The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Former FBI Agent: If They Do This Please RUN! Narcissists Favourite Trick To Control You! They're Controlling You Like A Puppet!

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Joe Navarro spent decades catching liars for the FBI, now he reveals the subconscious habits that are sabotaging your success Joe Navarro is a former FBI agent and internationally recognised expert in the interpretation and application of nonverbal behaviour. He is also the author of over 15 books such as, 'Be Exceptional: Master the Five Traits That Set Extraordinary People Apart'. In this conversation, Joe and Steven discuss topics such as, the quiet trick that gives you instant control, how to read any room like a book, the negotiation trick the FBI use, and the one gesture that reveals you’re not confidence.  00:00 Intro 02:25 Who Are You and What Have You Spent Your Life Working On? 04:30 What Is It You're Giving People? 07:16 How Would My Life Change If I Applied Your Knowledge? 11:13 Your Career 12:01 Behavioral Program at the FBI 15:01 Have You Caught Spies? 22:08 Story of Catching a Spy Using Flowers 26:42 How Many People Could Be Spies Walking Among Us? 29:16 Is Body Language Important? 34:43 First Impressions 37:33 How Do We Synchronize With Someone? 44:15 Eyebrow Knitting 46:08 Eyelid Touching 49:45 What Do Our Lips Give Away? 51:14 The Supersternal Notch 55:54 How Do We Negotiate? 1:02:49 Writing Down the Goal of Your Negotiation 1:06:51 Taking Control of a Situation 1:11:07 When Should We Walk Into Rooms? 1:15:09 Why Does Height Matter When Speaking to Someone? 1:20:25 What Clues in Someone’s Posture Should We Look For? 1:26:00 The Importance of Observing 1:27:42 Can You Train Confidence? 1:31:59 Don’t Rise at the End of a Sentence 1:34:20 Speaking in Cadence 1:36:31 Hand Gestures 1:38:12 Eye Contact 1:39:40 What to Do When Greeting People 1:42:59 Should We Be Taking Notes? 1:46:07 Handshakes 1:48:42 Behaviors You Wouldn’t Want From a Leader 1:49:34 Self-Mastery 1:51:52 The Importance of Taking Action 1:53:22 Observation 1:53:42 Psychological Comfort 1:57:59 How to Spot a Narcissist 2:04:07 Narcissism and Self-Belief 2:06:02 How Has Seeing All of This Changed You as a Human? 2:11:22 Is There a Proudest Day in Your Career? 2:13:10 The Importance of Connecting 2:14:53 What Do People Say They Like About You? Follow Joe: Instagram - https://g2ul0.app.link/mEIBxWMqESb  Twitter - https://g2ul0.app.link/2r4SCkOqESb  Body Language Academy - https://g2ul0.app.link/xDCgWDRqESb  You can purchase Joe Navarro’s book ‘Be Exceptional: Master the Five Traits That Set Extraordinary People Apart’, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/gbRf5uWqESb  Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACEpisodes  The 1% Diary is back - and it won’t be around for long, so act fast! https://bit.ly/1-Diary-Megaphone-ad-reads You can purchase the The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards: Second Edition, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb  Sign up to receive email updates about Diary Of A CEO here: https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt  Ready to think like a CEO? Gain access to the 100 CEOs newsletter here: https://bit.ly/100-ceos-newsletter  Follow me: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb  Sponsors: Shopify - https://shopify.com/bartlett Perfect Ted - https://www.perfectted.com with code DIARY40 for 40% off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I was in the FBI for 25 years. I have sat with spies and enemies of this country, and I learned a lot about human behaviors. Imagine being able to read other people and circumstances faster. It gives you a tremendous advantage in your life. I want to hear everything. So one of the first things I teach is... Joe Navarro is a former FBI agent

turned world-renowned body language expert. He helps people decode body language to improve communication, trust, and influence. One of the things that I found in negotiations is we as humans communicate quite a lot with our faces. For instance, we push this together when we don't understand something. And then the minute we hear something we don't like, blood actually begins to lead the lips, and then we begin to tighten them. Another behavior is that when there's a lack of confidence, insecurities, something we don't like, blood actually begins to leave the lips and then we begin to tighten them. Another behavior is that when there's a lack of confidence, insecurities, people immediately.

So once we understand these behaviors, you can take command of any situation. Confidence, is this something that you're born with or do you think confidence can be trained? It can absolutely be trained. So the FBI actually teach confidence and there's a lot of strategies. One of them is the most powerful gesture that we can use. And you see Musk do this a lot. But what I tell people is that the easiest way to learn confidence is to... Joe, we actually videoed my interaction with you when I met you. And I've got the video here.

So one of the things you immediately did was, don't do that, it's a no-no. Quick one before we get back to this episode, just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us

and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you. Thank you so much. Back to the episode.

Joe, zooming out, if someone asked you in the street and they wanted a two sentence answer, who are you and what have you spent your life doing? How would you answer that question? With one word, teaching. I think I've spent my whole life teaching. Even when I was in the FBI, starting in 1984, a lot of my job was obviously being an FBI agent, investigating crimes, chasing after spies and so forth. But I hired on in 1978, but as early as 84, I was already teaching. And I love it when people get it and they see a behavior, they understand the underpinnings, the foundation of why we do certain things.

I'll give you an example. Sometimes you'll come to a horrible scene and people immediately gasp, they take an air and then they cover their mouths or there's one point difference on the scoreboard and people are like this and they don't understand. This is back where we were surrounded by lions and tigers and we learned to cover our mouths so as not to broadcast our breath so that they couldn't see where we were or find us. And so the human body has a few shortcuts, I should say, the human brain.

They're called heuristics. And so one of them is to freeze. So when we hear a loud sound or we see a predator or a dog, we freeze. Obviously, whoever ran 300,000 years ago was bitten. And so we have these shortcuts, and it's always fascinating to me to share why we have these behaviors and why we... And you realize he just inhaled so you can hold your breath, and then we cover our breath so we don't broadcast for the predators to smell us.

You spend your time writing books, you spend your time teaching in various different contexts these days, whether it's on stage or in other environments on the internet. What is it that you're giving people? That's a profound question that I don't think I've been asked. I think the simplest answer is knowledge. Knowledge that perhaps they didn't have time to acquire. I grew up very poor. I was a refugee from Cuba, 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 garbage bins collecting things to read. It's that knowledge that I was fortunate enough to acquire, the love of reading. And I run into a lot of people who haven't had that benefit. Maybe they don't have a love of reading and of learning. I see myself as, okay, I have this knowledge. I have sat with terrorists, spies, bazooka-yielding enemies of this country, and other people never had that opportunity. And I learned a lot from that and from my reading.

So why not share it, make their life a little easier? When you say make their life a little easier, if I am to receive your knowledge, how would my life be better? How would I be more productive? That's a great question. Imagine being able to apperceive things way ahead of time because you can read other people and circumstances faster. Most people see a behavior and have to sit there and wonder, are they upset with me? Are they, as the Brits would say, my wife is a Brit, are they taking the piss or something?

Just any number of things. But imagine being able to look at something and decipher it infinitely faster so that you can devote yourself to other things. Where most of us break down the face into the forehead, the eyes, the ears, and so forth. 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 tremendous advantage. And also, in negotiations, being able to read others and at the same time

we forget that others are reading us and what is the perception that we want to convey. And if I were to attain all of the knowledge that you have to offer and I were to implement it, what areas of my life do you believe would improve? First, within yourself, for instance, being able to assess yourself. So if, let's say you have anger issues and so forth, or you're quick to trigger, well, how do I deal with that? Well, first you assess, you you assess what is going on. Your stomach gets upset, chest tightens, your emotions get up.

So what do I do then? Most people aren't taught that. So there's part of that. There's how to communicate, for instance, more effectively with your children. The simple thing that, for instance, and nobody teaches this, well, I do, is that 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 listen. It can be transformative if you apply that knowledge. Some people look at knowledge and they don't do much with it, but you can use it at home, you can use it at work, you can use it at work, you can use it in negotiations. For instance, one of the things that I teach is 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 is not a word. Well, you can use time as a non nonverbal to say I'm in charge. Whoever dominates and controls time, controls. And so even if I change the delivery of my message to slow things down, you're already taking charge in that negotiation. negotiation. It's a beautiful thing to witness when you execute it properly. So there are a lot of applications and you know and obviously like you, you basically study human behavior. You are a business person but you're actually really in the people business and And once we understand the needs, and some are biological, the wants, the desires, the preferences, 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 we'll have to do some due deal. The brain only recognizes fear. And so once you understand that, it gives you such amplitude to then pursue whatever it is that you're interested in doing more effectively.

And your career. So you were an FBI agent law enforcement for 30 years. I was in the FBI for 25 years, principally working in the area of counterintelligence. But in the FBI, you never wear one hat. I was also a pilot, so I flew surveillance. I was a SWAT team commander, so I did SWAT stuff and actually worked with the SAS from London. And then I was in the behavioral analysis program. So we used that skill set to work on catching spies. What is the behavioral analysis program? In the 89, 90, the FBI developed a very secret program to analyze not people that were dead, but actually how do we use human behavior to catch spies, to catch terrorists.

