The Social Athlete
A weekly podcast exploring the upper limits of social fitness and relationship success.
The Social Athlete
Blake Eastman on the Nuances of Nonverbal Communication and Decoding Human Behavior with Machine Learning
Blake Eastman is Founder and CEO of The Nonverbal Group, a behavioral research and education company founded in New York City in 2009. They conduct large scale studies on human behavior and are using a wide range of technologies to systematically deconstruct and improve human communication.
In this sprawling episode, Blake generously shares many of the key insights his elite clientele pay thousands of dollars to receive from him on a daily basis. This episode is our longest yet, but I think you'll agree that it flies by, and leaves you wanting more.
You will come away from this episode with a robust understanding of what constitutes effective nonverbal communication, as well as several powerful frameworks and tools for improving your communication immediately.
Blake is exactly the type of guest I fanaticized about conversing with when I launched this podcast. He is a true social athlete and an expert in his field. More impressively, Blake is a lifelong learner who is always probing the world for new insights in novel ways.
If you want to learn more about Blake and the awesome work he is doing at The Nonverbal Group, you can sign up for his free newsletter. This has quickly become one of my favorite pieces of email every week. Blake is also active on X (formerly Twitter), and is an excellent follow: @blakeeastman
Hello and welcome to the Social Athlete. I'm your host, casey Wright. Today I'm speaking with Blake Eastman. Blake is founder and CEO of Nonverbal Group, a behavioral research and education company founded in New York City in 2009, specializing in the art of nonverbal communication. They conduct large-scale studies on human behavior and are using a wide range of technologies to systematically deconstruct and improve human communication. If that sounds like a big project, that's because it is, and this project has taken Blake to some truly interesting places. He conducted a now famous dating study in New York City, where he videotaped people on dates and then interviewed them afterwards and found reliable deviations in the way people perceived these dates to be going to the way they actually went. He conducted the largest ever study of poker players and their tells, a massive video analysis project that is still yielding insights to this day. He is now an indispensable secret weapon to several of the top poker players in the world. Blake also happens to be a skilled poker player himself. In fact, he funded the aforementioned dating study with his substantial poker winnings, which is just one of my favorite parts of his story.
Speaker 1:Now, today, through his work with the Nonverbal Group, blake is frequently tasked with helping some of the most important people in the world improve their nonverbal communication skills. We're talking Fortune 500 CEOs, political leaders, thought leaders. All of them depend on Blake to communicate more clearly. In this episode, blake generously shares many of the insights his clients pay him thousands of dollars to receive on a daily basis. Now, recently, blake has taken center stage in the current AI revolution. His current passion is teaching computers to read human behavior. As you'll hear, blake thinks we are much closer to a world where computers understand us better than we understand ourselves. I think he thinks we're a lot closer to this than most people imagine.
Speaker 1:We riff a little bit about what this world will look like and how we should feel about it, but most of this conversation is centered around practical insights and methodologies for improving nonverbal communication at the individual level. Now I can just say on a personal level, I have been studying nonverbal communication for the better part of two decades. I wouldn't go so far as to call myself an expert, but I'm certainly a little beyond just a passing novice, and I can tell you that I learned a ton during this conversation, and I'm confident you will too. Blake is exactly the type of guest I fantasized about conversing with when I launched this podcast. He is a true social athlete. He is an expert in a space, but he is never content with the current body of knowledge, and he is always hunting down new insights in truly novel ways and then sharing them clearly and concisely with anyone who is wise enough to listen.
Speaker 1:I feel truly lucky to have hosted this conversation and genuinely thrilled to share it with you. So, with no further ado, it is my sincere pleasure to introduce to you Blake Eastman. Blake, how you doing.
Speaker 2:Good Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. So I want to dig in to really start with your main area of expertise, which is nonverbal communication. This is something you and I share a passion for, the difference being that you're an actual expert in this space and I'm just kind of a novice who likes to read about this stuff. So when I was a novice, it's pretty clear to me that a lot of what's out there is kind of pseudoscientific. You know, you'll look at a lot of the blog posts or podcasts or whatever on nonverbal communication and almost in the first paragraph of every single one they'll say something about 93% of communication is nonverbal. I've seen that stat so many times and yet I've never seen an expert that actually believes that stat is accurate or even that you could actually assess a number. That would be true in every context. So I wanted to start by could you just help us dispel some of the most common myths and misperceptions that people have about nonverbal communication?
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I mean, the person who's attributed to that study is known for saying that that's not true. Anytime you hear any sort of study like a reference to human behavior that's like 93% or 26% it's going to be an observation or a study that may be a theme of human behavior but not fact. So, like the way I like to think of it is like, you know, like social science and science, science is sort of true for everyone. So like gravity right now, like the rate of gravity or the speed of an object falling is going to be true for everybody. Like it's not something that's dependent on context or not, it's just gravity is gravity, h2o is H2O.
Speaker 2:With human behavior it's a lot different. There's a lot more nuance. There's a lot more of a trend between person to person, culture to culture, group to group, and I think what ends up happening is people really want the reference point or the quick tip or the sort of note of like 93% or 20% or whatever, because it sounds credible. But you should really be questioning anytime you hear some sort of blanketed statistic around people. I do think a lot of this stems from the fact that when people make a reference to nonverbal communication you can talk about like nonverbal behavior and how it's studied in a lab environment, which is definitely different, and then you could talk about it from like the personal self development which would give you the word sort of or phrase.
Speaker 2:Body language and I think at the heart is your communication is not a language. So they're like body language is a pretty, it's a great word, right, it's like a very good marketing word. The term comes from a book in the seventies, but it's not a language. Because if it was a language I would be able to do three things that, no matter where you went, could be translated exactly to what it meant in certain cultures or so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:So you even have problems translating certain words and certain texts from cultures, because a language can encapsulate all the meaning of that, but behavior it gets a little bit, it gets infinitely more robust. So the truth is there's just really isn't. Maybe there are some guidelines or some common themes, but everything is context dependent. Behavior should be read within the context that it is in and the truth is a lot of this stuff is just you make an observation about someone, you see an observation and you make some sort of inference and like our brains doing this at a rapid rate all the time, and sometimes we're right and sometimes we're wrong, but people like to make it, people like to believe that they're right way more than they are wrong, including experts, and it's just a way more nuanced area.
Speaker 1:So so that makes sense. So, basically, anytime that you see somebody who's making it sound like it's simple or easier, that it's always true, you can pretty much discount that and say that's not the way human behavior works. That's not the way that nonverbal communication works. It's going to be way too nuanced and context specific for you to really pull out any always true rules. But I do want to push on some of you, or pull on something, I guess, that you just said, which is that you do think there are themes and trends that are persistent. Can you reveal a couple of those things that you think are likely to be true more times than they're likely to not be true?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I say that there's themes, there's basically perceptual themes. So there's like trends and patterns and movement that society perceives a certain way. So, like I could take an example of someone who is I could take three video clips and send it out to like a thousand people or 10,000 people or a hundred thousand people. And one in the clip A the person could be like hey, my name is Blake. And in person, in clip two the person would be like hey, my name is Blake. And then clip three, like hey, my name is Blake. And you could ask them on a scale from one to five, who is the most confident version? And you're going to find that there are themes in the perception. But that doesn't mean the person's confident or not confident. It just means that people perceive that to be confident.
Speaker 2:So part of like the more complex aspect is not really understanding how to act, but how to act in alignment with society thinks, how you need to act. It's why, like, if you watch a movie from like the fifties, it doesn't really land well because an actor is picking up on the perceptual themes of that time. So like a comedy now was a lot different than a comedy 60 or 70 or 80 years ago, right? It just looks completely different and it lands differently because it doesn't. It's like a statement on the culture.
Speaker 2:So I think that's a really critical aspect that, like it doesn't, somebody can be acting confident. It doesn't mean they are confident. It means that their behavior is in alignment with what you would perceive to be as confident. It's like a little bit of a word puzzle there, but it the truth is. It's so important. So, like a con person is doing that, like con man, confidence man that's literally the etiology of the term. They're just mimicking what it looks like to be confident. They actually don't know necessarily what they're doing and that's how they scam people.
Speaker 1:So I think it's really important to separate those two things out, right, because you don't want to overestimate your ability to actually determine what somebody is feeling or thinking based on how they're acting. But, on the other hand, if you are acting in alignment with the way people perceive, then that is probably going to work in most cases, right? So, in other words, in most social settings, it's probably more useful to act confidently even if you're not confident, than to be confident and not act in a way that's perceived as confident, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean in a social situation. I would say the first step is getting to a place of where you genuinely feel confident or feel comfortable, and then building those skill sets above, because these things are not easy to fake. Like, most people don't have the level of physicality or control of their language or behavior or whatever to truly fake confidence. For the most part, if you take a bunch of people and you say listen, act, confident, they end up acting in a way that society would perceive as weird, not confident.
Speaker 2:So, it's like you can trick it only to a certain extent Like you, really Like. That was so interesting about humans. We have this ability to pattern recognize when things are outside of what normal is, and you've seen that If somebody like you fake it, so you make it like it's such a cool statement because there's some truth to that, but it could also go quite wrong, right, and I feel like there are a lot of circumstances in which people try to be a certain way, and if they were just focusing on being more comfortable, they'd probably look better than the way that they're trying to look.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So do you think that focusing on being more comfortable would be better in most social settings than focusing on appearing confident?
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100% Like start with comfort and then build in confidence. Like those two things are like highly connected, so you should be like in a social setting. My goal for any client or anybody I work with is not for them for society perceive them as confident per se. It's like first like remove the suffering of social interactions, be able to be comfortable in your own skin, be able to be uniquely you, and then start framing and making certain adjustments to make it more refined within society's lens. But you should never try to be something that you are not, unless you're really watched, and what I mean by that is you need a feedback loop of someone telling you no, yes, no, yes, no. And the truth is it's hard to do that.
Speaker 1:I think this is probably one of the reasons why every athlete in a post game interview ends up saying the same lines, the exact same way, right? Because they're just it's more important to not make a mistake than to say something interesting or to come across as really confident, right? Like their advertisers just care like hey, don't say something that's going to go viral here in a bad way, right, and so they're kind of more focused on that.
