We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP218: Understanding Body Language w/ FBI Expert Joe Navarro (Business Podcast)
Episode Date: November 25, 2018On today's show, we have body language expert Joe Navarro. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: How to read other people’s body language and why it’s reliable. Why you should look down when you stud...y the body language of another person. How business people can use body language in negotiations. How to enhance your relationships with a simple head tilt. How to detect the body language of a true leader. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, and the other community members. Joe Navarro’s website, jnforensics.com. Tweet directly to Joe Navarro: @navarrotells. Joe Navarro’s book, What Every BODY is Saying – Read reviews of this book. Joe Navarro’s book, The Dictionary of Body Language – Read reviews of this book. NEW TO THE SHOW? Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool. Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services. Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: SimpleMining AnchorWatch Human Rights Foundation Onramp Superhero Leadership Unchained Vanta Shopify HELP US OUT! Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it! Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Transcript
Discussion (0)
You're listening to TIP.
On today's show, Stig and I are so excited to share this interview with Joe Navarro because
we're really huge fans of his work.
Joe is a famous writer on an international scale because he's the leading expert in understanding
and interpreting body language.
Joe worked for the FBI for 25 years and was the founding member of the FBI's elite behavioral
analyst program.
The reason we're bringing Joe on the show is because so much of business is about communication.
And when two parties are conducting a deal or working together on a project, these nonverbal cues often drive the conversation more than people realize.
So I have no doubt you're thoroughly going to enjoy hearing some of Joe's fascinating ideas, some of his amazing stories about body language, and how it can help you understand the various situations you face in your future business dealings.
You are listening to The Investors Podcast, where we study the financial markets and read the books that influence self-rength.
made billionaires the most. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. Welcome to the
Investors podcast. Stig and I are thrilled to have you with us and we're really excited about our guest today.
Joe Navarro, Stig and I are big fans. We've been fans for a while and I don't know why we've
never thought to bring you on the show, but I was revisiting your book more recently and I thought to
myself, why in the world have we not invited Joe Navarro on the show for how big of fans we are?
And so thank you for coming on the show first of all. And we're really excited to have you here.
It's a pleasure. And for you guys, I didn't mind waiting in line because you're up there.
You know, you're at the top of the mountains. I don't mind queuing up.
I don't know about all that. I'll tell you, Joe. We are thrilled to have you. And for people that
aren't familiar with some of your work, give them a little bit of a background of what you've done.
You worked at the FBI.
You headed up this new division of body language, body research, and then applied it to all
these cases through the years.
This is fascinating stuff.
Give our audience a little sample of your background.
I was a police officer in Provo area.
I get approached one day by the FBI and they want me to join the bureau.
I come into the bureau and I was just blown.
way that I get to work with this great organization and then I realized about 90% of the work I'm
doing is observation. You're really a paid observer. It's not like Jason Bourne. You know,
started to look at body language and nonverbal communications really as an adjunct to my work
in catching spies. Then the FBI created this unit called the behavioral analysis program.
And then I became the facto bureau expert on body language. So it explains,
exposed me to a lot of cases, not just in the intelligence arena, but in the criminal arena.
And Joe, I'm sure that you have had this question multiple times before with your background
that, oh, like you're in body language. Am I lying right now? And it seems to be like,
this is what people are, and this is how people are thinking about body language, you know,
very black and white. But you actually provide a really good overview in your book about why
that might not be the best way to look at this field of study. So why do you feel that way?
Well, you nailed that question. I would say 90% of the time people ask me, am I lying? Am I
telling the truth? And I just shrug my shoulders and say, I don't know. First of all, I don't
care. And second of all, I really don't know whether you're telling the truth or lying because
there is no Pinocchio effect. There is no single behavior indicative of deception. It's so
much more subtle than that. We know that we very effectively communicate comfort and discomfort.