And then once we catch them, how do we get into their heads? How do we get them to tell us what they're up to, what their purpose is, and so forth. So we created this program. I, along with five other agents out of 12,000, were selected from the FBI to become part of this new behavioral analysis program, which was supposed to be classified except it was accidentally leaked. And our job was to look at the threats, national security threats, and then see how we can use our knowledge of human behavior to then attack that. So when you say you, much of your work was to catch spies, most of us have only ever heard of spies from watching James Bond and other things like that. So we don't actually

understand the sort of reality of spies. So if I just play completely dumb for a second, other countries send people into other countries like the United States or the UK or Australia, Canada, to do what? So every nation state has interests. A lot of it is obtained through diplomacy. A lot of it is now obtained through what we call espionage. So it's nothing like television in the movies. Some nations, especially hostile nations, send what we call hostile intelligence officers,

usually masquerading as a diplomat, but often masquerading as students or scientists or businessmen. And their job is to acquire knowledge in specific areas, military knowledge, science and research, intentions and plans, military intentions and plans. Or they may have interest in, for instance, what is going to be the wheat production in Argentina this year, because it may affect the price of grain across the world. So there's commercial espionage that goes on. And so every nation defends itself by trying to identify, well, who is here trying to spy? So that's what we do.

That's counterintelligence. That's espionage, and it's nothing like the movies. We don't jump from buildings. Although we do that sometimes, but it's not as glamorous as the James Bond stuff. So have you caught spies before? I have. I've arrested spies, multiple spies. Give me the most interesting example of a spy that you identified in court and what were they here doing and which country did they come from? Well, as it turns out, it was an American because we also have what we call turncoats.

So in the case of Roderick James Ramsey, he was an individual who, in 1989, I was asked to go interview because we thought he was a witness to something that had happened in Germany. He was a former army sergeant, had been kicked out of the army. The military wanted to find out if he knew anything about some missing documents, if he had seen anything. During my interview of him, which again, I thought he was a witness,

he was smoking a cigarette at his house. And I just mentioned an individual's name that had been at that base, but who had been under investigation by German authorities, in fact, by the Bundeskriminalamt, which is the equivalent of the FBI. There's no reason why he should react to that. It's just a name. But when I mentioned the name, his cigarette shook. And I knew enough about human behaviors to know that that physiological change had to be caused by something significant. Why would a name affect him? And 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. Clyde Conrad, that was the name of the person that had been under suspicion. the guy that I was interviewing, Rod Ramsey, was not. And so I left that interview and then I persuaded my supervisors to continue to talk to Rod Ramsey and that led to a 10-year investigation and the arrest of three, four, five, six, seven additional individuals.

So that Roderick Ramsey guy with the shaking cigarette was a, he was spying on America? What that he was doing, and that's a good question and forgive me for not explaining, while he was in the army, he and Clyde Lee Conrad were stealing military secrets from the US Army. They were taking US Army secrets and then selling it to the Soviet Union through the Hungarian intelligence service. So he was a traitor of the United States. So he was a traitor. And that is often the biggest problem for any nation state is the traders from within.

And they had elevated espionage to an industrial level, I mean, to the point where they actually no longer even use 35-millimeter cameras to photograph the documents. They were actually videotaping them so that they could expedite the thousands of pages. It was the most damaging espionage case in the history of the United States because they had compromised the United States' nuclear go-codes in Germany. And that left all of Western Europe exposed. Nuclear go-codes. Yes.

What is that? All of our nuclear assets around the world are controlled by two things. There is a what's called a permissive action link, which is like a last minute safety lock on each device. And then there is the that says there is authority to use this weapon. Ramsey was able to steal the actual nuclear go code. 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 the inherent danger in what they did was that not that they could initiate a launch, that can only be initiated at the national command authority level. But if this were compromised and given to, let's say, the Russians at the time, the Soviet Union, this is before 1989, then a foreign 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 pyramid structure and it's put high enough, right, let's say you control all of the East Coast. Maybe you don't want to spy for Russia, but for $100,000,

let's say you were willing to slip this in there and take the one that's there out. Okay. So maybe that helps your conscience in some way. Then you basically, if it's a pyramid sort of schema, you can paralyze everything below that. Okay, so someone could have changed the code, put a fake one in, which meant that it wouldn't work anymore. That at the highest level, then nothing would work if you had it accessed at the highest level. Did they go to jail?

Oh, yes. Yeah. The shaking cigarette guy went to jail. 33 years. Let me just finish it by saying this. This case put of all of Western Europe in danger, as well as the United States, the general who testified in this case said that had hostilities broken out, the defeat of the West would have been assured within three days.

That's how devastating this was. Yeah, let that sink in. Those are his words. The defeat of the West would have been assured because of the damage these individuals had done. Not all cases are as significant in terms of catching spies. I was reading about another one where you caught a man because of the way he held some flowers. Yeah, a lot of times it's just based on the behavior. You see how often somebody looks at their watch, right? But maybe when they're operational, they look at their watch more often.

And they filmed this guy who we thought was what we call an illegal. In the parlance of espionage, an illegal is someone who magically appears in the parlance of espionage and illegal is someone who magically appears in the United States and pretends to be an American, has always been an American, like the series, The Americans. But we had some clues from one of our sister services from another country and said, we think this individual may be someone who you need to look at that is pretending to be an American. We're looking at the unit, we bring the whole team together, all six of us, and we're looking at the movie, and it was filmed, just serendipitously, it was filmed on Valentine's Day.

And so we see him entering a flower shop and leaving the flower shop. When he exited, I said, definitely he's not an American. Everybody looked at me like, excuse me. I said, he's not from here. And he said, how? And he says, look how he's carrying the bouquet.

Americans carry the bouquet, bouquet up. Eastern Europeans carry it bouquet down. And continued to carry it that way. So I did what's called a presumptive. So we stopped him one day, and said, you know, I'm with the FBI and I said, do you want to know how we know? And that was 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 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, he had practiced everything. His English was immaculate. He sounded like a midwesterner and all that. After a few hours of having nice, really a nice chat, he agreed to work with us and admitted everything. What did he admit? That he had been sent here by a foreign government, that his job as an illegal was to be in the United States, act as an American. And most people don't understand, well, why would

a country, a nation, states spend so much money training these people to be like an American? And what they don't understand is their purpose here is for when hostilities break out. They can report on, for instance, train traffic, what trains are carrying munitions, what airports are being used for what purposes. Many times, as he later told us, they're giving caches of explosives so that they can then blow up certain things that no missile would be able to do. So that's their role in hiding in America. It's not to commit espionage, it's to be here in case hostilities break out. So you flipped him to working with the FBI? Correct.

And does that mean he doesn't get punished? Well he doesn't get punished because he didn't commit any crime other than immigration violation, but what he was able to reveal to us was nothing short of breathtaking. Which nation was this? I cannot say. But obviously they would have to have enough money and enough interest to carry out an operation like this. If you had to hazard a guess how many people that live amongst us have been sent from a foreign nation the diplomatic staff to as many as at one time the Soviet

Union, 85% of their staff were conducting espionage. I think numbers, so you have those. Now, if you're referring to like how many illegals, I would say at least you would have at least two dozen in the UK, maybe a dozen in France, and you know, you would have a whole host, a constellation of them in the United States, simply because we span five time zones. I believe the UK only spans one. I think I asked this in part because I was reading something that said much of the illegal immigrants that had come across the southern border of the United States, many of them

were Chinese. And there was an article about questioning whether that was potentially an intentional act to get illegal Chinese people into the United States for some future purpose. Big claims require big evidence and I haven't seen that. In my experience, the Chinese intelligence service prefers to use students and scientists. We have approximately 80,000 Chinese students here at any one time. I know that, for instance, in the early 80s and early 90s, they would be given allowances. It always impressed me that they were given small allowances for meals,

but large allowances for photocopying in the library. We call that a clue in the FBI. So they'd be given like $150 for eating, but they would be given thousands of dollars so that they could copy as much as they could from the libraries. It is much easier for them, for any nation, to send people here as students and for instance go into engineering or any of those things. On this subject of body language, it's highly contested because some people say body language does give us clues, some people say body language does give us clues, some

people say it doesn't give us clues because there's cultural differences. Is body language important? Well, let me address what you just asked. Well, number one, body language is supremely important because 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 that would be a minuscule sentiment

around the world amongst people who really have studied this. And I'll say why. So a baby is born without the capacity to speak, but the mother quickly learns through nonverbals whether that child is colicky, whether or not that child needs just to be reassured, whether they're cold or hot, and so forth. There's a lot of junk out there, and that is probably the cleanest word that I can use about body language, that this means that or whatever. But we were exquisitely prepared to communicate at any time whether or not we're comfortable or uncomfortable, whether we're confident or not understanding.

We had to evolve that precisely because we were always surrounded by predators. For instance, Stephen, 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. You didn't have to teach me that. Now, what I would argue is, am I seeing constraint? Am I seeing 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 percent 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, is it positively valence or negatively valence? Balanced, you see, deferring your glabella. What does valence mean? Valence really means it's balanced or how much electricity goes this way or this way.

What's the valence of it? So if something's positively valence. What does that mean? Positively valence, you're going to see gravity defying behaviors, you're going to see emphasis, you're going to see a lot of humor and alacrity and broad gestures, so forth. If it's negatively valence, it's, you know, restraint, you're going to see the It's, you know, restraint. You're going to see the furrowing of the glabella. You're going to see the tightening, the diminution of the lips. You're going to see a lot of facial touching. I don't know, right?