Speaker 2:That's like media training, like media training, is all about communicating a message within a certain way. That's aside, but it's anybody who trains somebody else in media training is teaching you how they think you should be perceived in a circle not necessarily how you want to be perceived. And in our culture now we like more of that openness, straightforward, I think, more than we like the controlled stuff. So like if we were to go back and take some of like take someone famous now who's just speaks off the cuff and just talks about whatever they want to talk about, and they seem authentic and organic and all those things that our society right now, at least in America, applaud. If you brought them back to the fifties it would not work that way. They would see them as probably unresponsible, not professional, like all these other things. So there's, there's all of these themes that are just so, so, so important to really understand.
Speaker 1:I'm fascinated by the idea of the vision of confidence evolving over time. How do you see it evolving Like? Can you be more specific about what confidence looks like in 2024 versus, say, 1954?
Speaker 2:I think confidence right now looks more organic and less controlled, more communicative. I mean. It's such a like confidence in itself is just such a. It's a big theme Like what is confidence Like?
Speaker 2:First, you have to always start with like a definition. So some people believe confidence to be. I mean like I would probably prescribe with the definition of it, being comfortable with the person that you are. It's just like confident. Other people would look at somebody who's maybe not talking, a lot more stoic, more relaxed in nature, not being affected by the room around them, as confident, like. It's a. It's so these things are so damn contextual that like it depends.
Speaker 2:So like a confident in a speech. So like if I wanted to create a confident, a presentation where I looked confident, it might be a little bit different than how I am approaching in a meeting. And that's the thing. Like people optimize with the wrong things. Like optimizing just for confidence is dumb. Like optimizing for confidence means you're optimizing yourself for you, you're focusing all your attention and effort to making yourself look a certain way. And the truth is like the best communicators aren't optimizing for themselves or optimizing for others. So like I'm in a conversation, I'm not necessarily optimizing. Oh, I want to look perfect, I want to look this way, I want to look that way, it's more so. I want to add as much value to the other person, I want to connect with the person, I want to establish a connection, and those directions or that layer of optimization allows you to often be more confident. Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:No, that makes perfect sense. So I'm interested if you were going at this work of because there's so many books out there that are written about how to be more confident, how to appear more confident, how to look more confident and you're saying that's fool's gold. Don't go for confidence. If you're going to start anywhere, start with comfort. What would that look like If you had someone who came in and you could just tell they were not comfortable in their own skin? How would you start that work with them?
Speaker 2:Well, it really starts with sort of understanding people's origin stories and going back and seeing where this narrative of not being comfortable came from. It's always grounded in the past. Maybe, like in high school, a moment happened and that changed their perspective or changed their lens which led them to believe that they're uncomfortable in social interactions. They've got stuff in their past that affects their present. So there's some work there. And then there's the other.
Speaker 2:I don't want to call it desensitization therapy, but it is. It's just kind of slowly increasing the stimulus and decreasing the physical response. So somebody walks into a dinner on a first date and they're really uncomfortable and they feel awkward or they feel whatever. And I mean it's a great question because the truth is there is an education. There's an education in how to understand people, understand the nuances of people, and that's the information. And then there's also the self-work you do to not be so tied into those themes.
Speaker 2:So it's just like this back and forth approach towards optimizing or not optimizing, but like improving how you interact with people.
Speaker 2:And the more you're comfortable with that, the more you're not afraid of people or trying to show up in a certain way with people, the better you are.
Speaker 2:And the truth is like I wish I could give you some like path that works for everyone, but it's quite different for each person. So some people will say, like I want to become more confident, as an example, and I'm like, oh, you really don't want to become more confident. That's not what you actually want, like when I'm listening to you. You want to reduce the suffering and conversations, you want to have more ease in your life, you want to have more, all these other things. And you have to, like change their narrative on how they perceive themselves in social interactions and other people. It's more mechanical. It's like, no, they are confident, they just don't look it Like there's just the way that they hold themselves, the way that they move, the way that they gesture, the things that they say. They're almost like counter to confidence and once you show them that, it changes. So it's usually a combination of both of those things, but it's definitely somewhat different for each person.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that you talk about a lot is getting feedback Like you really need to get. You need to develop a feedback Loop If you want to really improve, and I think that makes sense for anyone who's really taken learning seriously getting that immediate, reliable feedback. One of the ways that you've done this really effectively is just using video. You have a now famous dating study that you did here in New York where you film people on dates and then you afterwards would kind of interview them and figure out their perceptions of those dates and you found very reliable deviations in the way people thought those dates were going and the way they were actually going.
Speaker 1:You did the largest study ever on poker players and their tells and found all sorts of really interesting information there about people who thought they were being very good at disguising tells and still had, again, reliable, reliable things they were doing in terms of nonverbal communication that showed up on the video that maybe wouldn't have been viewable right there at the table. You work a lot of times with executives where you'll go back and forth with them for days, weeks, trying to get them to understand something. Then you could show them one zoom video and they're like, okay, now I get it. Does it expand a little bit on the power of using video to understand how you're coming across on a nonverbal standpoint?
Speaker 2:Yeah, video is just a raw capture of reality. So the problem is you have some event, you go to some date or workshop or whatever and you have this concept or recreation of what happened. That's probably a lot different from what actually happened. And video is the only thing. In a world with so many different perceptions and people viewing things from different angles and perspectives, it's just a fingerprint of reality, it's just raw data.
Speaker 2:I mean, video is technically just at its core, like a bunch of zeros and ones compiled to turn into a video, and there's just something very visceral and powerful about seeing yourself on video.
Speaker 2:So when most people see themselves on video, they'll highlight the things that they don't like about themselves.
Speaker 2:But the more and more you watch yourself on video, the more and more this takes less of a hold on you and it's almost like a good thing would be to record yourself over and over and over and just keep watching and commenting on your own video and after a while even the things that you don't like about yourself will have less mass because you're like alright, like whatever, like you know, like it's just. There's just just processes about. I've had people I do that in my programs or people have to comment about what they don't like and like in videos and a lot of them will give feedback like yeah, it's something, it's weird, it's like the more I write about it, the more I think about it, the less it has a hold of me and I'm like it's exactly why have you do it right? But most of us watch the video, don't like it and go I can't watch us anymore, or just shut the video it's kind of like that experience everybody has where they hear themselves on like a voice recording, like that's what I sound like.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, it's like that on steroids right, because it's also what you look like. But again, if you listen to yourself on the phone for a week, you'll be over that. That's what you sound like and you can do the same thing of video. It sounds like you're saying too. I'm curious for somebody who wants to do this exercise but they don't have you know, they don't have you by their side, somebody who is really an expert on this, who knows what to look at, who knows what to focus on, he knows what to work on. But they want to do this analysis. So, say, they want to take their last zoom meeting and they want to take a recording of it and they want to use that to improve their nonverbal communication. What would you tell them to focus on? What would you tell them to ignore to really get the most out of that exercise?
Speaker 2:I would find a sample of communication where they feel the most comfortable, the most in flow, the most engaged, and I would compare that to the other samples. So usually what you'll find is when people are the most comfortable, it's their best style of communication. Some people think that I teach skills, but the first thing I do is try to remove all these other aspects and things that people think that the way that they should be in social interactions, get them to a base and then build so just really, yeah, understanding what you look like when you're comfortable, and that probably comes from a conversation with someone that's close to you, or a conversation with someone a family member or loved one or something where you're just like natural and you'll you want to find what your natural communication patterns are before changing them that's such a cool model for learning to you, because I think most people when they come to this work, they start by thinking how do I change myself, how do I become a different person?
Speaker 1:you're saying no, no, no. What if you could just take your best form of communication now and that became your new baseline for every communication you have, wouldn't that work great? I mean, that's that seems like a pretty powerful way to work.
Speaker 2:That would be a really powerful way to start. For sure. I think that if you could snap your fingers and carbon copy what you look like when you're comfortable in every social interaction, you'd have just this measurable change in your life from the way that people relate to you and the way that you relate to people for sure.
Speaker 1:So that's interesting, even as, knowing this, like I think there are certain settings, there are certain people that just make me uncomfortable and it's really hard for me to bring my most present self in those situations. I think about like a networking event where I don't know anyone and I'm generally like it's pretty easy for me to go meet a couple new people, but if I am dropped off in a room where I know nobody, now I'm just suddenly like I don't even know where to start. But I'm wondering like, how do you, how do you take this comfortability mindset that you have? We're like cool, if I was in a group with four or five my friends, a new person came up, that would be really easy for me. But now I'm walking into an event where it's a completely different context. How do you get to the point where you can kind of have that internal experience that you have with your friends in this new setting? Is it literally just you need to get reps?
Speaker 2:or no? It's a good question. No, no, no, it's. It's really first examining, like the stories, the labels, the concepts, all these things that revolve around being a network and not knowing anyone. So, like if you reverse engineer your language, it's like oh, I'm fine when I know what someone in friends, but when I don't know anybody, that's the problem. So there's probably some theme of like rejection in your past or some theme of like not fitting in or trying to fit in or something like that. That's going like the truth is what happens and the honest to God truth.
Speaker 2:You go to a networking event. You walk up to someone your sis, hey, nice to meet you and they turn around and walk away. It's not gonna like change your life one one bit, right so, but you're adding so much meaning to it that it's allowing you to, it's distracting from the person you actually are. Like you're becoming someone else and then the whole joke is like you become someone else and people don't like that person. Like it's. It's like the think about it. Like if you're in a networking event and they're around with five people and you've got four people that are just like comfortable and like whatever, and you've got one person that desperately does not want to be rejected and wants to be included and wants to be part of the group. Like you could almost just imagine what that person looks like, right? So it's people make you know a lot of this is. It's not a month.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying it's easy, it's not. It's very hard and I think the reason why it's very hard is it's so integrated into who we are as people. Like we're social animals it more so than any other animal. We are designed to be these social creatures that connect with others and do all these things, and our current culture is quite complex. Like if we went back 7,000 years, 5,000 years, whatever it is, the interaction is gonna look a lot more simple. There's not so much nuance, there's not so many social norms, there's not so many themes of like dominance and hierarchy and how you should be and how you should not be like it's just pretty simple. But now it's become more robust. There's a lot going on for a lot of different people, so it's just being able to not identify your meaning for that and then that's the first thing. And then developing the schools were skills where you really feel comfortable make the ability to start a conversation.
