"Facial Affect" Where to Notice and Benefits Of...Like Poker!

Our Host Larry Wilson shares his thought on where to study and the benefits of understanding Facial Affects. From observing people at airports to the value of using Facial Affect during a Poker Game, all is explained on this episode. This tool "Understanding Facial Affect" can greatly benefit anyone in Business...Sales, inter-office communication, etc.

Hosted by Larry Wilson
Produced by: Verbal Ninja Productions
Producer: R. Scott Edwards
Sponsored by: The Wilson Method

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Transcript

Larry Wilson 0:02

Hi, this is Larry Wilson, and this is How to Talk to Humans. This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills. Are you looking to get a better job? Are you looking to find a relationship? Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far? I can show you so easily how to change that. Now, I can only do it with humans. If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies extraterrestrials, this is not the show for you. But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned for 40 years in the show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world, and their secrets are unbelievable. What I'm going to be teaching you during the course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward success. Thank you for joining me for another episode of How to Talk to Humans. I really want to address something because a number of you have sent me emails asking about facial affect. We've talked about it here before, but there's always more room to explore. And maybe the name, maybe the official phrasing of facial affect was confusing or intimidating or unclear. And it's probably from a scientist or medical term using the word affect. It just means what's going on here, what we see on your face. Now, obviously, facial affect is joined with vocal affect if I lower my voice to an intimate tone. Or I come out with some commanding sound like a biblical old world prophet or something. All those things join together. And that's what I'm hoping you'll be integrating all the different parts using active listening, using eye contact, all these elements, we want them to work synergistically together so that the parts combined produce a much greater result than the sum of all the parts. That's what we're looking for here. But some people were asking how to practice. I think the real response was there were some people who were interested in my two-day boot camp, but they could not coordinate it with their schedule and everything else to come and join it, and they were hoping there was stuff they could practice on their own. So of course there is. There always is. The most obvious one, and if I really was as great as I think I am, I would get one of those hats, you know, that they use on the undercover shows that has a camera built into it, a concealed hidden camera that connects to some sort of phone or recording device or something. Because that may make it clearer than anything I can tell you. But the one place that I immediately think of as a great place for studying facial affect are airports. I'm obviously it's a low-hanging fruit for me because I seem to be in airports every week. I know people who get bored in the airport. I don't know how you could get bored. I guess it depends on how you process information. To me, it's like being at the circus. There's a fantastic glummapry of strange and unusual things to see and witness. You don't have to dive into it with the same fervor that I do, but don't be surprised if you find you're developing an unhealthy taste for it. If you are flying, then this is a perfect way for you to fill your time. You found your gate, you're checked in, everything's set, you have 30 minutes, an hour. Sometimes I'm on flights that have connections where I'm trapped in some airport for a couple hours, two, three hours sometimes. So it's incredible if you simply pay attention. I've talked before, and some of you know, uh my suggestion of practicing empathy skills by just trying to imagine looking at people. But let's bring that down even simpler, on a smaller level. Just examine people's faces who are all around you. Sometimes if I'm in a busy airport like Denver or Dallas Fort Worth, I avoid Chicago hair at all costs. But those kinds of airports where there's so many people, sometimes I'll be walking along, I'll just stop like a stone in the river and let the hordes pass over me. And I'm looking at their faces. There's so much semiotic information that you can observe. There's so much information coming off their faces. If I had to guess, I would guess that 99% of the people are completely unaware. Maybe I'm cheating you. Maybe I should really say 100%, except there are some people like me who are familiar with facial affect and have trained and have spent time and energy and attention on what's going on. But the vast majority of people are not aware of what they look like. They have a mirror at home. You know, there's a funny thing. Sometimes you'll see somebody who one part of them, maybe they have fantastic shoulders, and you you see them someplace. This doesn't have to be in an airport, and you'll say, wow, that person's