All these pacifiers. And so I would argue that stop looking for perfection. In fact, Dr. Ambadi 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 ample. You can look up her research. It was all done on the auspices of looking for what she called thin slice assessments. Thin slice assessments, all of your viewers should know. Because it showed us that from as little as three milliseconds, we actually get a pretty good assessment of each other. And we're right 75% of the time with three milliseconds.

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

Are they an 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. I was thinking as you said, I was thinking, fuck areas. I was thinking as you said it, I was thinking, fucking hell, like, I was thinking, if someone reads you that quickly, I was thinking about how easy it is to leave a bad first impression.

Yeah, well, you know, when I started in studying body language, which was formally in 1971, had no appreciation for schoolwork. So I created my own study program. So when I started taking a look at body language in 1971, I remember people saying, you know, the first 20 minutes are the most important for making an impression.

Then years later was 15 minutes. By the 1980s, somebody had said, well, it's the first four minutes. Time out. That's ancient information. We now know that that assessment is made in the first three milliseconds. That's faster than your blink rate. And you can begin to do things poorly and badly

and begin to negatively affect others in that amount of time because your subconscious is assessing others more quickly. And by the way, I didn't mention this, 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 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 are already programmed to adapt to that which dominates so that we can fit better. And this goes right from that to business because synchrony is harmony. 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

can look at the research that's been done on the lilt of crying babies. How does one synchronize? So if synchrony equals harmony, i.e. if we synchronize with each other, then we're going to be harmonious in business or in life or whatever. How do I synchronize with each other, then we're going to be harmonious in business or in life or whatever. How do I synchronize with somebody when I meet them? The first thing is at a distance. If I saw you walking down the hallway and you say, hey, Joe, you know, Steve, how are you? Right? I'm mirroring you. You know, this goes back to the work of Carl Rogers in the early 1960s. And he found that synchrony puts us in, sort of locks us in, into this binding, psychological binding of where you greet with your hand and arch your eyebrows, hey, well, that sends powerful messages. So if I do it,

can you imagine if you greeted me like this? And I went, yeah, how you doing? Yeah. It's like, we're totally out of harmony. We're totally out of synchrony. So we begin with the non-verbals. We begin, for instance, with the clothing. If you go to a meeting, we would probably dress the same way

or approximate each other. We would probably have this look at us right now with our hand gestures. We're literally mirroring each other's hand gestures to the point where our thumbs are precisely the same way. Why? Because we're comfortable with each other. We would lean in if we are

in good synchrony. Our speech pattern would synchronize. And to the point where you can actually work with individuals to calm them down or to see things your way or to appreciate, let's say in negotiations, to begin to be more receptive. People are more receptive if they can mirror your behaviors. So people are more receptive if they can mirror your behaviors. So if I let you mirror my behavior, then you're going to be more receptive to what I have to say. Is that what you're saying?

In general, we cannot be mimicking each other like it's a game. It becomes ridiculous. But there's no way we can negotiate if you're screaming and I'm stoic. 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 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, doesn't put us in synchrony. And everything that I have ever found was even when I was talking to terrorists, even when talking to terrorists who absolutely hated me, hated a lot of other things, if I could just get them grounded to the point

where we are talking basically the same way and using the same words. If they say, my family, don't say wife and kids. Use family, don't use terms of art. If they say, well, what's the price? Don't come back and say, well, the points on this, that's not what they asked. That's a great way to demonstrate The points on this are, that's not what they asked. That's a great way to demonstrate that you're not listening.

And the other thing I always emphasize is that for years, people said, well, try to reduce everything that's emotional so that it doesn't interfere. That's not how we evolved. That 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 senses a threat, it is there to deal with it.

And anything negative rises to prominence. That's one of the first things I teach. If it's really negative, it rises to prominence. We assess for it first, we deal with that first. And often in business, what we see is somebody had a hard time finding your location, they had a hard time finding your location. They had a hard time parking. Then they had to go to your receptionist who was on the phone and took about 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 and you want them to jump right into the meeting without all that 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 attack me, then I attacked back at it, you know, and then we we go through that whole storytelling which has mythical proportions and mythical aspects as archetypes. And if you subscribe to 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.

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. And yes, you're going to have to invest that time and then move forward so that you can deal with the transactional, the business and so forth.

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. Think a second ago, you referenced glabula. And this brings me to something I read in your work about eyebrow knitting. What is eyebrow knitting? So this little area between your eyes is called the glabella. And the glabella is great because at about, well, I've seen it in babies as early as three or four days, but 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 furrow the Globella, some people call it eyebrow knitting because we have nicer eyebrows nowadays, not bushy like the old days. They don't come together like they used to. So a lot of those expressions of I don't understand we use with the squinted eyes,

the furrowed globula. You know, sometimes we'll touch our face or scratch our face. Babies at 47 seconds, which I have directly observed, if you shine a light at a newborn baby, it will furrow the chin that they don't like it. And in my presentations, I have a 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 like. So we begin to communicate quite a lot actually with with our faces. What about eyelid touching? Yeah so for a long time including in some of my writing the theory was a lot of people cover their eyes, touch their eyes when they hear bad news and you said hey, can you help me move this weekend? Oh, geez, Steve, right? You see a lot of that. And I started to think about that

about five or six years ago. And so I took some classes in anatomy, human anatomy, and I'm pretty much convinced now that a lot of the facial touching, including the, you know, touching of the eyes and so forth, has to do with the innervation of the fifth cranial nerve and the seventh cranial nerve. Now, some of your viewers may find this interesting. That nerve, which goes to our forehead and actually goes into our

eyelids and so forth, and the seventh, which is the facial, is very short in distance to that part of the brain where it is received. And so I think, you know, I postulated, I wrote for Psychology Today that a lot of the reasons why we touch our face and why we touch our eyes, oh no, is because that pressure immediately goes to the brain and helps to relieve stress and because the nerve is so short. 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 its ability to anytime there's stress, we pacify ourselves.

And by the way, it's very interesting. In 1974, I was 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 blown away. The first time 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 hardwired in our DNA. This is part of our paleocircuits, as Dr. David Givens later taught me. And it has to do with how it feels. And that's why we touch our faces so much. So it's typically a negative emotion and a form of self-soothing for that negative emotion. I think that's a good synopsis. But also keep in mind how often we touch our faces when we're having a nice time.

Like when I'm reading, I find myself turning pages because I read very fast. I turn with my left hand, but I pacify or soothe myself by touching my, you know, it's a pensive pose. Women will play with their hair. All day long, our brain is asking us to do things to contribute 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 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 to answer your question, yes, but it also applies to when we're really enjoying a moment. What about our lips? You talked a second ago about like pursed lips and stuff. What kind of clues does the lips give away? Yeah.

So for me, the lips are the seismograph. The lips are like the emotional seismograph of the body. When we are comfortable and confident, our lips are full of blood, their color changes. The minute we hear something we don't like, blood actually begins to leave the lips and they become narrower and then we begin to tighten them. You know, if somebody says something I don't like, I might go, hmm, right? Or we begin to bite the lip because we're stressed, or we pluck it, pull on it, do all sorts of things to soothe it.

But the lips get very, show a lot of nervous emotion when we're under stress. So they're very much much as is the jaw. Like for instance, if you said something I might not agree with, I'd probably shift my jaw. Because when you shift your jaw, it puts pressure on the TMJ. That alone says to the brain,

go somewhere else. Don't struggle too much with that. So we're always doing something physical to counter anything that the brain might be undergoing. Tell me about the super sternal notch. So the super sternal notch, it has other names. You could call it the little neck dimple, this little area right at the bottom of your throat. It's a deep 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. In the literature, you hear about, oh, she clutched her pearls, right? 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 lack of confidence, insecurities, fear, apprehensions, or concerns, that people will go, oh my God, did you see that? Right? Oh, it's gone. It's back. And, you know, why is it all directed at this little area of the neck? And why do men clutch their necks and massage their necks when they're...

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 confidence is 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 behaviours. Wait, sorry, when you say ventilate, you mean giving yourself air? Yeah. So it could be...

So ventilating behaviors are behaviors of weakness because your body temperature has changed at 1 to 50th of a second, and what you're revealing is something negative is getting to you. So 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. 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 brain 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 you see this here in Florida, and we certainly saw it in November, after the hurricane, people come to see their house and they cover their their head hands are up here. Oh My god, you know, why why why do we do that again large felines? These are shortcuts. This is heuristics that have prevailed and say oh no, right and You and and you say well, we're no longer surrounded by them. Well, go to India, there were 238 attacks last year.

It is in our DNA. It is performed out of necessity to keep us alive. So we have these reactions, But so I look at the, certainly I look at the lips and the neck as good places for information. Just thinking then about why, yeah, you hold your head, but you also hold your head when you see something that's fallen over. So if you see like a building falling down

in an earthquake, you immediately. The other day, it was an old car and it was parked on a road that was at an angle and they forgot to set the brake. And I'm watching it slowly slide. And I found myself, I teach this stuff with my hands up here. And unfortunately, it was across the street and I couldn't get to it fast enough and it didn't do any damage. But you realize these shortcuts are with us for a purpose.