And when we are asked questions and they cause us some sort of difficulty, psychological discomfort,
we usually see it manifest through some sort of leakage, be it a nervous tick or a behavior,
which we may do occasionally, but is hyper-emphasized when we're asked a difficult question.
You know, you're asked, well, where were you last night? And all of a sudden, we're lip biting,
or we're jaw shifting, or the jaw muscles become tense. That's telling us something is wrong.
Not that you're lying. Something is that issue.
Joe, one of my favorite parts in the book was your description on how the limbic system works
and how it's tied to our inherent body cues that are expressed. So can you explain a little bit of
this to our audience because I really think that this is a great foundation for people to
kind of understand why this body language stuff occurs and why it's so reliable in some cases.
It's extremely reliable.
You know, for decades now, scientists have been looking at the limbic system and it truly is
exquisite and not just exquisite, but elegant.
And we say elegant because of the simplicity of action.
If you think about survival, if we had to say,
stop and think, is that snake a friendly snake? Is it an ill-tempered snake? Is it nasty? We would
have died out as a species. We either evolved or we were gifted, whatever you believe, a system
which reacts to the world and does not do a lot of heavy thinking. And so because it doesn't do a lot
of cognition, it does reaction. It tends to be very authentic. Now, what that means is we have a certain
amount of shortcuts. Well, what are those shortcuts? If we see a nasty dog growling at us,
we're going to freeze in place in the same way that if we hear a gunshot, we might freeze in place.
And sometimes you see a child out on the street, it sees a car coming and it just freezes instead of
getting out of the way. And you say, well, why would we have this freeze response? And that is because
the limbic system has only a limited set of shortcuts that it uses for threats. And you say, well,
why the freeze response? Because when it comes to humankind, the number one predator for a very
long time were large felines, large carnivores. To avoid the chase trip bite sequence, we evolved
the freeze response, it still helps us. But it's a very quick, it's a very short response,
and for the most part, it works. Would you say, Joe, that this is still to our benefit? How do you look
at the Olympic system today in the modern world? Is it good or bad? How is it helping and not helping us?
It helps us today because there are things that can still threaten us. All of a sudden, the other day,
It happened. There was a young woman going to get into an elevator. The elevator door opens. I'm standing behind her. And there is a group of unruly, somewhat intoxicated men in that elevator. And she just froze. She just froze. And I froze. And I told myself, I'm not getting in that elevator. You know, there's just too much party going on. It still helps us. Even in this modern society, there's a lot of things that
helps us with. But those are just reactions to maybe negative things. Think about how many times
you've driven miles and you've been thinking about other things and you say, wow, how did I get here?
I wasn't even paying attention to traffic. The subconscious mind is extremely powerful. It's
extremely efficient. And it handles so many tasks that we don't think about so that we do have the
time to think. So it's not like we don't need the subconscious. We primarily need the subconscious,
both to survive and to deal with the world around us. You would argue that because we've basically
had that programming take place on our subconscious, that our body is expressing itself to these
pressures or these stresses somewhere in your body. And you don't even realize you're doing it.
So if you would go up and ask somebody a question that makes them uncomfortable, they're going to
express themselves subconsciously somewhere in their body.
Does it happen quickly?
Does it happen slowly?
Talk to us a little bit about that idea.
You're exactly right.
So as we experience either something positive or something negative or even something neutral,
we know that our bodies transmit in real time what we're thinking, feeling, even desiring.
and of course what we fear.
It's kind of interesting.
You see candy in the window as a child
and you see the child leaning towards it, okay?
There's your desire.
You're talking to the business person,
he's in a hurry or she's in a hurry
and the right foot orient towards the exit.
Well, we don't have to wait for,
hey, I got to go.
They're already communicating.
I have to leave.
You're having a discussion with a colleague
and somebody says something that maybe isn't very professional.
And all of a sudden you see the person pressing the lips.
This is an immediate reflection of our sentiment.
So I got to tell a funny story that happened to me last night.
