Order of Man - How to Size People Up and Predict Their Behavior

00:00:00.000 The ability to accurately size someone up could spell the difference between life and death,

00:00:04.840 whether you or that other guy gets the promotion, if that prospect purchases from you, or if she

00:00:10.280 decides to date or marry you. And I can think of no better person to talk with us about predicting

00:00:14.940 human behavior than Robin Drake, who spent more than two decades as a behavior analyst for the

00:00:21.500 FBI. Today, we talk about being wary of trusting your gut, the difference between your gut and

00:00:27.540 intuition, why if you're betrayed by others, you may have actually betrayed yourself.

00:00:32.980 We talk about manipulation and judgment, but ultimately how to predict human behavior and

00:00:37.880 why it matters to you. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears

00:00:43.160 and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time

00:00:49.320 you are not easily deterred, defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is

00:00:56.300 who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,

00:01:02.000 you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler,

00:01:07.080 and I am the host and the founder of this podcast and the movement to reclaim and restore masculinity.

00:01:12.640 It is apparent to me and many of you listening that we live in a culture that has dismissed masculinity,

00:01:19.980 has mocked and ridiculed and belittled what it means to be a man, and then we live in a time where

00:01:25.280 men are being feminized by the millions. And it is my job to give you the tools and resources and

00:01:32.800 within this podcast, the conversations that you need to become a more effective, strong,

00:01:38.440 and capable father, husband, business owner, community leader in every other role that you

00:01:44.300 want to fill, that you want to step into, and that you want to be proud and capable of doing so.

00:01:50.340 So we've got, like I said, this podcast where we're interviewing just incredible men. Today,

00:01:54.740 I've got Robin Drake. He is a FBI behavior analyst. We're going to get into that in here in just a

00:01:59.300 minute, but we've had other men on the podcast, like Jocko Willink and David Goggins and Andy

00:02:04.520 Frisilla, Dave Rubin. We just had on the podcast, Brian Rose, Sean Whalen came on last week,

00:02:11.680 Tim Kennedy. We've got Matt Fraser coming on soon. John Eldridge. I mean, the lineup of men that

00:02:18.300 have joined us is phenomenal. And I think that's because these men see the power of

00:02:24.100 having these types of conversations and not only just the conversations, but calling you to take

00:02:28.960 action in your life towards the types of information that we're talking about and sharing

00:02:33.720 here. So I want to welcome you. I'm glad you're here. If you would, please leave us a rating and

00:02:38.300 review. We're going to have a rating and reviews contest here in, I believe we're going to do it for

00:02:43.000 the month of June. So I'll give you the details and information on that. And by the way,

00:02:46.940 if, if you do give us a, or leave a rating and review before June, you're still going to be

00:02:51.500 entered for that contest. I'll give you all the details, not a big deal. We just want to make

00:02:54.820 sure you get covered. And also if you would, with the ratings and reviews, it's important because

00:02:59.000 it goes such a long way in promoting what we're doing here. So if you've ever got any value from

00:03:03.760 what we're doing, share it, leave a rating review, easy things to do. Great way to say thank you.

00:03:09.660 Also a great way to give other people information that hopefully has served you.

00:03:13.000 So with that said, I want to introduce my guests here in just one second. I do want to make a

00:03:19.200 mention of our show sponsors origin, Maine. You've heard me talk about them now for probably

00:03:24.780 over a year. In fact, I moved to Maine. I think it's this week, one year ago. So I've been here for

00:03:32.180 exactly a year with my family. And I couldn't be more honored and proud to call the people at origin.

00:03:37.860 Uh, my friends, they make geese and rash guards. Mostly they started with jujitsu apparel. Uh,

00:03:44.580 not so much anymore because they've moved into the nutritional lineup. Uh, that's partnered up

00:03:48.680 with Jocko Willink. They've got discipline joint warfare, which is my favorite product. Uh, they've

00:03:54.380 got their super krill. They've got discipline go, which is their cognitive enhancing energy drink.

00:03:59.480 Uh, they've got it all. Go check it out over there at origin, Maine origin, Maine is in the

00:04:04.440 state, Maine. And if you decide to join their, uh, their club, they have a monthly subscription club,

00:04:10.220 make sure, or anything else, just make sure you use the code order or D E R at checkout,

00:04:14.980 and you'll get a discount when you do again, origin, main.com use the code order or D E R at checkout.

00:04:22.280 All right, guys, let's get into this conversation. I told you already, my guest name is, is Robin

00:04:26.740 Drake. He spent more than two decades as a behavior analyst for the FBI. Uh, and he's dealt

00:04:32.060 with some extremely complicated and complex situations from handling Russian spies and

00:04:38.360 navigating all the politics within the bureau. Uh, he's written three books. One is it's not

00:04:43.160 all about me. The second one is the code of trust. And then his latest book, which is sizing

00:04:47.040 people up. And in this one, he shares a six step system that he developed, uh, to predict

00:04:52.320 anyone's behavior based on their words, their goals, their actions, and the situation in

00:04:58.800 which you may find yourself. Uh, this was such a fascinating discussion, very, very fascinating

00:05:03.080 discussion. Uh, and one that if the lessons are applied in your life, I believe will drastically

00:05:08.500 improve every facet of your life. So take notes if you need to pick up a copy of the book, but for

00:05:14.280 now, just tune in and enjoy the conversation with me and Robin. Yeah. I mean, you, you talk about,

00:05:20.800 uh, marketing, but you actually have, you have an advantage, I think, cause you understand the

00:05:25.320 human psychology element of it, which is just packaging. Marketing is just packaging human

00:05:30.540 psychology. Yeah. And you would think so. Um, you know, it's, it's really interesting,

00:05:36.600 you know, so what I'm doing, I'm doing a lot of online classes for it. And, and I reckon,

00:05:41.760 you know, every time I see, you know, one of these experts in marketing, you know, cause it is a

00:05:45.920 different, you know, it's a very specific skillset, but I see the overlap of all my content,

00:05:51.720 which is all about talking in terms of the customer and talk in terms of other people.

00:05:55.480 So once I see it, I recognize it, but because I'm used to one-on-one engagements where it's pure

00:06:00.680 trust and pure relationship development, it's more of, cause I'm more on the customer relationship

00:06:05.740 and sales building side and not on the marketing side. So it is, it's slightly different. Um,

00:06:11.960 so once I see it once I'm like, Oh yeah, I got that. You know, so I'm, you know, so it's one

00:06:15.940 of those things like, Oh yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. That makes sense. Cause it fits

00:06:18.860 my, my model, but at the same time, when you haven't seen it kind of packaged that way before

00:06:23.480 you're like, huh. So, yeah, I can see how it would, that would be a little bit of a, of a hangup.

00:06:30.100 I think, like you said, once you figure it out, like you've got it down, you understand it,

00:06:33.700 you know, then there's also the, are people going to resonate with this, right? Which is,

00:06:37.760 you know, packaging it in a way that's consumable. So you might understand the human

00:06:41.560 psychology element of it. Like what would drive somebody fear or joy or, you know,

00:06:46.240 positive benefits or negative ramifications. Now, how do we make it pretty? So people want

00:06:53.360 to engage in it. And that, that, that is a challenging thing for sure.

00:06:56.340 Yeah. And also just coming up cause I've never had to do ads before or anything else. And so,

00:07:00.920 you know, I have the scaling up I'm going to do is I do have an email list. I do have people that

00:07:04.800 have taken my course in the past. So I have those leads to start with, but then I, you know,

00:07:09.620 I've, I've done the research and I'm taking another webinar on how to use LinkedIn as I

00:07:13.000 do get it. Most of my speaking business does come through LinkedIn. So now I'm going to try to see

00:07:17.120 if I can maximize that. So anyways, it's a fun learning process. It gives me something to do

00:07:20.520 every day. That's for sure. Yeah, definitely. Well, I've enjoyed your work. I haven't been

00:07:24.420 familiar with it for too long, but I read the book sizing people up and yeah, no, thank you for

00:07:29.580 sending it. And I'm glad to be able to have this conversation. I actually am really curious. And I think

00:07:33.600 this will set the, uh, set the tone for the conversation. I mean, obviously you use the term

00:07:38.220 sizing people up. It makes sense, but it also has a little bit of a negative connotation, which

00:07:43.000 hopefully captures somebody to want to be engaged in this. I think people could rush to the conclusion

00:07:48.520 that if you're using some of these, I don't know if tactics is the right word or strategies that you

00:07:54.980 might be doing something that's negative as opposed to, Hey, this can actually be a very positive thing.

00:08:01.000 Yeah. As a matter of fact, that was the reason why it was funny. You know, when you work with a

00:08:05.020 publisher and a, uh, and a marketing team there, when they don't read the actual content of the book

00:08:11.100 and they try to come up with a cover design for you and they think it's a book about manipulation.

00:08:15.840 Yeah. You'd be so shocked at some of the things they first sent out to me. And I was like, no,

00:08:20.820 I mean, they had this really dark silhouetted image with black and red and all the words on the

00:08:26.180 front were completely different. I'm like, Hey freaks, have you ever actually read this book, this book?

00:08:30.760 So yes, with sizing people up and from a counterintelligence behavioral guy, you're

00:08:34.860 thinking this is a book about learning how to manipulate or understand manipulators or something

00:08:39.560 like that. And as you've read it, as you know, it's anything further from the truth than that.

00:08:45.080 This is about understanding people at a very, very deep level, you know, much deeper than you normally

00:08:51.440 do with a very clear purpose. Cause if you understand people at that deep level, the real purpose is how do

00:08:57.500 you create and maintain a great healthy relationship? Cause if I can start reasonably predict what you're

00:09:03.440 going to do in all these different situations in life and all these different lanes that we're

00:09:07.840 engaging with, it now gives me the ability to manage my expectations of what I can reasonably expect

00:09:13.640 from you. Cause I like to try to take the subjective side of liking someone, which creates some real

00:09:21.180 bias fraught with, um, some potential downsides. And that being, you know, if I like someone,

00:09:27.160 I think I can trust them to do everything, which is wrong. I mean, so liking is basically generally

00:09:33.960 based upon our, our, our personal subjective observations of, uh, commonalities of interests,

00:09:40.220 morals, ethics, beliefs, um, locality, all these things goes into the liking bias. And unfortunately we

00:09:47.920 think if we'd like someone, we can trust someone. Well, no, I, I have some really great friends that

00:09:54.240 I like dearly and I happen to be a pilot, but I couldn't throw them the keys to a plane that I rent

00:10:00.180 and actually trust them to keep me from dying. If they were flying that plane, because that's a

00:10:04.900 different lane that they're, they're in. So that's why I like to try to segregate out the liking bias

00:10:11.040 from the objective observation of what can I reasonably predict you're going to do in each of these

00:10:16.740 lanes. And the most important thing there is just because I can predict you're going to perform

00:10:21.960 and do well in one area doesn't mean you're going to do well in all areas. Because what happens then

00:10:27.180 if you have this expectation of, well, I just hope they'll do well. Well, then that'll set you up for

00:10:32.280 failure as well, because hope can be a very dangerous thing as well. Cause hope generally as human

00:10:36.400 beings set a bar for hope way up here and people generally fall in under it. Yeah. False expectations

00:10:43.380 of the way other people will perform and show up. Absolutely. And when that happens, then what

00:10:46.500 happens to you? You get angry, resentful, frustrated, all the negative emotions pour it into your brain

00:10:52.220 directed at the individual because you had not cognitively really thought through what can I

00:10:57.380 reasonably expect they're going to do. Because now when you do this process, it's all about

00:11:02.460 understanding what they will do at a very deep level. And so they're either going to meet the bar that

00:11:07.920 you manage your expectations for exceed that bar. And now if they happen to fall short of it,

00:11:13.040 that's okay. Because you no longer are angry because you've spent so much time trying to

00:11:17.060 understand them. You know that something must've gone sideways in their lives. So now you're saying,

00:11:22.540 oh, now you have empathy and compassion because all right, something must've happened.

