uh, we have nicer eyebrows nowadays, not bushy like the old days. They don't come together like they used to. Um, so we, uh, a lot of those expressions of, "I don't understand," we- we use with the squinted eyes, um, the- the furrowed glabella. You know, sometimes we'll- we'll touch our face or- or scratch our face. Babies at 47 seconds, which I have directly observed, uh, if you shine a light at a newborn baby, it will furrow the chin, that they don't like it. And, uh, in my presentations, I have a mi- uh, matching one of a 47-year-old man and a 47 second old baby, both doing the same thing when they hear things they don't- they don't like.

    8. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    9. JN

      So we- we begin to communicate quite a lot, uh, actually with- uh, with our faces.

    10. SB

      What about

  14. 45:54 – 49:31

    What Eyelid Touching Really Means

    1. SB

      eyelid touching?

    2. JN

      Yeah. So for a long time, including in some of my writing, um, the theory was a lot of people cover their eyes, touch their eyes when they hear bad news. Uh, uh, if you said, "Hey, Joe, can you help me move this weekend?" "Oh, geez, Steve." Uh, right?

    3. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    4. JN

      You see a lot of that. And I started to think about that, uh, uh, about five or six years ago. And so I took some classes in anatomy, human anatomy, and I'm- I'm pretty much convinced now that a lot of the facial touching, including the, uh, you know, touching of the eyes and so forth, has to do with the innervation of the fifth cranial nerve and the seventh cranial nerve. Now, some of your viewers may find this interesting, that nerve, which, uh, goes to our forehead and actually goes into our eyelids and so forth, and the seventh, which is the facial, is very short in distance to that part of the brain where it is received. And so I think, uh, you know, I postulated, I wrote for Psychology Today that a lot of the reasons why we touch our face and why we, uh, touch our eyes, oh, no, uh, is because that pressure, uh, immediately goes to, uh, the brain and helps to relieve stress. And because the nerve is so short, right, we could massage our feet and achieve the same, but it's very far away. So I think a lot of facial touching, including eye touching, we do because of, uh, of its ability to, anytime there's stress, we pacify ourselves. And- and by the way, it's very interesting. In 1974, I was at a- a board at the university, so there was a lab where you could actually watch children and study them at play. And they had some children there that were born blind, so they had never seen. And I was just blow- uh, blown away the first time I- I saw a blind child who had never seen, heard some news that was not very good and immediately covered their eyes, having never seen. And that's when I realized, okay, we are 2.4 million years old. This is, uh, hardwired in our DNA. This is part of our paleocircuits, as, uh, Dr. David Gibbons later taught me.... and it has to do with how it feels. And that's why we touch our faces so much.

    5. SB

      So, it's typically a negative emotion and a form of self-soothing for that negative emotion?

    6. JN

      I think that's a good synopsis, but also keep in mind how often we touch our faces when we're having a nice time, like when I'm reading, I find myself turning pages, uh, because I read very fast. I turn with my left hand, but I pacify or soothe myself by touching my, my, you know, into a pensive, uh, pose. Women will play with their hair. All day long, our brain is asking us to do things to contribute, uh, to that. But when there's something stressful, then, for instance, we go from, like in negotiations, when somebody throws a number we don't like, we'll go from touching our face to scratching our face because the brain is saying, "Hey, do something more powerful that will keep me in what we call homeostasis." So, um, to answer your question, yes, but it also applies to when we're really enjoying a moment.

  15. 49:31 – 51:00

    What Your Lips Are Secretly Saying

    1. JN

    2. SB

      What about our lips? You talked a second ago about like pursed lips and stuff. What kind of clues does, do the lips give away?

    3. JN

      Yeah. So for me, the lips are the, um, the seismograph. The, the, the lips are like the emotional seismograph of the body. When we are comfortable and confident, our lips are full of blood, their color changes. The minute we hear something we don't like, blood actually begins to leave the lips, and they become narrower, and then we begin to tighten them. You know, s- if somebody says something I don't like, I might go, "Hmm," right? Or we begin to bite the l- because we're stressed or we pluck it, pull on it, do all, all sorts of, of things to, to soothe it. But the lips get very, uh, show a, uh, a lot of nervous emotion when we're under stress. So they're, they're very much, uh, re- as is the jaw. Like, for instance, if you said something I might not agree with, my j- I probably shift my jaw because when you shift your jaw, it puts pressure on the TMJ, and that alone says to the brain, (laughs) "Go somewhere else." Don't, don't, uh, you know, don't struggle too much with that. So, um, we're always doing something physical to counter anything that the brain might be undergoing.

  16. 51:00 – 55:39

    The Supersternal Notch – Body Language’s Secret Weapon

    1. SB

      Tell me about the suprasternal notch. What the hell is that?