And the thing that I'll tell the audience,
after you read Joe's book and you start observing this stuff,
you can't even hear what people are saying anymore
because their body is screaming so loudly.
You just can't even hold it together.
It's just so funny.
So last night we were at a birthday party for a six-year-old.
It was at our neighbor's house.
And so we're sitting there and all the kids are there playing.
And it's November.
Okay.
So it's not real warm out.
So they all go over there and they're jumping on the neighbor's trampoline.
There's probably like 10 of them or whatever.
And my wife is over there trying to corral the kids on the trampoline because they're wild and crazy.
Well, one of the little brothers, he's like three or four.
He goes and gets the hose.
It's November, right? And so he gets the hose. He's right behind my wife. He turns this thing on, sprays my wife right in the back, and then gets the rest of the kids on the trampoline because they were being like mean to him or something like that. So his mother flips out. Everybody says my wife thinks it's hilarious. She comes back. She's there at the adult table sitting down. We're all laughing. Well, the mother of the little three or four year old, she brings him over to say his apology to my wife.
And so he walks over and he's standing there.
And as soon as she takes her hand off of his shoulder to like bring him over, he literally spins, turns around backwards.
He knew he had to say, sorry, but his head was down.
His shoulders were slumped down.
And he was literally turned backwards, just trying to get out of that situation.
And there's subtle things that you see that have informed me so often.
It's just so, such a valuable skill.
And I'm just so thankful for your book, Joe.
And I'm excited to have you here.
And I'm sorry to distract the audience here with my story.
But I had to tell that to you.
And I want to get to the next question.
So Stig, you got the next question.
Fire away.
Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.
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All right.
Back to the show. Joe, this was one thing I really, really liked about the book because it's so much surprised me. Because you were talking about where should you look if you really want to understand the other person and really read the body language. And perhaps people can pause this right now and then for them to think about where would they look. I personally would look at the face, which is apparently the worst place to look. So, Joe, where are you looking and why?
By the way, it's interesting because as you're talking to me, I can see the arching of your eyebrows, which we use for emphasis.
And so, I got to apologize, but I'm reading you as we're doing this.
When we think about nonverbals, it's so often about the face, the face, the face.
And the fact of the matter is we are very social.
And so we tend to put on a persona, a social face, which can be very inauthent.
sometimes. We give that false smile or, you know, somebody says, is everything okay? And we say, yeah, when it's not. But in studying body language over the years, one of the things that I found was that the feet and the legs are so authentic. They tend to be more authentic than our faces because of the need for survival. You think about it. You see somebody at a party that maybe you've had words with or you don't particularly care for. And you'll turn toward your look at.
Adam and sort of give a social smile, but you find that your feet are already oriented away.
That's done at a subconscious level.
As Preston was talking about the child that had to apologize, already he's changing directions.
There's something exquisite about the limbic system which protects our ventral side,
our belly side, and tends to turn us away from things that are negative.
And you see this on television where you'll have people talking about a topic and the
literally turn away from each other. This is very, very authentic. Watch children when you say,
hey, we're going to Disney and they get happy feet and their feet are jiggling and so forth.
And then the minute you say, here's some broccoli and you see those feet immediately turn
towards the exit. Is there anything more pure than their body language that says, no, not me,
not today. There's a lot to be gained from looking at the face, of course, but I guess the emphasis,
as I was placing in the book was, don't ignore the feet because oftentimes the feet,
because they're responsible for our safety, for getting us away from difficulties,
tend to be very honest as to our true feelings. And that has not changed.
For the audience, if they want to apply it in real life, which way are the feet pointing?
Is it pointing towards the person they're speaking to? That's typically a good indicator of
liking the person? Is it pointed towards the exit? That's not as a good sign. But as you also said,
Joe, it's not so much about lying or not lying, say, for the sake of argument. There might be a
lot of different things. It might mean that, you know, just mean that they're busy, that they're
uncomfortable. Could you that relation talk to us more about, it's kind of like you're a detective,
right? You're looking at all these clues to come up with a conclusion. What is your thought process
about that. That's a very good question. And conceptually, that's exactly right. I'm looking at
everything. Look, you're in a business meeting. You sense there's restlessness under the table.