00:11:25.700 You know, what can I do to be a resource for you? So that's, that's the whole purpose of this entire

00:11:29.480 thing. I think even having these expectations, not only will it set yourself up for failure,

00:11:34.340 I just don't think it's fair to another individual. Like the context I think about it is, you know,

00:11:39.200 my wife or my children, if I have their expectation up here and they fall short of that,

00:11:43.400 I've set the bar right here. And that may be realistic, but most of the time it's unrealistic.

00:11:49.100 And then they inevitably fall short because people fall short, including us. And then we hold ill will

00:11:54.400 to that individual. And in all reality, it was our fault for maybe setting the bar here and not

00:11:59.680 giving them the training or the information or the communication required to succeed. And I see it

00:12:04.300 in, um, you know, where I see it a lot, actually more, more recently than maybe in the past

00:12:08.880 is actors and politicians. Like we think, we think that because these individuals, like a politician

00:12:16.380 shows up with a suit and it's very polished in the way that they deliver a message that they know

00:12:21.220 everything about everything. Or we see an actor who we really like. And we think because we have an

00:12:26.620 affinity with that individual or the role that they played that somehow they're qualified to talk about

00:12:32.000 politics or any number of issues that they may know nothing about.

00:12:38.040 Absolutely. I couldn't, couldn't say it better at, you know, and, and especially, you know,

00:12:42.880 when you're dealing with family or friends or even close associates at work, when you, um,

00:12:47.840 what happens is, is you set that bar so high and they inevitably come in under it.

00:12:51.880 You know, what happens with you is you have those negative emotions and they pick up on you judging

00:12:56.920 them. And when people are feeling that they're being judged in a negative way, that's starts

00:13:01.500 spiking their own insecurities. And when insecurities spike up an individual, then they go into defensive

00:13:06.980 mode. They try to justify their actions. They, and they, and a lot of times it's inappropriate

00:13:12.100 behavior because what you're basically saying to them is you're attacking our genetic and biological

00:13:16.440 coding to want to be valued by and accepted and affiliated with others. So basically when you're

00:13:21.840 starting to judge someone, the genetic coding for fear of being rejected by the tribe kicks in.

00:13:28.140 Yeah. And so that's when, you know, people start self-aggrandizing, they start name dropping,

00:13:33.140 they start self-promoting, which really makes the situation much worse in most cases. And so it all,

00:13:39.040 it all came down to because you caused it. So that's why I love this process is how can you not do that?

00:13:45.460 So you can maintain those relationships because the ground truth of what I've realized in life a number of

00:13:51.080 years ago was that, especially as this hardcore type A, which I thought the way to be successful

00:13:56.240 in life was to make yourself look great, perform great deeds, do great jobs on the things you're

00:14:02.120 assigned. So I thought it was me, me, me, me, accomplish, accomplish, accomplish. But that creates

00:14:08.140 a pattern of success, failure, success, failure, success, failure, because what you failed to realize

00:14:13.760 is that you can't achieve any of those things without others. Because there's nothing in life you can

00:14:19.180 achieve without relationships. You know, whether it was someone that inspired you, whether they knew

00:14:23.880 it or not, whether it's someone that was a teacher, mentor, guide, someone that became a resource in

00:14:28.260 some way, you know, everything in life comes down to good, healthy, strong relationships. And the more

00:14:34.320 you have, the deeper they are, the more successful you're going to be in the things you're going to

00:14:37.980 try to accomplish because you've already made yourself available to others for their success as well.

00:14:43.120 This is a big intertwined pattern. And if you focus on the relationships, the reason why I

00:14:48.440 write my books is so you can have those deep, meaningful ones, everything in life happens.

00:14:52.880 I always say if you can have the greatest genetics and biology on the planet, but if you don't have

00:14:56.740 good, healthy relationships, you might as well be a moron on top of a mountain by yourself

00:15:00.320 because you will go nowhere.

00:15:02.140 Yeah. No, I do like that you're talking about relationships. And I also want to go back to

00:15:05.720 something you alluded to, what you're talking about here with the strategies that you share in the book

00:15:10.300 and just your work in general is taking responsibility for it. Like I think a lot of

00:15:16.040 people expect others to behave a certain way. And, you know, maybe we should have some of those

00:15:20.960 expectations. Like if you have an employee, for example, there should be some healthy expectations

00:15:25.200 there. But when you do that, you're putting all of the responsibility of performance on them and

00:15:30.600 you're actually unloading it from yourself. Now, what you're talking about is how can I make

00:15:36.180 observations of other individuals using the strategies that we'll get into here in a little

00:15:40.240 while? And that puts the responsibility where it lies and also where it has the most power

00:15:45.880 yourself. You can actually control yourself, not the way others perform.

00:15:49.880 It's a very easy thing as you get older and more self-aware. And I think when you, you know,

00:15:56.200 when human beings start letting go of their own insecurities and realize, all right, we're all

00:15:59.520 flawed. And so do I, I know what my flaws are and I have a plan to overcome my flaws. You know,

00:16:04.240 my books are my manuals on how not to be the moron I was born to be. I always say,

00:16:08.160 because I know my weakness is very, very well. And most human beings, we spend our lifetime

00:16:12.480 creating strategies to overcome our weaknesses because very, very few of us have to work on our

00:16:17.340 strengths. Our strengths are strengths. You know, we, if the more self-aware we become

00:16:21.380 the world around us, the more we understand where we are weak and we understand, all right,

00:16:25.680 we need to do something about it. And so it's really easy to see someone face a situation and

00:16:30.740 become frustrated. Their first reaction is always very telling of where they are on their path. If the

00:16:35.420 first reaction is to immediately place the blame of everything that's going on or everything that

00:16:40.260 happened to them on others, I was like, all right, you're a little further back on the path. Again,

00:16:44.700 no right, no wrong, no better, no worse. Just, you know, you are not taking accountability for your

00:16:49.920 role in what happened. And so that's what I do first in every situation. When everything goes sideways,

00:16:55.660 if I see emotional hijacking or crazy brain, as I call it, happen with another individual,

00:17:00.620 the first place I look is me. What did I do to be the straw that broke the camel's back with this

00:17:06.840 individual? Because very rarely do people do things to you. You just happen to be in the way of an

00:17:11.820 insecurity that you might've spiked on them. So the first thing I do is assess myself. I assess what

00:17:16.320 I might've done to spur an insecurity in that individual that will, you know, flame up, you know,

00:17:21.820 a negative reaction. And after I do my self-assessment, I think about the words I use, the body language I had,

00:17:28.080 the mannerisms, the topics of conversation. If I can't come up with anything, it doesn't mean

00:17:32.760 there's nothing there, but generally, you know, if I can't come up with anything, then I'll look at

00:17:36.840 them and I'll say, all right, now what's going on in their life? You know, so first, first personal

00:17:41.960 accountability, um, because people do not care how you make them feel about you. They care about how

00:17:47.940 you make them feel about themselves. Yeah. So that's where the focus always is. Well, that makes sense

00:17:52.900 because as you were talking about that, the thing I was thinking of is, and I've said this,

00:17:57.620 I know other people feel this way. And we've been in these situations where it genuinely is not us.

00:18:02.320 You might be dealing with a very irrational or emotional individuals. I can't do anything about

00:18:08.360 that. So I do like that you're talking about, okay, look at yourself first, then look to that

00:18:12.400 individual. But the way I'm hearing you say it is not like, so you can place blame, but that you can

00:18:16.860 understand so you can start working through an issue. There's, you know, there is no blame to me.

00:18:21.680 You know, I always, another analogy I use is because, you know, there's a few guarantees in

00:18:26.120 life with human behavior, um, which makes human beings very predictable. One, all human beings,

00:18:30.880 we will always act in our own best interests in terms of safety, security, and prosperity for

00:18:35.220 ourselves and our loved ones. You know, so as long as I can figure out what you think that is,

00:18:39.640 I now know what you're going to do because everyone's very different with that. The other thing

00:18:43.200 you can also count on is that we are all imperfect. We all have insecurities, every single one of us.

00:18:48.700 You know, I've done so many investigations with so many human beings throughout the course of my

00:18:51.880 career and everyone has an insecurity. Everyone has some bit of shame about something because

00:18:57.280 we're born perfect for 19 years. The world messes us up pretty good. And we spend the rest of our

00:19:02.860 lives overcoming those things we experienced in those first 19 to 24 years before the prefrontal

00:19:07.380 lobes fully formed. So that's the other guarantee. Yeah. I want to riff on that one a little bit.

00:19:11.520 Do you just, just to reiterate, maybe, maybe talk about this. Do you believe that, that,

00:19:16.420 that we're born perfect and that it's, that we're messed up after the fact by parents and other

00:19:22.580 circumstances, or do you believe that we're, we're imperfect or maybe immature and that that needs

00:19:30.620 to be conditioned and learned? Like, I'm, I'm really curious on your thought process for that.

00:19:34.120 So, you know, when you look at evolutionary psychology and organizational cycle of early

00:19:39.740 development of children, you know, there's these, there's these things that are met before you can

00:19:45.840 evolve into the next stage of life of learning. And, you know, little kids are very nonjudgmental

00:19:52.520 of other human beings, you know, and, and this is seen, I've, you know, if you look at any social

00:19:56.680 psychology videos on YouTube, you know, with universities doing these studies, you know,

00:19:59.860 you look at kids and you look at the way they'll interact with people and not judge is pretty remarkable

00:20:06.340 because judging is what really starts putting walls up between people. And when people are being

00:20:11.240 judged, they don't feel affiliated with, I mean, that's, that's kind of the root, I think of,

00:20:14.940 of all the insecurities that human beings is we fear being judged by anyone. That's why people

00:20:21.280 fear public speaking. That's why they fear writing something and putting out there because you fear

00:20:25.020 what someone's going to say. They fear breaking into groups because of the same thing, you know,

00:20:29.840 clicks at work, clicks at school. It's all about judging because when we're born, we're born not

00:20:34.880 judging. Now as us as parents, you know, what happens is we teach our children to judge and it's for

00:20:42.220 safety, security, and prosperity as you're getting older, you know, say, this is hot.

00:20:45.760 Got to watch out for this person. You have to watch out for this area that we're walking into

00:20:49.780 or you have to watch out for these types of people at school. You know, these types of people,

00:20:56.240 you know, there's, in other words, your parents are telling you there's bad people out there that

00:20:59.620 can do harm to you, which is true, but we're born without that. And so we have these societal norms.

00:21:06.520 In other words, these learned behaviors during those first formative years of life that,

00:21:09.700 that teach us to judge others, right? But they teach us to kind of, it's a rough balance,

00:21:16.260 but that's also what starts happening. And then that starts, I think the whole process where we

00:21:20.140 start, our insecurities start flare up as well. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. It's, but it is,

00:21:25.840 there is a healthy line because there are areas where you shouldn't go. There are people that you

00:21:30.220 should avoid. And without any other data, we have to make some assumptions. We have to fill in

00:21:38.960 some blanks and connect some dots that may not be extremely evident to keep ourselves on the right

00:21:45.560 side of safety and security. Would you agree? Oh, absolutely. And I think part of it, probably

00:21:51.240 the main, main timeframe where kids are really starting to have this flare up is between, you

00:21:57.580 know, ages of eight, nine, 10, basically when they're hitting the middle school years after

00:22:00.820 elementary school, when they start having their own thoughts and opinions and your parents are trying

00:22:06.080 to not listen to your thoughts and opinions. And that's when our need for dopamine and all the

00:22:10.620 pleasure centers of the brain start firing. And so if you don't get that kind of validation and

00:22:14.840 nonjudgmental validation at home, you're going to get it from somewhere. And so that's when you start

00:22:19.140 looking to friends at school. And that's when the clicks started forming, you know, most bullying

00:22:23.660 happens during the middle school years because of this judgmentalism that, you know, we're just

00:22:30.100 coded for because... Are we just trying to figure out like where we belong in that? Because before that,

00:22:35.080 we don't care. After that, we should start figuring it out, right? So I'm wondering if it's because of

00:22:40.280 that. Yeah. So it's both cultural and genetic that's happening during those years. And so having

00:22:45.920 good, healthy relationships during those years is what actually helps kids transition healthy into

00:22:50.460 the next phase of evolution for themselves and their life. Yeah, that's interesting. I know even now

00:22:56.380 at 39 years old, like I feel like over the past five years, I've really started to let a lot of

00:23:02.120 the way other people feel about me kind of go by the wayside. And again, I don't know if that's a

00:23:06.600 level of maturity. I don't know if that's doing a lot of work on myself to be confident in who I am.