Much of the work you do as an FBI agent is some form of negotiation. And you spend a lot of time teaching people how to be good negotiators as well. You mentioned negotiation a second ago. I'm a business person. I do lots of negotiations, whether it's with clients, or suppliers, or interviews. I'm interviewing people all the time, which I consider to be a negotiation.

How do I improve my negotiation skills? What are the things I should be thinking about as I go into the negotiation? Well, they warned me. You ask profound questions. And you're right, in the FBI, I mean, when you're trying to convince someone to tell us the truth and put themselves in jeopardy, that is nothing but negotiations. You may look at it as interviewing, but like you said, even a conversation. You know, I look at negotiations in the same way that I look at interviewing.

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's highly simplistic. I've never heard that. Well, think of it. Well, what is the purpose? OK, well, we'll get to that in a minute. Either you have something I need or want or that. But there has to be communication.

And there has to be an understanding of what I mean and what I intend and so forth. So for me, it's a reminder of 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? What do you mean? Excuse me? What do you mean? Not about the confession. He says, you'll get the confession. Interviewing is about FaceTime. If you can get people to talk to you for two hours, three hours, four hours, in one case I interviewed an individual for 12 hours, they'll tell you everything you need to know,

but you've got to keep them in the room. And so I always view negotiations of number one is how do I communicate with you in a way that you'll want to talk to me for however long it takes to get to that purpose, which is the transaction. Now, you know, if I'm evaluating you for your services or if I'm negotiating for prices, you know, I want to hear what you have to say and I want to lay out what I'm interested in achieving and then reconciling or working around whatever discrepancies or issues there may be. I think when we look at negotiations that way, we can say, well, that means I got to do a lot of stuff up front, which is who am I communicating with? Who am I going to negotiate with?

What's the negotiating style? Are they stoic? Do they come in? Are they, do they throw things down? I mean, 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 wanna hear the numbers. Okay. Then how do we begin to deal with that? Because someone that comes in and is aggressive and so forth, you've got to deal with. What do you do? Do you rise to their aggression or do you try to bring them down to your position? Great question. The worst thing you can do is rise to that. You begin to dominate them by taking control of time.

Whoever controls time, controls. And so they come in, they throw the things down. So usually, you know, we'll start with, well, good morning to you too. Yeah, yeah, let's cut to the chase. And then the whole team I'm working with knows we're gonna slow things down. We are not gonna 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 write this down and we're gonna put this here. We're gonna put, and then this is the difference of, there's a lot of strategies.

But the first thing is, 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 equity. Now, I've had a lot of clients that have said, hey, you know, I've tried all your strategies, and, you know, this guy I'm dealing with is just, he's crass, he's just a bully. He comes in and stuff like that. So one of the questions I always ask is, is he the only source? 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 look at that. He gives you headaches. You don't sleep well. Every time you go to this, thinking of one client in particular. You come away with a nervous stomach and how long are you willing to tolerate that? If you're willing to tolerate it, then he's not going to change his style.

Then you come in and we change our exposure. So we're not gonna expose all of our staff to that kind of negativity. We send in our first person and say, look, here are the numbers and we work with that. But there are ways to dealing with the very toxic, but we don't allow them to get away with everything nor think that they're in charge.

And we do it in subtle ways. And we sort of derail their agenda. Maybe their agenda, based on past meetings, was to come in and just throw these things at us very quickly. Then we have to adjust to that. So there has to be rehearsed strategies for dealing with that. One of the things your work made me think about is how important it is to literally like write down the goal of my negotiation before I go into the negotiation or else you might get swept up in the emotion of it and the sort of heat of the moment. Yeah, 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 we actually negotiating for?

And so that's why I like the simplicity of effective communication with a purpose as a form of 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. Sometimes we go in there and your first assistant is always there also, but you also have an office counsel that is in attendance. What's their role? And what is my role? Something so simple as, what are you going to do? Look straight ahead the whole time?

Your attorney is speaking or are you going to look at him? Well, we know from the research that by looking at the person who's actually talking on your side actually potentiates the gravity of what he's saying, that at the most emphatic points that when that attorney makes, and you did this earlier, you want to steeple because steeple is the most powerful gesture that we have to convey confidence. Steepling is in this sort of hand gesture. Is this. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel did this a lot.

You see Musk do this a lot. You see Steve Jobs used to, a lot of pictures of Steve Jobs doing that. But you know, you reserve that for that point in time when you want to emphasize. And so the worst thing you can do is just to sit there 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 right, Steven, that's how you're perceived. And that's how you're perceived. And that's what happens. The experiments, which were done first with babies, found that if you take a baby, and it's called a still face experiment,

so if you take a baby and you look away and look back and smile, the baby's content. You can do that several times. But on the last one, you turn around and you hold very still. The babies become incontrollable. They have fits. They're really troubled by that. So the experimenters said, well, yeah,

but at what age does that 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. You see, you find it disconcerting. And what the brain perceives is a threat. And you lose trustworthiness. Because you can't read what this person's thinking either way. I'd rather you be unhappy than at least I can put that in a box. Well, that's one way to look at it.

I'm not sure that anybody knows the precise reason for it, but what we do understand is that the still face, which if you're in a virtual call, you want to nod, you want to tilt your head, you want to nod, you want to tilt your head, you want to make different gestures, but the worst thing you can do is hold still. And then in negotiations, when you're talking to the team and saying, look, when we're going in there, you know, I don't want anybody to just sit there. I want expressions.

And when someone is speaking, you know, you're looking at them in the same way that the other side would do. But you have to plan. Now, the other thing I find with negotiators, 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 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. 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, would you like some tea? How would you like it? And so forth. And what we're actually witnessing is the transformation of you have now become the dominant person by becoming the archetypal, the father or mother figure.

Because you're offering something. Because you're offering it and you're in control of the food and the brain. People often wonder, well, why was it in Stockholm, 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 victims were defending the bank robbers. It was very simple. They became the father figure, and the hostages became the children. So I actually didn't know that story.

What happened was there's a bank robbery. And in Stockholm, the bank robbers went in, held the victims hostage. Eventually they were rescued, but what they found was that 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 subservient.

Is that what happens in domestic abuse cases? Yes. You nailed it. You nailed it beautifully. You're the first person to get that right away. And that's why you often see this in domestic abuse cases. And you say, she just got beat up. How can she defend him, usually the case? And you realize, oh my God, we have like a Stockholm syndrome where he's the provider. He's the only one working or this or that. But, you know, getting back to negotiations, I think it's 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 conversation. So when you're thinking about walking into the room and all these where you sit, if you're walking into the room to interview a terrorist, 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 what are you thinking about seating positions? Right. So one of the things that I always insisted is I would walk into the room first.

So they would already be in there. No, no, no. I, we would, we would walk to the room. Oh, with them. With them. And then I would just make them wait there a minute. I'd open it. I'd take a look and I'd say,

oh, just want to make sure the room is safe and there's nobody in here. I've walked into people before. That begins to establish my dominance. And then I would say, why don't you take a seat right there? People ask me, well, why are you being so nice to these criminals? Well, first of all, I go back to what that old timer said. I want FaceTime.

I don't care what it takes to get FaceTime, but I also want to be in charge. And if by being nice to him and pointing to the nice chair there achieves that, then so much for me. And then I always try to sit in a way that I sit higher. Now in the case of Ramsey, we'd literally get the room ahead of time and we would change the furniture so that I always set about an inch to two inches higher than he did. He never noticed that.

Ramsey was the guy whose cigarette was quivering. Was quivering. In the end, we ended up doing 37 interviews. They were all done in hotel rooms, mostly in the Orlando area. And we would go in ahead of time, and we would just arrange the furniture or bring in furniture, but I always sat higher than him. He never understood that. He always sat on the couch, which somehow,

about that much was shaved from the couch, so that it always sat a little lower. And so he was always literally slightly looking up to us. And then we controlled when we would take breaks. And I, you know, and I was always attentive and I would say, you know, would you like something to drink now? I said, well, this is such a good subject. Why don't we take the break now? And you had the drink now, and then we'll, so we can continue. What he didn't realize was that I was establishing control over him by sort of dictating. It would be no, you know, I'm sure your listeners might be saying, boy, that's manipulative.

Yeah, but in the transactional phase, it's no different than you saying to your crew, I need to take a break right now and go to the restroom. Okay, take a break. I don't 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 would say, well, I could use a smoke break right now,

and I'd say, hang on a second, because what you just said was really interesting. And my partner, Mrs. Terry Moody, I loved her. She was a great partner. She looked at me like, really? You're going to push it that much further? But it worked to the point where, I mean, here's a guy who had his attorney's phone number

on him at all times and he never used that. You mentioned the height of the chairs. What does height matter in this context? Because I was thinking as well about Zoom and the interesting thing about now about Zoom, we're talking about this before we start recording and the fact that most of our conversations are happening digitally now is we don't often think about height. And I'm sometimes on a call with one of my colleagues or partners, and I'll often ask them before the client or whoever we're doing business with joins the call to adjust the height, because they're like looking down into the lens, or they're looking up into the lens, which I think is also suboptimal.

Good term, suboptimum. There's a lot to be said about height, just as there is a beauty dividend, right? So the beauty dividend, and you can look this up, the beauty dividend, well-researched, basically says you're going to earn 8% per year the rest of your life just if you are good looking. That's the beauty dividend. You can go online and look at all the studies and the statistics that go with it. There's also a height dividend and it is universal.