Speaker 1:It's so interesting because you're saying that you're saying is probably comes from something in your past and like immediately with flashed into my head as I was like, yeah, when I'm in a networking event, it feels like an experience that you had, like at the first day of school, where you're like, what table do I sit at right? And it's just like and that's like literally the feeling I have, which is a feeling that I don't really experience in any real way at this point in my life. But you're right, it just sucks me right back into that nervous experience. And if I could just kind of re-script this is like, hey, I'm not in a high school auditorium, this doesn't matter anymore, like it's not the same thing, I'm not dealing with 16 year olds, like these are adults, it's gonna be fine. Like I could totally re-script the way I think about all that. You're right, that's.
Speaker 2:Or you could just yeah, you could just simply reframe what you're doing. So like I mean, you could reframe to let me, I want to be rejected by somebody tonight. So like I want somebody to be like go away and you probably be more successful than you would be if you were thinking I don't want to be a problematic for anyone or something like that. Like there's all these tricks that you can play, but like the truth is just people really overestimate the amount that your interaction matters for other people. It doesn't like if I'm at a social networking event and someone comes up to me and it says something weird and like wants to impress me because they know me, or something like that, and they it doesn't work out for them and they crash and burn and they walk away.
Speaker 2:I don't remember the oh my god, that what you're such a weird, but I just go on with my life, like so that's what they're. Just for you, it's everything. For the other person, it's like point oh, oh, oh, oh. One percent of their interactions. And sometimes you have to calibrate for how you're waiting these things, because the truth is people are more interested in their own life and more interested in what's going on for them than they are some stranger at a certain point so it's really interesting.
Speaker 1:I totally believe that. And then when I meet people who appear to be confident and charismatic, it seems like they overestimate the impact they're having on other people. Not underestimating it, right like they, they have like a straight and I'm again I'm trying to get in somebody else's head, so maybe I'm wrong but just the way they talk about themselves and the impact they have on other people, it seems like they really convince themselves into thinking like what I say matters, what you know. When I walk into a room, people care, you know, people care about the words I say to them, but you're kind of saying go the other direction, just like diminish. Is this? Is there something to play with here, though? In terms of thinking about the positive impact, you overestimate that and then the negative one you underestimated. Or is it really just turned down the volume on all of it, turned on the temperature and all of it? Like, how do you think about that?
Speaker 2:I'm saying kind of both.
Speaker 2:I'm saying like, once you don't care or reduce the caring, you can show up in a way that's powerful, like if you look at like anybody who's got telling you anybody's got charisma has an element of not caring.
Speaker 2:I've never seen somebody with what most people and that's like a really loaded word but what I would describe as charisma, which is basically just like behavioral attention, like somebody that you six people are talking, one person's talking and everybody's paying attention to that person. Right, I guarantee you that person doesn't have a narrative in their head where they're like okay, I hope they like that, I hope they didn't like that, because it would be impossible to mimic that sort of natural style of communication if you were thinking like that. So it's one of these things where I believe that if you come from a place that you don't really care and you don't feel that you have that much of an impact, you can actually have impact because you can step into a place of where you feel more powerful well, and it seems like a consistent theme here is that you have to find a way to keep the attention outside yourself right, like because that's where all the magic really happens yeah, it's a really good.
Speaker 2:It's a really good principle. It's just and also it's it's kind of like, if you focus on the other person or the other people and you genuinely are, it makes you this like social martyr or something where it's like okay if it's, if it's awkward, if it's whatever, like I'll take on that responsibility for the sake of other people. Like it's just an easier way to navigate life and also it's just like a core tenant. We like people that add value to us. We. How many times you're in a conversation where somebody's like just talking about themselves and you're like, all right, like this is a little bit weird, or yeah, it's just what it is to be human, to have that information exchange and if you lead with that, I just think it's a way more powerful way to be just in period.
Speaker 1:You know I'm struck by how often you know, the deeper you dive into nonverbal communication or just effective communication generally, how much it syncs up with just being a good person, right.
Speaker 2:Oh, 100% yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you feel like there are any areas where that's not true, any deviations where you're like actually being a shitty person or being a bit of an asshole would actually help you out in this setting.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, there's tons of settings like settings in workspace dynamics, where you have a team leader who's really aggressive and maybe how people would perceive their behavior to be like mean or arrogant or whatever, but then they create this like people pleasing dynamic, where people look up to that person and want to perform for that person. Like there is no one route, like I have seen every communication style work. There are very successful people in life that go through life like assholes.
Speaker 1:Like I, you know, yeah, I'm fascinated by this. I think it's the idea of, kind of the dark arts of nonverbal communication which, you know, people will talk about. Like well, steve Jobs obviously didn't know anything about people and they, well, where did you get that? He had one of the most successful organization people will kill for him, even though he has cruel to them. He obviously knew something about people that we don't, you know, but you're not going to find the Steve Jobs form of nonverbal communication in any book, right? Like, do you think about this at all? About?
Speaker 2:like, how, yeah, I mean this is this comes up a lot Leadership's, different Leadership's, its own social construct within itself. Like so Steve Jobs. He's. You know, if you read his book or you know Musk's book, you have to understand they're. They're operating within a different constraint than like a cocktail party, right? So like Steve Jobs, if you took Steve Jobs and you didn't know who he was and you had him doing his like famous staring, not talking thing, he would just be a weirdo.
Speaker 2:But like the truth is, steve Jobs like at the time that a lot of this stuff is written, is like one of the most successful entrepreneurs period. He has his ups and his downs. He comes back, he's continues to be more successful. So there is this like halo effect around his behavior and he. You know, a company is a collection of people and there are different ways to get the best people in a company. Like sometimes it is with love and permission and all the other times it's just being like brutally hard and the people that can make it make it and everybody else phases out. So there's just so many different strategies.
Speaker 2:I don't think like one is good and one is bad. It's just really about what you want to do. So like I wouldn't want to have a company where people are like, oh my God, like if you work with Blake, like I can't read the guy, he's like so difficult to understand or he's so hard on us. It's just not what I would want. But it's really about what you would want. It's a personal choice, more so than anything else. So it's like you have to choose how you want to give your impact to your team and the people around you, and then you want to make sure that your behavior is in alignment with that choice. But it is a personal decision. I've seen many different styles work, like this whole notion that there's like six types of leaders and these are good and these are bad. It's just not true. It's just isn't.
Speaker 1:Do you think that that also has something to do with synchronizing with the actual mission of the organization, right? So I recently read the Elon Musk bio and yeah, he's hard on people. It's all night, everything. You know. That makes sense when you're running a rocket company where, if we don't get this off the ground, like this whole company could end. You know, I run a software service company. We're not doing heart surgery here, like it would be. Really, if I told people they had to pull all nighters, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have employees pretty quickly, right? Like they feel like, well, I can go work at a company that's doing similar work that doesn't require me to do this. But if you want to leave SpaceX, there's no other private rocket company where you can do this work. Maybe you have a little more latitude to do things there. Do you think that there's? Do you think these leaders are conscious about syncing up their leadership style with the mission, or is it really just they get lucky with that fit?
Speaker 2:It's a really good question. I don't know if they're all conscious. I also don't know if they all care, because, also, what happens is, as a leader, as a person, as anybody, as you go through life, you kind of find it what works for you and what doesn't work for you, and it's like really hard to critique the management style of someone who is literally running three of the most successful companies in our time, right, like something's working. But if Elon said, well, listen, I've heard a couple of stories from my team and these people, you know, they feel like not listened to, they feel not heard, they feel all these things I want to change, then okay, but right now what he is doing is working. And that's why I've struggled with a lot of this leadership stuff is because, like, I work with leaders that are doing everything opposite of every book I've read about leadership and it's like no, this is a little bit more of a complex dynamic right, like, at the end of the day, organizations, and sometimes you have cultures that are created around like metrics, like the goal, like they measure your effectiveness by like three KPIs or three metrics or whatever, and you're crushing all those KPIs and you're the most effective quote unquote leader based on those metrics. And then they come in and they're like well, we don't want you to talk to people this way. And then the person goes well, what the hell? Like, I'm the most effective person in this company. And it's like hard to reconcile that, right. It's hard to be like well, we want you to be this, but not this too much this and this. So that's why it's really important to understand, like, what kind of culture you're getting into and, as an entrepreneur, as somebody that runs a team or is the leader of any people, is like what kind of dynamic do you actually want to create? So I feel that the best culture is the best.
Speaker 2:It's all about alignment. It's that simple. Like, if Elon's like, listen, we're going to moon, I'm sorry, we're going to Mars. I want to do that within my lifetime. I actually want to do that in the next seven years, when someone says, oh, I, can I take off for my birthday, it makes total sense that he says no, because, like, what are you crazy? Why would you come to me with that? Because the scope of what they're trying to accomplish is getting to Mars and we can't have people taking off for their freaking birthdays during mission critical time, right, like it makes sense. But Elon never said he wanted to run a company of like people that are happy and that's not what he is trying to create. So it's all your own creation and then seeing how that creation is aligned and I think that's what struggles for a lot of managers who, like in a culture that they don't agree with the culture, they have their own way of doing things like, that's a little bit trickier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I think the other thing that's challenging about these is that you don't get to run the counterfactuals right, like we don't know how much Elon's management style is responsible for the success of Tesla or SpaceX.
Speaker 2:Nope.
Speaker 1:It could just totally be that he made great decisions and has great team members, and if he was a nicer guy, it would be twice as successful.
Speaker 2:We don't really get to run the counterfactual yeah.
Speaker 1:Apple. Apple's a really interesting example, because now you have the whole Tim Cook, you know, post period, where they're tremendously more successful in terms of dollars and cents, but the innovation seems to have slowed down, and maybe that tells you something about those two management styles. Right, there seems to be less hiccups and less turbulence under the Tim Cook, but there seem to be a lot more energy and innovation under Steve Jobs, you know.
