We're gonna get the show rolling now. Our next speaker is somebody who's really really well known on the speaker circuit. He's a former FBI agent and he's one of the leading experts in nonverbal communication in the world. He's published over 11, he's published 11 books.
And he's gonna basically show us how the way we act, our nonverbal cues, can affect the way people communicate with us, the way we present ourselves. And he's gonna help you understand other people's nonverbal cues and how it all relates to community, right? This is what we do. Like, we talked a lot... about the theoretical stuff before.
We talked a lot about the ways that we can integrate into our business but this section is all around how to build engagement with people. So we're gonna start with this talk which is very hands-on it's about engaging people in person. We're going to go into a lot of online engagement and understand a little bit more of the practice of building community and actually building engagement for people. So let's give a big CMX welcome to Joe Navarro!
Thank you for the kind introduction. It's hard to follow a break, because I know the break was a lot of fun. Dave would tell you it took me quite a bit to get here.
I was supposed to be with CMX earlier in the year, and unfortunately we had an illness. But it's a pleasure to be here. In 1960, and this explains why I'm in front of you, something happened that nobody expected. And that magical thing that happened, which explains why I'm here, is that there was a presidential election.
debate and it was the first televised debate. And prior to that, debates had been covered by newspapers or on the radio. And for the first time, it was on television and something weird happened. happened. Weirder than what we're seeing nowadays.
And the weird thing that happened was those who listened to it on the radio said Richard Nixon won. And those who saw it on television said Kennedy won. And not just won, but decisively. And whoa, you can't have both.
How can you have one group who listens to it say he won, and the other group who saw it say the other one won? And that difference was the nonverbal communications. Now, in 1960, that's what I looked like. And I was in Cuba. And I was actually that week getting my passport picture because the communists had taken over.
Things were getting nasty. Priests were disappearing. They had just closed my school.
And my parents were thinking. we need to get out of here. And at that time, the word refugee wasn't a dirty word like it is today. So we were going to take refuge somewhere, and that place was the United States. Now, I wanted to save people and be heroic and so forth, and well, things didn't quite turn out that way, so I ended up here in the States.
I learned English and somehow I became an FBI agent. And there's some things that I learned along the way, both as a refugee and as an observer of life. And that's all I was.
I was a paid observer. And I want to share these with you because as fascinating as criminals were, they were not nearly as fascinating as the people that I studied along the way. and certainly in the last 15 years in writing books that I define as really being exceptional. And they're exceptional because of things that are non-verbals. So I'd like to cover that with you today.
And non-verbals is very broad. It's everything that communicates but is not a word. So this room has its own message, its own history.
You have your own message that you communicate. If your mother did... and dress you, and you chose to dress yourself today, you are communicating how you feel, what you think, maybe where you're from.
We communicate in all the things that we attach ourselves to, whether we use a Montblanc pen or we use a big pen. So it's a very broad field. And it's interesting how many things... that we observe non-verbally. You don't walk up to somebody and say, excuse me, are you honest?
Nobody does that. And yet, how do you let people in through the front door? Somebody knocks on your door.
Who do you decide to talk to? Who do you decide who you're going to lend money to or assist or whatever? And a lot of the things that we do, we do non-verbally because we have been for a very long time. Every time you're at an ATM machine and you're looking over your shoulder, you're non-verbally assessing, is there a threat to me?
Is everything going to be okay? And this we do without really thinking about it. We look at this individual and we say, oh wait, this individual looks professional.
This is what we call thin slice assessment. He looks competent. He looks friendly.
Now, it's possible he's not. But at least on the surface, we're going to try it out. And then we look at this individual and we say, wow, he looks competent, but he doesn't look as friendly. One of them is telling you, you can talk to me for several minutes.
One of them is saying, you can talk to me for several seconds. But one of the things I learned about studying body language is the little things. And one of them you see here is the thumb displays.