If you look at Americans that are 6 feet 2 inches, so a little taller than me, accounts for about 3% of the population, unless you go to the Fortune 500 companies, and then they account for 39% of all CEOs at 6'2". at 6'2". Whoa! That, my friend, is an order of increase. And you say, are taller people smarter? No. No. It has to do with the benefit of being tall. There is a dividend. And so we tend to see that across the world. The word dividend for anyone that doesn't know basically means a benefit or a reward one could think of it as. An advantage. You have an advantage. So with Ramsey, what was the dividend by you making your chair just an inch taller? What were you doing, Tim? You taking away his power a little bit?

Making you more powerful? I had to because he had all the cards. He was the spy. He had all the evidence in his head or in his possession, or the Russians had it. The Russians weren't gonna give it to us. They're the enemy. They said, too bad, mates, but 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 his IQ. He had the second highest IQ 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. for about 2% of the population, but about 20% of CEOs. So your malignant narcissist who overvalues themselves and tends to devalue others, and in my case with him, he had narcissistic traits, which I could deal with, but his superior intellect was breathtaking and he had perfect recall. So in a way it was frightening because all he had to do was transport himself to another country and he could sell all the secrets that he had memorized.

So I had to play a 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 be flippant with the knowledge that he knew, especially once we knew that he had compromised the nuclear go-codes. Do you mind if I pause this conversation for a moment?

I want to talk about our show sponsor today, which is Shopify. I've always believed that the biggest cost in business isn't failure, it's the time you waste trying to make decisions. Time spent hesitating, overthinking, or waiting for the right moment. When I started my first company at 20 years old, I had no experience and no money. What I did have was an idea and the willingness to move fast. And that made all

the difference. If you've been thinking about starting your own business, Shopify makes this entire process so much easier. With thousands of customizable templates, you don't need coding or design skills, you just need a willingness to start. Shopify connects 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 slash Bartlett and sign up for a £1 per month trial period. That's Shopify.com slash Bartlett. What about posture?

Because that's kind of one way to make yourself taller. Are there any clues in someone's posture and how important is sort of playing with our posture to create a different impression? Yeah, absolutely. Not just posture, but territory. So I look at posture as 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 event and a lady came up to me and she says, you're getting ready to go on the stage. How can you not be nervous? And I said, well, I am nervous. I'm just hiding it. I'm acting like I'm in control, but I've learned to do that because you don't want to look like a nervous FBI agent. Trust me.

You want to look cool, calm, and collected. In negotiations, you don't want to look needy. You don't want to look desperate. And at the same time, you don't want to come across as you're indifferent and sometimes that demeanor, that posture, those gestures, the totality of it has a lot of meaning. Now you have to keep in mind, a lot of successful businessmen I'm running into

are actually on the spectrum, right? So the autism spectrum. And so they don't make as much eye contact. They may have behaviors that are irregular. I have one I deal with who has Asperger's and so he sometimes jerks. And so there's a lot of discomfort I find from others in reading him.

I don't have any problem. I just see it, okay, this is his normal behaviors and we get around. But you can tell a lot about 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 nonverbals and saying, you know Are they communicating confidence or are they communicating?

desire or need or any kind of frailty? 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. And there were two final stage candidates and I was just reflecting as you were saying how one of the final stage candidates was extremely calm and sat back in their chair, and the other one was very much leaning forward. And upon reflection, the second candidate wanted the job a lot more, but the first candidate was probably more experienced, more confident,

and had higher self-worth. And their ability to be so relaxed in that environment and kind of own the chair in my boardroom, it actually made me kind of want them more, because they were signaling to me that they had lots of options. They weren't intimidated, they weren't scared, they weren't nervous about this opportunity. You know, that's an interesting observation, Stephen, and it's very good that you observe the discrepancy. One of the things that I look for is what is their role going to be?

I don't mind that somebody is nervous. 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 people when they hire, they never ask that question. They tell, you know, I can do Excel. I know Microsoft, that's great. Please tell me what problems you have solved at your last job.

And, you know, how efficiently did you do it? How do you know if they solved the problem or they were on a team where someone else solved the problem? job and how efficiently did you do it? How do you know if they solved the problem or they were on a team where someone else solved the problem? Because one of the things that I look for 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.

So when that little child finally figures out how to, you know, you give them a trick lock where would 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 say, and I solved it, I solved it, I got in there. Yeah, right?

The person that's just telling you this story doesn't know the emotion that goes with it. The other thing that I look for is, and they may be nervous or whatever, is how good are they at observing? This is the one question that has 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 at observing people?

The great thing about companies that seek this is, all right, so when you go and you business, you go see your subsidiary, what are you looking for? What are you observing? Well, when I look at the books, how about the attitude of the people? Are people content? Are they happy?

Or do they all look like they're constipated? I mean, I've been into companies that the minute I walk in, I go, oh, geez, you got management problems here. And the guy goes, did somebody tell you? 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. And it's like they hired for this skill,

but is that really what you need when you actually need somebody that is a great observer? What about confidence? Is this something that you're born with? Would you think confidence can be trained into somebody? I think confidence can absolutely be trained. Coming from Cuba where we lost everything, arriving as a refugee, having nothing. And then all of a sudden, the FBI asked me to become, and 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 you guys serious? It's like, I'm 23 years old. I'm barely learning how to shave. And with no confidence whatsoever. And they teach you to be confident. You can teach confidence. And what I tell people is the easiest way to learn confidence is to be confident about one thing.

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

You know, with me, I was confident in playing football. Okay? I was fast. I could do certain things. I was confident about that. I knew that in basketball I could shoot a three-pointer. Okay. Confident about that. But not confident about 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 cannot, unless you're a world-class actor, you cannot walk into a place and all of a sudden pretend 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 elbows are in, they're almost mousy looking, they're nervous, they're looking about constantly, they don't know where to look. And, you know, and I, and I tell them, know your subject, know your subject, because the minute they begin to talk about that, they begin to flower and change. So, so it's competence in a particular area,

or vertical creates confidence, which then kind of permeates. or vertical creates confidence, which then kind of permeates. Yes. And that's what the military, like the British military, that's what they take young people, 17, 18, 19 years old, and they say, we're going to change you into a warrior. Well, how's that? By running, by getting you to climb up that rope, by doing any number of things where you can come away and feel that confidence. You talked in a video that I watched for Wired about a variety of different ways we can exhibit and be more confident 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. The other one was about your voice. Use a deeper voice and do not rise at the end of the sentence as if it's a question.

Right. So let me talk about those. Don't try to reinvent what's successful. A confident person doesn't have to talk fast and doesn't talk high. I remember the first arrest I made and I said, stop! This is the FBI. My voice was, nobody was going to stop. Nobody. Nobody. And the guys that were with me said, Joe, you got to work on your voice.

You have to have a command voice. Well, a command voice is down. Like? Like, stop right there. I'll give you an example. You talk to most executives and you say, no, that's not acceptable. It's too high.

No is always said down. No. Are we gonna? No. That sounds like a complete sentence. You get them to practice saying no. Absolutely. I did it for 10 years. Every February, the guy that, Brian Hall, who encouraged me to write one of my books called Louder Than Words invited me to go to Harvard. And I'll never forget, I had a complete Harvard class.

I think there was 76 students, and I had them all saying the word, no, no, no, going lower and lower. He had stepped out of the room to take a call. When he came back, he thought I had a cult going on. I said, no, Brian, I'm teaching them the right way because these are going to be future executives. That you don't say, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Now that sounds like a complete sentence. No. No. That's not how it's going to work. And it's always lower. So we work on the words. More importantly, we work on the gestures, how much territory you occupy, because the territory that you occupy, if you're here...

Sort of like shivled and tight. You're shriveled. You don't want to be excessive. You don't want to look like a clown, but you want to have the space that you're entitled to. And then I think it's very important to learn to speak in cadence. When you speak in cadence, and I do it, is people listen, they have time to process what you're saying, but they can also attach the emotion that

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

We will fight on the beaches We shall fight on the landing grounds We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills We shall never surrender the cadence is Not just seductive, it is powerful. And a lot of executives don't know how to use it. They just, 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 you know. There's a real authority when you slow things down just that little bit and provide the gaps. Which goes back to what I said, who controls time, controls.

You're establishing control over the theater of the negotiations. They don't teach that. Your hand gestures as well. You've got very complimentary hand gestures to what you're saying. Even as you're speaking to me, you just went, who controls time? Controls. Controls. And so it's, I'm wondering how our hands-

And my fingers are spread out, establishing how much we care about something. When we fear, our fingers come together. When we fear a lot, our thumbs tuck in. I've seen people in negotiations give up a lot of information because all of a sudden they're tucked their thumbs in. I say, okay, they're scared because dogs tuck their ears in, humans tuck their, the hands, no matter how dark you are, your hands, the palm of the hands are very visible.