00:23:10.840 It's probably a mix of both, but it feels pretty nice to be in that position.

00:23:15.060 Yeah. I think, you know, when I first... You were out there a lot. You're a public figure. You know,

00:23:19.040 you do podcasts. You know, you do a lot of things with the public, which opens you up for

00:23:23.480 being validated and also being judged. No doubt.

00:23:26.500 And so what you start doing is, because I had the same thing, you know, I am highly insecure.

00:23:32.500 When you start publishing books and, you know, you're on Amazon every day, wait for the next

00:23:36.580 review to come in, you know, and you feel like a million bucks with a five-star and all of a sudden

00:23:39.760 you feel like you all want to crawl into a rock when you see your first one-star.

00:23:43.160 Right.

00:23:43.620 You know, and you just, that's when you start realizing that, you know what,

00:23:47.480 anytime you take an opinion, half the world's going to line up with you and half the world's going

00:23:52.240 to line up against you. It's just the way it is. You know, you're not going to please

00:23:55.720 everyone and you shouldn't try because think about the greatest people in the history of the,

00:24:00.360 of the world, whether it was Gandhi, um, Martin Luther King, JFK, um, George Washington, Jesus,

00:24:08.680 all these people had, you know, they had, they were great human beings that did great things for a lot,

00:24:13.820 but a lot of people hated them as well. Yeah. And so think about that. So I just kind of like,

00:24:18.500 you know, it's okay. We're all okay. I try to, I always try to get back to neutral

00:24:23.820 in my thought of myself. Right. So you think about it like this. If you look at a scale and

00:24:27.740 you have somebody leave you a five-star review or tell you how wonderful you are, it's like your job

00:24:31.760 to like, bring you back into reality. Like, Hey, I appreciate that. But in my mind, I'm like,

00:24:36.640 I'm not as good as that guy's making me out to be that way. When I get the one-star review or the

00:24:42.060 criticism or the negative comments, I'm like, ah, yeah, you know what, bring it back. I'm actually

00:24:46.280 better than this guy's making me sound. And, and trying to stay on that, that neutral line,

00:24:51.280 the perception I have of myself has served me well because I take everything praise and criticism

00:24:56.640 with a grain of salt. And if I only take criticism as being true, I think it's much easier for me to

00:25:02.760 also take a criticism as holding more weight than maybe it ought to.

00:25:08.160 And I think it helps you really just then to also focus on not external, but also just focus on the

00:25:13.340 content you're trying to get out, you know, cause when you're focusing on the content, you know,

00:25:17.460 of the things you've learned, the things that have helped you, um, become, you know, a better

00:25:22.120 contributor to society and a greater resource for others' success. Um, that's when you just kind of

00:25:27.760 let go of, of negatives and positives. You just do what you are compassionate about.

00:25:32.440 Right.

00:25:32.920 And, you know, my good friend, Joe Navarro is my mentor and guide who wrote the book,

00:25:36.560 what everybody is saying. Um, he's on my behavioral team, I'm an international expert for

00:25:41.100 nonviolent behavior. And he told me something years and years ago, I always repeat when people ask,

00:25:45.380 you know, why do you do this? And how do you let go of the negatives? You know, people say is it.

00:25:49.440 So, because what he's always told me was, is that if you have at least one bit of information,

00:25:54.220 another human being could benefit from shame on you for not getting it to them.

00:25:57.960 Great point.

00:25:58.440 So, you know, so as, as, as a contributing member of society of the human race, you know,

00:26:04.280 I think everyone has something they can share that another human being could benefit from,

00:26:07.960 even if it's just one. So that's, that's what I focus on.

00:26:10.660 Yeah. That's a good point. I want to go back to the term manipulation. You had talked about

00:26:14.700 that earlier. And I think most people hear that. And again, negative connotation.

00:26:18.060 Absolutely.

00:26:18.640 You know, I, I don't know though, if you look at, if you look at what that means,

00:26:21.680 or at least the way I've, I've understood it and determined it, it's like, I'm always

00:26:25.020 manipulating from the way that we're having this conversation and the questions I'm asking to

00:26:29.380 trying to get my kids to do chores, to, uh, trying to influence somebody who might read a book or

00:26:34.700 listen to a podcast to behave or act in a certain way. I mean, there's upsides to the idea.

00:26:41.340 Maybe we're just using different words, but the idea of manipulation. So like what's positive,

00:26:47.000 what's negative, where do you fall on that scale? How do you maybe choose to define the positive

00:26:51.500 attributes of influence, maybe even compared to negatively manipulating somebody?

00:26:57.340 So I think there's a real, um, easy test to see if you're actually manipulating and the fact,

00:27:02.940 the, what you, the, what you just said and how you said it just says you're not manipulating,

00:27:06.760 get trying to get someone to do something is not necessarily the manipulation. And here's,

00:27:11.580 here's the thing that makes it manipulation. If you use subterfuge or deception or lack of

00:27:16.540 transparency, that's manipulation. In other words, so I, so my definition of manipulation is I love to

00:27:21.880 give labels and meanings of things. Cause when I give labels and meanings, I have what I call my

00:27:25.180 Toyota tundra effect. Yes. Yeah. So basically when I bought my truck, I swear as soon as I did 300

00:27:32.600 people in my town bought the same truck. Of course. Right. I call it a new car effect because it has

00:27:37.800 labels and meanings. So you now recognize it. So you can do the same thing with behaviors. So as

00:27:41.260 soon as you, I, that's why I write these books and that's why I teach the way I teach. So I give

00:27:45.000 labels and meanings to behaviors so we can recognize them. The negative ones we know what to steer clear

00:27:49.620 from and the positive ones we know what to do more of. And so that's why I give labels and

00:27:53.620 meaning. So manipulation, the label of meaning for me is an attempt of control of actions,

00:27:58.020 thoughts, end time, or any other aspect with the use of subterfuge or deception,

00:28:02.380 or lack of transparency. And so. Even to produce a positive outcome.

00:28:09.840 Like, let me give, let me give an example of that. Yeah. So as, as an employer, okay. An employer

00:28:15.360 is probably not going to disclose every bit of information to an employee, uh, to, to have that

00:28:23.540 employee perform or do something or lead up a project or organize a team. He's not going to share

00:28:28.760 all of that information, but there's reasons that he wouldn't. And a lot of the times an employee may

00:28:34.560 not see the entire picture, but he's asked to follow on faith and just with the information he

00:28:38.860 has. Sure. And that's a great example. And so here, here's two things that are mitigators in

00:28:43.320 situations like that, especially if you have a great inspirational leader. One is that if a majority

00:28:49.040 of the time leading up to situations like that, that there is transparency and communication going

00:28:55.200 on, then you have trust. And then, so there, when those moments, when you actually do have to poke

00:28:59.880 someone in the eye, or you have to get someone to do something, you have a bank of trust already

00:29:04.500 built up that they know, Hey, this is most likely. Okay. So that's the first thing. And the second

00:29:10.200 thing is, and I've had to do this, you know, I'm, I'm the counterintelligence spy recruiter that tell you,

00:29:14.540 I never lied to you. I was very straight up and honest and transparent. Now, same thing in my

00:29:20.500 situation as with the boss is that if someone questions you about why you can do, why they have

00:29:26.060 to do something, or they're looking for you to pull the curtain back behind, see what's going on

00:29:30.020 behind the scenes. And it's inappropriate according to policy or morale or anything else.

00:29:36.460 And if the boss says, Hey, I'd love to share this with you. And I can't because of X, Y, and Z.

00:29:41.540 Well, that's also transparent. That's true. Yeah, that is true. Yeah.

00:29:44.540 Good point. You know, because I've, I've had before, you know, where, um, I would, I'd walk

00:29:48.960 up to someone, um, on vacation, you know, a spy of some sort and, uh, and, and, you know, see if

00:29:56.000 they wanted to grab a cup of coffee or, you know, have a conversation about their priorities and let

00:30:00.380 them know what I have as resources, you know, something along those lines, you know, basically

00:30:04.100 a cold call in the middle of nowhere. And they'd look at me and say, you know, how did you know I was

00:30:08.520 here? I had lots of tools and techniques to find out how they're there, but I'm not at liberty to

00:30:13.340 disclose them. And I just say, you know, we have lots of ways that we find out where people are

00:30:17.800 because, you know, when we think you're a threat, potential threat to national security,

00:30:22.140 we tend to really pay attention to you. Um, I'd love to share it with you, but I'm not at liberty

00:30:26.080 to do so for your protection and the protection of our, our tools and techniques. So if you'd still

00:30:29.580 want to have that cup of coffee, great. If not, I totally understand. That's transparency.

00:30:34.300 That's interesting. Can you tell, I mean, just to go to that, that, uh, that example,

00:30:38.320 can you, even if you didn't have some of these tactics and information and access to technology

00:30:42.540 and that sort of thing, are there things that you can look for and say, Oh, there's something

00:30:46.240 about this individual that might represent some sort of intelligence agency or, you know, some,

00:30:51.200 some additional training that really stands out when you see an individual like that?

00:30:54.780 Yeah. Um, probably not at face glance, uh, you know, at first glance and believe it or not using

00:31:01.580 technology is not all that common. Um, cause it's such a, you know, our country is so fantastic with

00:31:08.320 our constitution. It is so rock solid, you know, regardless of, I know we've had, you know, horrendous

00:31:13.580 things in the news, you know, at the top of the executives inside the FBI in the last bunch of years

00:31:18.040 that view certain things, but in general for the layman on the street, you know, which I was,

00:31:24.520 which I was, and also interacted with when I ran our behavioral team, it is such a massive laborious

00:31:30.400 process. Uh, especially if the U S person, not even a U S citizen, but a U S person, in other words,

00:31:35.960 someone here that is in a transition to get a green card or any other category that is there a U S

00:31:41.140 person. Um, the, the level of, of confidence you needed to demonstrate to a court and all the

00:31:49.000 checks along the way, it took so long to actually use technology on your side. So it was so much

00:31:54.900 easier to develop the skills and tools. I talk about my books about human beings because human

00:32:00.040 beings have much better information than any bit of technology because technology very rarely gives you

00:32:05.240 context and context is so critically important. You only really get context from human beings.

00:32:09.760 And so, well, and it's, it's a lot more translatable as well, right? If you have technology,

00:32:14.920 great. You can pick out this one individual that you have an interest in, but if you have the

00:32:18.940 information, like you're talking about the behavioral information, the, the, the ability to,

00:32:23.400 to read people and predict their behavior accurately, then that translates to anybody you might need to

00:32:29.460 recognize or acknowledge, whether that's an active, a potential active shooter, uh, or some sort of

00:32:35.160 threat like that, or, you know, looking for a partner and being able to determine, is this a

00:32:40.900 woman, for example, that I want to commit my life to like, it's a very translatable if you have that

00:32:45.840 set of skills versus the technology. And really, and so go, go back to your, your original question.