    2. JN

      So the suprasternal notch, um, it has other names. You could call it the little neck dimple, uh, this little area right at the bottom of your, your throat. It's a, a deep, uh, indentation. This is the most vulnerable part of the human body. All air, food, nutrients, blood, electricity, oxygen, everything goes through there. And what happens is, and one of the things that I found was that there was nothing in the literature in 1975, '76, I'm looking, and I'm noticing that when people are nervous, they immediately cover their neck, they touch their neck. You know, in the literature, you hear about, oh, she, um, you know, clutched her pearls, right? Um, rubbing that men tend to do it more robustly because of testosterone. Women tend to more directly touch the suprasternal notch. And what I found is when there's a lack of confidence, insecurities, fear, apprehensions, or concerns that people will go, "Oh my God. Did you see that?" Right? "Oh, it's gone. Now, it's back." And, you know, why is it all directed at this little area of the neck, and why do men clutch their necks and massage their necks when they're... Th- it's the worst thing you can do in negotiations, by the way, is touch your neck, because what you're transmitting is weakness. Somebody who's confident just never touches the neck. You just don't. You don't go anywhere near the neck, and you don't ventilate because you're, what you're saying is, "You're, you're getting to me." Ventilating behaviors.

    3. SB

      Wait, sorry, when you say ventilate, you mean giving yourself air?

    4. JN

      Yeah.

    5. SB

      So it could be-

    6. JN

      So, so ventilating behaviors-

    7. SB

      Okay.

    8. JN

      ... are behaviors of weakness because your body temperature has changed at 1/250th of a second, and what you're revealing is something negative is getting to you. So you, you, you, you don't do that. But here's the behavior, the neck touching, neck covering, covering of the suprasternal notch, and there's another behavior. You know, earlier we talked about we were surrounded by predators, and one of the behaviors we did was to cover our mouths or hold still when we hear a noise. The third behavior is to cover the neck, to cover the neck because large felines always go for the neck. And so the, the brain didn't, doesn't have a closet full of ties. It has about four choices. And those four behaviors are exquisite. It's proven over time that if we cover our mouth, cover the neck, don't move, they work pretty well. So we don't have to choose a lot of colors. And the other thing sometimes you'll see people do is when, um, you see this h- uh, here in Florida, and we certainly saw it in November after the hurricane. People come to see their house, and they cover their, their head, hands are up here. Oh my God. You know, why, why, wh- why do we do that? Again, large felines. These are shortcuts. This is heuristics that have prevailed and say, "Oh, n-..." Right?... and you, and, and you say, "Well, w- we're no longer surrounded by them." Well, go to India. There were 238 attacks last year. It is in our DNA. It is performed out of necessity to, uh, to, to keep us alive. So we have these-

    9. SB

      (laughs)

    10. JN

      ... um, these reactions, but, um, so I look at the, I, uh, certainly, I look at the, uh, at the lips and the, uh, uh, and, and the neck as, uh, as good places for information.

    11. SB

      I was just thinking then about why, yeah, you hold your head, but you also hold your head when you see something that's fallen over. (laughs) So if like a, you seen like a building falling down, an earthquake, you immediately... (laughs)

    12. JN

      Oh, uh, the other day, it was an old car and it was, and it was parked at an angle, on a road that was at an angle, and they forgot to set the, the brake. And I'm watching it s- slowly slide, I'm, uh, and I found myself... (laughs)

    13. SB

      (laughs)

    14. JN

      I teach this stuff with my hands up here and, uh, unfortunately, it was across the street and I couldn't get to it, uh, fast enough, and it didn't do any damage. But, but you realize these, uh, these shortcuts, uh, are with us for a purpose.

  17. 55:39 – 1:02:35

    FBI Strategies to Win Any Negotiation

    1. JN

    2. SB

      Much of the work you do as an FBI agent is some form of negotiation, and you spend a lot of time teaching people how to be good negotiators as well. You mentioned negotiation a second ago. I'm a business person, I do lots of negotiations.

    3. JN

      Mm-hmm.

    4. SB

      Whether it's with clients or suppliers or interviews, you know, I'm interviewing people all the time, which I consider to be a negotiation. How do I improve my negotiation skills? What are the things I should be thinking about as I go into the negotiation?

    5. JN

      Well, uh, you know, they warned me, you ask profound questions. Um, and you're right, in, in the FBI, I mean, when you're trying to convince someone to tell us the truth and put themselves in jeopardy, that is nothing but negotiations. Y- you may look at it as, uh, interviewing, but like you said, even a conversation. You know, I look at negotiations in the same way that I look at interviewing. It's in, in, in the simplest form, it's effective communication with a purpose. So you say, "Well, that's highly simplistic, I've never heard that." Well, think of it, well, what is the purpose? Okay. Well, we'll get to that in a minute, either you have something I need or want or w- that. But there has to be communication and there has to be an understanding of, of what I mean and what I, uh, intend and, and so forth. So for me, it's a reminder, when I first came into the FBI, an old-timer said to me, "Interviewing isn't about the confession." And I looked at him like, "What?" (laughs)

    6. SB

      (laughs)