shoulders really look great. But their hair is a mess, and their clothes are a mess, and there's all kinds of problem. Like you think, how did that person not see that at home looking in the mirror? Well, because a lot of times people simply focus on what they like or what they think of as their assets. So they may look in the mirror, they may say, Oh, I have such nice eyelashes. So that that may be the only thing they look at. And then they've trimmed their beard to look like an insane person or put on makeup that looks like a clown, or you know, they're not paying attention to that. If you look at them, you will see incredible stories coming off their faces. You will see some of them on phones, you'll see their face reflecting. I think again, almost all of them unaware, their faces showing you a reflection of what they're hearing on the other end of the phone, or when they're speaking to someone. Uh I'm I know you've seen people talking on their cell phones who are gesturing. They're not even aware they're gesturing. Not on, not on uh uh FaceTime, in other words, the other person can't see them. They're just speaking on the phone, but they're still gesturing. Listen, I'm not gonna, you know. Well, of course, this is not facial affect, but it is semiotic information that you can see what's going on with them. And in the process of observing that, hopefully it makes you more conscious about what your own face is doing. And as I've explained in other episodes of this podcast, that's all we're trying to do when you're doing conscious communication. You don't have to do this ever. If you wake up in the morning and go down to make breakfast for yourself and your wife or husband or kids or says good morning, you don't have to think, how would Larry handle? You can do whatever you want. I'm talking about business. I'm talking about when you have interactions that have to do with goods or services that you buy or sell or involved in. This can make or break your yearly income very easily, very easily. I've been talking recently with a number of people in real estate who uh seem to be using Wilson method techniques very successfully. And the way they phrased it to me, they said, oh, if I was able to just make one extra sale a year, that's a huge difference in my yearly income. One sale. And they said, I there's but one person in particular who trained with me, who, according to him, says, Oh, yeah, I've added hundreds of thousands of dollars to my bottom line using the stuff you taught me. Well, I'm not sure exactly how you measure that. I guess you look at last year before you trained with me, and this year after you train with me. I don't know, but I think it's fantastic if that's the case. What a great result. Fantastic result. So, depending on what your business is or how you're involved in it, little tiny incremental changes can have a huge impact. And I wanted to suggest, I know this is funny, but another place that's a great place for studying facial affect. And that is, um, based on my life experience, so many years I've spent working in casinos. And when I'm performing in Las Vegas or Atlantic City or Lake Tahoe or Reno, uh, I'm only working about an hour a night. I'm not, it's not like a regular normal job. So I have a lot of free time on my hands, and I find myself over the years gravitating to the poker table. Now, in other places, I'll tell you again, I'll mention again, but I this goes back many, many years when I first started working in Las Vegas. I would go to the poker table, and you know, I'm sort of a friendly, gregarious guy, and I'd get talking with people and be friendly. And all of these players were much better than I was. They, oh, they were running rings about them. But they sort of took pity on me, I think. And occasionally they'd say, Oh, you want to grab a bite or something? And I'd take a break from the game, we'd go get something to eat. And they'd say, you know, uh, you really don't get this game, do you? Yes, I do. Yes, I do get they'd say, No, no, you're you're really bad. Like, there are a lot of leaks in your play. And of course, I had no idea what they were talking about. And they would take pity on me, and I remember one guy writing on a cocktail napkin or a paper napkin in the coffee shop some some rules for me, you know, number one, number two, and he was trying to help me, and my game gradually improved because I was being tutored by people who were experts. And I thought this was so interesting to see simple things that were so obvious to them, but not to me. Well, one of them, I remember this very clearly, and I won't tell you his name because I'm not sure if he really wants people to know he's a professional gambler. Maybe it's no one's business at all. He's actually a very nice guy, and he uh I'll tell you this much, he's um he's an educated guy. He has uh advanced college degree, not just uh BA, he has advanced uh degrees. And he was saying, you know, when you're sitting at the poker table, most people are only paying attention when they're in the hand, when they're playing. That's the mark of the amateur. Now, there's nothing wrong with being an amateur, it's a game. People come to play it like they play any game for fun. But there is