00:32:50.240 Can you tell someone who, you know, because most I'd say 95 to 98 or even 99% of, you know, foreign

00:32:56.800 intelligence collectors in our country are diplomats under diplomatic cover. How do you tell that

00:33:02.000 if someone's actually an intelligence officer, as well as, you know, under, you know, trying to

00:33:05.720 pretend to be a regular diplomat? Well, it's easy. Is there, is their daily activity consistent with

00:33:10.460 what their job is? Right. You know, and so if you see someone, you know, I'd say, I mean, so our guys,

00:33:18.240 you know, say, you know, they get into work at nine o'clock in the morning and nine o'clock in the

00:33:21.960 morning, they should be going over to the embassy or United Nations, if that's where all the other,

00:33:26.840 you know, employees worked, you know, but all of a sudden, you know, like three days a week,

00:33:31.260 they're not going over there and are going on drives, you know, for three or four hours and

00:33:35.440 they're taking these weird routes every place. And it makes no sense consistent with them being

00:33:39.880 an attache in a certain area. Um, and then afterwards they, they huddle down inside, you

00:33:45.500 know, their establishment writing, you know, when everyone else is home. So you can assume they're

00:33:49.920 writing reports and cables that then go back. Now that's someone who's probably doesn't have our

00:33:54.640 best interest in their heart. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and I've heard this from a lot of those,

00:33:59.780 those people who are, who are good or have some training in situational awareness is they talk

00:34:04.140 about establishing the baseline first. Yes. And I think that's what a lot of people miss is like,

00:34:09.060 if you go to a concert, for example, the people at a concert, generally the baseline is going to be

00:34:13.960 different than if you're at, uh, a symphony or an orchestra, right. Versus a hard rock concert,

00:34:20.280 you need to establish the baseline first to see, okay, this is normal behavior for the circumstances,

00:34:25.860 or this is out of the ordinary. And I need to be more aware of that.

00:34:29.600 And human beings pick up on it really, really well all the time. And that, I mean, from the

00:34:34.840 creepy car salesman, you're picking up on incongruence between actions and words. Um,

00:34:39.980 that's an easy one. When we walk into work in the morning, when we used to work, walk into work in

00:34:44.520 the morning, I will see it via zoom. You can always tell who's having a bad day without anyone saying

00:34:48.540 anything because their non-verbals are deviating from their baseline. You know, all that, the only

00:34:53.160 difference between someone that does it for a profession and anyone else is that I pay attention

00:34:57.780 to it because I have to pay attention to it. You know, so it's just taking a muscle skill that

00:35:02.360 everyone has and just building that muscle memory by doing it a lot, but everyone can do it. And

00:35:07.940 everyone does do it every day without even realizing it. So this sounds a little bit at odds with what

00:35:13.020 I saw in, I think it was the first part of your book where you talked about being able to trust your

00:35:17.740 gut, I think is the term you used and how you used to, you used to feel fairly confident in that.

00:35:22.780 And now you just don't. So how do you reconcile the idea that we can pick up on the used car

00:35:28.980 salesman or the guy that's just a little shadier off and Hey, don't trust your gut.

00:35:33.460 So I have two sides of this, um, that I, I kind of bifurcate them. And the first one we talked about

00:35:38.560 already is liking, liking is part of that gut because as human beings, we kind of glump everything

00:35:43.780 together. And I like kind of separate, separating things out so you can know what you can rely upon

00:35:49.260 better than others. And so we tend to glump, you know, our intuition and our liking at the same

00:35:55.500 thing. Cause they think that's a gut feeling. And here's how I define it. So liking I've already

00:35:59.280 defined as overlapping of commonalities of morals, ethics, background interests, all the things that

00:36:05.340 make me enjoy being around someone. Which can be manipulated. I imagine like if I'm trying to get

00:36:10.880 you to like me, I can figure out what you're into and create and fabricate some form of likability,

00:36:17.220 maybe not all of it, but some of it, I would think. Yeah. For short spurts of time is the best

00:36:22.880 thing I'm going to say with that. Um, so my, my experience with that is that, so I did a lot of

00:36:28.560 undercover work for a number of years, uh, when I was in New York and anytime you're trying to be

00:36:33.560 someone or something, you're not, it's mentally exhausting and you'll eventually tire of it and

00:36:39.340 you'll start slipping and go back to who you are. I mean, think about, you know, here's a great way

00:36:43.940 to think about it that we've all witnessed. Think about, um, political campaigns, whether they're

00:36:48.720 local or whether they're, you know, for the presidency. Um, you see people on a campaign

00:36:55.240 trail when they're during the primary season and you see them on a stage, you know, every now and

00:37:00.140 then, and man, they are game on great. Sure. And then all of a sudden they get into our elected

00:37:05.460 position. You start seeing them every single day or every couple of days and you start seeing,

00:37:09.680 um, it's not quite the same guy that I, I, I elected because, well, because they were game on

00:37:15.960 for, they could put a show on for an hour or two at a time, but when they're under scrutiny and under

00:37:21.540 the camera for 24 hours a day or something, you're going to see the true them come out because it's

00:37:26.260 exhausting trying to be someone you're not. Um, so when I was doing undercover work, matter of fact,

00:37:32.220 when I went through the undercover certification school, it's about 10, 10 days of two weeks. Um,

00:37:37.400 it was the most emotionally exhausting thing I've ever done in my life. And so at the end of it,

00:37:42.140 I slept for like three days. Really? Because you're thinking, your brain is thinking all the

00:37:46.460 time. Yeah. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? And as, as people get older,

00:37:51.500 they start slipping. And you know, so the true you starts really coming out because basically

00:37:57.100 the true you comes out under stress, whether stress is, whether stress is exhaustion or whether

00:38:03.920 the stress is from anger, all the negative emotions, you know, that's when, you know, all

00:38:08.320 the shields you have up kind of shed away and your core comes out. So, yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.

00:38:13.920 I guess this is why I think about acting. I know we were talking about it earlier, but you know,

00:38:17.800 you see these great actors and they get so into their role so much so that I think it becomes hard

00:38:22.920 for them to distinguish between themselves and their character. I imagine they have to do that.

00:38:28.540 Otherwise it would just be just like you said, so exhausting to play like different parts to

00:38:33.860 different people in different circumstances. It is. And then, you know, the greatest thing about

00:38:37.360 great method actors that are the best out there, you know, they, it's just the same thing as

00:38:41.740 undercover. I mean, I did acting classes because it's the same exact thing. It's you, you imbue

00:38:46.260 a new person into you. And that's why these great actors are, are truly gifted because they built up

00:38:52.620 all this muscle memory about how to do that, you know, and becoming someone completely different and

00:38:57.800 completely new for those periods of time. Um, and yeah, I mean, I, that's why it's such hard.

00:39:03.240 You know, it's funny people that any profession that if you're a master at and you're an expert at,

00:39:08.880 it's a lot of, a lot of hard work and it's not just easy. Um, and some of those, the greatest

00:39:14.840 method actors in the world that is excruciating years and years of years of building muscle memory up.

00:39:20.800 Um, so it doesn't become so exhausting that you can only do it for a couple minutes at a time,

00:39:24.940 but they can do it days at a time when they need to. Right. I interrupted you earlier. You were

00:39:29.380 talking about, um, trusting your gut and how do you reconcile that with, with, uh, with what,

00:39:35.640 what you believe now would say, I don't, don't necessarily trust your gut.

00:39:38.500 So the liking, I don't trust because liking and disliking something creates a bias in us that,

00:39:44.160 you know, it's, it's very, very difficult to overcome. And if we like someone or something,

00:39:49.560 we tend to think everything out of their mouth is completely fine. And if we don't like them,

00:39:54.160 it's exactly the same thing. The best analogy of this right now is politics. Of course it is,

00:40:00.240 you know, without a doubt, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll put both of them out there. Hillary Clinton

00:40:04.020 and, and, uh, president Trump are clearly the most divisive people that have ever run for president.

00:40:10.420 It's not because of their policies, believe it or not. It's actually because they were probably

00:40:14.820 the most well-known presidential candidates we've ever had. Great point. You know, Hillary because

00:40:20.500 of bill, cause she's been in public service for so long and Trump because he's been on TV forever.

00:40:26.140 I mean, when I was growing up in New York, I heard about Trump, you know, from when I was in high

00:40:31.140 school, you know, so when you have someone that well-known for that long, people have already made

00:40:38.560 a choice where they'd like them or dislike them. And so if you like Hillary, there's nothing

00:40:44.800 she can do that you will say was wrong. Right. Same thing with Trump. If the Trump supporters

00:40:49.620 like Trump, there's absolutely nothing he can do. They're going to bash and we're seeing it right

00:40:54.740 now. And the converse of that, if you dislike either of them, there's nothing they could do.

00:40:59.300 Right. Of course. I remember I, I pose this, uh, this theory to my daughter and, uh, she does not

00:41:04.340 like the president and she says, dad, I don't believe that. I don't think that's accurate. How old is

00:41:08.860 she? Um, she's 22. Um, about to graduate a nurse. Okay. Um, another month. And, uh, and she's, and

00:41:15.840 she says, I don't think that's true. I don't think I have that bias. I said, okay. I said, help me

00:41:19.100 understand this. So you don't like president Trump. She goes, no. I said, there's, is there anything he

00:41:23.540 could do you'd agree with? And she goes, Oh no, never. There you go. Exactly. Well, and you've, and we've

00:41:28.620 all seen these, uh, these videos where, uh, a reporter or, or some sort of a pollster or somebody will go to

00:41:34.940 somebody and say, Hey, tell me what you think about, for example, Hillary Clinton's policy.

00:41:38.780 And then they'll list out like three to five policies. And I'll say, Oh, I love that. I love

00:41:42.860 that. I love that. This is a self-proclaimed Democrat, for example. I love that. I love,

00:41:46.220 well, would it surprise you to find out that those were actually Donald Trump's policies?

00:41:49.960 Oh, uh, backpedal backpedal. And it happens on both sides of the aisle, but that just proves the

00:41:54.260 point. Absolutely. So, so liking is very dangerous thing. I do that people do that I try to take out

00:41:59.320 of the equation and the other. So, so that's part of our intuition. I mean, part of our, our,

00:42:03.840 our thing that, you know, the gut feeling. Now the other part is intuition. And so here's how I

00:42:10.340 define intuition. And this actually can be a little bit more accurate, um, for people as long

00:42:14.940 as you don't come liking into intuition. So intuition for me is the congruence that you see

00:42:20.060 between someone's nonverbal behavior and their verbal statements. So the example is if someone is

00:42:27.080 saying the right things, like I have, uh, I think it's a fifth sign. No. Yeah. Fifth sign is language.

00:42:32.360 So if someone's using the right language with me, in other words, making that conversation

00:42:36.820 about me by seeking my thoughts and opinions, talking in terms of my priorities, validating

00:42:42.080 me without judging me and or empower me with choices when they're doing, whether you're

00:42:46.340 doing it to them or they're doing it to you, you're making that entire conversation about

00:42:49.980 them. It's fantastic. Now, if their nonverbals are congruent with that, in other words, good

00:42:56.240 high comfort nonverbals where I got a nice head tilt, exposed my carotid artery, smiling,

00:43:01.260 full facial smile, some eyebrow elevation, ventral displays with palms up, basically the

00:43:06.040 body's opening up and out. It's high comfort with a conversation about you. That's great

00:43:11.860 congruence. So my intuition in that point will be, ah, this person is a good person. They're

00:43:16.640 trustworthy. That's my intuition. And on the converse side, if they're saying all the same

00:43:20.920 things, in other words, talking in terms of my product, like a great used car salesman

00:43:24.240 that is actually shady, that gives you the creeps. They're talking in terms of your priorities,

00:43:27.660 they're validating you, they're empowering you with choices, and they're talking in terms

00:43:33.620 of your priorities. But if they're using very aggressive nonverbal behavior or very tense

00:43:39.560 nonverbal behavior like eyebrow compression, leering at you, leaning in at you, palms down

00:43:45.140 trying to dominate the conversation, they're using a tempo that's out of sync with your tempo,

00:43:51.320 they're assertive. All these things that are saying they're on the attack, yet their conversation

00:43:55.320 is about you. That's very incongruent with the words. And that's what gives people the creeps.