That evolved with us because they're expressive. So even in low light, we can use our hands to communicate. The more confident we are, the further our fingers are. I care. Imagine if I said, I care about you versus I care about you. It's a big difference. So in the first example, you kind of had your fingers together. In the second, you spread them out. This, I care about this. And so they potentiate the message. 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 we feel. And eye contact. Yes. Lots been said about eye contact and the importance of it. What should I understand about eye contact confidence? Eye contact in some ways is, I mean, we could spend about 40 minutes on it because, and as a teacher, I can tell you because you want to have good eye contact. For instance, if you're dealing with a woman, you don't want it to go,

you know, normal eye contact is here. You don't want it going down to here to the breasts. Okay, so you want to stay looking at the face, right? So you want to keep it in the face, but you also don't want to intimidate unless you want to keep it in the face, but you also don't want to intimidate, unless you want to intimidate. So you have to employ things like eye gaze behavior. You have to employ things such as looking away.

Now, you and I both look away as we're thinking about examples and different things. You can use eye contact for emphasizing. Look how often we use eye contact or our eyes to communicate opinions. Maybe with your partner you said, what do you think? And immediately they'll look, he or she may look at your partner, not yours specifically,

but somebody you live with and they go, mm. look at your partner, not yours specifically, but somebody you live with, and they go, so with our eyes, we often give our opinions. So in negotiations, it's an important area. One of the things I think a lot about is about rapport building very, very quickly. You know, someone that does this podcast a lot, I sometimes I overthink it a little bit, especially when I'm meeting people like you, because I'm like, Oh my god, this guy's going to be reading everything about me and da da da da da. Yes.

So sometimes I'm like, I think I overthink it when I meet someone like your body language expert, someone who's good at behavioral science. And I want to talk about rapport building, we actually videoed our interaction today. So when when I walked in, I've got the video here, let me have a look at this. We'll put it on the screen for anyone that's watching. But I just want you to analyze my interaction with you when I met you, and tell me how it could have been better. Alright. Hello Joe. So first of all, you were waiting for me with arms akimbo, which is I'm in charge, I'm the big guy, and so your arms were here. Yeah, I got it.

But you know. I actually do remember that. I remember thinking, get your hands off your fucking hips. No, no, no, but it's fine. This is your domain. I expect this from you in your domain. But one of the things you immediately did was you immediately went around the table

and you went forward to shake my hand, right? So one of the things that I say is, how much people matter to us is determined by how fast we act. Okay. So the fact that you actually went from there to here and you did it immediately, it demonstrates that you care.

As early as 11 months, a baby will recognize individuals or even inanimate objects that care just based on how quickly they move. Towards them or just? Towards them to do something for them. It's called a prosocial act. And babies as young as 11 months recognize that. So this is something that,

it doesn't surprise me because you've been successful. Success for me is measured on how well people get along with others. Thank you for the work, appreciate it. You're very, very smart. You look like someone who worked in the FBI. It's the FBI uniform. This is the...

Will I be miked or it's just this? Just that one. Just that one. Perfect. Okay. You said something charming about how I was dressed, which I appreciated. This is always a good reminder to me of how old I look now. And the only note that I would add is, I would have remained standing a little longer. And then make sure that, you know,

as I'm sitting, then you sit at the same time. Okay, so invite you to sit and sit with you. At the same time, rather than allow me to all now, if you can see in that instance, I'm actually still over you while you're already seated. That is in negotiations, that would be, as we say, contraindicated. What does that mean? It is. It's a no-no. It's a big word for Steve. Don't do that.

What about taking notes? This is something that I've started doing actually in the last six months when I'm in meetings in my companies in the UK, is I have an iPad now. And when someone's speaking, it actually helps me because of the way that I think and process and learn. And it helps me also to not be listening to speak. I, if they say something, then I immediately have an idea that I'm worried I'm going to lose. Instead of, you know, that kind of behavior, I can write down what I'm about to say. And it gives me more time to listen. But one of the things I noticed in your work is you say that in terms of showing someone you care, taking notes is a really effective way to do that.

Well, what I would say to you is what I would tell the therapist. One of the biggest mistakes therapists have started making is they sit there and because a lot of them are earning a lot less money and they don't have a secretarial pool like they used to, they now type their observations as they're talking to their client. I think that's a big mistake. And from the studies that my company did in surveying, not the therapists, but their clients, the ones that were willing to talk, it's terrible. What I tried to emphasize is have material in front of you. And if there's a particular note, write a little something, or if you have somebody with you

that's going to be the note taker. I don't want to miss anything. If you're writing, you're not observing. And observing is actually more important than writing. Now, if you started talking and mentioned, if you had mentioned the supra-sternal notch, I might have, okay, is that super or supra sternal notch?

Okay, that's a worthy note. And then I come back and revisit. But if I'm writing all the time, I have young people tell me, well, you're just an old timer. This is how we've grown up. I can tell you that from an evolutionary standpoint, we cannot outdo our DNA. We just cannot simply, for instance, schools come in and say, you know, well, you can't hug the students anymore. Okay. Don't expect, you know, why do we have depressed students?

Why do we, there's any number of things, but I can tell you this, we evolved to hug, to touch, to greet each other, you know, your best mate, all that stuff. When we used to wrestle with our buddies, right? That play, that play wrestling, all that is is covert touching. It's because our species needs it.

Humans need to touch. There are certain things that humans need and one of them is this facial interactions. When you're focused on writing, you're actually taking away from that. How do you think about handshakes then? Because handshakes are how we kind of touch strangers in a socially acceptable way. Is there a good way to handshake? There is. And there's bad ones.

So I always say when you shake hands, the fingers are down, right? A lot of people put their finger up. And so when they shake hands, let's see if we can reach each other. And so when they go like this, now you have their finger in this, this is an erogenous area of your body. This is what you kiss. The veins. Yeah.

Well, the, the, the inside of the wrist is an erogenous area. And so now you have this man's finger here and it's, and it's just weird. So the fingers are low and the pressure is applied equally. So you don't try to... Donald Trump hit the squash. Yeah, don't do a Donald Trump handshake or don't jerk the hand. Don't squeeze it too tight. Don't play Jiu Jitsu.

People my age have arthritis. I'm never impressed. I've had, you know, men come in and they're big and burly and they squeeze my hand and it's like, are you serious? What about the cupping? Right. So cupping of the hand is okay with really people you know, but most people don't like to have their hands engulfed. If you want to touch somebody else's hand, so you shake the hand and then you touch the upper arm and all of that. For anybody that likes matcha, for anybody that likes lattes, one of my companies has

just launched canned matcha lattes. And I was speaking with the founder, Marissa, and she said that creating this product has been no easy feat. They tried launching in 2021, but as is often the case in business, the development process turned out to be extremely complex. So they've spent the last four years testing and refining every single detail to create this, which is a Perfect Ted Matcha Vanilla Latte and a Perfect Ted Matcha Strawberry Latte. So what we have here in these cans is barista quality matcha straight

from the can and it tastes like it's just been made from your favorite cafe. Naturally sweet and naturally creamy in a can and the reason why I've invested in this company and I drink matcha is because matcha as an energy source gives me lasting energy without the big crashes that I get from other products. You can grab their ready to drink canned matcha lattes at Waitrose, Tesco's, Holland & Barrett and here's a little incentive for you. If you go to perfected.com and use code DIARY40 you'll get 40% off your first order. Please don't tell anybody, keep that to yourself. That's code DIARY40 you'll get 40% off on perfected.com. So go use that before they change it. I've got another video for you here.

So he starts out with an arm down, but he's touching his neck, covering his neck. He's crimping the left side of his face and he's massaging his forehead and his neck. So I mean, we look at it and we say, okay, these are all emblematic of psychological discomfort. Now, why that is, we see his blink, or eyelid flutter, he's touching his face. Why is that? I don't know.

It's not, now there's a cathartic exhale. Looks like he's reading one of my books. What I would tell you is, is these are all the behaviors you wouldn't want from a leader. You would certainly, you see that from a wouldn't want from a leader. You would certainly, you see that from a follower, but not a leader. You'll never see a general do any of that. Certainly not in the US Army or the British Army. All the behaviors that he's doing, which are pacifying or indicators of some sort of psychological discomfort are also all the behaviors

that we equate with lack of confidence. Leaders are often exceptional and you say that exceptional individuals are made not born and that's a good thing because that puts this level of excellence within reach of you and me and you've identified several traits that make someone an exceptional person. One of those is self mastery. Self mastery, whether it was Alexander the Great who sought the learnings of, let's see, Socrates taught Plato, who taught Aristotle, who, Alexander. So Aristotle taught Alexander the Great, and he pursued the knowledge. Thomas Edison, one of the greatest inventors in America, 1300 patents,

left school at age six, sought the knowledge. I mean, as humble as I came from, we were so poor, I literally had to go to garbage cans to steal books and magazines to learn. You can create your own apprenticeship program and you can learn to master a skill or a knowledge or an athletic move, whatever. Someone who is self-mastered, what have they accomplished? They have accomplished something that nobody can take from them. Nobody can take that from me. What is it? All that knowledge, all that skill, all that experience, nobody can take from me.