Well, what is that? You see a lot of movement and the shifting in the chair and so forth.
Is it because someone has something they want to say, but they're not giving the opportunity to say it?
Is it because there's a topic that's creating some sort of psychological discomfort?
Somebody might say, well, maybe the person's had an operation and they're uncomfortable.
Yeah, there's any number of things.
You have made an observation.
Now, the question is what's driving that behavior?
And that's what makes for really good business people that are both socially conscious
and they are aware of their surroundings.
Why is this behavior taking place?
Why is it that every time we talk about this merger
or we talk about this particular issue,
we see the behaviors that are associated with psychological discomfort?
Again, it has nothing to do with deception.
It has to do with the fact that we reflect when something is wrong
through our body language,
and now we must pursue this.
Therein is the utility.
If you're only focus as deception,
you're going to have a really tough time
because it is so difficult.
We're no better than 50-50.
Point toss at detecting deception through nonverbals.
But if we use it to identify issues,
if we used it to sense,
I'll never forget, we were in France.
I was hired by a company, I can't name,
and we were part of the negotiating team.
And we were across from,
this is a global company that deals with aircraft.
And we're reading their body language.
And we're literally going paragraph by paragraph
on this hideously long contract.
But we get to one paragraph.
And immediately,
the attorney on the other side does the bunny nose.
And that's where you crinkle your nose upward
with children.
That's how they do that.
do thing. And as he's reading it, his nose is pulling up. And I immediately wrote a message to
our lead negotiator. I said, there's something wrong with this paragraph. There's an issue here.
And sure enough, it was a huge issue. Here's an example of how a nonverbal revealed something in
real time that was helpful for our side of the team. And that's how we use nonverbal. Whether you're
using it in the conference room or you're socializing and you have a gathering at the house.
We use it to sense, are things okay or is there an issue?
Joe, so you tell some absolutely incredible stories, just like the one that you just told us.
Your book is filled with stories like that, which for me really helped me understand and to
remember the cue because there was a story to it.
And one of the examples you talk about an ice pick.
Could you tell our audience this story?
Because I think this was such an awesome story.
And it also helps identify how you're using some of the tools real time in order to extract the information you're looking for.
I'll never forget this story.
This happened.
It would have been 1979, 1980.
And I still remember it vividly.
It took place on the Colorado River Indian Reservation.
A man had been stabbed.
But here's what's interesting.
He had been stabbed with an ice pick, but nobody knew that except the coroner, myself, and the person that did the crime.
So when one of the suspects that we picked up, we started the interview, his name was Ricky.
I said, well, Ricky, you're telling me you had nothing to do with this crime.
And he agreed.
And I said, but if you had done it, if you had killed this guy, would you have done it with a machete?
No. Would you have done it with, you know, with an axe? No. Would you have done it with an ice pick?
And when I said ice pick, his chin just hit against his chest and his eyelids came down.
I said, Ricky, come on. Just get it off your chest. And he confessed right there. And so his body revealed the cognitive load that he was carrying that he had used an ice pick to kill this man.
And it was because of the precise item, right?
So not all words have the same weight.
If I had said, did you kill him with a gallon of milk?
No.
But ice pick, that had a lot of weight.
And so his body reflected that.
He pled guilty to that.
Joe, a lot of the listeners that we have here on our show,
they're business executives or they have a business focus one way or the other.
What is the best advice you can give to them in regards to reading body language?
My best advice is probably not what you're expecting.
My best advice is that we begin to read each other's body language at a distance.
So we are reading the body language of people that are coming to visit us in the parking lot.