And I don't know if you've ever seen thumb displays. These are high status displays. You see them with royalty in Europe. You see them in certain professions. And I assure you, when your plumber is done, he or she doesn't finish the job and go, Oh, hello.
This is a high status display. As our other thumb displays. This was a young child that began to observe these things because I learned as an immigrant, actually as a refugee, not an immigrant, that non-verbals were more truthful than the verbals. Because people will say things, but they don't always mean them. But you can't really fake the non-verbals.
And then I learned along the way that there were some other things that were troubling. How many of you have been told that this behavior is not a good behavior to do? Right? Right. There's a clinical term for that, and I hope David will forgive me, but the term for that is crap.
That's just sheer nonsense. For in fact, many of you, when we had the breakout, were doing this, and you were quite comfortable, weren't you? It's a self-hug.
It's just a self-hug. It feels good. That's why we do it in public, more so than in private.
And so there's a lot of junk out there about non-verbals, and of course there's the problem of sometimes we don't see the non-verbals because what? We're busy with a device. Now I'm not here to change the world.
I can't tell you to stop using devices, but I can tell you this, no matter how many devices we have, we as a species evolved to communicate non-verbally. A text will never, will never supplant a hug, or a kind smile, or a head tilt. It just won't do it.
Now, whether people will abide by that, that's not my responsibility. But there are some things that we can master here today that you can take away today because that's what David wanted. Give them something they can use immediately.
And that is focus on comfort and discomfort. Just that, comfort and discomfort. We're not here to learn about deception.
We're not here about, you know, power displays. Comfort, discomfort. And if you focus on that, you'll be blessed. From the moment we're born, we are doing pacifying behaviors.
In fact, we do pacifying behaviors in utero, just as other mammals do. Elephants suck their trunk in utero. And if you've ever wondered why we bite our lips, smoke, touch our faces, do all these things, these are pacifiers. This is our body saying... Chill, relax, calm down.
And we do these things all day long. Yesterday I'm watching the flights and there was two canceled flights and people are standing there and they're biting their lips. And it dawned on me, people bite their lips and they don't know why they bite.
Do you know why we bite our lips? I'll tell you why. Because you can't suck your thumb anymore. Because at my age, this looks bad.
I want to, but I can't. And so we have all these little behaviors, repetitive behaviors, foot bouncing, leg jiggling, all these little behaviors we dislike that are repetitive, we do to calm ourselves down. What do they reveal? They're revealing that the brain is dealing with some sort of stress. So let's talk about the first important one.
And the first one is eye-blocking behavior. Right? So, when something bothers us, we cover our eyes.
And you say, well, wait a minute. I cover my eyes when something, yeah, when something bothers you? How do we know this? Because in 1974, I studied children who were born blind. They had never seen.
And when they hear things they don't like, they don't cover their ears, they cover their eyes. That means it's part of our paleo circuits. This is millions of years old.
And so when we hear somebody say something, or you ask them something, and they go, oh, thank you for that question, and they're covering their eye, you know. You know they didn't like that question. And then there's the nose, right? We wrinkle our nose when we don't like something. And we do this all day long, whether we're reading a contract, Or somebody suggesting, you want to go to this restaurant?
No, I don't think so. But it's interesting to see how often, for instance, this betrays our negative sentiments, as do our lips. You ever wonder why when you're asked a question, you might go, hmm, I don't know, and you purse your lips?
It's because it means I'm thinking something alternatively, or I disagree. Wow. Can you imagine being in a discourse, in a conversation, and you're seeing this behavior?
What a great opportunity to say, wait, what do you think? Because I know you're already disagreeing with me, instead of just talking. We know that when the lips disappear, something's wrong.
Which is why anytime you see somebody testifying in Congress, they have no lips. Their lips are sucked out of their mouths. They're gone. Lips gone, issues. Anytime the lips narrow, they're gone.
And then there's the neck. You ever wonder why we touch the neck? Issues, insecurities.
Oh my God, there's that guy again. Oh, he's gone. He's back.