money at stake here. So you can only play so much before you run out of money or find yourself in bad straits. It's not exactly like playing Monopoly or Checkers or something like that. And he said, there's so much information coming off these people's faces, all of them, all the time. He said, when you're at the table, your job is to be studying all these faces. Now he didn't use the word facial affect, but that's what he was talking about. And uh he used a different kind of language. I'm also not gonna reference that because I, again, I don't want to I don't want to blow someone's cover here, but he was talking about semiotic information. Now, in this particular instance, this is a perfect example, it's very specific to this game. It might carry over to other elements of their lives or business, you never know. But as far as we're concerned, it's just about this game. And so he was explaining. He said, you know, I want you to see where people's eyes go. I want you to see all these muscles around their eyes. Do they flex? Do they tighten? I want you to see muscles here around their cheeks and their jawline. You know, they're all all the things that are happening with their faces, for the most part, are unconscious. They're not even aware of it. But, as he was quick to point out, then there are always the ones we call Hollywood. Because those are the players who think they're gonna do an act. Now, I will tell you this. Many years ago, I was playing in a game, a sort of a friendly industry game in Los Angeles, and the actor Jerry O'Connell was in the game. And he didn't really seem to know the game that well. I'm not sure he took it that seriously, I don't know. But at one point, I was watching him very closely, and I saw the way a hand developed, and I saw this very subtle thing going on where he seemed to be very excited about the hand, but was concealing it, and then seemed to act duplicitous, like he was going to fool someone. And I was in his hand with his, and I thought, oh, he made a huge hand, he wants to sucker me in this. And so I studied, and some bets went on, and I folded my hand, I threw my hand away. And then he exposed his hand, and he had been bluffing. And I thought, oh my god, this guy's a brilliant actor. Well, of course, he's a professional actor, but he did it so well, I've never forgotten it. And he sort of laughed about it. I don't know whether he realized, I got the feeling he knew that I was watching him very closely, and he gave such a subtle performance that he knew I would see all these tiny little details. But if you happen to be a fan of poker, the poker table, and you know, I'm when I say this, I don't mean like a friendly home game. I mean like in a professional casino situation where you're mostly with strangers, people you don't know. There's so much information that you can practice reading. Now, you you don't have to invest huge amounts of money. You could buy into a poker table for, I don't know, what, depending on what the limit was, for $50 or $100, and sit there for hours and not play any hands, and I guess maybe anties or blind bets, it might cost you a little bit. But the idea is if you it's again an opportunity like I was saying about airports, where the majority of people have no idea what's going on here. It doesn't mean you have to act on that information. But if you want to become an expert at facial affect and reading facial affect and reading semiotic information, I don't know if there's a better laboratory for you than the poker table. You can see so much. And sometimes they're little things, sometimes they're really obvious things where they they aren't an actor of the skill of Jerry O'Connell. So they aren't uh doing a subtle, they're doing something really big. They pick up their hand, they go like this. Well, that probably means they're really happy and they want you to think they're unhappy, you know? And in the same way, sometimes where someone will pick up their cards and go, like they're trying to tell you, oh, uh, I have a big hand. It usually means they're busted, they have nothing. But but there's so much information there. If you will study it, you will learn. There'll be some players who will give you a baseline where nothing's going on until they pick up a good hand. Then there are other people whose faces maybe are very expressive, and everything is coming out. Oh, I hate this. Oh, I'm delighted, oh, I'm confused by this, oh, I'm I don't know what to do. They may be showing you all kinds of stuff. But it's a perfect laboratory for you to practice looking at people's faces and in turn imagining what you're projecting with your own face. I hope you'll come back and join me again next week for another episode of How to Talk to Human. This has been Larry Wilson. I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you found this information useful. If you're looking for more, you can find it at thewilsonmethod.com. There's a ton of stuff there. In fact, if you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human. Send me an email at info at WilsonMethod.com because I read every single one. I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey. And you'll be with me for the next episode of How to Talk to Human.