00:44:01.520 So that's now that's part of the gut. I think people are actually decent-ish at,

00:44:06.040 then that should give you the pause to say, all right, something's a little off. Now let's look

00:44:10.220 at these six signs. Man, let me hit the pause on the conversation very quickly to talk with you

00:44:16.400 about our exclusive brotherhood, the Iron Council. Membership in the Iron Council is up roughly 15%

00:44:23.660 over the past two to three weeks, which is huge, obviously. I think that's because men are beginning

00:44:29.280 to see the value of banding with other strong, successful, like-minded men. I believe that

00:44:34.220 there is a turning of the tide from this lone wolf mentality to let's band together with other men who

00:44:40.280 are successful, who want to thrive, who want to win, who have the tools and resources to do it,

00:44:45.260 and will help me do it as well. And that's exactly what you're going to get when you band with us

00:44:49.320 inside the Iron Council. First, we're going to help you identify your track to run on. It's not

00:44:54.200 ours. I'm not identifying my track for you to run on. It's yours. And then once you have identified

00:44:59.360 that track, we're going to give you the framework and the tools and the accountability to ensure

00:45:03.480 that you stay the course until completion. Very, very important. And then you have the skills to

00:45:09.200 apply in other facets of your life as well. If you know there is more inside of you,

00:45:14.500 but you don't know quite how to unlock that, then band with us and we'll show you exactly how to do

00:45:20.960 it. You can learn more and lock in your spot at order of man.com slash iron council. Again,

00:45:26.820 that's order of man.com slash iron council. You can do that after the conversation and make sure you

00:45:31.360 do. But for now, I'll get back to it with Robin. Yeah, we're going to get into that, but I do like

00:45:37.160 the idea of congruency because I've always looked at, but you were talking about body language,

00:45:40.960 the nonverbal, uh, nonverbal, uh, form of communication. And, and I've had people cause

00:45:45.820 my background is sales. So I've had trainers come in and they're like, if you, like you said,

00:45:49.700 your palms are out and, and you match the speed of what they're saying and you're doing all these

00:45:54.560 things. And like deep down inside, I'm like, this is bullshit. Like they're like, maybe that guy's

00:46:01.840 just standing with his arms crossed, for example, because he's comfortable with his arms,

00:46:06.020 comfort move. Yep. Right. Or, or he's cold and you're reading it as being closed off. It's like,

00:46:10.820 it could have nothing to do with that. But I think what you're saying here is clusters,

00:46:14.180 right. We're, we're not using that body language alone. We're using it as a metric

00:46:19.760 in conjunction with everything else that we'll get into. Just one more data point. That's all it is.

00:46:24.980 Right. Yeah. I never, I never look at one solo thing and make that determining thing. And here's the

00:46:31.180 other thing too. That's why, you know, non-verbals and you know this because obviously you've listened

00:46:35.940 to a lot of people and did a lot of training with it. You know, non-verbals alone are horrible

00:46:39.580 indicators of deception, you know, and you can't rely on those alone because, you know, non-verbals

00:46:45.500 for deception or stress non-verbals and stress non-verbals are also caused by, you know, bad

00:46:49.720 thoughts, negative thoughts, a bad experience, you know, it's all the same thing. So they all look the

00:46:53.900 same in everyone. So you need really good statement analysis as well as non-verbals, you know, and it's

00:46:58.980 very difficult. Best people in the world are only 50% accurate at best. With body language alone.

00:47:04.300 With body language alone for detecting deception. Right. So I don't even bother. It's just silly.

00:47:09.680 Yeah. I mean, it's just so easy to misread. So, I mean, we, and the other thing we do is we come

00:47:13.960 with our own, with our own assumptions about the way that we would perform or the way we'd show up.

00:47:18.280 So we think that, well, that person's saying something I would say, so they must be feeling the

00:47:22.320 exact same thing that I would be feeling in that situation. And it could be completely different.

00:47:26.460 We have our own biases. Yep. And I think the, and the other tests, you know, cause you're right,

00:47:30.700 you know, if someone could actually be saying all the right words and they're trained to non-verbally

00:47:34.480 do all the right things, you know, and, and so people then say, well, so, so what is someone's

00:47:38.800 a fantastic manipulator? You know, how do you, how do you recognize that? And I go back to my first,

00:47:44.920 you know, thing about transparency. Manipulators have a hard time with transparency. And so if I'm

00:47:50.540 seeking transparency, in other words, I'm not quite understanding what you're saying because you're

00:47:54.500 talking a little too fast, you're trying to overcomplicate things, or, you know, I always

00:47:58.300 make the excuse that, Hey, I got a really slow brain. I don't have a 50 pound brain like you.

00:48:01.860 Help me understand what exactly are you saying? Right. And if they can't help you understand,

00:48:07.020 that's when I take notice and I back off because that's someone who's not looking for an open,

00:48:11.960 honest communication and dialogue, most likely not in my best interest. So I'm out.

00:48:17.300 Yeah, that's a, that's a very good point. I think most people are probably afraid to some

00:48:21.740 degree of that level of confrontation though. I remember. Oh, and it's so not confrontational

00:48:25.520 because look what I think they're perceiving it that way though. Absolutely. But you own it. In

00:48:29.160 other words, I never, I never pass a judgment on you. I'll never say, Hey dude, you're just trying

00:48:32.960 to manipulate me. No, no, no, no, no. You're just trying to figure it out. Right. I'm looking,

00:48:36.880 I'm seeking transparency because I don't understand. And if, and, and if you can't make me understand,

00:48:41.740 that's my fault. I apologize. Maybe you come back another time. If you think you can dumb it down

00:48:47.480 even more for me, fantastic. But until that day, Hey, see you later. Yeah. Good point. I remember

00:48:53.300 a couple of weeks ago, I was on a sales call with, with somebody that, that wanted to offer

00:48:57.200 some solutions to some things that we're dealing with. And, and he, he was using this really cryptic

00:49:02.080 language. He's like, yeah, you know, I'll see what we can do. And I'll talk with this individual.

00:49:05.220 And we'll like, I'm sure we can work something out. He's just being really cryptic about it. And I just

00:49:09.120 said, hold on. And I flat out said, I said, you're being really cryptic in your language. I don't

00:49:13.600 understand what you're saying. So like, can you help me specifically understand what it is you're

00:49:19.420 talking about? You're saying, you're going to talk to this individual. What are you going to ask that

00:49:23.620 individual? What, what, what solution are you going to provide? I don't understand. Right. And he

00:49:28.480 actually did have a very good response to that. But the other thing that it did, which, which was nice

00:49:34.400 is that it pinned him down to something. So now there's an expectation that he has to meet because

00:49:39.460 he said it. I don't think he was being deceitful necessarily. I think he just didn't want to be

00:49:45.400 pinned down to being held to what he had said. Sure. So bringing that out, drawing that out,

00:49:51.240 helped me come to that, that, that conclusion. Yeah. And also, you know, cause a lot of times too,

00:49:56.300 you know, I've noticed, especially you're dealing with someone who's, uh, I won't say younger,

00:50:00.480 cause I've seen younger people that are fantastic at this. Someone less experienced, uh, or a little

00:50:05.180 insecure about themselves and their abilities will rely upon maybe a script that a company has given

00:50:11.420 them. Um, and so they'll, even though they're very genuine, they're very sincere, they're actually

00:50:16.100 trying to make it all about you, but they're following a script, which is, sounds like that

00:50:19.480 might've been something like that. But when you pin them down on, on, Hey, you know, why don't you throw

00:50:24.840 the script aside and really tell me what the hell's going on? And they do. All right. That's fine.

00:50:29.120 No problem. I'm glad that you talked about younger. Cause I was looking at my four-year-old and

00:50:33.560 thinking about him. I'm like, man, this kid at four years old, he's a master manipulator. Like

00:50:37.640 that stuff doesn't need to be trained. Like they're just born with it. Well, they're born with

00:50:42.580 it because they need to stay alive. But we also train them as parents. Like if I scream loud enough

00:50:47.560 for long enough, I'll give them what they want. So that's what they interpret. Well, he's always

00:50:51.680 effective. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So my son, um, he's very, you know, him and I, we've strategized,

00:50:57.580 you know, relationships forever. And he's at the Naval Academy right now. Well, actually home right now

00:51:01.540 studying at the Naval Academy, like everyone, but, uh, he's fantastic at strategizing, you know,

00:51:07.320 how to good, have a good, healthy relationship, how to have a good conversation, how to send a

00:51:11.020 great email because, you know, he's, he's 20, you know, and it took me till, you know, probably about

00:51:16.580 five or 10 years ago till I started really saying, huh, I think I've been doing things really off my

00:51:21.520 entire life. You know, that's an interesting term, strategize relationships. Is there a point at which

00:51:27.060 it becomes counterproductive and robotic to the point where it's like, okay, this is not even

00:51:32.660 real human interaction at this point anymore. I get asked that a lot of times too. There's a great

00:51:38.460 thing that it start, I think with some people it can start out robotic. Um, I've had people say to

00:51:44.920 me before, you know, I've actually had FBI agents in some of my class say, Robin, you know, how do I do

00:51:50.160 this? I just really don't care about people. And I said, well, first of all, you're in the wrong line

00:51:53.620 of work, but, but here's, here's an interesting by-product. You know, I always did care about

00:51:58.800 people, but I was always, I'm genetically very self-centered. You know, I I'm, you know,

00:52:03.220 on the Myers-Briggs ENTJ expert, intuitive thinking, you know, judger, I'm all about

00:52:07.140 conquering a dominant personality. And I guess I'm just hardwired for not really

00:52:11.900 of really thinking of myself first. And so it wasn't, I enjoy people. I love people. And that's,

00:52:19.220 it always hurt me deeply when I accidentally wronged someone because I had that behavior.

00:52:24.620 So this process actually is, is extremely empathetic. It gives you the empathy that

00:52:31.180 you might not have had intuitively, because when you start seeking the thoughts and opinions of

00:52:34.980 others, learning about their priorities, so you can start talking in terms of their priorities.

00:52:39.020 The other thing I do is I'm always looking for what people are great at and strong at what their

00:52:42.480 strengths are, because if you want to have a conversation, you need to focus on that. So when you

00:52:46.500 start doing those things and you start getting outside yourself and you start realizing,

00:52:52.240 dang, there's a lot of people around me. Matter of fact, everyone around me has these

00:52:55.740 mad skills I had no idea about. And they're so wonderful in these areas. It starts bringing up

00:53:01.220 out of you a thing called, which is the best thing I think you can have as a human being to make these

00:53:05.540 great connections, curiosity. If you're curious about people and curious about how they became the

00:53:12.740 human beings they are, and you combine that without judging them, that is the way you're

00:53:17.640 going to move forward with everything. If you become curious, being a curious human being,

00:53:22.600 I think is probably one of the healthiest things you can do if you can couple it without judging.

00:53:28.580 And you put those two things together and you're going to see the world completely start opening up

00:53:33.600 and lightening up for you.