Maybe when they're at the security desk, maybe when they're at the receptionist and so.
forth, just as we're reading their body language, they're reading ours. The fact that nonverbales is
everything that communicates but is not a word. So how responsive we are to people, even at a distance,
begins to register. So let's say we see somebody that's coming to see us. They're 60 feet away.
are we waving our hand at them or are we ignoring them until they come to us?
When they get out of the elevator, do we go out to greet them or do we wait for them to come
to us?
These are non-verbals.
Big, as I'm watching you, and I mentioned earlier, the flashing of the eye.
Because if I had to tell an executive, one behavior to use that makes you more likable,
that makes you more interesting, would be to use.
eyebrow flash to emphasize and especially when you greet somebody. I mean, think about how many times
you've gone into a business and they just look at you and yes, hello, welcome and you see no
expression in the face. When you walk into a business and you see that eyebrow flash and you go,
hey, how are you? Joe, good to see you. And boy, you just feel so different about that. We have
only about two seconds anymore. It used to be the first 15 minutes to impress, and then it came down to
four minutes. Then it came down to the first minute. You know, boys and girls, we're down to the first
two seconds. That's how first impressions are made. And we've got to get our act together and do it
in a very short period of time. We don't have this longevity of living in the same village where we can
affect impressions over days.
Those days are gone.
Two seconds, and we've got to have our act together.
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All right.
Back to the show.
You know, I showed Joe a note I have in my wallet with five partners that I learned from
Joe's book.
And one of them, number four, is eye blocking is negative and that a bigger eyes is positive.
So I don't want to try and manipulate you here, Joe, but I'm.
I have actually made a habit out of whenever I'm meeting people that I'm happy about,
even though it might be tired.
I actually do make an effort on terms of making my eyes bigger.
And then I try, if possible, not to eye block too many things in my daily life.
He's been working on that compliment for years, Joe.
You know, you can see it with babies.
Just the other day, Halloween.
Mother with a stroller and father nearby.
And as I approached the baby, I flashed my eyes.
eyes and you could see the baby just light up. They at a very young age, at a very young age,
probably within the first three months of life, babies react to the eyebrow flash. And let me tell
you, 65 years later, nothing changes. We react to it. I'll give you another example. When you
couple a smile with that eyebrow flash that greets, and then you marry that with head tilt,
Head tilt is one of the most powerful behaviors that we have that guarantees greater face time.
Think about this.
You know, in business, it's about talking to each other and increasing the connectivity.
What if there was one behavior that I can guarantee you that will increase that face time?
And that's head tilt.
Head tilt exposes our necks.
But what it's saying is, I am really interested in what you have to say.
I may have an agenda, but I'm not.
suppressing it while I attend to you. Watch the royals. Princess Diana was exquisite in her ability
to convey care just by that little head tilt. But if you notice her children, they use this all the
time. And the reason that they do it is because it is singularly effective in getting people to
relax around you and to open up around you. So Joe, this reminds me of a different
book that I was reading recently. This book was called The Wisdom of Your Sells. It did a great job of
talking about this idea of how babies are reading the facial expressions, primarily of their parents,
but also of everybody else around them. And so the book talks about how we're genetically kind of
coded within like the first, I want to say the first three years to really study and learn
facial expressions and what they mean to the baby. And what I found even more fast,
is whenever the child goes from like age three to around five or six, what they're then doing
is the example would be, say, we're out in the yard and my son sees a snake and he's around this
age. The first thing that he's going to do isn't scream snake. I'm scared and run away. The first
thing he's going to do is stop, like you said in your book. And then what he does is he looks at the
snake and he turns and he looks for his parents' face. And what he's doing is he's trying to understand
what snake means based off of the facial expression of the parent.
And so you see this so often, especially at that age between like three and six years old
where they don't know what a snake means.
They don't know what the car driving fast down the road.
They'll stop.
They'll see the parents' face.
And based on that reaction, they now know snake is bad.
