Reading people under pressure and leading through what I saw. This is how I spent my career. Reading behavior for signs of danger or deceit.
As a cop on the street, you learn to use body language to assess danger pretty quick. It moves from a survival instinct to a skill that lets you start to spot deceit. Both useful skills. Words for example, mean nothing. Body language and behavior tell you much more.
Then I became a private investigator. I spent years across the interview table from people who had a reason to lie to me. I got good at spotting it.
Then I became a manager of investigators and while I was more removed from the day to day interviewing of subject’s, I still had people to manage. People are people. The skill set transfers.
Three worlds. Street, investigation, boardroom. One skill underneath all of them. Reading the man in front of you when the stakes are real.Along the way I realized that this skill is valuable to everyone. Think about the last time you had a conversation with someone. Were you listening to what they told you? Or were you busy formulating your next comment to keep the conversation flowing. Its partly a design feature that people have to make the other person comfortable. Fine in a social setting. Not okay in business.
In my experience not many people get good at this. The number one reason is listening requires attention, which is harder and harder for any of us in the fast-moving high tech environment in which we live. Also, if you don’t start talking right when the person talking to you stops, you look foolish, or the quiet becomes uncomfortable.Ive also noticed sales people practicing their pitch. Quietly rehearsing that they are going to say. I have watched it fail them in meetings as well. The minute the prospect goes into un-chartered territory and pulls them from the script, they are lost. Once you feel lost, you panic and the conversation takes a turn. Not in a favorable direction either. Or even it the conversation doesn’t stray, they talk flat out stating the rehearsed lines and failing to pick up on all the cues the other person sent them. Too much talking. Not enough listening. Like your gram used to say. God gave you two ears and one mouth. Use them appropriately.
The negotiation is won or lost in the things no one says out loud. Almost no one is trained to see them.
Here are the five rules I read by. Simple, but often not used.
## Rule One. The body does not lie.
The brain runs an old system underneath your thinking mind. Call it the survival system. It controls the responses you do not choose. When a man feels threat or stress, that system fires before his conscious mind catches up. He cannot stop it. He can manage his words. He has almost no control over the first reaction of his body.
That is why the body is the better witness.
## Rule Two. You must have a baseline.
This is the one people skip and its important. Not every mannerism or tic means the same thing to all people. A tell means nothing on its own. A man crossing his arms is not lying. He might be cold. He might always sit that way. You do not know, because you have not watched him long enough to know what normal looks like for him.
The baseline is his normal. How he sits when he is relaxed. How fast he talks. Where does he rest his hands. This is what you gather in your casual conversation before you launch into your actual interview. Talk ling enough to get a read on the baseline. Then pivot too uncomfortable. You are watching for change.
## Rule Three. Read clusters, never singles.
One signal could be coincidence. Three signals pointing the same direction is a message. A man touches his neck. Fine. A man touches his neck, breaks eye contact, and shifts his feet toward the door in the same three seconds. Now you have something.
Years ago I sat across from a man during a theft investigation who had his story tight. Calm voice. Steady eye contact, almost too steady. But every time I named a specific reference point in his story, his eyes did a hard block. A long slow blink that did not match anything else in his face.
His mouth was lying. His eyelids were flinching. This point in the story, this time frame was an issue.
I stopped chasing the story and started circling the dates. Circle in and cirlce in and you will see the other signs as the story starts wobbling. A person telling the truth has no issues with you drilling down on particulars.
That is the whole method in one interview. I had his baseline. I saw the change. I waited for the cluster. And I worked the exact spot where his comfort broke.
## Rule Four. Comfort and discomfort are the game.
Forget trying to spot a lie directly. No single move means deception.
What you can read, reliably, is comfort and discomfort. The body broadcasts both constantly. People are comfortable when they tell the truth and when they are getting what they want. They show discomfort when they are stressed, hiding something, or being pushed past where they want to go.
Your job is not to catch a lie. Your job is to track comfort and discomfort across the conversation, and to notice exactly when it shifts. That shift is the opening you work.
## Rule Five. The instrument has to be sharp.
This is where we turn the skill inward. You cannot read another man’s nervous system when your own is fried. Tired, soft, distracted, running on caffeine and cortisol, you miss everything. You see the words and none of the signals.
Physical discipline is not separate from this skill. It is the foundation of it. The calm to sit still and watch comes from a body that is not in chaos. I am almost sixty. I read a room better now than I did at thirty, and a real part of that is that I stay fit.Keep the body sharp and your mind will stay sharp.
Now remember this can take you far in business and sales. But never forget that some of the most important conversations you’ll ever have, happen at home. They happen at the kitchen table. Your spouse tells you they are fine. You can tell they are not. A child will tell you he is fine while every signal says he is drowning. If you can read the cluster, you can reach him.
Never forget to turn the skill inward. This is the most important advice that I can offer.
Start with the one in the mirror.
— B
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