Speaker 2:And do you know that Tim Cook and Steve Jobs story? I think I'm paraphrasing this, but Tim Cook and Steve Jobs had a conversation when I think Steve was like knowing he is dying and handing over everything to him, and I think he said something like how do I think like Steve? Just what Tim Cook said to Steve Jobs. And Steve Jobs replied back like I don't want you thinking like that, like I don't want you thinking. It's like I trust you, I trust you, but like do not. That's like a dangerous way of going forward and I think it's truthful, because it's like there's no really way to carbon copy how someone thinks you could kind of view the world through their lens, but like he has a very unique style and a unique approach and it's just there's many ways to sort of scale the mountain right. It's like there's not just this one path, there's different ways up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and there's nothing worse than somebody doing a bad Steve Jobs impression. I'm sure you've met plenty of those in Silicon Valley, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I say. You're not Steve Jobs. Like people act like they are like a middle manager of, like a tech team or whatever is like tries to pattern these types of behaviors and I'm like you don't have the authority, you don't have the cloud, you don't have the mission, you don't have all this other stuff, so people are just going to not like you, like the only person I think they really pulled this off was the Theranos Girl, right.
Speaker 1:Like she actually really did do a compelling Steve Jobs impression and that obviously didn't end too well. So maybe more just another reminder to be yourself, because you can't do somebody else that well, yeah, so I want to kind of go back to this video thing, one thing that you've done, that you've actually inspired me to do. I've been doing this the last couple of weeks, but it's video journaling, so I wanted to get a sense of just kind of how you came to this, what you got out of it and when and why you would advise somebody to do this for themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think journaling has always been a really good practice, like a way of getting your thoughts out, a way of creating clarity in your life, like writing has so many benefits.
Speaker 2:But I found that, like when I was writing, I would tend to like lie to myself, just be overly optimistic about something and craft my words in a way that like everything is okay when everything wasn't okay. And I found video to be just way more of a raw medium for where you're at, so like just talking to yourself on video about whatever you're going through in life, or just like an update. It's sort of a snapshot not only of your thoughts and your language, but of your physicality and your health and like what you look like and all these other various types of things. So I believe it's more of a raw capture and it provides better insights than just written texts. I think they're both strong, but I think that video is something that everybody should do. It's like just even if you're recording a video to yourself once a week, like on Saturday, like with certain prompts of like what's going on, how are you, and it also makes you a better communicator, because just that practice in front of a screen.
Speaker 1:I've definitely noticed that. I've also noticed, so, what I'll do, and I don't know if this is the right way to do it, but I'll just do the direct to like selfie video on my phone, right? But it's interesting because you can see yourself while you're recording. So what's interesting is I will notice how many times I will start with something you know like oh, today's going to be a great blah, blah, blah, and then by the end I've landed almost in the exact opposite point, because I can just see what you're saying, like I'm lying to myself, this isn't exactly what I think. Or on the alternative, probably like God man, today's going to be rough and then I'll kind of get through it.
Speaker 1:I'm like no, it's not like, but it's amazing to me how I'll have just this arc over the course of a 90 second video, just because, like you said, you can't lie to yourself in the same way you can. We're just typing something out, and so I think that is. It's such a. I wouldn't have thought that intuitively that it would do that, but just doing it for a couple of weeks. I think you're spot on that. It really does make it harder to lie to yourself, and it's amazing how helpful that is for decision making right. If you can, just in the beginning of every day, just to spell the biggest lie you're telling yourself that day to start the day, it's a pretty good way to start.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I think it's a great habit and it just helps you. It helps you be more comfortable with yourself and they're not for anybody else. That's the cool thing. Like it's not, like the video's not going to be posted, it's for you, it's a moment for you to like talk to yourself. And it's also really cool if, like your entrepreneur or something like, look back at one of these videos like five years later and like, look at your thoughts on things and look on, maybe, what your mental state was like or where you were excited, where you were not excited and I think it was Steve Jobs that had that great quote was like if you look in the mirror and you ask yourself if this is the last day on earth, would you be happy with what you're doing? If your answer is no, for too long you got to change. Something like video is a visceral explanation of that.
Speaker 1:I'm struck by how much this is a present reality for all of the people that we consider the most like effective and productive people of our age. They all talk about that. Constant meditation on how short life is is being a really important part of making them do their best work every day and it's something that I really try and remind myself of. But it's hard to kind of hold onto that day on and day out, like I think it really is a superpower to remind yourself of the temporality of all this right.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I think that the notion that we're going to die is just like a very visceral reminder. I think it's like the in Bhutan or I forgot who, but like it's. There's an app called like we croak, I think it is, and it sends you a random quote five times a day, based on, I think, it's the Buddhist principle of like contemplating death five times a day and it is a really good reminder. It's like, especially for social interactions, like you're not going to on your deathbed, you're not going to remember how you said the wrong thing during a meeting, like it's just contextually, it doesn't matter, and we have this sort of false expectation that we're gonna be around the next second, the next minute, the next hour and you truthfully don't know. It's something that you cannot guarantee ever. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know I'm curious. I know we've talked a lot about not getting stuck on emulating other people, but I know when it comes to nonverbal communication, I've gotten a lot by just trying to learn specific things from specific people. I'll find someone who'll be like, wow, this person just instantly gets people to open up really easily and I'll try and kind of deconstruct what they're doing. Or I'll be like you know, every time this person goes into a room, everybody is looking at them instantly and they're not particularly attractive. There's just there's something they're doing there that I need to deconstruct. I'm wondering do you have any role models that you consider that are kind of like you know, that have superpowers when it comes to nonverbal communication, that you watch often, or that you advise your clients to watch often? Somebody that you're like this is somebody who's figured something out that's useful.
Speaker 2:No, not really I don't. I would more focused on. Here is something this person does interesting and carbon copying that one thing, as opposed to like blanketed following someone or trying to mimic someone else. So like I could look at a communicator and be like, wow, it's so interesting how they do this, this, this and this. Like maybe I want to borrow something from that. But I've never been the kind of person that will like idealize an individual. It's just not in who I am, sort of thing Like I just don't think that way. But like you could, you could watch. Like.
Speaker 2:Jamie Foxx's ability to story tell is incredible, like and you can see him like tell a story in three different settings to three different audiences and slightly change the pacing, tonality and tone of the story to connect with the audience. Like that's like world-class storytelling. So it's like okay, but I'm not gonna like copy Jamie Foxx right, like so I feel like. Or like the physicist Brian Green is like really good at handling like, quite frankly, like just like dumb topics, so like so somebody's a physicist and people ask questions or take like these things from physics and mix and match, and instead of making them wrong, he like uses the moment to teach them in a really cool way. So I prefer, like finding, like small aspects of people that you find interesting, as opposed to just copying the sum of everything.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the things that I've heard you speak about in the past is that we're learning a lot about kind of these baseline features that people have that affect their nonverbal communication. I think you know every book you're gonna see about nonverbal communication. They're gonna focus all of their effort on the things that are within your control, the things you can change. But some of this research is showing us that a lot of how we come across to other people may not be within our control. We've all heard the term, you know, resting bitch face right, like to describe somebody who just doesn't look friendly through no fault of their own. But there are all sorts of deviations of this People who come across as maybe more intense or less intense. People who come across as boring just because they have a monotone voice, even though they might be very passionate. Can you speak a little bit about what we're learning about kind of these baseline you know nonverbal things that we're bringing into every interaction that may be invisible to us because we've lived with them our entire lives?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of those are just so culturally relevant. So like an overactive face in America is probably gonna be better. So like I'd rather I prefer more facial animation in somebody both listening and speaking in America, for sure, all across the America. So if I had to say, like somebody said, I want more facial animation or less, I would say more. If we went to Asia, maybe less, or it'd be greater control over the facial animation or just the way that they perceive things. So it really is dependent on the culture. But yeah, there are some people that just look a certain way and their sides of their mouth may sort of like drag a little bit because of old age and people are like why are you angry or why are you sad? And they're like I'm fine, right, like it's just this.
Speaker 2:We make impressions Like our whole impression system is like kind of laughable in a certain regard. Like our ability it's so powerful and so problematic. So like our ability to like be in an environment and see a potential threat and identify that in a second and then our body rallies like all the hormones and neurotransmitters to deal with a threat. Like that's like so cool. But then it also our ability to like look at someone and act like, oh, like I know for a fact that that person's this, this, this, this and this by watching one second of them is like it's such bullshit. Like people just always overestimate their ability to sort of read people, especially with us. I have this thing. I call it like I've kind of forgot what I call it. It's the first, fifth and 99th impression, to the point of where, like, people will make the first impression and sort of stick with the first impression and not update at the fifth, at the sixth, at the seventh. It's like people are more complicated than they're just their face and people change. And sometimes you get meet me people at a bad day, like today. I'm just really I'm exhausted because I've been like talking and traveling and speaking and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:I might show up different if I was rested, like is it going to be that? Can you rally? Can you change your state in that moment? Yes, but there's no such thing as this like perfect version of you. You have a bunch of different versions of you and I think.
Speaker 2:But there are things like if you have a certain like, you can hedge against those things. So it's important to know what they are. So, for example, like if somebody does have like a resting bitch face, or I call them like, I call them like negative default faces, like so for like I have a low level of facial animationalist, I control about it. So like my wife will be like, why are you mad? I'm not mad, I'm just not moving my face that much. Right, you can do things to hedge it. So like, if I know that my head, if I know that my face is not giving off the perception that I'm maybe like interested in something, I could say like, oh, that was a really interesting point, or oh, I really agree, or I can move it or get excited or do all these other things. So the truth is like, if you do have some sort of default resting thing, instead of trying to change that thing, you should just try mechanisms for compensating it and shifting the sort of curve of how people receive you.
Speaker 1:And what might that look like? Is that just calling attention to it in a conversation? Is it being conscious of it and overcompensating?
Speaker 2:That's like the big one, like if you have a straight face and you don't react much like, oh like, just so you know. Before we work together, my wife always says that I have this very straightforward face, I'm interested, I'm paying attention. It just may look like I'm not. Oh, ha ha ha. You have no idea how many times those little contextual shifts change someone's perception. It's how you frame yourself. So like if you frame yourself as somebody that commonly gets perceived as being angry, but you're not angry, people won't see you as angry. If you don't do that, people are gonna see you as angry.
Speaker 1:It's funny you hit on that because that's one that I struggle with right. Like when I get excited about something, especially during a disagreement, people read it as angry. And I'm not. I won't be angry at all, I just I speak excitedly about something I'm excited about. I'll start speaking quickly. I'm speaking passionately and to somebody who's not used to that it just comes across as angry.
Speaker 1:Me and my fiancee run into this all the time because she has the. She came from a family with the exact opposite communication style where it's gonna be very stoic, it's gonna be. You know, keep a lot kind of close to the vest. Don't say everything that's on your mind. Think before you say something that might be hurtful, like which. I think these are much better, probably a much better guidepost in conversations. But that's not the family I grew up in. We just said what was on our mind. We weren't trying to hurt each other's feelings. We would say things and then we would forgive easily, like it was just kind of the family we grew up in and that made sense to us and I brought that into my conversations. But yeah, I've had to learn with employees. I've had to learn, you know, with my fiancee and close relationships that I have to draw attention to this, that, like, if you think that I'm angry, I'm probably not. If I actually am angry, I will tell you that I'm angry. Yeah, I'll tell you, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But, owning the context is really, really, really important. So the truth is, if you don't like I just wrote about this today, I was explaining that I don't want to get into it. Emotions are like a really deep conversation. It's like we can have like a 50 hour podcast on emotions, but let's just say, like emotional language is really important. So if I say to you, hey, I'm sad right now, right, that gives you this like one data point. Like you have your own concept of what sad is, I have my own concept of sad, this conversation has its own context.
Speaker 2:But if I say to you like I'm feeling sad, I'm feeling frustrated, I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed and I'm just really tired, you get a better sense of my experience because you're increasing the emotional language. Right, you get, you increase and like we don't experience like fear and anger and how. It's not the, it's not why it works. Like you can be happy and scared and frustrated and like things are complex. So like one of the more valuable tools for framing it is like framing your emotional experience with more robust language so people understand.
Speaker 2:So this happens in relationships a lot, right. Like someone says like I'm frustrated, and that's all they say, it's like I'm frustrated by what you did yesterday. So it's like it's not enough for that person to show up in a way that you want them to say. It's kind of like the more context, the better. Like I'm really frustrated and, quite frankly, disappointed, because I really relied on you for that one thing and you didn't do it, and it makes me not be able to trust you in the future. Sure, like that's just so much easier to understand, but people like have their emotional syntax or language or vernacular, however you want to say it is just limited, based on their past experiences or whatever. And I guarantee you, if you expand your emotional vocabulary, you have a better life. There should just no way that you won't, because you'll be able to more robustly understand your emotions and emotions of other people as well.
Speaker 1:I love that. You know. This is something that, it strikes me, really syncs up with the video journaling tool. Right Like. This would be a great place to go to work on video journaling. Just start by describing your emotional state and like. Try and do it in more and more specific language. Right Like, and get better at it every day?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the truth is that happens a lot of people. If you can't pinpoint why you're feeling something, nobody else can With all your knowledge and all your this I mean a therapist or somebody else can help, guide you to get you there. But the answer has really come from you and I think it's a very useful pursuit to increase that emotional language for yourself and for others.
Speaker 1:I think I know one of the blocks for me and I think this would be true for my fiance too is that what got coded into us as kids through no fault of anybody, but just kind of the way we perceived our environments is that we didn't think there was any benefit to exploring and expressing our emotions right when we would have negative emotions. My thing is just to try and work my way through it, like what's the first thing I can do that can fix this, and for her it's just kind of to isolate and just to stew on it. She doesn't want to communicate with other people, and so I think a lot of times these default responses that you have that pull you away from exploring and getting curious about your emotions and explaining them clearly At least for me, I feel like that's one of the things that really stands in the way of being more communicative emotionally is just that it's really uncomfortable for me just to take the time to actually explore my emotions instead of immediately trying to work on them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and people do things that work for them. So some people suck it up, some people ignore, some people suppress, some people all those things. But there's different paths. Sometimes it's suck it up, sometimes you want more range for how to deal with it, as opposed to just this one ironclad thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, developing some range. That's a good idea. Like that's some good language I'd like to bring into our relationship is just talking about, like hey, we can both borrow each other's responses sometimes, too. We don't always have to play the script the way that we're used to. I like that. Yeah, exactly. So if somebody wanted to get. I want to go back to this kind of this idea of these nonverbal baselines that we have, the way your face might work, the way your voice might modulate. How could somebody gain an understanding, beyond just the interactions they've had from other people, about how they might be reading, just on a general level, like, how can somebody figure out that they might read as angry when they don't really mean it before having 10 conversations go poorly? Like is there some way that you can get at this information?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. I'm building software to do that, but it's a couple of years out. So this is where I struggle with this. We're not good at evaluating ourselves Like. That's why I struggle with it.
Speaker 2:Right, like it's very rare that I show somebody a video themselves and they're able to pinpoint the exact. I mean sometimes there are, like in obvious things, like if you had a conversation with your fiance and it didn't go well, and I said watch the video and highlight the point. So it didn't go well. You probably like, yeah, I kind of made her wrong here, I did this, this, here you would see certain themes, but when it comes to what we actually look like, or default face, whatever, there's just so much stuff with people Like people don't like the way they look, or they want to look a different way, or they want to be this or want to be that, or they want to change Like. If I looked at my video right now, I'd probably be like I got to lose weight quicker or something like that, or I'd be like I got a travel less or something you know what. Like it wouldn't be as so specifically. That's why it's almost like dangerous, like when you send people down this rabbit hole because they start looking for things and start optimizing things that lead to second and third order effects where they're like oh, I need to smile more and they start smiling weird and then that leads them to people not liking them because they're like okay, like you're starting to smile more, right, like, so. That's why it's so hard and that's why video and having other people to give you feedback is so much better.
Speaker 2:But the problem is you don't want to ask for feedback. It's like one of the more interesting things, like whenever you're dealing with your nonverbals or communication or whatever. Do not ask for feedback. Ask for people's perceptions. So don't say, hey, do you have any feedback on what I should change Cause, then you're just going to get somebody else's opinion about what you should be doing differently. But if you say like, how did I make you feel in that discussion? And they said I didn't feel like you were listening and you'd be like okay, interesting, and somebody else, how did I make you feel? Like what did you perceive me? Oh, I didn't feel like you're listening. I was like oh, wow, people don't think I'm listening, I am listening. So like that's the better thing to ask or solve for.
Speaker 1:I liked that. That question about how did you perceive this as opposed to what would you have had me do differently, because you need to do the work of figuring out how you'd handle that differently I liked that Exactly. Is there anything that's going to be different? This was something that I was thinking about as I was really trying to figure out how this is. Something that I've obsessed over my whole life is how I'm coming across to other people and you know I can look back comically at just some terrible misjudgments I've made.
Speaker 1:But one of the things that occurs to me is that, like, this stuff changes over the years and it's probably different via genders, like one of the things that I think about, like when I first started out my business, I you know I've always looked very young for my age. I started my company when I was like 23. I looked like I was like 11. And I was starting my brother and we did public speaking to promote our business and I mean it literally just looked like you know, two teenagers coming up to pitch you on a tech business idea, and so our way to deal with that was that we put suits on. You know, we're like we're gonna look really, but there's nothing that looks more like a 12 year old than a 12 year old in a suit right.
Speaker 1:It looks so bad and I think if I was doing it over, I'd say, like you should just lean in to your young people doing tech. You're speaking to older people. Older people expect younger people to know tech. Dress young. Wear a jeans and a t-shirt right Like that would have been, I think, the right move. Now, looking back on it, I don't think that would necessarily be the right move for me now. Now actually showing up in a suit might be a better move. Yeah, it strikes me that these things change over time and that they're not necessarily fixed, so it's like it's also about kind of figuring out you know where you are in your life and what is the relationship most people have to you. You know, if you're in a subservient position most of your life versus being a leadership position, you might have different priorities in terms of what you're trying to communicate. Right One you're trying to be taken seriously. The other one you might be trying to put people at ease, and so you literally have completely divergent goals from those two standpoints.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that you can frame yourself whenever a way that you want to frame yourself. So I remember when I was teaching poker at a young age, I was teaching like jeans and a t-shirt and so I'm going to be like you're a little bit young. I vividly remember it was like like why should I learn poker from a 25 year old, or something like that. And my answer was like because if you're lurking poker from a 50 year old, everything they were teaching you was probably outdated. And they laughed right. It was just like my response was quick and confident and assertive of like this is the right thing for you and people.
Speaker 2:I just don't think people get how much they could control their own narrative or how other people perceive you. That is something you get. That like framing and through all these different types of just language tools, like just being able to frame yourself. It's like, yeah, we're young, but the difference is we live at home and we're fully committed to this and this is our 24 or seven job and we don't have a family. We don't have like how to frame something that can be perceived as a negative as to a positive, like, yeah, we're young, but we have the energy of a 20 year old Most people. I'm not running home to my family Like I'm going to be grinding from the morning to the end.
Speaker 1:So it seems like could be something that could also play with that confidence or comfort you have in a situation. If you know that you've completely reframed whatever you see as your insecurity or weakness there as a strength, then you can speak about that confidently. Then it's totally going to make you more at ease in that setting. Like if I really felt, like stepping in there, that my youth was an advantage, not a disadvantage, I would approach it completely differently and probably much more effectively.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, and it's that's more of just like a tool. It's like a tool like reframing, like the ability to shape a narrative in a way that you want it to be shaped. It's not, it's a skill set, it's a tool and it's something people got to get used to doing. It's like, for example, when I used to teach psychology, like people would come in and be like sorry, I'm late, and I'm like don't even say that, because now I remember you as late. Just come in and sit down. I'm likely to forget who you were. But by framing yourself as late, I'm going to remember you as late.
Speaker 2:But in the same other example, if you're in a meeting with five people and you come in late and you just held everybody up, if you don't give the context for why you're late, you can be perceived as rude. So like it involves any walk in a meeting, everybody. I'm so sorry. We had a call with a client and went over. I was dealing with the blah, blah, blah, blah contract. Everybody has that context. If you just walk in like five minutes in and nothing happened, it's like what? So it's like two different devices and two different ways of using framing in two different contexts. That if you swap the advice, you'd have bad results in each one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it really is. You really have to work backwards from the situation you're in, the effect you're trying to have on other people and then kind of the baseline that you're starting with. There's so many variables, yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 2:Let me just that's another thing. So one thing I really don't like that the word baseline. I want to explain why. So a lot of like body language experts or something we'll talk about like it's kind of this, like interesting cop out, it's like, oh, like, if a person does this, that means that. But of course you need to understand their baseline.
Speaker 2:And what I always found when you like like every read one of those books or understand those books, nobody really describes what a baseline is Like. What the hell is a baseline Like, okay, there's like a baseline of I could literally right now rattle off 30 baselines. There's like a baseline of emotional language, a baseline of emotional expression, a baseline of top half forehead movement, lower face muscle, like you can go through the whole thing which nobody can actually do, like machines can do, but like people can't actually do this. So it's one of these things where, like, whenever you're establishing a quote unquote baseline, gotta be really clear about like, what is that? Is it a baseline of movement, is it a baseline of confidence or whatever? So, like mine has always been like comfort and social interactions I'm looking for how comfortable is this person?
Speaker 2:Cause I want to make them either. I want to make them more comfortable. If they're not comfortable, right Like that's like an objective function of, or something that I want to do. It's like if somebody is talking in a group of six people and like if you're at a dinner with me and you feel uncomfortable and there's six of us, I mean it'd be very rare for me not to make you comfortable within 10 or 15 minutes and you even know what happened. You're just like I just feel so much more comfortable and it's me actively like checking in with you to make sure you're safe, make sure you're heard, make sure you have a comfortable, whether I make myself the model or make a joke or change attention in the room or whatever it is. So like the baseline thing is so critical. You really got to know what you're looking at before you, otherwise it's just kind of like, oh, this person looks different and it's not really a baseline. So it's just an important point that just came to my head. I just wanted to discuss it.
Speaker 1:I think it's a really good one too, because to your point it really it kind of betrays an intellectual sloppiness in the way that you're thinking about it right, that's a really good way of articulating it.
Speaker 2:I like that intellectual sloppiness yeah.
Speaker 1:And you can just say that we can. I can basically nullify whatever I said that didn't turn out to be true by just saying, well, there was a baseline error there that if you would have understood I would have made a difference. It's like, well, that's not really useful, it's not really predictive and so we probably shouldn't have even done it. That's really useful. So that's another thing, that if you're listening out there, how you know you've got a pseudo scientific body language if they're using baseline too much in addition to numbers.
Speaker 2:yeah, or just not knowing what a baseline is. Like how can you baseline something if you don't really define what a baseline is? So it's just like the throwaway thing, like you need to. It's like a cop out. It's like I'll give you advice, right. So here's what you should do. Okay, when you walk into a room and you talk to somebody, you should say, like what's the most important thing, but don't forget their baseline. Or if they look different, it could always be a difference in baseline. It's like advice. But here's this crazy exception for when the advice can or cannot land right, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No, it reminds me of just kind of the disclaimers they give at the end of, like, a pharmaceutical medication. Exactly what it's like.
Speaker 2:That's the best analogy. Like here's this great job that can stop. However, it may lead to death stroke. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
Speaker 1:You said something recently that really resonated with me. You said that we are living in the most socially and emotionally complicated time we've ever lived in, but obviously we don't have new evolutionary or biological wiring that's caught up with this, and so I'm curious how do you think about this? How are you managing this tension in a world that is getting more context, specific, more socially complicated, and it seems like the trend lines for this is that it's gonna keep accelerating in complexity and it's gonna keep getting more confusing, but we're not gonna have more resources to deal with this? How do you prioritize your time and attention to just not drive yourself crazy and to get the most out of social interactions in this increasingly complicated world?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. I think that first, I think we'll be fine. I think all the disastrous talk about technology and humans. If there's one thing we're good at, it's adapting. So I definitely think that a 10 year old kid in today's society is way more tapped into the social nuance than 30, 40 years ago. Why? Because they have streams of the nuance coming through every phone and screen that they're on. There's more exposure to it.
Speaker 2:I do think it's gonna increase the amount of suffering in the world in the sense that people derive. I say that the goal of everything I do is to decrease the amount of suffering and increase the value add and extract from social interactions, but it always starts with decreasing the amount of suffering. So I feel for somebody that walks into a meeting and feels terrified, or walks into a network event and the heart's racing and their stomach is bothering them and they're just terrified of being like that. I think with the complexity, suffering will increase, which is why I'm doing all that I'm doing is to try to decrease that and I do think that, like machines, will play a big role in this. So I think that it's hard because, like a lot of the things that you've asked me on this, like when you ask me, it's like my software can do that, not right now, but it will be able to right. So let me give you an analogy.
Speaker 2:So you asked me, you said hey, like a second or third part. You said like, is there a way to understand how other people would perceive you? All right, like, I'm working on that. So, like the version of this. I mean, let's say, eight years from now, is you've got a robot in your house, right? Whatever? Tesla robot, microsoft robot, whatever. And you ask it listen, I'm about to do this presentation to a room full of people in Southeast Asia. Can you analyze my presentation and notice any distributions of where I would be perceived differently because of this? And it can tell you because mapping perception is. It's not complicated, it's just really labor intensive. It's not complex, though, like all I do like think about it. Like I can get 100,000 people right now to watch videos of people and change certain things in the videos, and we have a pretty interesting methodology for doing this and they can. I like this person. I don't like this person. I think this person's confident, I think it's not perfect, and then you can take those same behavioral patterns and distribute it amongst the population and see how another population would handle it. So, like I think this stuff is coming, I mean, hopefully it'll be my company that does the bulk of this, but you will be able. I truly believe that within 10 to 15 years you will have a conversation, or you won't have a conversation. Your robotic system will understand more about you than you do yourself, because it can pick up on patterns that we can't.
Speaker 2:People say, oh, it's just a technical problem. We have a decision tree in my head for everything. Right, and you do too. We have these massive decision trees, but that's just our decision tree. A machine has infinitely more of these decision trees and infinitely more processing power, and once they're fed how to navigate that, it'll be pretty cool. So I think technology is a big answer to this, but with that probably becomes a lot of what happens when you're more comfortable talking to your robot friend than you are your real person. There's a lot of other stuff that it leads to, but I'm hoping that technology will solve a lot of this.
Speaker 1:I love that you pivoted this part, because I think this is maybe the most fascinating thing that you're working on right now is teaching machines to read humans, and to me this just seems obvious that it's only a matter of time before machines can do just about everything better than us, and I think reading humans is going to be one of the first things they can do. It's one of the less to your point, it's one of the less complicated things. I mean, children can read people pretty effectively, right, it's not going to be hard to teach machines to do this, and pretty soon they are going to be better at it than us. You must spend some time thinking about what the world looks like when that happens. What are your most excited? This is probably coming and what are your most like? Wow, this is a little bit scary or a little bit nerve-wracking that this may be coming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I don't really think that much about the future. Maybe that's a problem Like I'm more focused on, like most of my efforts focused on solving. There's like a bunch of steps that have to happen between what I just envisioned versus where I am now, and I'm just so dedicated to each step, like solve this and then move to the next step. Solve this because you're like complicated things in machine learning and computer vision and a bunch of other things. But like every technology, imagine it being good and bad. I mean, I think that's every technology. Every technology has great things and bad things.
Speaker 2:Like Facebook connected us to the world and the fact that you could post something on Facebook and get instant connection from other people is incredible. The fact that you can reach out to somebody that you may have went to high school with 40 years ago and now you're friends again and you never would have without Facebook it's incredible. But it's also the fact that we're in this like constant sort of like casino of like looking through videos and being distracted. So I really think that I mean everybody just highlights good, bad, but it's not. It's so complex.
Speaker 2:So I believe that I do believe that this type of technology is for sure a net positive. Will it be used in ways that hurt people? Or, of course, just like a car does like, just like an ambulance does, just like every, like modern surgery, just like everything. But it's sort of like the ends justify the means and if you can be responsible on the way things are used and understand its impact and hedge against it, it's going to be net positive. But like also just I mean I could think of more net positive cases off the top of my head than I can net negative, and maybe that's my just optimism, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know, I was, I was. I think this is also one of the structural asymmetries about this, which is that it's always the people who are most excited about the promise of a technology though the ones that get it off the ground right the people who think there's going to be all these problems.
Speaker 1:They're not the ones that are on the vanguard, right. So, yeah, the conversation kind of gets dominated by the optimist early on. And I look at this because, because this was me in social media. I remember when I was, I was one of the first people that was really excited about social media. We used to teach about it all the time and people ask me all the time like, aren't you worried about this, this, this and this? I'm like no, of course not. Here's why. And I had great answers for all of them. I really believed it and I was completely wrong. Like they were right, like, and so I.
Speaker 1:I now I think about this now and I'm like I want to try and think about how this can go wrong. Because it's natural for me to think about how it can go right. I instantly get really excited about all the ways it can go right. That part comes easy to me. But I want to think about the blind spots that I had early on, and so I really try and think about this a lot. With any new technology comes out where it's like the Vision Pro or AI or, or you know, machine learning of human faces, like it's. It's really easy for me to think about all the amazing things, but I also want to leave some room in my head for some of the dystopian outcomes. But to your point, it's like that's not a place you want to put attention when you're trying to build a tool. Like you can't be thinking about how can the government misuse this in 10 years? Like that's not. That's not where your head needs to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've thought about it, I have, but it's just, I guess it just leans towards positive.
Speaker 2:Like it leans towards positive when you have an eight year old child, or not even eight, like a 10 year old kid or 11 year old kid that's really struggling in school and doesn't know why, and you can have a machine to understand it. Or just like just the self awareness of a vehicle like this. Like, for example, like something can say Blake, you look tired based on your facial data, based on your sleep data, based on all this stuff. Like, make sure to take a break. Like just that little teeny prompt as an example.
Speaker 2:I mean, will it be misused? I mean everything gets misused by advertisers first, I would assume, right, so, like that, that, like you're walking down the street, software will never be able to detect your actual emotional experiences. It gets so complex because, like, with enough data, you really do get to know a person. So, like if I were to be, like, for example, if you're able to pull all of all these data sources are connected in some way, shape or form. And like, based on the messages you've written, the things you've posted and the behavioral data sets for you walking just across the street, like you meet the clinical definitions of depression, and then, like an ad that comes in and is like are you feeling depressed? Like here's the solution, like I could definitely see that coming. Well, that's not even hard.
Speaker 1:Like that's a best case scenario. That's a best case scenario If it's a depression medication. What if it's alcohol?
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, drink more or this, and that's where I hope we have, you know, standards. I know that I will have some sort of ethical standards at which the way that certain things can be used or not, for sure, I would never want to create something that you know creates harm in the world. But I would be completely ignorant to think things that we do create in some way, shape or form don't lead to things that we haven't seen. Right, like that's kind of that's like something a lawyer would never see, never tell you to say, but like it's just to honest the God truth of every technology.
Speaker 1:I think it's totally right. It's a they're all double edged swords and there's no way around that. You can't create something powerful that can't also do something powerfully bad. Like it's just. And then that becomes our work as a society to figure out how to manage that tension, like and that's, but maybe it's not the job of the technologist creating the technology at the beginning. Like you can't. You can't keep both feet in those camps at the same time. I think you know I'm curious. This is one of the questions I get asked the most by people who listen to this podcast is the one that people have been pushing me the most. They're like you got to talk about what's wrong with generation Z and they're like what's?
Speaker 2:going on. What is generation Z again? I don't even know anymore. I don't even know.
Speaker 1:And that's the thing. These, these things are all. I think. What most people think are Gen Z are actually like high school kids.
Speaker 1:Well, no, gen Zs can be all the way up to, I think, like in the late twenties now. So I think, like people have some definitional things, but what people mean when they ask this question is they basically mean high school, college, high kids. Basically, they don't communicate the same way they don't have, they're not good at nonverbal communication, they seem depressed, they seem anxious, they're not good at developing relationships, they don't spend any time outside. You know, this is this is the batch of concerns that I hear, and I'm interested as somebody who is a nonverbal communication expert but also an optimist by nature, who believes that we are good at adapting. How do you read this generation? Do you see this as a generation that's going to have all the social and communal problems that so many of the older generation is predicting? Or is this just a new world and they might actually be the best ones adapted to the thrive in it?
Speaker 2:Well, first, I would say I have no idea. So, like I have no clue, like any research, about the differences in generations, and I just don't know. I don't, I don't know that research, I don't know what's going on. I don't really work with that many 20 year olds or teenagers. I don't really interact with that many 20 year olds or teenagers. I don't really have a good grasp of it. I would say, though, that they're still going to be better than past generations. Like the past generations have this like oh, we're so good, we're so this or that, I do think that there are some problems with ours. But listen, my biggest concern is the soft as the word. But like that, we're not breeding or creating breeding. We're not as, like the matrix, we're not creating durable humans that can handle anything in front of them.
Speaker 2:So when someone gets really angry or triggered because someone used a word in a conversation with them, and that gets reinforced as being something that the world shouldn't act this way because of this, I don't, I don't think that's proactive. I never want any person to walk around the world. I remember I worked with a vegan once that was so triggered by anybody talking about meat and she would just get like angry. I was like and I said to her I said, listen, you know that I eat meat, you know that I love steaks and I eat them, like every single day and I know you respect she goes no, I respect you. I was like listen, I'm telling you this I love that you have a cause and you want the world to see the world through your lens and I appreciate that you're willing to change my views and opinions and all of that.
Speaker 2:But you can't go through life if every single time someone says that I'm going to have a steak, being disgusted Like that's going to create more stress, it's going to create more environment. There's going to be so many issues with you and I don't know if this is just me observing this on the peripheral, but it seems like we're not teaching the skill sets of Strengths. Now I don't even know how to articulate with. Skill sets are. I'll use my coach. Jocelyn has this concept called unmesable with right. What just like? What messes with you in life? I think things are just messing with people too much, right? I don't want people to have a life where they're messed with.
Speaker 1:I think you're. I think it's such a great point and, again, I'm not an expert on this generation too. I spend so little time. It's one of the reasons why I haven't tackled this topic. I'm like, I don't feel like I'm qualified. There's a lot of younger. I live in a building that has a lot of families and so there's a lot of kids in here. I see them in the elevator all the time. They don't look like a problem to me. They're kinder.
Speaker 2:They're kinder.
Speaker 1:They're more polite than I was at that age. I mean, I don't really know. Like I hear parents talking about it, but like when I spend time with them it doesn't look like it's a crisis thing. But yeah, I hear the stories about how you know this word gets used and so you know this teacher is fired because a word got used in her classroom. You're like God.
Speaker 1:I remember when I went to school and I remember literally going to my parents, I got accused of plagiarism for something I did not plagiarize and I was like, can you? She just was mad that it didn't sound. It was written so well that she didn't believe that I wrote it. And she penalized it for me and gave me, gave me a bad grade. I go to my mom like, hey, this is where I need you to step in. Like she's accusing me of something I didn't do. It's hurting my grade. I remember my parents being like, yeah, a lot of life is dealing with unfair people. Go figure it out. Like. And I was like, but it was a great lesson, right, because I did, I had to go, I had to go conflict resolve with my teacher and we ended up getting there. But it was a great skill for an 11 year old to learn, and I just think about in this day and age, there's no way that would have happened.
Speaker 1:You know, parents would have been in there immediately, and so, yeah, I do think that the softness is something I worry about too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the world doesn't look like. I had a professor so interesting he used to like have all these criteria for when you submitted the papers. We, like the whole class, was submitting four papers and every pay. I literally remember every paper needed to have a cover, a cover letter, like a cover title, with your name, the class, your code and this number that he gave us all. And then, like I, he said I want the cover lever stapled horizontally, no vertically, on each paper. It was like four or five simple things, right, and the way he said it was like all right, this is kind of weird, right, like, but whatever, the guy told me to do it, this assignment, do this way. And then I wish I remembered his name. He would, when everybody would hand in the paper, he, he would sit there to everybody with hand in the paper and he had all his papers, says right, and he'd like take it and look at it and put it aside, take it, look at it, and if one didn't meet the criteria, he would rip it and throw it away.
Speaker 2:And I was like holy whenever watching this and being like holy shit, this guy is fucking intense, like what, what's the deal? And of course I followed all the directions and of every person that didn't follow the directions, went into a story or narrative about how this person's wrong, this person's this, and I was like he just told you to do like three steps and his lesson to us was if you don't know how to follow just some of the simple rules of what people are telling you, you're never going to be successful. And I thought it was such a wise, it was an interesting way to teach the like. It was like such a wise thing that it's like, yeah, sometimes you just not you just going to have to deal with what's in front of you. You don't have the opportunities to change or shift, or, and complaining is not going to get you anywhere. And I feel like there's, just from my observations, there's just a little bit too much of that right now and hopefully it'll shift and these things overcorrect.
Speaker 2:I mean, I feel like there's, you know, listen, 15, 20 years ago, I remember watching an episode of Seinfeld and I think it was like the masturbation contest episode. Do you remember that? And then I like I typed in Google like controversy surrounding that episode and it was like, oh, it was like a big thing. Back then. I'm like I can't believe that they went there. Now, that's a laughable thing. They didn't even use the word Like. It's. Just the times this there's, it changes and shifts, it changes, it alters. You've got to ride the wave, not fight it and say why is this wave moving the way it should be moving and it's like no.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got to pick your battles too right, you can't make everything, yeah, definitely. You maybe have one issue, but you can't turn everything into an issue. Well, cool, here I want to kind of move into the rapid fire round and I'm now very conscious of I've taken up a lot of your time and you've been traveling a lot and very tired, so we'll try and do the conversations always make me feel better.
Speaker 2:It's like the truth is like, even if I start tired, I get energy from other people more. So if you were in the room with me, but just like talking about these things and topics like give me energy, it's like my fuel. So it's actually like an anecdote to my tired. So thanks.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, I'm the same way too. I always get energy from conversations. So, well, cool I've got. Just, I want to go through, like rapid fire, a few questions here that are all kind of in the space of nonverbal communication and communication, some like kind of context specific. So let's start with the classroom context. I say there's a student listening to this who wants to give themselves the best chance at getting a good grade in their class. Is there anything they can be doing from a nonverbal communication standpoint that is going to give them the best chance of getting a good grade in that class?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sit in front, look interested, that's the first thing. So sit in front, everyone's in a while Not tilt your head, squint and write something down. Right, like, oh, that's so interesting. Like right, like, okay, just do that. And then sit in front and then ask questions that are like deeper questions. So so ask questions that suggest you read the content. So, for example, like if you have a textbook and they tell you to read 100 pages of a textbook, instead of asking some random question like go to page 37, look at one thing and ask a very specific question because it gives you the perception that you read it.
Speaker 2:Just got to make sure that it wasn't answered on page 80.
Speaker 1:Yeah, make sure.
Speaker 2:yeah that's a good point. But even if it's just like an esoteric or I was like oh, I was really interested in this concept, or blah blah, blah blah, like where do you find more information about that? It's just people are going to perceive or think that you read it.
Speaker 1:I love that. Such an easy tip. All right, you spent a lot of time observing dates, so for someone who has a big first date that they want to give themselves the best chance of making a really good first impression and getting a second date, what would your advice be to them?
Speaker 2:It's not a big first date. You barely know this person. This person has no value to your life At this point. If you're a guy, for the most part you probably. If it's a big first date, you're overvaluing the person's attraction and you're putting like attraction on a big scale, like oh my God, they're so beautiful or oh my God, they're so this. If you and I'm just talking about trends of themes, male, female, like whatever but whatever you're doing, if it's a big first date, you're overvaluing the person. You do not even know this person. Why are they so special? Like that's the first case, you have to come from it. The second you walk into a dynamic. You're like, oh my God, this is such a big deal. You will fundamentally not put yourself so you just can't perceive it that way. You got to coach yourself out of making this a big thing. What's the worst that happens? Oh, you're going date. It didn't work, that's it. You find it Right back where you started. Yeah, Exactly, it's just that simple.
Speaker 1:All right. What about for those of us in relationships? What's something that we can be doing to improve, like in terms of nonverbal communication? What's something we can be doing to improve our relationships with our significant others?
Speaker 2:I mean probably one listening skills, which is a big thing in relationships is not just listening skills, it's like perceived listening. Like making sure that you actually look like the other person thinks you should look when you're listening, because sometimes, like there's fights, like no, I heard every word you said. It's like, well, that's not really listening. Like hearing every word is not really saying right, like it's there'd be a ability to power it back. What's going on. I would think like really having a more robust discussion with your partner about their past and how they handle emotions and handle experiences, so you can communicate in a way that best serves them and you can best serve each other. I mean, a big tip would probably my biggest. It would probably be like use better expressive or more emotional language to describe what you're going through. So don't just say I'm frustrated. Like get into the context of why you're frustrated and what other emotions come up and all that stuff. It'll be much better relationship if you two can understand each other's like unique emotional disaurus.
Speaker 1:Okay, so for conflict resolution, I kind of consider this like. To me this is the highest form of kind of communication. Right Is when you have to go into a meeting with somebody where you are on different sides and you need to find common ground. What would you advise somebody who is in a high stakes conflict resolution situation like this and they want it to go well?
Speaker 2:Boxing gloves and fight it out. I'm just kidding. Conflict resolution should always start. Whoever's initiating it should start with their role in the conflict, which is what a lot of people are refused to do. So everybody wants to go.
Speaker 2:So if, like say, something happened between me and you and I'm having to, like just have a discussion about it, it starts with where I fucked up, like listen, boom, boom, boom, and it doesn't quickly go into like sometimes I'd be like, okay, listen, I fucked up, I was late, but you shouldn't have had. That's not what it is. It's describing where I messed up and then describing the impact of where I messed up on you. 95% of the time, if you lead with that, the other person will reciprocate. All right, but people don't do that. They start with, oh you know, da, da, da, da, da, da, and then they go right into the problem and it's like no, this is not. Oh, I'm so sorry, but here's where you're doing everything wrong. It's really getting like here's what I did, I'm sorry, it impacted you. And sometimes like conflict resolution's about saying you're part of the conflict or addressing your part without an expectation that the person's gonna return it.
Speaker 1:It's interesting to me? I don't see that it's interesting to me because, as you're saying this, one of the things that occurs to me is I'm like that would be really easy for me to do if I'd calm down and was ready to have the conversation, but really hard for me to do if I hadn't.
Speaker 2:Which is probably yeah, that's a good insight for you, like there's oh, totally there's times where it's just not the time to have this conversation or at the time to send this email.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So like, if you can clear-headedly think about what you've done to contribute and it's easy for you to say that out loud, that's probably a pretty good indication you're ready to have this conversation. If you can't, maybe you're not. Yeah, at least for me I know that would be true. All right, let's say you're entering a new social setting where you don't know anyone and you wanna give yourself the best chance at making a good first impression, attracting positive attention and, you know, pocketing some meaningful relationships that you can extend beyond that event. How, what focus would you have tell someone to go into that setting with?
Speaker 2:Depends on the level of anxiety. I think. Well blanketed statement. No matter what, having a plan is gonna make you feel better.
Speaker 2:So for those of you who would like a lot of anxiety, even if you said, okay, as soon as I walk in, the first thing I'm gonna do is find out where the bathroom is. I'm gonna go to the bathroom, I'm gonna use the bathroom. The second thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna walk to the bar. I'm gonna get a drink. The third thing I'm gonna do is find the conflict, the organizer of this event, right, and I'm gonna ask them a couple of questions about like will there be another one? Da, da, da, da, da da. The fourth thing I'm gonna do is talk to a staff member, and then the fifth thing I'm gonna do, I'm gonna randomly jump into a conversation. And the reason why is, if you have like intentions behind your movement, you're likely to look less like creepy and weird as you move around a space. Like all of a sudden you're walking in and you're walking around to the bathroom, and then you're walking around to the bar and then you're walking around to the conference to organize or probably make you feel better also.
Speaker 1:I love that too, because it basically builds up that head of steam right. You're doing the things that are easiest first and you kind of you layer them so they get harder and harder by the time. You're doing the fifth one, which is opening a group of strangers. You've already talked to the organizer.
Speaker 2:You've already talked to the staff member.
Speaker 1:You've already yeah, I love that. That's a really cool idea. I'm definitely gonna pocket that one. I can use that. So one of the things that I think it really gets in the way of non-verbal communication certainly from me is just rumination. When you're stuck in your head something that you're worried about, something that you said stupid a few minutes ago, do you have just kind of a rapid fire way that you can kind of cut through rumination and bring your full present self to a social situation?
Speaker 2:I think the quickest thing is to write down ruminating thoughts. You can't argue with your thoughts in your own head. It tends to just go in circles. Writing it down creates a disconnection between your thoughts and allows you to actually like visually see them. So I would just write them down. Second thing I would do is give them a voice. So if you start ruminating, change the vocal aspect of the rumination. I make it like annoying. So like if you're sitting there and you're like I can't believe. I said that. I can't believe. I said that. Don't make it. You dissociated from using it. I can't believe. I said that. I can't believe. I said that it kind of like makes it like fun or comical, but more importantly, it disconnects your identity as a person and your tonality from those thoughts. So it's like that's not me.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about international travel. You've got, you know, I know you travel a lot, I travel a lot too we're learning a lot about nonverbal communication. Culturally is just completely different. You've alluded to it a couple of times in our conversation here that you know, going to Asia facial, you know, having a lot of facial movement could be perceived completely differently than it is here. How do you kind of orient yourself when you get to a new country that maybe you don't have that sort of information with? You know, how do you make sure that you're kind of queuing into whatever the social signals are there?
Speaker 2:I mean, for I mean you could do research, so like you could talk to for a business context, like if I'm about to go speak to a group of people that I don't know any culture about, the culture, I'll talk to somebody that understands usually translators, like a corporate translator will understand all the little nuances and I'll be like is there anything that they is frowned upon?
Speaker 2:Or like like give me this delay of the land, kind of thing.
Speaker 2:But then next is just really observing, like all right, before I like jump into a place, I just want to watch, like how our communication's happening, like what is a standard interaction from a like just being more in that observation to notice any different and there is cross-cultural differences, but like the world's a lot more homogenous than it used to be, I think because of technology and the fact that everybody's closer right, like so yeah, going to Japan, interactions are going to look different.
Speaker 2:The way that I would read people would be like a different system, probably because they somebody can hate you and still be genuinely like respectful, which is a lot different in like America versus New York versus California, like there's differences. But I would say, like, talk to translators and observe first and then also just be like really open to the fact that you're in somebody else's culture. You're not in your culture, like don't, I'm an American that was born and raised in New York City. If I go to Japan, things shouldn't be the way that I think they should be. They just are the way that they are, and I should be more willing to like go into that culture, as opposed to try to force a culture to be how I think it should be.
Speaker 1:Do you think there are any like shorthands that you could use? Like you know, you could really somebody who's never. You'll hear so many people who learned English in America and they'll say that, like I learned it from watching late night shows. Or I learned it from watching you know, and it's actually pretty good, because a late night show has human conversation with you know famous, charismatic people who are trying to present them the best selves and it's like you're going to be learning nonverbal communication that's pretty effective for the United States at the same time that you're learning verbal communication. Do you think there's any shorthands like that? Like, could you just go to Japan and watch their late night show and get the same type of insight, or is that?
Speaker 2:I mean Japan's such a bad example because it's like such a nuanced society, like there's just so many themes that you're not aware of and themes that I don't think you can truly grasp or understand until you speak the language right.
Speaker 2:And then there's also this whole cultural norm around how a society perceives foreigners. So, for example, like if you are in France, let's say, and you try to speak French, they seem to get like a little bit annoyed. They're like, if you talk to I mean, in my experience, and this is kind of like a known thing if you like all of a sudden go, if I go to France and I'm like, oh, you know, pardon, like Merci beaucoup, like you know, they're like, oh, what do you want? Right, like they don't necessarily like that game, but other cultures like it. Like you might go to another, like South American culture, where you're trying to speak Hispanic or Spanish and you're talking, and they're like, oh cool, he really is understanding or is going into that. So there's that too, right, it's like trying to fit in or how you're perceived. It's just very meta.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So we spent a lot of time talking about the nonverbal aspect of communication, but your real expertise is in communication writ large. So I'm curious is there anything that you think of in terms of just structuring your verbal communication that can help you come across as somebody who's more clear, likable, concise? What would you recommend for somebody who wants to be perceived in that way?
Speaker 2:I think structure is really important, having the ability to structure your thoughts and your ideas. I think one of the best ways in the beginning is just counting, so like, oh, there's like five things to go over today, or three things I need to go over with you, or two things that I want to go to Cause it's just, it's just an easy reframe. So if I say, listen, there's three more things I want to do, go over before I go, I do a couple of things. One, I frame that there's three things over before I want to go. So, like you know what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Two, I create structure for myself because I'm like one, two, three, like I know how to do that, I know when to start and finish and I, finally, I create this dynamic where you know what to expect. So when I'm on point two, you know there's going to be a third point. When I'm on point three, you know it's going to be over. So it's just creates like inherent structure instead of just going on and on and on, like when is this going to end? So it's like, oh, like, for example, I just have one quick story and then a message about it, and then I tell the story of a message, right Like so. Anytime you can sort of prep or frame what the expectation of the communication is and what is going to happen, it's a plus.
Speaker 1:It's great, too, because it really makes you think about what you're going to say before you say it to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that. I'm always working on this, like I'm always like like working on improving my structure. I struggle with that because my thought goes like my head can go in so many different spaces and ideas, so like I'll think about something I'd like to talk about this, this, this, this. Like it's kind of like chaos in my head. So I'm always trying, like when most people hear me talk, you're hearing like chaos distilled as much as I can for the other person, cause, if it was just me talking about like blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2:I could be going into so many different tangents.
Speaker 1:Chaos distilled. That's a cool name for a book or a podcast or something. Yeah, yeah yeah, I like that All right. Last question it's going to be very broad, but as someone who has spent the majority of your adult life studying communication, particularly nonverbal communication, and human behavior, how has this changed the way you think about people?
Speaker 2:And just making me. I mean, it's made me more understanding and compassionate. I think everybody has a unique story. Everybody has their own unique experience in life and I'm way less judgmental than I've ever been and that's part of the reason why people don't really bother me, cause, like, if I see somebody I don't like, if somebody's like yelling at me or whatever, I don't like view that as this person is a bad person or whatever. It's just okay. This person has a unique background that led to this moment where they think that yelling at me is acceptable in this moment and it just lets. I'm less impacted by people negatively because of that. But it's made me way more compassionate, way more understanding and also, honestly, way more grateful for my life and my family and my parents that raised me. I've seen a lot of really horrible things over the years. So, if anything, it just makes me yeah, I have a lot of gratitude for like my genetic lottery and my family's lottery and whatever and just being like quite happy about that. So I'll see you guys next time.