    7. JN

      "What do you... W- excuse me? What do you mean not about the confession?" He says, "You'll get the confession. Interviewing is about face time." If you can get people to talk to you for two hours, three hours, four hours, uh, in one case, I, I interviewed an individual for, for 12 hours. We, uh, you know, they'll tell you everything you need to know, but you got to keep 'em in the room. And so I always view negotiations of, number one is, how do I communicate with you in a way that you'll want to talk to me for however long it takes to get to that purpose, which is the transaction? Now, you know, if, if I'm evaluating you to, for your services or if I'm negotiating for, for, for prices, you know, I want to hear what you have to say and I want to lay out what, um, I'm interested in achieving and then reconciling or working around whatever discrepancies or issues, uh, uh, there, there may be. I think when we l- look at negotiations that way, we can say, "Well, that means I got to do a lot of stuff up front," which is, who am I communicating with? Who am I going to negotiate with? What's their negotiating style? Are they stoic? Do they come in? Are they, do they throw things down? I mean, I've, I've been (laughs) I've been in negotiations where opposing counsel came in and literally walked into the room, didn't even say good morning, just threw the things down and said, "I want to hear the numbers." Uh, okay. Then how do we begin to deal with that? Because someone that comes in and is aggressive and so forth, you've got to deal with.

    8. SB

      What do you do? Do you rise to their aggression or do you try and bring them down to your position?

    9. JN

      Great question. The, the worst thing you can do is rise, rise to that. You begin to dominate them by taking control of time. Whoever controls time controls. And so they come in, they throw the things down. So y- usually, you know, we'll start with, "Well, good morning to you too." Uh, "Yeah, yeah, let's, let's, let's cut to the chase." And then the whole team I'm working with knows we're going to slow things down. We are not going to be working at that pace. Because if you work at that pace, they're taking control. And so we slow things down. And there's several strategies, you can become all of a sudden you can become very visual and say, "All right, we're gonna, you know, write this down and we're gonna put this here. We're gonna put..." You know? And then this is, this is the difference of, you know, y- there's a lot of strategies. But the first thing is y- we've got to get that person to understand...... that we negotiate, hopefully, as equals. But if the perception is always that that person is negotiating as the bully or is always in charge, you're never going to have, uh, equity. Now, I've had a lot of clients that, that have said, "Hey, you know, I've tried all your strategies. And, you know, this, this guy I'm dealing with is, is just, he's crass. He's just a bully. He comes in," and stuff like... And I- and so one of the questions I always ask is, is he the only source? Is, is he or she the only source, number one. And number two is, how long are you willing to tolerate this person? Because we fail to, to look at that. He gives you headaches. You don't sleep well every time you go to this, um, I'm thinking of one client in particular, you come away with a nervous stomach. He c- and, you know, how long are you willing to tolerate that? If you're willing to tolerate it, then, you know, he's not gonna change his style. Then you come in and we, we change, uh, our exposure. So, we're not gonna expose all of our staff to that kind of negativity. Uh, we send in our best person and say, "Look, here are the numbers," and we work with that. But there are ways to, to, to, to dealing with the, with the very toxic, uh, but we don't allow them to get away with everything nor think that, uh, they're in charge. And we do it in, in, in subtle ways, and we, uh, sort of derail their agenda. Maybe their agenda, based on past meetings, was to come in and just throw these things at us, uh, very quickly, then we have to adjust, uh, to that. So, the- there has to be rehearsed strategies for, for dealing with it.

  18. 1:02:35 – 1:06:37

    Why You MUST Write Down Your Goal Before Negotiating

    1. JN

    2. SB

      One of the things your work made me think about is how important it is to literally like write down the goal of my negotiation before I go into the negotiation, or else you might get swept up in the emotion of it and the, the sort of heat of the moment- the moment.

    3. JN

      Yeah, you, you wouldn't be the first one to find yourself in a meeting, negotiating, and all of a sudden you're, you know, it's like, what are, what are we actually negotiating for?

    4. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JN

      And, um, and so that's why I like the, the simplicity of, um, effective communication with a purpose as a form of, uh, negotiations. But to also understand what is my role, what is my role, and what is my purpose in being there, because many times we go into negotiations and the chief financial officer is there. Ding. Uh, sometimes we go in there and, you know, your first assistant is always, uh, there also, but you also have, uh, in-office counsel that is in attendance. What's their role? And what is my role? You know, something so simple as, what are you gonna do, look straight ahead the whole time, um, your k- you know, your attorney is speaking? Or are you gonna look at him? Well, we know from the research that by looking at, uh, the person who's actually talking on your side actually potentiates the gravity of what he's saying, that, uh, at the most emphatic points, uh, when that attorney, uh, makes, um, and you did this earlier, you want to steeple, because steeple is the most powerful gesture that we have to convey confidence.

    6. SB

      Steepling as in this sort of hand gesture.