And so it's really fascinating to see how the body language, that's the real inherent
cue at such an early age to teach children and then ultimately human beings.
beings, all of those stuff. Something else that was interesting in this is how the child at that age
is being completely programmed at the subconscious level. An interesting thing that I had read
that completely corresponds to what we're talking about. It's not just interesting. It explains so
much. We know with experiments with toddlers, I think the earliest experiment I saw was with an 11-month-old,
perhaps younger, where they put them on a glass sheet.
And half of the glass sheet has a bottom,
and the other half has a drop-off.
The baby will crawl along the covered area.
But when the baby reaches the purported drop-off,
there is no drop-off, the glass continues.
He or she will look back at the mother or the father and look at the face.
if the face smiles and there is no psychological discomfort displayed by the parent,
the child will continue across that glass,
even though it looks like a drop off.
If the mother or the father reveals any kind of psychological discomfort,
such as the squinting of the eyes or compression of the lips,
the baby will stop and not further cross.
Amazing.
Now, think about this. Think about how many times we've seen where a baby falls down or a toddler falls down. And it's looking at the parent to see, do I make a big thing out of this or do I make a small thing out of this? And the parent basically says, hey, you're all right and walks away. But, you know, all of a sudden, any attempt at crying and histrionics or anything are just, they're shorted out. What? This is not a big thing. But the parent, the parent,
it that reacts to it and makes this big theatrical presentation of this, the baby immediately invokes
that. But the same thing happens in business. Since retirement, I give about 42, 45 presentations.
You know, I've been everywhere from China to Europe to South America. And invariably,
you see this. The people in the company will look to the CEO to see how he
reacts, he or she reacts to a situation, and then that carries the day. Organizations that really
have their act together realize that we can act with unity. And if the boss looks at something
and he says, okay, yeah, things didn't go our way, but we move on. That just changes the
organization. It's like, get over it in an instant and we look forward, not backwards. No different
than what we saw with that child looking back to its mother.
One of the things that I teach in my seminars is leadership is visible.
Leadership is not in an office.
Leadership must be seen.
One of the great things that I like about military officers is they go out and they walk and they
eat and they sit with the troops and great organizations see the same thing.
Sam Walton was like that.
You know, he'd get in that old truck and he'd go and,
hang out with the lowest person in the organization. When you look at the non-verbals of leadership,
I say, first of all, is present. You must be visible. But what does that visibility look like?
That visibility must be humble, number one, because nobody likes arrogance. And number two,
think about the gestures that you use. Leaders use gestures that are smooth, but they're broad.
Joe, I'm curious about the answer to this.
Talk to us about the least reliable body cue.
Is there such a thing?
Probably the least reliable body cue is the one that you often see where the person puts
their hand on their chest and says, honestly, I, you know, I'm telling you the truth
or I don't know what happened or whatever.
To me, the hand to the chest, I completely ignore that.
I ignore that in the same way that I ignore crying.
I've seen both the guilty and the innocent cry.
And so to me, it's that these nonverbals are neutral to me because I know there are other
nonverbals that are even more potent.
For instance, if your daughter comes home from school and she's talking about bullying
or something that's happened in school and she's rubbing this neck dimple, if she's touching
that, whoa, I got to pay attention. This is a nonverbal that potentiates whatever is being said.
And so I give greater weight to that than tears or that hand to chest behavior that both
the guilty and the innocent use. Joe, I'm really curious to hear your thoughts here on the next
question. With all your experience, everything that you have seen through the years,
What's your favorite story that you can tell really about how to apply these body language tools?
Let me tell you this story because I think it's a humbling story.
You know, here I was at the pinnacle of my FBI career.
I was the Bureau's expert on body language.
One of the agents on my squad came in one day and said, hey, we're short on agents.
We've got a ton of people coming in that need to be interviewed.
Could you help out with this one?