And we cover this little area called the suprasternal notch. And we do it because... Since the time of Australopithecines, what has mankind witnessed? Large felines, large felines. And so we adopted these behaviors that when there's a threat, when there's something negative, we freeze, we cover our mouths, or we cover our necks because of large felines.
And we ventilate, right? You ask somebody, is that going to be done by July? And they go, yeah, no, it's not. No, it's not. Why do you know that?
Because they ventilated, and we only ventilate when something's wrong. Not deception, but something's wrong. And you know, we do funny things with our hands. We rub our hands all day long when we're dealing with any kind of stress. You should be in the green room.
I'm watching all the speakers before me and they're all wringing their hands and I was wringing my hands. But there's one behavior we do which is a reserved behavior. When you see somebody doing this, their fingers are interlaced, fingers are straight, and they start doing this, something's really wrong. Something is really wrong.
And yet how many people miss this because we don't take the time to learn. the non-verbals. This is a reserved behavior. And then there's behaviors that potentiate our messages. If you ever wonder why people steeple, this is called a steeple.
Let's all do it together. Put your fingers together. It won't hurt.
Separate your fingers, right? Wide and high. Don't arch them.
There you go. The only behavior, the only behavior on this planet that says I'm confident. No, no, it's true.
And how do we know this? Because when we look at blind children, they do this behavior to other blind children, which means that they've learned to perform it and they're receptive to getting that message. So when you have something important to communicate, Don't sit on your hands. Don't put them in your pockets.
Steeple. There's a purpose for it. It potentiates your message. Don't do it weakly.
Don't do it under the table. Do it high. Do it high. And the feet. I talk about the feet because the feet are the most honest part of your body.
Most people don't know that. You see, our faces have... By social convention contracts, you smile, I smile, but our feet don't have a contract with anyone.
If you see a threat, your feet turn away. If you have to go, David was up there with me and he had to leave and immediately one of the feet oriented. I know, I drive people crazy. I knew he had to go. So why stop him?
That's called social intelligence. And in the last few minutes that I have, I want to talk about something else that has to do with nonverbals. And that is influence.
Because we influence each other primarily not with words. Not with words. Nobody's that clever.
We influence each other nonverbally. We think of houses as having a curbside appeal. But the question I always ask is, what is your curbside appeal? What would drive me to you? Are you clever?
Are you smart? Are you funny? Are you interesting?
Do you have a great story? Did you read a great book? Or is it time to repaint the house, cut the grass, and change the shrubbery? And I say that because I'm old enough to know and have talked to people who haven't changed in 15 years. And then they wonder why they're stalled.
And I say, have you changed your curbside appeal? Read a book. I love this photograph because when I look at it, I see serenity. And we are drawn to things that are serene. The human brain dislikes disharmony.
We like things and we like individuals that make us feel good. I love this photograph for that. We like...
This guy, even though he's the same as, I don't know how that picture got switched with that one. But look at it for a second. Why are we drawn to one and not drawn to the other one? And here's the message. Clothing does matter.
Oh, yes, but it does. Oh, but it does. Look at the research. Now, I realize that I'm the one that's overdressed here, and maybe I need to apologize, but that's the way I feel comfortable. But don't ever ignore the fact that how we appear matters, because the research shows that at six months, we already prefer, at six months of age, a baby, we already prefer beauty at six months.
We like smiles, but we like head tilt better. I loved when I was watching all of you and so many of you had your head tilted. Head tilt means I'm receptive to you.
Can you imagine as a child, your parent always addresses you like a drill sergeant? Hi, how are you? Nice to see you.
Did you have a good day? Versus hi, because at four weeks a baby recognizes head tilt. And if you don't believe me, borrow somebody's child.
Go on. It's excuse me. That bloke says that head tilt and watch how the baby smiles. And we humans smile when we see head tilt. It means we're receptive and we love great attitude.
You know what we hate? Bad attitude. How many of you know somebody that has a bad attitude and they still breathe?