    7. JN

      Is this- is- is this. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel did this a lot. You see, uh, Musk, uh, do this a lot. You see, uh, Steve Jobs used to, uh, a lot of pictures of Steve Jobs doing that. But, you know, you reserve that for that point in time when you want to emphasize. And so the worst thing you can do is just to sit there, uh, dormant. And in fact, we have research, and it's called the still face experiments, and that is that the worst thing you can do is sit at a meeting and hold a still face. You're perceived as a threat, you're perceived as less trustworthy, you're perceived as insignificant. Corner of your mouths are down, eye roll to the, to the right, Steven, that's how you're perceived. (laughs)

    8. SB

      (laughs)

    9. JN

      And that's- and that's what happens. Uh, the experiments which were done first with babies found that if you take a baby, and it's called the still face experiment, so if you take a baby and, uh, you look away and look back and, uh, and smile, the baby's content. You can do that several times. But on the last one, you turn around and you hold very still. The babies become uncontrollable. They, they, they have fits. They're really troubled by that. So, the experimenters said, "Well, yeah, but at what age does that l- uh, leave us?" So, they decided to do it with adults. Adults do the same thing. If you and I are talking and we're exchanging faces, the worst thing I can do is then sit there.

    10. SB

      (laughs) You see something (overlapping dialogue: You see, you f- you find it disconcerting.) Yeah.

    11. JN

      And what the brain perceives is a threat, and you lose trustworthiness.

    12. SB

      Because you can't read what this person's thinking either way. I'd rather you be, uh, unhappy, then at least I can put that in a box.

    13. JN

      Well, that's one way to, to look at it. I'm not sure that anybody knows the, the precise reason for it. But what we do understand is that the still face, which if you're on a virtual call-You want to nod. You want to tilt your head. You wanna make, uh, different gestures, but the- the worst thing you can do is hold still. And then

  19. 1:06:37 – 1:10:53

    Subtle Moves That Give You Total Control

    1. JN

      in negotiations, when you're talking to the team and saying, "Look, when we're going in there, you know, I don't want anybody to just sit there." I want expressions, uh, and I ... And when someone is speaking, you know, you're looking at them, uh, in the same way that the other side would do. But you have to plan. Now, the other thing I find with negotiators, uh, one thing I did in the FBI is I always planned my interviews in exquisite detail. Who would enter the room first? Who would say what? Where I would sit? Who gets offered water and when? Because I need to be in control. Who's going to say what? These are things people don't think about, but at the levels with the people that I deal with, you have to have a certain amount of advantage. You have to have a certain amount of psychological leverage to say, "Look, you may be the world's largest manufacturer of this, and I'm just starting out, but I am not down here. And so I would appreciate if you would begin to value me." And I do that by doing certain things, in the manner that I walk in. Who walks in first? Where do I sit? What gestures do I use to point, right? So you never use your finger. You always use the full hand in the vertical position. You take command of the situation and it looks aesthetically pleasing. Oh, isn't it nice he's offering me something to drink? Or the assistant or someone says, uh, "What would you ... Would you like some tea?" How would you like it?" And so forth. And what we're actually witnessing is the transformation of I ... You have now become the dominant person by becoming the archetypical, the father or mother figure. (laughs)

    2. SB

      Because you're offering something.

    3. JN

      Because you're offering it-

    4. SB

      Okay.

    5. JN

      ... and you're in control of, of, of the food and, and the brain. You know, people often wonder, well, why, uh, you know, why was it in Stockholm, uh, Sweden back in the '70s that the Stockholm syndrome took hold so fast with those bank robbers, where they had such an effect on their victims that within hours, the, the, the victims were defending the, the bank robbers? It was very simple. They became the father figure and the hostages became the children.

    6. SB

      So, I actually didn't know that story.

    7. JN

      What happened was, there was a bank robbery and ... in, uh, Stockholm, uh, and, uh, the bank robbers went in, held the, the, the victims hostage. Eventually, uh, they were rescued. But what they found was that in, uh, in a matter of hours, the victims were rising to the defense of the criminals. And it became known as the Stockholm syndrome and what it showed us was the robbers became the archetype of the parent and the hostages became the children, and in an instant, they became, uh, subs- subservient.

    8. SB

      Is that what happens in domestic abuse cases as well?

    9. JN

      Yes. You nailed it. You nailed it beautifully. Yeah, uh, y- you're the f- the first person to get that right away. And, uh, and that's why you often, uh, see this in domestic abuse cases and you say, "How can sh- ... She just got beat up. How can she defend him?" Usually the, the case. And you realize, oh my God, we have a, like, a Stockholm syndrome where he's the provider, he's the only one working, or this or that. But, uh, you know, getting back to negotiations, I think it's, it's one of those things that I insist that if you go into negotiations that you be treated at least as an equal and that the minute people start to look down on you, it makes for a very difficult, uh, conversation.

  20. 1:10:53 – 1:14:54

    How to Walk Into a Room with Authority

    1. JN

    2. SB

      So when you're thinking about walking into the room and all these, where you sit, if you're walking into the room to interview a terrorist-

    3. JN

      Right.

    4. SB

      ... are you trying to walk into the room first or are you trying to walk into the room last? Do you send your team in to walk in first, then you show up last? And where, what are you thinking about seating positions?

    5. JN

      Right. So one of the things that I always insisted is I would walk into the room first.

    6. SB

      So they would already be in there?

    7. JN

      No, no, no. I, we would, we would walk to the room.

    8. SB

      Oh, with them?