Why is the word self in there? Self mastery. Because so much of it, nobody, you know, we were talking earlier and I said, I try to read two books a week so that way I can have read about a thousand books every decade. Nobody's telling me to do that. And so it's self. Why? Because I wanted to know because, you know, why did Leonardo da Vinci want to know

the eddies, water eddies in the water, or the length of a woodpecker's tongue? Who cares? It doesn't matter. It was self-imposed. And we in this, are the beneficiaries of Leonardo da Vinci's interest in water eddies, which then helped him to draw hair of the Mona Lisa. We're the beneficiaries of that. I think self-mastery is more important than I think what a university can teach you, a university can teach you how to think, but it doesn't teach you mastery. So is this, because I'm hearing like obviously learning and the pursuit of knowledge, and then there's this other part of self mastery, which feels like self awareness, being aware

of oneself, like... Well, I think you're an example of self-mastery. It's the only word around in the universe of languages that encapsulates being able to take what is available and making it a part of your life. And so whether it was my grandmother teaching me how to talk to people or my mother or my father or my mother showing me how to actually shake hands, my sister showing me how to dance,

this is all part of self mastery. Now I could have rejected all of that. And a lot of people do. A lot of people reject science or reject, oh, I don't wanna learn how to dance. I don't wanna learn to of that. And a lot of people do. A lot of people reject science or reject, oh, I don't want to learn how to dance. I don't want to learn to do that. Okay, that's your option. But there's an exquisite elegance in being able to look at the world around you and learn from it, which you have done and say, I'm going to put that to work. Why should I reinvent what other people have experienced? I'm going to adopt that which I like and prefer, and then I'm going to put it to good use.

The second one is observation, which I think we've talked about. Observation, you know, the great example is a parent who can observe the immediate needs of children and so forth. And I see people now that they're so... I was at the airport yesterday coming here, and there was a family that the whole time they were waiting, not once talked to each other, nor were they aware of what the others were doing. I find that difficult because when my daughter was growing up, I never took my eyes off of her. I see people on their devices as this whole family was, and they're missing out on a lot of things, a lot of information.

The great inventions are made through observation. The Velcro, do you know the story of Velcro? In the middle of World War II, a Swiss guy goes up in the mountains and comes back hiking, right? And he looks at his socks and he says, man, these chiggers, these little... Is it a plant?

Yeah, it's just the little seedlings that they give off that stick to things. Here in America, we call them stickers. There's all sorts of names. And he looks at it under a microscope, and he notices that they don't just stick out. They're actually curved. And in curving, they get stuck on everything.

So he says, I'll just invent this. Now what's interesting we talk about observation is he had seen this one time. How many millions of people had seen it but it's the observer that can capitalize on it and that's why I tell executives when you hire, hire good observers, because they're going to save you. They're the ones that are going to say, hey, I'm seeing some trends here that are bad. So observation is key.

And then we transition right into the next one is, most people think communication is just about words. And communication is principally, most effectively and most influential, a nonverbal across every culture. And the misconception that words triumph over nonverbals, go to a funeral. Go to a funeral and see how well words work versus putting your arm around somebody

and let them sob on your shoulder. It's the primary means by which we communicate. It's the primary means by which we show we care and it's the primary means by which we show we care and it's the primary means by which we show empathy. The fourth one is action. And for me, it really links to both the second point, which was observation, but also to your story about Velcro,

because there must have been many people that thought, oh my God, that thing's sticking to me. And they did nothing. Maybe even some people who thought, oh, that could be useful. But then the hard part often is doing something about it. It's the action. Is doing something, as I talk in the book,

be exceptional. Do something that is pro-social or beneficial, but don't wait. Right? The worst thing we can do, if you wanna let people know that you don't care, take your time. And this happens all the time.

You go to a counter, you walk up to a counter and say, hey, you know, I'd love some help with this, you know, and then they just, well, I don't know. Let me check in the back and they take their time walking to the back and then they take time walking back. You might as well be shouting, I don't care. What I tell managers is, that's your responsibility. Why did you hire someone who can't move at the speed of light? Because movement is equated with caring.

So if that's their attitude, you might as well have a sign that says, I don't care. Now you could say, well, you know, maybe they have a mobility problem. Fine, front it. I'd say, you know what, it's going to take me a minute because I just had my hip replaced, but I'm going to address it right now." We can forgive, but when we don't show we care by action, that is so immediate. And the fifth one is psychological comfort. And you write in the book that this is the

most powerful strength humans possess. Absolutely. What's interesting about humans in the years that I've studied them is that humans don't seek perfection. The baby doesn't care if it's sucking its own thumb or the twin sister's thumb. Humans don't seek perfection. What we seek is psychological comfort. And whoever provides that is the soonest winner. It is as simple as that.

If you can, you're too young, but I remember when computers came out and they were in ugly boxes and they were in ugly stores and they were behind the counter and they were ugly. Steve Jobs comes around and says, no, we're going to put them on these lab tables like we have and we're going to make them accessible. So this mysterious device that is such an ugly word that you forget that people hated computers so much they used to come in at night and cut the cords. That's how scared people were of computing. And he went from 4% shares of the computer market to whatever it is now, 67 or whatever the number is.

Why? Psychological comfort. And I tell this to businessmen, when you're negotiating, what you're negotiating for is can you create enough psychological comfort that the other person can live with that? So that I can feel, okay, maybe I didn't get everything I wanted, but for this period in time, I can live with that psychological comfort. I can go back to the board and report that this was the best that I can do and so forth. Aim for psychological comfort. And how does one go about creating psychological comfort in any context? You started it today. You welcomed me in and then you said, what would you like to drink? Would you like some water? Would you like some tea? Would you like some coffee? That begins the process of psychological comfort. We're in a quiet environment.

Less noise, more psychological comfort. Less lighting, it doesn't hurt the eyes. Anything that starts at a biological, physical, physiological, and then cognitive level. So psychological comfort, we're negotiating. So you want to offer 3000, I think I'm worth 6000. So how do we achieve that? Well, I'm going to let you tell me your side of why you can only provide 3000. And I'm going to provide you my side. You can only provide 3,000 and I'm going to provide you my side. Okay.

The fact that we actually get to tell our story begins the process of psychological comfort. Now, in the end, I may have to abide by that because there's only so much money. And if it's not in the budget, it's not in the budget. But there may be some things that you can add to say, look, this is all we have at this time, but we're gonna reevaluate this in three months. And if we can then, depending on earnings, get you another $500 a month, we will do it then.

We do it incrementally, but always thinking about what provides psychological comfort. Being harsh, being indignant, not being attentive to needs, wants, desires, and even preferences create psychological discomfort. In 2009, you wrote a book called Narcissists Among Us. Yes. And earlier on, you said that roughly 2% of people are narcissists, but then 25% of CEOs? 22%. As high as 22% of CEOs have narcissistic traits. Yes. CEOs have narcissistic traits, yes. Okay. And if someone's dealing with a narcissist,

what do they have to do in order to manage that situation? Because according to those numbers, roughly like 98% of people aren't narcissists, but probably will deal with them in their lifetime. And then, you know, a significant amount of people work with them. Even though they account for 2% of the population, we will work with or for somebody like that. So what we have to keep in mind, well, what do we mean by narcissist?

We're not talking about the person that looks in the mirror and likes to splash on cologne and comb their hair. This is a person that overvalues themselves, but has to devalue others. This is a person who only thinks about themselves and doesn't care of what suffering or what's going on through your life, wants you to be loyal but is not loyal to you, is disinterested in your personal affairs but wants you to be interested in theirs. There is your malignant narcissist. Oh, and by the way, they inherently tell lies but expect you to tell the truth to them. Now, the effect is, well, if they're only 2% of the population, but we see them in a lot of corporations, we're going to work for them, then how do we get along?

Well, first is recognizing that they're going to devalue us. Now, sometimes they devalue you by not inviting you to meetings or sharing information, but many times it's by the way they treat you, yelling at you, being disparaging. I mean, I have some things that are horrific. So what do we do when we have people like that? Number one is recognize what you're dealing with. And that's why I wrote the dangerous personalities because I have these robust checklists in there, which have

been tested many times. So you can see, oh, wow, out of 125 things, this person has 75 of these traits. You've got a problem. But now here's the thing. When we live with somebody like this, let's say they can be very charming, but then they turn on you and they become who they really are. Then how do you deal with that? What I can tell you is that the arc of the trajectory does not favor you, that these individuals are so caustic, they're so toxic,

that eventually they will victimize you physically, mentally, emotionally, physiologically, or financially. You'll be victimized. The question then is, and I tell this to a lot of executives who work for these individuals who they're bullied and this stuff is, how long are you willing to tolerate it? If you can set a number and say six months or a year, okay. But then do something because you will pay a price. You know, there's a great book called the, the, the body keeps the score.

The body will definitely keeps the score. You will pay a price for being in the proximity of a toxic individual. And if you become that person's chew toy, you will suffer immensely. And so I say, you know, there's no pill to cure them. There is nothing you can do to make them like you. Expect no loyalty. Try to get out as soon as you can. And that them like you. Expect no loyalty.

Try to get out as soon as you can. And that's the only advice that, you know, obviously I'm not a clinician, but I think most clinicians, if they're honest, will say, you got to get out of there. This is not tolerable. So don't try and win in any respect. Don't try and... I don't think you can win. First of all, these individuals are severely flawed of character.

They have no introspection. They see themselves as perfect. They don't see any imperfection in themselves. And so because they're flawed of character, you cannot expect normal behaviors from them. And so why expose yourself to them? They will be like that all their lives. There's a particular chapter where you say, one is bad, two is terrible, three is lethal.