You're always going to be around people with bad attitude, but we gravitate towards people with great attitude. And that's really who we want to work with and associate with. And here this princess is doing what we call a gravity-defying behavior. She's arching her eyebrows, right?
When you say hi to somebody and you defy gravity, you go, Hey, how are you? Versus, how you doing? Which one do you like better? Do you like the one with the animation, with the arching of the eyebrows? Or do you like the, how you doing?
Nobody likes the other one. And that's because you're burning blood sugars. You're actually doing something energetic that says, I care about you. Because when I don't, I won't lift a finger, literally.
And so just with the arching of an eyebrow, when you see somebody, you'll be perceived as more kind and they'll want to be with you. You know, oftentimes, I was speaking with Tim, oftentimes we set the wrong goal. We set the goal as, I want to achieve this. When the goal is, I want to have more face time. Think about it, the difference.
When I came into the FBI, they said, well, you've got to get a confession. I reframed it. I want to have face time with this person. If I have face time, they'll tell me whatever I want to know.
Why? Because they want to spend time with me. And that's what I did.
If your goal is, I want to sell this, or I want to achieve that, Maybe you should reframe it and say, how do I achieve more face time? To do that, you've got to do everything I've talked about so far. That's what you don't want to do. You don't want to look like that.
We want to listen. We want to listen for the words that are used, because not all words have the same weight. My generation used...
Problems. Your generation says issues. It doesn't resonate with me. If I say mom and dad, don't say family. You need to listen because words have different weight.
And people will front that which is important, and they will use weighted words with you. But we also have to be curious. You want people to spend time with you? Be curious.
Benignly curious. They'll gravitate to you. They'll spend time with you. They'll want to know more about you. Just by asking them questions.
Really, where are you from? Oh my God, what was that growing up like? Whatever. Because we humans seek to communicate. And when people are curious, they gravitate towards us.
And we want a mirror. non-verbally. If you're relaxed, I'm relaxed. If you're stressed, I want to help you to deal with that stress.
I want to mirror your words so that we are in synchrony. How many of you have had a bad handshake? Right?
It's like, how can you screw that up? Right? You've had the jujitsu. You've had the wet fish, right?
Go ahead and do it. Do it for me. Yeah, there you go. I've had everything.
I've had the probe. I've had the one where the index finger is halfway up my arm. And I didn't know index fingers were that long, first of all.
And secondly, are we engaged? How can you screw up a handshake? But here's what's important. We remember negative things for about 13 years.
It goes to that part of the brain that reminds us that we can't touch a hot stove every day. And that's why it sticks with us so long. So the first time we touch, get it right.
Because when you get it wrong, just tell yourself, I'm going to remember it for 13 years. Yuck. Simple things like even how we point, right? Everybody point at me. Oh, this is what it looks like.
Do you like it? No. This is what it should look like.
Let's all do it together. Ah, it's like I want to be with you. Everybody point to the wall. Just do it again.
It won't hurt you. There you go. Now with your finger. Like this.
Like this. Simon says. Why? Because the brain is prepared to accept this far better than this. That's how sensitive our brains are to non-verbals.
And yet how many people we see say, Why don't you take a seat right there and right away? We hate that. Take care of the little things because the broken windows, when you show you don't care, other people will not care.
That's in your home and at business. You see garbage outside? People will dump garbage.
They see you picking up the garbage? They'll pick it up. They see you cleaning up your language?
They will clean up their language. You stop wearing torn jeans, they'll wear nice jeans. You stop dropping F-bombs, they will stop dropping F. But the minute you don't care, other people won't care. How many of you do presentations?
Always be framed by blue. There is no other color to be framed by, and that's why you see what you see. Always be framed by blue.
The research is ample. I don't have time to explain it all. What happened? Oh yeah, that's the head of Xerox.
Simplicity. Humans like things simplified. Don't make it complex.
The simpler, the better. Just when you write it. If there's one thing I've learned after 11 and a half books, is you simplify. Simplify, simplify.