    9. JN

      With them, and then I would just make them wait there a minute. I'd open it and I'd take a look and I'd say, "Oh, just wanna make sure the room is safe and there's nobody in here." You know, I've walked into, um, people before. That begins to establish my dominance. And then I would say, um, "Why don't you take a, a seat, uh, right there?" You know, people ask me, "Well, why, you know, why are you being so nice to these, uh, these criminals?" Well, first of all, I go back to what that old-timer said. I want face time. I don't care what it takes to get face time. But I also wanna be in charge and if by being nice to him and pointing to the nice chair there achieves that, then, uh, so much for me. And then I always try to sit i- in a, in a way that, uh, I sit higher. Now, in the case of Ramsay, we'd literally get the room ahead of time and we would change the, the, the furniture so that I always sat, uh, about an inch to two inches higher than he did.... he never noticed that.

    10. SB

      Ramsey was the, the guy whose sh- cigarette was quivering.

    11. JN

      Was quivering. In the end, we ended up doing, uh, 37 interviews, and they were all done in hotel rooms, mostly in the Orlando area. And we would go in ahead of time, and, uh, we would just, uh, arrange the ch- furniture or bring in furniture. But I always sat higher than him. He never understood that. He always sat on the couch, which, um, somehow, uh, about an, about that much was shaved from the couch, so that it always set, um, a little lower. And so, um, he was always literally slightly looking up to us, and then we controlled when we would take breaks. And I, I, you know, and I was always attentive, and I would say, you know, "Would you like something to drink now?" Then I said, "Well, this is such a good subject. Why don't we take the break now, and you, you have the drink now, and then we'll ... so we can, uh, continue." What he didn't realize was that, um, I was establishing, uh, control over him by sort of dictating. Uh, it, it's, it, it would be no, you know ... I'm sure your listeners might be saying, "Boy, that's manipulative." Yeah. But in, in the transactional phase, it's no different than you, you saying to your crew, uh, "I need to take a break right now and go to the restroom." "Okay." (laughs) Take a break. I don't-

    12. SB

      Hmm.

    13. JN

      I don't think that much of it. But over time, what happens is, he begins to relinquish a lot of that forcefulness that he'd love to exhibit, he'd love to be in charge, but I'm not permitting it. And sometimes, he, he, he, he would say, "Well, I could use a smoke break right now." And I'd say, "Hang on, on a second, 'cause this, what you just said was really interesting." And my partner, Mrs. Terry Moody, who I, I, I loved her, she was a great partner, she looked at me like, "Really? You're gonna push it that much further?"

    14. SB

      Hmm.

    15. JN

      But it worked, uh, to the point where, um, I mean, here's a guy who had his attorney's phone number on him at all times, and he never used

  21. 1:14:54 – 1:20:11

    Why Height and Posture Subconsciously Matter

    1. JN

      that.

    2. SB

      You mentioned the height of the chairs. What- what does height matter in this context? 'Cause I was thinking as well about Zoom, and the interesting thing about now about Zoom, uh, we were talking about this before we started recording, and the fact that most of our conversations are happening, happening digitally now-

    3. JN

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      ... is we don't often think about height. And I, um, sometimes on a call, uh, with one of my colleagues or partners-

    5. JN

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      ... and I'll often ask them before the client or our, whoever we're doing business with joins the call to adjust the height, because they are like t- they're like, looking down into the lens, or they're looking up into the lens, which I think is also suboptimal.

    7. JN

      Good term, suboptimum. Uh, there's a lot to be said about height. Just as there is a beauty dividend, right? So the beauty dividend, and you can look this up, the beauty dividend, well researched, basically says you're gonna earn 8% per year the rest of your life just if you are good-looking. That's the beauty dividend. You can go online and look at all the studies and the statistics that go with it. But there's also a height dividend, and it is universal. If you look at Americans that are 6'2", so a little taller than me, accounts for about 3% of the population, unless you go to the Fortune 500 companies, and then they account for 39% of all CEOs at 6'2". Whoa. That, my friend, is an order of increase. And you say, "Are taller people smarter?" Uh, no. (laughs) No. It has to do with the benefit of, of being tall. There is a dividend, and so we tend to see that across the world.

    8. SB

      The word dividend, for anyone that doesn't know, basically means a, like a benefit or a reward, one could think of it as.

    9. JN

      An advantage.

    10. SB

      Yeah.

    11. JN

      You, you have an advantage.

    12. SB

      So with Ramsey, what was the, the dividend by you making your chair just an inch taller? What were you doing to him? You're taking away his power a little bit? Making you more powerful?

    13. JN

      I had to, because he had all the cards. He was the spy. He had all the evidence in his head or in his possession, or the Russians had it. The Russians weren't gonna give it to us. (laughs) They're the enemy. They said, "Too bad, mates. Uh, we've got all your secrets." They had so many secrets that they measured it in weight, not just in pages. The other problem I was dealing with was, is his IQ. He had the second highest IQ in the, uh, that the army ever recorded since World War II. He could talk on any subject, quantum physics to whatever. When you have a superior intellect, in his case, which was true, or you're dealing with someone, let's say, who is malignant narcissist, so they account for about 2% of the population, but about 20% of CEOs. So your mal- your malignant narcissist who overvalues themselves and tends to devalue others, and in my case with him, he had narcissistic traits, which I could, I could deal with, but his superior intellect was breathtaking, and he had perfect recall. Uh, so in a way, it was frightening, because all he had to do was transport himself to another country, and he could sell all the secrets that he, um, had memorized. So I had to play a c- a certain role, but I also couldn't let him take charge of the investigation, and not one that had put...... England, Germany, all of Western Europe in jeopardy, as well as Canada and the United States. I could not afford, the United States government couldn't afford to have him, uh, be flippant with the knowledge that, um, that he knew, especially once we knew that he had compromised the, uh, nuclear go codes.