00:53:34.480 Yeah, that's a great, that's a great word and a great message. I know there's a lot of people who

00:53:38.820 reach out to me, for example, asking for podcasting help. How do you interview? How do

00:53:43.200 you have conversations? They'll say things like, oh, you're, you're a natural or you're great at

00:53:46.740 this. I'm like, no, I've just done over a thousand interviews now at this point. Like that's why I'm

00:53:52.700 good at it. Absolutely. Lots of muscle memory. It is. And I use, you know, what's interesting is I

00:53:56.780 used to, so I would take like your book, for example, I would take your book and I would go through

00:54:01.200 it with a highlighter, which I still do because that's important. I want to make sure I'm researched on this

00:54:04.360 stuff. And then I would write down like verbatim, the questions that I wanted to ask the people that

00:54:10.140 I was having on the show. And I don't do that anymore because I think that was a disservice

00:54:13.640 to them. It wouldn't allow me to explore avenues and paths to just came up naturally in the

00:54:18.680 conversation. And it was pretty painstaking. And now it's taking bullet points. And the only thing

00:54:24.040 that bridged that gap to be able to do that was I just have to be genuinely curious. If I'm curious

00:54:29.300 about you or anybody else I have on the podcast, it's going to be a great conversation.

00:54:33.360 Yeah. And here's the, here's the shift you made, which is it's, it's a great point. What a great

00:54:39.720 thing to highlight, you know, you did. So highlighting things where you're getting,

00:54:44.740 you know, topics of, you know, potential topics to explore and go down, depending if I'm chatty or not

00:54:50.180 is fantastic. But when you start writing down questions that you want to ask, what starts

00:54:55.200 happening is you start following a script and the script is about what you want to do and not about

00:54:59.140 what I want to say. And so when you let go of a script and you pay attention to the words that

00:55:04.780 the other person is saying, but you have the themes that you want to make sure you cover for the

00:55:08.100 audience, that's where it brings on that beautiful natural flow because you made the conversation

00:55:13.100 about me. But at the same time, you know, the topics that are going to be good for your audience

00:55:16.860 and you keep that in mind so you can just guide the words coming out of my mouth. So in other words,

00:55:21.480 as I'm sharing the words out of my mouth, what I'm doing is I'm sharing my priorities with you.

00:55:25.880 And what you're able to do now, you can actually go to the buffet of information of priorities I'm

00:55:30.240 giving and you can handpick the different priorities that I was willing to talk about and

00:55:34.100 bring up and theme it with the areas that you know your audience is looking for. And that's what

00:55:38.520 makes a great interviewer, makes a great conversationalist because again, the entire

00:55:41.720 conversation, you're the bridge of the gap between the great conversation with me and serving your

00:55:46.220 audience. You know, I even think about this in the context of women because a lot of the men who

00:55:50.320 listen, you know, they're attracted to women. Obviously they want to have dates. They want to do these

00:55:54.920 things and engage with women, which is wonderful. But they struggle. And I found that the reason that

00:56:00.600 a lot of these guys struggle is because they're so worried about themselves as nothing to do with

00:56:05.060 a woman. Because if you were just curious about her, you'd be a great conversationalist. You'd

00:56:10.180 actually be somebody she really enjoyed talking with, but you're so worried about how she's looking

00:56:15.440 at you, how she's perceiving you. Are you cool? Are you attractive? Are you a potential mate? Like

00:56:20.780 you're so worried in your own head that you can't just have a great conversation, which is what would

00:56:25.300 actually attract her to begin with. And let's go back then to what I'd said earlier on, you know,

00:56:31.040 in the program, remember, especially in the dating world, it's not how you make them feel about you.

00:56:36.460 It's how you make them feel about themselves. And how do you make them feel great about themselves?

00:56:41.700 You gotta, you gotta get that dopamine going in the brain and the serotonin, oxytocin, you know,

00:56:45.980 make the pleasure centers fire when you're talking to them. So these, these four things, once again,

00:56:51.080 seek their thoughts and opinions, find out what their priorities are. In other words,

00:56:55.980 the challenges that they have in their life and, and talk in terms of those things,

00:57:01.000 everything that they're saying and doing validated. In other words, have that curiosity to seek to

00:57:05.360 understand everything that they're saying. Doesn't mean you necessarily agree, but you want to

00:57:08.520 validate it. So you seek to understand it. And now if appropriate, you empower them with choices.

00:57:13.480 Like, even if, Hey, if you had a great time, I really hope you did. And if, and if you'd like

00:57:17.300 to get together again and comfortable with it, why don't you give me a call or would you like me to

00:57:21.120 call you again, more choices, empower them with choice. And there, there's a great conversation.

00:57:26.000 There's a great date. You know, you talk about priorities. I think it's pretty easy to figure

00:57:31.580 out what somebody's tangible priorities are. Like, I want to, I want to live here. I want to go on this

00:57:36.380 vacation. I want to drive this car. I want to do this work. How do you identify the non-tangibles

00:57:42.540 and what is motivating people? Things that maybe they can't even articulate themselves.

00:57:48.900 I love this question. This is such a, this is one of my favorite ones. Um, and few people,

00:57:53.420 I don't think anyone's ever asked it because you're leading in what I, to what I call means

00:57:57.600 goals and ends goals. Okay. You know, like people think it's the means, you know, it's an expression,

00:58:02.280 it's the means to the end. Right. Sure. And what you just named were all the means goals people

00:58:06.800 will have, you know, whether it's a vacation, a car, a promotion, a transfer, a new house,

00:58:12.600 all these things are means to the end. And the end goal goes back to what we were all genetically

00:58:17.920 coded for. We're seeking, you know, to act in our own best interest in terms of safety, security,

00:58:23.360 and prosperity. In other words, all those things you just mentioned are what they define as things

00:58:29.920 they need in their lives for safety, security, prosperity. Okay. And so, so here's, if you want

00:58:35.380 to understand what someone, because again, people don't know a lot of reasons why they do the things

00:58:40.240 they do. They're just reacting to the stimulus around them or keeping up with the Joneses or

00:58:43.740 something like that. But at, you know, if you hear someone talking about one of their means goals

00:58:48.300 they're looking for, whether it's a promotion, a transfer, training opportunity, new car, all these

00:58:52.880 things, ask them, Hey, what are you hoping to get from that? You know, if you get that new car,

00:59:00.160 what, what's the emotion? What, what thing are you trying to get out of that? Is it a sense of,

00:59:05.540 you know, feeling superior to someone? Is it a, you're trying to, is it trying to bring greater

00:59:11.680 comfort and security and safety when you drive your family around? You know, so, you know, why,

00:59:16.340 why you should just always ask that, you know, again, the couple of questions I love, you know,

00:59:21.580 from my first book, you know, it's not all about me. It's like, ask how, when, and challenges

00:59:25.500 questions. You know, how does it, you decided you wanted to do that? When did you decide you want

00:59:29.300 that kind of car? What kind of challenges do you think you're going to have moving from what you

00:59:33.520 have to what you want? Those are great opening questions. You're going to get a whole lot of

00:59:39.140 deep thought on those. I think you will, as long as you don't take it too far. And I've been guilty

00:59:44.320 of this and I've seen other people be guilty of this. I no longer feel like we're having a

00:59:48.760 conversation about these things. I feel like I'm being grilled or interrogated. And so how do you

00:59:53.660 find that balance to not push and take it too far? Watch the non-verbals. So if you're starting

01:00:00.540 to take it too far, in other words, if you're, if your tempo and intensity and the depth of the

01:00:05.400 questions you're asking are inappropriate or too fast for that individual, you're going to

01:00:10.360 immediately pick up on some stress non-verbals. You're going to get a little, maybe withdraw.

01:00:14.760 Yeah. Lean back for sure. A little eyebrow compression, maybe lip compression,

01:00:19.300 you know, a little frowny face, anything that's kind of showing it that they're from the baseline

01:00:23.700 that you establish of the normal conversation you're having, where you had good comfort

01:00:27.580 non-verbals. If all of a sudden you're getting some flashes of discomfort, back off. It means that

01:00:32.700 you're pushing it not according to their tempo. You're pushing it according to your tempo because

01:00:36.780 some people disclose everything all at once. Some people it's going to take you years because it's not

01:00:42.840 about you and your tempo. It's about them and their tempo. You got to be very cognizant of it.

01:00:47.280 So that's another great point to bring up, you know, and cause there are really, I call them

01:00:52.200 relationship accelerators that you can utilize. And we're just kind of really talking about them

01:00:57.620 there, especially, you know, when we're dealing with this online world right now, you know,

01:01:01.920 I know people are very insecure, especially in sales and business and client relations. They're

01:01:06.040 trying to maximize, you know, how we need to get people on board now, but I'm dealing with the

01:01:10.480 virtual world or all these things. Relationship intensifiers. I actually mentioned in the book

01:01:15.360 too, is one proximity, you know, proximity right now is challenging for us because the best proximity

01:01:21.580 you can have is one-on-one in person. Right. But the second best thing right now, Zoom, like we're

01:01:28.360 doing now, Skype, all these things where we can at least see each other from the chest up. So these are

01:01:32.440 great indicators that we can still make a good connection. Backing off from that will be telephone

01:01:37.500 calls or just voice, um, or, you know, via voice, Skype or something. Then from there it's emails

01:01:43.340 from there it's, um, texting. So that's, you know, from the best to the worst, those are accelerators.

01:01:49.140 The next accelerators are going to be time. Are you spending 30 seconds in a text or on a quick

01:01:55.660 conversation or, or you spend an hour talking to someone because the amount of time you spend

01:02:01.240 with someone is also an accelerator. The third accelerator is intensity. And that's one of the things

01:02:06.620 that we're just talking about. Are you talking about asking them those how, when, and challenges

01:02:11.120 type questions where they're going to dive really deep on the meaning of life by what they're doing,

01:02:15.680 or are you just talking about the weather? So those are great potential intensifiers to

01:02:21.620 accelerate the level of trust and relationship, but you've got to be very, very careful because

01:02:27.520 the tempo is up to them. You don't want to push beyond what they're willing to accept.

01:02:32.240 Do you, do you find, let me back up. Let me say it this way. Do you disclose and tell people

01:02:39.040 what you've done in the past for a living?

01:02:41.560 Absolutely. Cause that's transparency.

01:02:43.180 I'm just wondering if even that alone, I mean, I'm sure you do it in an appropriate way,

01:02:47.740 but even that alone, I imagine it probably intimidates a lot of people. Like they feel

01:02:51.200 like, Oh, he's reading me. Oh, he's, he's trying to determine and decipher what it is I'm doing

01:02:55.520 and what I'm thinking. And that throws people off.

01:02:57.440 Um, so my general, my general response to people is I, I, I have given my presentations,

01:03:03.600 my keynotes, my train to all my bosses. Um, when I was still working with the FBI to friends,

01:03:08.780 family, everyone to see me do what I do. And I, every now and then I have a boss that say,

01:03:13.940 Hey, Robin, you're doing it to me now. I said, what making it all about you. You're damn right.