I said, sure, no problem. It was a white collar crime case, typically not something that I worked, but it wasn't terribly difficult. The woman comes in. I sit her in the interview room. So the first 20 to 30 minutes, you spend that time calming the person down because obviously, you know, they have these preconceived perceptions of the FBI and they're nervous and so forth. But what I'm noticing is rather than calm down, and I haven't even asked any difficult questions yet, this poor lady,
is becoming more tense.
I mean, she is ventilating her hair, right?
She's pushing her hair away from her neck,
which is obviously a clue of psychological discomfort.
I'm starting to see jaw shifting
where she just pulls the bottom jaw in one direction.
There's a lot of lip compression.
And right underneath the nose,
there's a little area called the philtrum
and little droplets of sweat are building up there.
And I'm thinking, okay, Navarro, you're the Bureau's expert.
You got this one.
This is easy.
And so finally, I said, ma'am, I hate to say it, but you look like you need to get something off your chest.
And she just closed her eyes.
You know, she gave me this blocking behavior.
And then she gives me this cathartic exhale when she says, thank God, Mr. Navarro,
because I only had two quarters to put in the meter and it's about to run out.
Oh, my God.
And this was one of those cases that I wish I'd had earlier in my career to just humble me down to where I needed to be.
I was reading all the behaviors.
All the behaviors were there, the ventilating behaviors, the jaw shifting, the lip compression,
the buildup of moisture under the nose and so forth,
all these things that in the past,
people have told me,
oh, these are equated with deception.
All she was worried about was the meter running out.
So I take her downstairs.
She doesn't have enough quarters.
So I feed the machine.
This is how long ago this was.
So we put some quarters in.
We go back upstairs.
And as it turns out,
Her identity was stolen, and it was being used by some criminals, and she had nothing to do with what was going on. But it taught me a great lesson. You're observing behaviors. My job is to determine what is it indicative of. And it was very humbling. And so every time I catch myself saying, oh, yeah, I was able to see that behavior, I'm always reminded of that instance. And I think that's wise for all
of us, we may see behaviors, but we may not understand the reason for them. That's our duty.
Joe, I know the audience got a ton out of this. I have no doubt. If you're out there listening to
this and you want to get a lot more. And let me tell you, there's a lot more that Joe has put
out there that will just keep you captivated. I was telling Joe before we started recording that
I have trouble hearing people whenever I'm talking to them sometimes because the body language in
And the things that I've learned from this book are just so overwhelming when you start to see
this stuff.
It's fascinating.
But Joe's book is called What Every Body, What Every Body is saying.
He's got another book out right now.
It's called The Dictionary of Body Language.
Stig and I cannot recommend these books highly enough.
But Joe, I want to give you an opportunity.
I know you have an active Twitter account and some other things.
I'll tell the audience where they can find you.
I appreciate this opportunity. And I have to tell you, I appreciate you, Preston, and Stig for what you do, which is sharing knowledge. I'm like you. I see your bookcase. I am a lifelong learner. And I love guys like yourself who share knowledge with others. You can find me at janph forensics.com. Most of my books are at your local bookseller, which I always encourage people to go see. They're all available. All 13 of my books are on Amazon.
But go visit your local bookseller. You can follow me on Twitter at Navarotels. And I'm happy to answer any
question that's thrown my way. So thank you again. You bet, Joe. And I'll tell you, your Twitter is a
really great account to follow because Joe, he's teaching you. He'll post a picture and he'll say,
this is this cue. And so I closely follow your Twitter account because I'm continuing to learn some
of the things that I read about in the book, and it's very useful. But Joe, thank you so much for
coming on the show. It's such a pleasure to have you here. Well, it's my pleasure. And though I
waited a long time, it was well worth it. Thank you, guys. That was great. All right, guys,
that was all the press down I had for this week's episode of The Investors Podcast. We see each other
again next week. Thanks for listening to TIP. To access the show notes, courses, or forums,
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