Oh, you know, people, I get this question all the time. Well, can you have multiple traits? Yes. You can have, you can be pathologically narcissistic, so you overvalue yourself, and you can also have traits of the paranoid personality, where that you are very rigid in your thinking and you're always suspicious of everybody's intentions.

In history, you look at Hitler. Hitler was pathologically, he was a malignant narcissist. He was clinically paranoid. Who did he fear? Minorities, the Roma, what was then called the gypsies, and of course, the Jewish people. That is clinical paranoia. And he was a psychopath. Okay, let's just lay that out there. What is psychopathy?

Psychopathy is where you have no remorse, no empathy, no conscience. You can do whatever you want and you sleep well at night. There. That's your Robert Hare. The researcher is the best one that defines psychopathy. Hitler had it all. There's a thin line probably there between narcissism and self-belief. Because when you're describing narcissism, you're talking about over-importance, like really believing one's important.

And it sounds somewhat like someone who is extremely self-believing. Well, narcissism, by the way, narcissism, which has been studied since the 1950s, we now have a narcissistic society like we never did before. We see it in the way we talk about ourselves more than anything. We get on TikTok and other forums and we espouse all sorts of things. And so we're way more narcissistic now than in the 1950s. They look at even the words we use. Now we use the word me and I more than we did in the 1950s. We used to say we and ours. Now we say me and I. The true narcissist has a belief system that is so corrupt, they're truly flawed of character, and they not only have the traits

of narcissism, but they truly believe how they see themselves as infallible as, I only have the answers, I'm the person that can make us great again. And I know what you're going to ask me next. No, I'm not going to ask you that. Thank you. Thank you. But if the traits fit, then what I tell people is, whether you're going into an organization, or if you're looking at who's leading your country, ask yourself, do they have these traits?

If they have the traits, then it's not a difficult equation. Psychology, especially when it comes to people flawed of character, is not that difficult. It's, do I want to work for somebody that values me, or someone that devalues others? And you start with that. In all these decades of you doing all these incredible things,

hunting terrorist spies, aerial surveillance, working in partnership with the SAS, interviewing people, chasing down terrorists, how has it changed you as a human being? How has it shifted your perception of human behavior and what it is to be a human and meaning and all of these bigger questions of life? I've never been asked that question. So thank you for asking a most profound question. I guess the best answer is that I learned the piecemeal and I'm glad I learned piecemeal.

And by that I mean that my first homicide was just a regular homicide that I responded to. My first suicide, which was a police officer, it was in increments. I think if I had been presented with everything that I had been presented with all at once, I think I would have had a mental breakdown. I'm glad that it was episodic, that I was able to learn from each.

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

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

I was at Brigham Young University when a girl was abducted by a serial killer. And to this day, I am in pain that I was on duty that night when she was abducted. I still feel it. And these things, they weigh on you. But I'm also very, you know, when I get with students, I mentor people, I mentor a lot of executives, but I also mentor young people who are curious. And I see the eagerness in which they pursue life and knowledge.

And that gives me great hope. Why are you still in pain about being on duty that night? Because you can't get it out of you. I can't get the smell of... Sometimes you go to a crime scene and the smell is so bad that you can't wash the smell away. You have to burn your clothes. Forensic examiners know this. Forensic examiners know this. There's just some things that you can, you know, the first person I saw killed was in Cuba. And you just can't, there's, you know, biologically you have the hippocampi, you have two of them,

and that retains everything negative you ever experience. That's why you can't take a pill for post-traumatic stress because the hippocampi make sure that the first time you burn yourself, touching that stove doesn't occur again. So all things negative are retained sometimes forever, but usually around a decade. But I'm also enlightened by the fact that people still pursue good things. I hear from people who work with dogs or who work with the handicapped with no expectation

of any reward. And I think most people have a good heart, a kind heart. And so I tried to focus on those people that I met, which gave me the examples for Be Exceptional. That woman in Brazil who at the age of six became blind, she went on to have 12 children. She had more, but only 12 survived, and who could still do needlework blind by feeling. I will never forget that experience either. To sit in her presence was

a bestowed pleasure upon me to understand a woman who could sense people moving in and around her just by how the hairs on her hand moved as they interacted with the space around her. It was a great experience. So what day of your career are you most proud of or were you most happy? Oh, wow. Well, I'll tell you, I was really happy when I graduated from the FBI Academy. Imagine at any one time, there's 27,000 applicants to the FBI and they will only accept 220 maybe or so a year. So I was elated. I was also very happy the day I left the FBI

because at that point I had done it all and I wanted to do other things. I wanted to write, which is very difficult to do when you're in the bureau, and I wanted to continue teaching. Yeah, so I think those two events were, when it comes to career, was good times in my life. Joe, my audience are very much people that want to learn, that love stories, that want to change their life, improve their lives so that they can achieve the objectives they have.

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

we've been doing this, a lot of great questions. And I think in your questions, the essence is, what is the importance of connecting? Your audience are all in the people business. I mean, unless they're working as a, they write code, but even they, we're all in the people business. And what your question's really circled around is, what's the importance of connecting?

What's the importance of connecting? What's the importance of connecting properly? And then how do we maintain those connections? And we've talked about this, the importance of non-verbals to communicate, I trust you, I value you, I care about you and all that, but then creating that psychological comfort that allows us to then have this long time together that relationships are invaluable.

I think that's the greatest lesson. Every time I go anywhere, I say we are in the people business. And I think you are exemplary in demonstrating what you can achieve if only you have that. That's a great compliment. Thank you so much. We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for.

And the question that's been left for you is... Interesting. What do people say that they like about you? I think that one is easy. And it's easy because I hear it so often and they say, you're so approachable. I think they see pictures of me, you know, where I'm looking sternly or they think an FBI agent.

And wherever I go around the world, they say, well, you look so average, you look approachable. And I've always tried to make myself approachable. Whether you're a student, whether you are the security guard or whatever, I am always accessible, I'm always approachable and I treat everybody the same. Joe, thank you. It's a really interesting time that we're living in. We talked about it a bit before we started rolling. We're more digital than ever before. We're living behind screens, and connection is somewhat of a lost art.

And that's why people are so, I think, in part so keen to learn more about how to connect better, how to not be misunderstood, and how to communicate how they truly feel, because it's not something that now comes naturally to this digital from birth generation. And that's something that I think your work does so profoundly. It kind of brings us back to what it is to be human, that through line of anthropology and understanding our evolution

and where it all came from as well is the reinforcer of everything that you say. And it's incredibly important and it's so incredibly resonant. I've seen it across the videos that you've been in and the interviews that you've done. They're just so unbelievably resonant. And that's because people are so thirsty for this information. And many of the problems I think we often find in our lives stem from being ineffective at communicating to someone else how we feel and what we truly think.

Maybe because we haven't learned, but also maybe we're learning another behavior and maybe we're becoming more individualistic and more withdrawn and more trapped behind the screen. So I really applaud you for the work that you're doing and I highly recommend people go and read these books. There's a lot of them but I'm going to link them all below and with a little synopsis so you can decide which one best suits you. I read a few of them. One of my favourites is the exceptional one, it's so accessible but they're all very good at different things depending on what it is you're looking for in your life, whether it's body language, whether you just you're the type of person that wants to hear more about hunting terrorists or understanding psychopaths or generally more things about the FBI and the

life that you've lived. So I'll link them all below. Is there anything we've missed? Well, my wife would tell me, please be nice and say that if they can mention my, I now have a YouTube channel to address a lot of these things. Just go to jonevaro.net and there's a link there to my YouTube channel, which you would think I would know, but I don't know. But I want to thank you for what you do. You're gonna realize one day, as I realize, that you're helping to change lives, even though that wasn't your intention. Your intention was probably to educate.

But 10 years on, 20 years on, or as I recently found found from 40 years on, somebody will write to you and said, something you said, or your example affected me, and it changed my life. And you'll go, wow, I never thought about that. And that's what you've done. And you'll realize it one day. Thank you. I mean, it's what you're done. And you'll realize it one day. Thank you. I mean, it's what you're doing too.

Joe, thank you for being so generous with your time. I really, really appreciate it. It's been an honor to meet you. And I'm excited to finish the rest of your books and to explore more on your YouTube channel, which I'll link below. You also do lots of speaking. You work a lot with companies and organizations.

And if people want to reach you, they should go to your website and send you an email there. Absolutely. Just through the website and send you an email there. Absolutely. Just through the website and we'll attend to it. And I'm happy to share that knowledge journey with whoever's interested. I'm going to let you into a little bit of a secret. You're probably going to think me and my team are a little bit weird, but I can still remember

to this day when Jemima from my team posted on Slack that she'd changed the scent in this studio and right after she posted it, the entire office clapped in our Slack channel. And this might sound crazy, but at the Dire of SEO, this is the type of 1% improvement we make on our show. And that is why the show is the way it is. By understanding the power of compounding 1%, you can absolutely change your outcomes in your life. It isn't about drastic transformations or quick wins. It's about the small consistent actions that have a lasting change in your outcomes.

So two years ago, we started the process of creating this beautiful diary. And it's truly beautiful. Inside there's lots of pictures, lots of inspiration and motivation as well, some interactive elements. And the purpose of this diary is to help you identify, stay focused on, develop consistency with the 1%

that will ultimately change your life. So if you want one for yourself or for a friend or for a colleague or for your team, then head to thediary.com right now. I'll link it below. Thanks for watching!