01:03:18.280 I am. If you want me to stop, I'll stop that too. I, you know, cause I always, I use the self

01:03:21.980 deprecating humor, which is very true. I said, I am a natural born self-centered ass. I will do the best

01:03:26.640 I can not to be that for you. Yeah. I guess your, uh, your, your purposes are aligned in many ways

01:03:32.860 in that case. Yeah. And again, when I throw in the transparency and the lack of insecurities by

01:03:38.700 not trying to hide who I am and my background, what I'm doing, I said, thank God. I actually,

01:03:43.380 you know, wound up doing the things I, I wound up doing because I sucked really bad. I wanted to be

01:03:48.880 this great. When I was in high school, I wanted to become this great leader. After I, people generally

01:03:53.380 will sometimes ask me, so how did you get to be the chief of the behavioral analysis

01:03:56.400 program in the FBI? That sounds so cool. It must've been a lifelong dream. I go, nope,

01:04:00.760 no, it wasn't. I said, when I was in high school, I wanted to go to the Naval Academy. I wanted to

01:04:04.420 become an aerospace engineer. I wanted to become a Navy pilot, test pilot, and astronaut. And, uh,

01:04:09.320 and they said, well, what happened? I said, I absolutely failed at everything. I, I did get

01:04:14.620 in the Naval Academy, took me an extra year and almost took me next year to get out. Um, cause

01:04:18.020 I failed out of aerospace engineering, a major in political science, uh, went Marine Corps instead

01:04:22.560 of, um, Navy, uh, air because my eyes went bad. My sophomore year, uh, at the Naval Academy. So I

01:04:28.620 wanted, everything went completely sideways. Um, and I wound up doing what I wound up doing because

01:04:34.000 it, what that's the life that was presented to you and you just want to do better what you're

01:04:38.180 presented. Um, but the end goal that I had when I was very young, I did want to become a great

01:04:42.760 leader. And I was trying to force the means about how to get there. I thought to become a great

01:04:48.420 leader. I had to do what I just articulated. No, what I really need to do to become a better leader

01:04:53.500 was actually something very simple. How do you, how to learn how to make it about everyone else,

01:04:59.360 but myself and learn how to become a resource for the success and prosperity of those around me

01:05:04.540 without expectation or reciprocity. Great inspirational leaders do three things. They

01:05:10.200 accomplish the mission. They take care of their people and their safety. So they go home every day

01:05:15.040 and their resource for their success and prosperity. And that resource for the success

01:05:20.060 and prosperity is key and paramount. Uh, I, I learned it when I was in Marine Corps, um, by mistake

01:05:25.520 because I, I, there's a point when I was at Parris Island training recruits and I had all these drill

01:05:30.540 instructors working for me, um, that I realized that, wow, these Marines are better Marines than I'm

01:05:36.640 ever going to be. And my job is to make sure they don't do something stupid to hurt their careers.

01:05:40.620 And I literally understood my role was morale officer. If I kept them mentally healthy and

01:05:46.900 kept them from being stressed, they're not going to do something stupid to ruin their careers.

01:05:50.720 So I learned my first behavior behaviorism was reading nonverbals of stress and mitigating it

01:05:58.080 before it hurt them. And that, and I threw myself on a, on a couple, you know, virtual grenades,

01:06:03.580 you know, to save a couple of my Marines every now and then. And, uh, I only realized years later

01:06:08.920 that they recognize it too. Cause I live, I live actually just South of Quantico, Virginia,

01:06:12.740 and they'll call it the crossroads in Marine Corps because literally you bump into people all

01:06:16.660 the time. You knew. Oh, is that right? Yeah. So I was trained. So one of my son was really small,

01:06:21.240 um, here I was coach of his baseball team, his t-ball team. And I'm out in the outfield with the kids

01:06:27.720 coming in and I hear from the sideline, it was one of my drill instructors that had worked for me like

01:06:32.800 20 years ago. Yeah. His son was on my baseball team and he still, he still tells a story about how he

01:06:37.820 saved his career one time. And I was like, Oh, thank God that he didn't want to hit me. So that

01:06:40.860 was good. I bet that's pretty rewarding and fulfilling at that point. It was because, you

01:06:47.020 know, my time prior to there, you know, I had, I had made some blunders, you know, some great

01:06:51.300 humbling moments about how I was interacting with my, uh, my peers. And, uh, and, uh, they made sure

01:06:57.400 I knew that, Hey, I kind of sucked. And the fact that by the time I had figured out, you know,

01:07:03.300 all right, subjectively it's an art form, leadership is an art form. And I had to figure out how to

01:07:06.920 make it a paint by number so I could actually do it. Well, I like that you're talking about,

01:07:12.120 you know, your, your, your ends is to be a great leader. You could do that as an astronaut. You

01:07:15.960 could do that in the FBI. You can do that wherever, wherever you happen to be.

01:07:19.440 It's not about title and position. It's about how you treat people. That's it entirely. You know,

01:07:23.660 I, I, when I retired from the bureau, um, cause sequestration had, you know, decimated my team. So I,

01:07:29.080 I went back to the street. I was a, I was a street agent again in the last couple of years of my

01:07:33.380 career. I was doing, you know, I gave up title and position. I was curious whether I'd still have

01:07:37.000 the ability to do a lot of speaking engagements, a lot of training, cause that was part of what I

01:07:40.800 did. And I, I loved it. Found out I wound up doing it even more because people did not want

01:07:46.240 me because of the title and position they want to me because of how I made them feel about

01:07:50.460 themselves. That's really pretty much it. Yeah. Uh, so is your son following in, in your,

01:07:56.120 your footsteps? Is he going down that path?

01:07:58.320 Yeah. He's going down the path that I wanted to go down.

01:08:01.840 That's what I'm asking. Yeah. That's what I mean. Yeah. So far. Yeah. He's a mechanical

01:08:04.420 engineer and a kicking it. He's doing really well. He wants to be a Navy pilot. He's already

01:08:08.140 pilot. Um, you know, uh, he got his private pilot's license in high school and he's still

01:08:12.680 flying at the Academy. So he's, he wants to go to Navy pilot route too.

01:08:16.160 That's excellent. Yeah. I was, uh, I was planning on going to the Naval Academy in high school,

01:08:20.040 my junior year. And honestly, I don't know why I stopped going down and pursuing that path,

01:08:24.720 but that was definitely something I was interested in and I was getting my paperwork and

01:08:28.000 application together and, uh, Senator recommendations and all of that stuff. So

01:08:32.060 it's cool to see that. Good deal. Yeah. It's not an easy process.

01:08:35.560 Maybe that's why I stopped. It was, it was like, ah, screw this. I don't want this that bad.

01:08:40.840 Well, good for you. Yeah. Well, let's talk just briefly because, um, I can't believe how,

01:08:46.240 how quickly this time went. I know. I was looking at the class at, wow, we've been,

01:08:49.180 I've been yammering at you. No, it's been good. This has all been valuable information,

01:08:52.340 but we haven't really got into the six signs of prediction, which is kind of what, you know,

01:08:56.260 I really wanted to talk about. So, uh, you talked a little bit about language,

01:09:00.560 but maybe we could just pull a couple of these out of here and maybe there's a few that you feel

01:09:04.540 like, okay, that's one worth really talking about based on our conversation.

01:09:08.380 Sure. Um, I'm going to, I'll hit language again briefly because I get asked a lot of times,

01:09:14.120 you know, Hey, what's something I can do to size someone up or literally kind of start being able

01:09:18.180 to predict them really rapidly. Language is probably the easiest one. Again, I'm what I'm looking for.

01:09:23.760 And so here's, what's also important with this. These are, these are signs I'm looking for in

01:09:28.380 others, but also signs and things I should be doing for others at the same time. Sure. So that's,

01:09:33.320 so that's, so language is one of them. So I'm looking for someone seeking my thoughts and opinions,

01:09:37.120 talking in terms of what's important to me, or at least trying to discover what's important to me

01:09:40.820 and my priorities, not judging anything I'm saying. They're validating me and being curious about me

01:09:45.720 and they're giving me choices. So those are the things I can look at really rapidly. And if I have

01:09:49.800 someone doing that with nonverbal congruence of high comfort in the first couple minutes,

01:09:54.760 you're starting off on a good foot. Okay. I think, and I think from there, um, in a shorter period

01:10:01.300 of time, you can also pick up through their action, the words and deeds, whether they're actually

01:10:05.100 vesting in me. That's the first sign investing is, are they invested as in my success as much as they

01:10:11.220 are in their own? In other words, in someone who's vested in me at work is going to, whether it's

01:10:15.800 a peer or a boss or even a subordinate, really, they're going to give me opportunities to train

01:10:21.740 and advance my career when it might not even be beneficial to them. They might give up a seat to

01:10:26.880 attend a certain conference in favor of me going. Um, they're going to give me opportunities for

01:10:32.460 promotion. They're going to give me opportunities for advancement. Um, all these different things,

01:10:38.380 you know, they're, you know, that's someone who's vested in my success as much as they are their

01:10:42.020 own because they see when I win, they will win as well. Um, can I give an example on that one?

01:10:46.680 Absolutely. This one will be really pertinent to anybody who's listening, who wants to start their

01:10:50.880 own podcast. I'm sure like you, I get a lot of requests to go on podcasts and I can tell pretty

01:10:58.840 quickly if this is somebody who's vested in me or not, because a lot of the times, and these are

01:11:03.660 usually podcasters who are just getting started. They reach out with something to the effect of,

01:11:09.020 Hey, I'm in my first 10 shows and like having you on would really be a boost to my podcast.

01:11:14.840 It's like, Hey, I can appreciate, I can appreciate that. Sure. There's nothing wrong with that,

01:11:18.760 but that doesn't speak to anything to me as to why I would want to do it or what value would be in it

01:11:25.780 for me. So it's gotta be this mutually beneficial agreement. And I think that speaks to the vesting

01:11:30.600 component you're talking about. Absolutely. And, and dealing with, I deal with podcasts a lot also,

01:11:35.820 and I, I'd say 99.9% of y'all, um, are so well, are so well positioned to vest in me as much as

01:11:45.400 yourself. Um, you know, always asking, you know, even after the show, you know, Hey, what can I do

01:11:49.620 to promote you? You know? And so it's always, it's always fantastic. So vesting is an easy one. I

01:11:54.340 think we recognize, but when you give it a label and meaning helps you be more conscious of looking

01:11:58.840 for it. And most importantly, giving it as well, because it's so important. Right. And over a period of

01:12:03.760 time, I think actions are really important as well, because actions is a sign for, and there's

01:12:09.560 two sides of actions. What I'm looking for in actions. The first thing is that I'm looking for

01:12:13.320 positive actions. In other words, is someone gossiping or not gossiping? Are they saying

01:12:17.600 positive things about people or negative things about people? So I'm looking for good positive

01:12:22.620 actions, vice negative actions. And the other thing I'm looking for is what I call past patterns of

01:12:28.200 key behaviors. And this is where if you observe someone doing something the same way once, twice,

01:12:35.340 or three times, the likelihood of them doing it the same way four or five and six times is pretty

01:12:40.080 dang high. Right. And so that becomes very predictable behavior. There's many, many people

01:12:45.820 are highly predictable because if you just look at their pattern of way they engage people, way they

01:12:51.060 engage situations, I won't name particular politicians, but you can think of one or two particularly that

01:12:57.580 they do the same thing the same way every time. You poke them, you know exactly what they're going

01:13:03.460 to do in reciprocity. It's very, very predictable. Which is good from both an ally perspective and an

01:13:10.440 enemy perspective. It's good to know both. Hey, how is this ally going to respond and how is the enemy

01:13:15.500 going to respond? Or maybe enemy is not the right word, but adversary. Right. Sure. Yeah, exactly.

01:13:23.720 But yeah, it does because then, then people know exactly what they can expect. And when you know

01:13:28.420 what exactly to expect, you can manage your expectations and plan accordingly. It's people

01:13:32.120 that are all over the board that you got to watch out for because you're like, oh my gosh, what are

01:13:36.020 they going to do? Because that, and that goes into another highly critical one I'm looking at, uh, is

01:13:41.280 number six, which is stability. Do they maintain emotional stability during times of stress and crisis or do

01:13:47.500 they completely fly off the rails and stay off the rails? Because generally, yeah, people are going to

01:13:52.320 emotionally react to negative input, negative stimulus, but how fast do they come back? Do they

01:13:58.440 have tools in their own processes and checklists in place to bring them back to reasonable thinking

01:14:04.140 again? It's like me, I know exactly what I do when I'm under stress. And so I actually have a process

01:14:09.960 I have to, you know, my, in my brain, when I see I'm getting emotionally hijacked, which means I have

01:14:14.560 the negative thoughts and emotions coming in here. I ask myself right away is all right, is what I'm about

01:14:19.200 to do or say going to help or hinder a healthy relationship. And so that's the first thing I'll

01:14:24.280 start doing. And this is also where I will bring in what I call my beta testers. I am, you know,

01:14:32.220 as human beings, we get very, very good at doing the things we do a lot. And I do strategizing good,

01:14:38.640 healthy conversations and good health engagements a lot, but that does not mean I do not get emotional

01:14:44.200 bias inflicted on it. So anytime that I'm going to do anything of consequence, which is kind of

01:14:50.300 deviating from the normal of our normal lives, I have my, what I call my beta testers, my trusted,

01:14:56.320 good, close friends and family that I will bounce things off of. I'll have them read something for

01:15:01.940 me. I have a great friend. He's a flight instructor and he's chief flight instructor. He's a number of

01:15:08.700 years older than me. I will bounce things off of him. My wife is one of my other beta testers.