    14. SB

      Do you mind if I pause this conversation for a moment? I want to talk about our show sponsor today, which is Shopify. I've always believed that the biggest cost in business isn't failure, it's the time you waste trying to make decisions. Time spent hesitating, overthinking, or waiting for the right moment. When I started my first company at 20 years old, I had no experience and no money. What I did have was an idea and the willingness to move fast, and that made all the difference. If you've been thinking about starting your own business, Shopify makes this entire process so much easier. With thousands of customizable templates, you don't need coding or design skills, you just need a willingness to start. Shopify connects all your sales channels, from your website to social media, and it handles the backend payments, shipping and taxes too, so that you can stay focused on moving forward and growing your business. If you're ready to start, visit shopify.com/bartlett and sign up for a one pound per month trial period. That's shopify.com/bartlett.

  22. 1:20:11 – 1:25:45

    What Clues in Someone’s Posture Should You Look For?

    1. SB

      What about posture? Because that's kind of one way to make yourself taller.

    2. JN

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      Um, are there any clues in someone's posture and how important is sort of playing with our posture to create a different impression?

    4. JN

      Yeah, absolutely. Not just, not just posture, but, uh, territory. So I look at posture as, you know, when we, when we look confident, shoulders back, are breathing. To me, posture starts with the brain, how calm we are in our breathing. I was, again, in Valencia at this, uh, this event and, and, uh, a lady came up to me and she says, "You're getting ready to go on the stage. H- how can you not be nervous?" And I said, "Well, I am nervous. I'm just hiding it." (laughs) "I'm acting like, uh, um, I'm in control." But I've, I've learned to do that because you don't want to look like a nervous FBI agent. Trust me. You want to look cool, calm, and, and collected. In negotiations, um, you don't want to, uh, look, uh, needy. You don't want to look desperate. Um, and at the same time, you don't want to come across as you're indifferent, and sometimes th- that demeanor, that posture, those gestures, the, the totality of it, uh, has a lot of meaning. Now, you have to keep in mind, a lot of successful businessmen I'm running into are actually on the spectrum, right? So the autism spectrum. And so they don't make as much eye contact. They may have behaviors that are irregular. I have one I deal with, uh, who has Asperger's, and so he, uh, sometimes jerks. And so there's a lot of, uh, discomfort I find from others in reading him. I don't have any problem. I just see it, okay, this is his, uh, normal behaviors and we get it

    5. NA

      Mm-hmm.

    6. JN

      ... around. But you can tell a lot, uh, ab- about a, a, a person. And when you've invested in things, you're doing your diligence and you're talking to people, yeah, you can look at the numbers all day long, but you also are looking at the non-verbals and saying, you know, uh, "Are they communicating confidence or are they communicating, uh, desire or need or, um, or any kind of frailty?"

    7. SB

      I, I was just reflecting on a few of the interviews I've had recently. We've been interviewing for one particular very, very senior role.

    8. JN

      Yep.

    9. SB

      And there were two final stage candidates. And I was just reflecting, as you were saying, how one of the final stage candidates was extremely calm and sat back in their chair.

    10. JN

      Mm-hmm.

    11. SB

      And the other one was very much leaning forward. And upon reflection, the second candidate wanted the job a lot more, but the first candidate was probably more experienced, more confident, and had higher self-worth. And their ability to be so relaxed in that environment and kind of own the chair in, in my boardroom, was actually, it actually made me kind of want them more, because they were signaling to me that they had lots of options. They weren't intimidated. They weren't scared. They weren't nervous about this opportunity.

    12. JN

      You know, uh, that's an interesting observation, Steven, and it's, and it's a, uh, it's very good that you observe the, the discrepancy. One of the things that I look for is what is their role going to be? Uh, I don't mind that somebody is nervous. Um, I myself early on coming from a humble background, was often nervous. I tend to focus on the things that most organizations don't put into their plan to look for. One of them is problem-solving. Give me a list of the problems you have solved. Most que- most people when they hire, they never ask that question. They tell you, "I can do Excel. I know Microsoft." That's great. Please tell me what problems you have solved at, at, at your last, uh, job and, and, you know, how efficiently did you do it? Um-

    13. SB

      How do you know if they solved the problem or they were on a team where someone else solved the problem?

    14. JN

      Because one of the things that I sa- you know, look for is, is how many instances they tell and how they describe it, because here's what's interesting. The person who solves the problem goes into the detail and feels the emotion of the person that's telling the story.... only conveys it, but doesn't know the emotion that is attached to solving it.

    15. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    16. JN

      So when you f- when that little child finally figures out how to, you know, you give them a trick lock where wood things have to go this way or this way, and then the little thing opens. When they come back and tell you that, you see the gravity-defying behavior, the arching of the eyebrows, the bright eyes, and saying, "I solved it. I solved it. I got in there." Yeah, right? The prob- the person that's just telling you this story doesn't know the emotion that goes with it.

    17. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    18. JN

      The other thing that, you know, I, I, I look for is, and, uh, they may be nervous or whatever, is how good are, are they at observing?

  23. 1:25:45 – 1:27:28

    The Power of Observing What Others Miss

    1. JN

      This is the one question that, um, has, uh, actually saved a lot of companies. When I say, "Make sure that from now on you ask, 'How good are you observing?'" And they'll say, "Well, observing what?" Everything that matters. People, events, opportunities. Right? If you come to me and say, "Well, I can code this." Okay. That's great, but in the position that you're gonna be in, you're gonna be managing people. How good are you up- at observing people? The great thing about companies that, that seek this is, all right, so when you go and you business your, you go see your subsidiary, what are you, what are you looking for? What are you observing? "Well, when I look at the books and, uh..." How about the attitude of the people? Are people content? Are they happy or do they all look like they're constipated? I mean, I've been into companies that the minute I walk in, I go, "Oh, geez. You got management problems here." And the guy goes, "Who- who- did somebody tell you?"

    2. SB

      (laughs)

    3. JN

      I, I, I said, "Well, you know, I'd have to be clinically stupid not to recognize that all these people are walking around with their heads hung low, that they make no eye contact. Nobody... They pass each other in the subway and they don't talk to each other. You got management issues here."

    4. SB

      Hmm.

    5. JN

      And it, it, you know, and it's like they hired for this skill, but is that really what you need when you actually need somebody that is a great ob- observer?

    6. SB

      What about confidence? Is this something that you're born

  24. 1:27:28 – 1:31:45

    Can You Actually Train Confidence?

    1. SB

      with or do you think confidence can be trained into somebody?

    2. JN

      I think confidence can absolutely be trained. Coming from Cuba where we lost everything, arriving as a refugee, having nothing, and then all of a sudden, um, the FBI asks me to become an... I didn't apply to the FBI. The FBI actually came to me and asked me to apply. And then all of a sudden, I said, "Are, uh, are you guys serious?" Y- it's like, you know, I'm 23 years old, you know. I'm barely learning how to shave and with no confidence whatsoever, and they, uh, teach you to be confident. You can teach confidence. And what I tell people is, "The easiest way to learn confidence is to be confident about one thing." I don't care if it's you stack papers better than anybody else. I don't care if it's the way you make your, your bed. Uh, any small thing, show me that you're confident. Show me that that's better than anybody else's. And the minute you can be confident about one thing, now you can be confident about two things, and then you can be confident about three things. This nonsense that I often see people say, "Well, just come in and be confident." Uh, I think that's nonsense. I think you have to learn and your, your physiology has to learn to be confident about one thing. You know, with me, I was confident in, uh, playing football. Okay. I was fast. I could do certain things. I was confident about that. I, I knew that in basketball, I could shoot a three-pointer. Okay. Confident about that, but not confident about uh, uh, a host of other things. To be in a room full of executives, I remember when I had no confidence. So how do I work on that? You, you cannot... Unless you're a world-class actor, you cannot walk into a place and all of a sudden pretend you're, you're confident. I tell people, "Learn to be confident about one thing." And sometimes, it's knowledge. I always... There is no meeting I go into that I am not well-read on that subject. If you want to achieve confidence, know everything that you can about a particular subject, and that gives you so much great confidence. And I've seen young people come right out of college and they're sitting there, you know, their, their, their, their elbows are in. They're s- they're almost mousey-looking, they're nervous, they're looking about constantly, they don't know where to look. And, you know, and I, and I tell them, "Know your subject. Know your subject." Because the minute they begin to talk about that, they begin to flower and, and, and change, so.

    3. SB

      So it's competence in a particular area or vertical creates confidence, which then kind of permeates...

    4. JN

      Yes. And, and that's what the mili- and the, you know, the military, you know, the, like the British military, that's what they... They take young people, 17, 18, 19 years old, and they say, you know, "We're gonna..."... change you into a warrior. Well, how's that? By running, by, by getting you to climb up that rope, by doing any number of things where you come, can come away and feel, uh, that confidence.

    5. SB

      You talked in a video that I watched, um, for Wired about a variety of different ways we can exhibit and be more confidence, and show confidence. One of them is really looking at the leaders in your life who are confident, and trying to sort of replicate some of those confident behaviors.

    6. JN

      Right.

    7. SB

      Um, the other one was about your voice. Use a deeper voice and do not rise at the end of the sentence as if it's a question.

    8. JN

      Right. So let me talk about those.

  25. 1:31:45 – 1:34:06

    Don’t Let Your Voice Betray You

    1. JN

      Don't try to reinvent what's successful. A confident person doesn't have to talk fast and doesn't talk high. Right? I remember the first arrest I made and I said, "Stop! This is the FBI." My voice was ... nobody was gonna stop. Nobody. (laughs) Nobody. And the guys that were with me said, "Joe, you gotta work on your voice. You have to have a command voice." Well, a command voice is down.

    2. SB

      Like?

    3. JN

      Like, "Stop right there." Uh, I'll give you an example. You talk to most executives and you say, um, "No, that's not acceptable." It's too high. No is always said down. No. "Are we, are we gonna..." No. That sounds like a complete sentence.

    4. SB

      Do you get, you, you get them to practice saying no?

    5. JN

      Absolutely. I, I did it at h- you know, for 10 years, every, every February, the guy that, uh, uh, Brian Hall, who encouraged me to write my, one of my books called Louder Than Words, invited me to go to Harvard. And I, I'll never forget, I had a, a complete Harvard class. I think there was, uh, 76 students (laughs) and, and I had 'em all saying the word "no". No. No. Going, going lower. He had stepped out of the room for, to, to take a call. When he came back, he, he, he thought I had a cult going on. (laughs) I said, "No, Brian, I'm just, I'm teaching them the right way." Because these are gonna be future executives. That you don't say, "No, no, no, no." No. No. Now that sounds like a complete sentence.

    6. SB

      No.

    7. JN

      No. That's not how it's gonna work. And, and it's always, uh, lower. So we work on the words. More importantly, uh, we work on the, on the gestures, how much territory you occupy, because the territory that you occupy, if you're here ...

    8. SB

      Sort of like shriveled and tight?

    9. JN

      You're shriveled. Uh, you want to, you don't wanna be excessive, you don't wanna look like a clown, but you, you, you wanna have the, the space that you're entitled to. And then I think it's very important to learn to speak in cadence. When you speak in cadence, and I do it, is people listen,

  26. 1:34:06 – 1:36:17

    Why Cadence Is a Power Tool

    1. JN

      they have time to process what you're saying, but they can also attach the emotion that goes with it. Who spoke in cadence? Churchill. Um, Martin Luther King. "I have a dream that one-"

    2. NA

      ... one day- Yes. (rain falls) ... this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Yeah. (cheers)

    3. JN

      Powerful. Imagine if he stood up there and said, "I have one dream that one day my..." (laughs) It's like, who would listen to that? But he was a preacher, and he knew how to command an audience. And when Churchill said, "We will fight them in the air, we will fight them on the-"

    4. NA

      We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.

    5. JN

      The cadence is, uh, not just seductive, it is powerful. And a lot of executives don't know how to use it. They just ... I, I, I've been to presentations where people just let go. They're not even listening to what's being said. And yet somebody begins to talk to them in cadence and says, "This is our offer. It is not final, but for the moment, it is our best offer." Now you're paying attention. You're paying attention not just to what I said, but the emotion behind it. That's a lot better to say, "Well, this is not our last offer, but, uh, you know, we ..."

    6. SB

      Mm-hmm. There's a real authority when you slow things down just that little bit and provide the gaps.

    7. JN

      Which goes back to what I said, who controls time, controls. You're establishing control over the theater of the negotiations. They don't teach that in business schools.

    8. SB

      Your hand gestures as well. You've got very

  27. 1:36:17 – 1:37:58

    How to Use Hand Gestures Like a Pro

    1. SB

      complementary hand gestures to what you're saying. Even as you're speaking to me, you just went, "Who controls time, controls."

    2. JN

      Controls. Right.

    3. SB

      And, and so it's, I'm wondering how our hands -

    4. JN

      And my fingers are spread out, establishing how much we care about something. When we fear, our fingers come together, and when we fear a lot, our thumbs tuck in. I've, I've seen people in negotiations give up a lot of information because all of a sudden they, they tuck their thumbs in. I say, "Okay, they're scared." (laughs) Because dogs tuck their ears in, humans tuck their ... The, the hands, no matter how dark you are, your hands, the palm of the hands are very visible. That evolved with us because they're expressive. So even in low light, we can use our hands.... to communicate. The more confident we are, the further our fingers are. I care i- imagine if I said, "I care about you," versus, "I care about you." There's a big difference.

    5. SB

      So, in the first example, you kind of had your fingers together. In the second, you spread them out.

    6. JN

      This. I care about this. And so, they potentiate the message, um, and the human brain evolved also to look for the hands, because the hands, number one, can be used as a weapon, but number two, they are also emblematic of the emotions that, um, that we feel.

    7. SB

      And eye contact.

    8. JN

      Yes.

    9. SB

      A lot's been said about eye

  28. 1:37:58 – 1:39:25

    The Eye Contact Rule That Builds Trust

    1. SB

      contact and the importance of it. What should I understand about eye contact confidence?

    2. JN

      Eye contact, in some ways, is, uh, I mean, we could spend r- about 40 minutes on it because, uh, and I, as a teacher, I can tell you, because you want to have good eye contact. For instance, if you're dealing with a woman, you don't want it to go, you know... Normal eye contact is here. You don't want it going down to here, to the breasts. Uh-

Episode duration: 2:25:26

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