Write it, edit it. Write it, edit it, cut it down. Does anybody know who Edward Everett is? Nobody does.
And he was the most gifted speaker of his day. And the reason nobody knows who he is, And they should, because he was the president of Harvard and was paid to go give the most momentous speech of the day, which was at the Gettysburg Address. But his problem is, he spoke for two hours and thirty minutes. But then he was followed by this guy, who basically tweeted.
Abraham Lincoln gave the first tweet. He spoke for two minutes, twenty-six seconds. He spoke so fast, they couldn't set up the cameras in time. But it's his speech we remember because of its brevity and its simplicity. Next time you think you're clever, remind yourself we are not.
Keep it short. Nobody remembers that two-hour and 20-minute speech, not one word of it, nowhere, nobody. But we remember four score and seven years ago. Humility is huge, and we all need a little humility check every once in a while. Every one of us.
Every once in a while, you need to take a step back and say, Do I need a little bit of humility? Go to that humility bottle in the, wherever you parked it, take it out and take a little, you know, tablespoon of it. Because we all need a little bit of humility, and we all need empathy. And empathy is tactile, and it's present.
Remember this, empathy is not over the internet. That's communication. Empathy is tactile, and it is present. And it is powerful.
I still remember the day when Princess Diana picked up a baby that had AIDS, and the world changed. The world's perception of AIDS changed because, oh my God, she touched a baby that had AIDS. And like, oh, now it's okay.
Even doctors took off their masks. Empathy, folks, is powerful. And I've learned some things along the way because of our situation in my life.
Because when we came here, we were very poor. Very poor. And we didn't speak the language. But I learned that there's five things that differentiates the average from the exceptional. Not the average from the good, and not the average from the great.
The average from the exceptional. And I want to share this with you because I found these while doing my research. And the first thing is, we must, to be exceptional, we must have mastery over ourselves.
If you read the front page of a newspaper, every time you read about somebody going off to jail or having a breakdown or this or that, they have not had mastery over themselves. You cannot achieve great things if you don't master yourself, if you can't focus, and if you can't just plow through whatever life throws at you. And believe me, my family had many things thrown at them.
You can't build a violin. if you don't pay the price. And the second thing is, to be exceptional, you have to be a good observer. We are taught to look, but we're not taught to observe.
Most of us don't know what to look for. We're not taught to observe, and yet we know exceptional people are great observers. They see what your needs, wants, and desires are, so they can act on them.
And observing is not looking. And exceptional people communicate both verbally and non-verbally. Verbally and non-verbally. Not just verbally. And they do it effectively with a purpose.
Effectively with a purpose. Think about it. What if you were to...
Bring together these two powerful forces of communication, both the verbal and the non-verbal. Exceptional people act. They're known by their actions, not their words. They act immediately, and they act ethically. And they do it to accomplish whatever is needed at that moment.
They're undeterred. I was in... Washington DC when a plane hit a bridge and I saw one of my fellow bureau agents jump in the water it was three degrees he didn't sit there and have a debate he didn't wonder yeah should I jump in is it ethical no you do what you have to do exceptional people act they get up and they meet you and they comfort You want people to come to you, to spend time with you, to gravitate to you?
Provide psychological comfort. That's all we want. We actually don't want perfection.
We humans don't look for perfection. We look for psychological comfort. There's a great picture on the internet.
I wish I'd brought it. And there's a little puppy. And there's a chicken hand right on top of it.
Providing it warmth. I tweeted about it. I said... love doesn't have to be perfect.
It just has to be good enough. And you know what? Psychological comfort is that.
What does this person need in the moment? Five things. Five things that I learned from my family.
This is right before, right when we arrived from Cuba. But the most powerful thing I think I learned, and I'll leave you with this message because... we really don't have much time, is this. It doesn't matter what you own.
It doesn't matter what you make. It really doesn't, and it doesn't impress me at all. The one thing that I've learned, the only thing that matters, is how you treat those who can do absolutely nothing for you.
Have a good day. Thank you.