01:15:13.320 I mean, anytime before I put something on my website, before I send an email out,

01:15:17.360 before I do anything, I have her read it. My son is another one. My daughter is another one.

01:15:21.700 You know, I have people in my life that I will have as my trusted beta testers when I know I

01:15:26.640 might be emotionally too connected to the thing I'm trying to do. So there might be my own bias

01:15:32.300 coming into the language, which can be very detrimental at times. And so I always want to

01:15:36.140 make sure if I'm too close, I'm going to use those, uh, those good, safe people in my life.

01:15:41.260 Yeah. I mean, it's definitely powerful to have those advisors and people that you've given

01:15:44.880 permission to tell you the truth. Like it's not really an advisor. If you haven't either either,

01:15:50.620 either verbally or in past behavior, giving them permission to speak truthfully to you.

01:15:55.380 Yeah. And the big thing is, and I've, especially with my wife, I've had to make sure that

01:15:59.720 I don't react negatively when I hear things I didn't want to hear.

01:16:03.560 Right. Cause then she'll never share it with you again.

01:16:05.500 Yeah. And so I, I it's, I've gotten much better at it and, but yeah, you know, it's so, and I,

01:16:12.040 it also requires a great amount of humility to be able to do that. Asking for help saying that I

01:16:17.520 don't have all my crap together all the time is very, very important. Cause again, what's that say?

01:16:21.880 It says you're human. No one likes to be looked down upon by anyone. No one wants to feel inferior to

01:16:26.200 anyone. And like I said, my, these, you know, my, my, my camera stacked on top of all my books right

01:16:32.720 here. These are my manuals on how not to be the moron I was born to be.

01:16:36.180 I was going to say, especially difficult on the humility side for the high drivers and the

01:16:40.120 achievers. And a lot of guys listening are definitely that way.

01:16:43.300 But the second you can start doing that and you have that self-awareness come in and you

01:16:47.100 are not afraid to share your openness about, Hey, what you suck at. Cause I had to, you know,

01:16:53.340 I asked a lot of questions of people, people, when you wanted to become on my behavioral team,

01:16:57.660 you know, I put out an apple, you know, I send out a solicitation yet. I send a resume.

01:17:02.720 Then you had to do an interview and a few other things. And during the interview, I had two

01:17:06.720 critical questions. And the first one was tell me about your strengths. And when you told me about

01:17:11.260 your strengths, I didn't want to hear why you thought you were awesome. I wanted to hear what

01:17:14.520 strengths you had that were in terms of the priorities of the team, because you know, I want

01:17:19.420 to hear why you're going to be awesome for the team. And the next one was when I asked you what your

01:17:23.040 weaknesses were, what I wanted to hear is I did want to hear transparency on what you sucked at.

01:17:27.500 And I wanted to hear what your plan was to overcome it. Because if you could be transparent with me about

01:17:32.540 and honest, I'll say I, I, I, you know, my weaknesses, I care too much or something like

01:17:36.820 that. My weaknesses, I have no weaknesses, right? You know, I want to hear what it is. And then I

01:17:41.420 want you, I want you to tell me your plan. You know, you don't have to be perfect. You just have

01:17:45.840 to make an effort. Cause you know, if I, I'll take anyone with the self-awareness to tell me what

01:17:50.020 you suck at, what your plan is. I'll take them any day of the week. Cause that's someone self-aware

01:17:53.680 that is willing to be transparent. Cause when you're being transparent with yourself,

01:17:59.180 means you're going to be transparent with me. It helps me make better decisions. Help me place

01:18:02.300 you in a position for success. So that's, those are the thing, two easiest things. I can teach

01:18:07.540 anyone to flip a switch. You know, I can't teach self-awareness. Right. Well, I got to say, this

01:18:13.460 has been a, a very fascinating discussion, obviously. And I took more bullet points on what I wanted to

01:18:19.180 talk about, but for the sake of time, I'll let the guys just go pick up a copy of the book, which is

01:18:23.380 what they need to do anyways. Cause there's so much great information in here and everything else you're

01:18:26.300 sharing. I do want to ask a couple of questions as we wind things down. I didn't prepare you for

01:18:30.940 this question, but since we talk with primarily men, order of man podcast, I wanted to ask you,

01:18:36.240 what does it mean to be a man? Huh? That's a really good question.

01:18:45.580 You know, I'll go back to something I said earlier. I think to be a man to me is to be a very

01:18:51.260 cognizant resource for the success and prosperity of others. You know, be, be, be a, be a nourisher,

01:18:56.580 be a supporter, be a resource, you know, be, be a common, a storm, um, and be an anchor for people

01:19:04.480 when they need that anchor, you know, both emotionally and physically, you know, especially

01:19:08.240 I think, you know, today, you know, and what we're all going through with COVID-19, I think it's a,

01:19:13.020 it's a great example, you know, you know, strong people stand up and are there for others,

01:19:19.240 you know, with, you know, with great resolve with, you know, I think not fearing change,

01:19:26.600 you know, and accepting that things were, are always going to move forward and what are you

01:19:31.840 going to do about it? You know, we had a great expression in the Marine Corps, um, with brand

01:19:36.200 new second lieutenants that, you know, you're faced with all weird situations that you could never,

01:19:40.660 ever predict in a million years. And every time a new daunting situation that you had no idea what

01:19:46.640 you're going to do, you're, you're faced with, and you kind of got that deer in the headlights look

01:19:51.100 and you wanted to kind of run away and not do anything. You know, inevitably you had someone

01:19:55.660 above you, some senior guy look at you and say, all right, what now, Lieutenant? Meaning, all right,

01:20:01.280 here's life. Here's what you dealt with. You got a choice, crawl under a rock or move forward.

01:20:05.280 Yeah. You know, and so I think men don't crawl under a rock. They move forward.

01:20:09.140 That's excellent. That's great. I appreciate that. Well, how do we connect with you? Get a copy of the

01:20:12.820 book, uh, find out what you're all about and what you're up to. I know the guys are going to be

01:20:16.360 interested. Absolutely. Um, please go to my website. It's called peopleformula.com. It's

01:20:20.900 my company, all one word peopleformula.com on there. Uh, I got links to my books and they're

01:20:26.400 all on Amazon and some of them are still in Barnes Noble stuff, but links on my books are right there.

01:20:31.000 I do have my, uh, one of my online training courses out. It's about 10 techniques to quick rapport.

01:20:36.700 It's a, uh, matter of fact, if you email me from the show, mentioned this show, I'll give you a

01:20:41.740 discount code for if you want to take it as well, which includes a, which includes 30 minutes of

01:20:45.740 coaching with me, you know, a zoom call with me. So I really try to do all I can to be a resource

01:20:50.080 because I'm putting myself out there, you know, for everyone that is doing everything online,

01:20:53.940 everything that we're talking about can be translated to online, um, learning, working

01:20:58.720 business and all that. So I highly recommend you reach out to me. I field questions all the time.

01:21:03.140 I have no problem doing it. So that's easiest way. And follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, all that.

01:21:07.880 Great. Robin, we'll sync everything up. So the guys know where to go. I really appreciate you.

01:21:10.900 I appreciate your service to this country and everything you've done there. And of course,

01:21:14.100 the information you share, because knowing how to understand people, knowing to the degree that

01:21:19.400 you can, their motives and their intentions, and then being a better people person, a better

01:21:23.600 communicator is all very, very important, probably the most important skillset that I think an

01:21:27.780 individual can learn. Absolutely. And I couldn't agree more on it. And even now, I mean,

01:21:31.900 I think the aftermath of this is going to be, uh, psychologically very challenging for people.

01:21:36.320 And if we can really focus on all these skills and tools to help us with those relationships and

01:21:41.360 help feed people feel connected, because again, we want to be valued by others and we want to feel

01:21:45.360 affiliated. And I think with social distancing right now, with a lot of people locked down in

01:21:49.240 their homes and working distance wise, there are still things we can do with our language and our

01:21:53.480 actions that can still help people feel that connection that we are genetically craving. And so

01:21:58.580 make sure we're doing that for each other right now. And we'll all get through it. Great.

01:22:02.160 Agreed. Agreed. Thanks again.

01:22:03.740 Thank you for having me again, Ryan. Appreciate it, man. There you go. My conversation with the

01:22:08.640 one and only Robin Dreek. I hope that you enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. Uh, it was, it was an

01:22:14.700 enlightening conversation. I walked away with a lot of new information. Of course, I read his book

01:22:18.320 sizing people up and I would highly, highly encourage you to do as well. Uh, this is something that is very

01:22:23.540 applicable. You know, most of the conversations that we have are obviously we wouldn't have them if we

01:22:27.560 didn't think they were applicable, but I honestly believe that if you adopt and apply the lessons

01:22:32.980 that Robin shares in, in his book, sizing people up, uh, then you will become more capable man

01:22:39.200 because you'll understand people and what they're after. And then you can create strategies and systems

01:22:44.920 and scenarios where those individuals win. And you also win mutually beneficial relationships and

01:22:50.580 opportunities for everybody to win. And that's what, that's what it's about when it comes to being

01:22:55.620 a man. It's about adding value. It's about producing. It's about providing. Uh, it's,

01:23:01.140 it's about being the type of men that we're capable of becoming. And a big part of that is interacting

01:23:05.720 and dealing with other people. Uh, those that are counterparts, those that we are called to lead,

01:23:10.500 whether it's our children or, or with our wives or employees, neighbors, et cetera, et cetera. So,

01:23:16.780 uh, anyways, pick up a copy of the book. I think you'll really enjoy it. Make sure you subscribe.

01:23:20.600 We've got some other great podcasts coming down the pike here very soon. Uh, check out the iron

01:23:26.660 council order of man.com slash iron council. And then ultimately, uh, also leave us a rating and

01:23:31.300 review. Again, it goes a long way in promoting what we're doing here. And if you've been with us

01:23:35.480 for any amount of time, you know how important this work is. Hopefully it's been important to you.

01:23:39.000 And I imagine if that's the case, then it will be important to other people that, you know,

01:23:42.940 all right, guys, that's it. I'll be back tomorrow for the, ask me anything with Kip Sorenson.

01:23:48.400 Uh, then of course we've got our Friday field notes. We may do another Thursday show as well.

01:23:52.780 I've just done so many interviews over the past several weeks that, uh, we're going to give you

01:23:56.280 guys some, some more great conversations, but, uh, until then go out there, take action and become

01:24:02.180 the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take

01:24:07.480 charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order

01:24:12.140 at order of man.com.

01:24:18.400 Thank you.

01:24:20.400 Thank you.

01:24:22.220 Thank you.

01:24:24.460 Thank you.

01:24:25.420 Thank you.

01:24:27.400 Thank you.

01:24:29.460 Thank you.

01:24:37.800 Thank you.

01:24:38.700 Bye.

01:24:38.940 Bye.

01:24:39.380 Bye.

01:24:39.600 Bye.

Order of Man - May 26, 2020

How to Size People Up and Predict Their Behavior ｜ ROBIN DREEKE

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript