Preston Pysh  1:53  

I don’t know about all that. We are thrilled to have you. 

For people who aren’t familiar with some of your work, give them a little bit of a background of what you’ve done. You worked at the FBI, you headed up this new division of body language and body research, and then applied it to all these cases through the years. This is fascinating stuff. Give our audience a little sample of your background.

Joe Navarro  2:18  

I was a police officer in the Provo area. I got approached one day by the FBI and they wanted me to join the Bureau. I came into the Bureau and I was just blown away that I would get to work with this great organization. 

Then I realized about 90% of the work I’m doing is observation. You’re really a paid observer. It’s not like Jason Bourne. I started to look at body language and nonverbal communications really as an adjunct to my work in catching spies. 

Then the FBI created this unit called the Behavioral Analysis Program. I became the de-facto bureau’s expert on body language. It exposed me to a lot of cases, not just in the intelligence arena, but in the criminal arena.

Stig Brodersen  3:06  

Joe, I’m sure that you have had this question multiple times before with your background, “Am I lying right now?”

It seems to be this is what people are and this how people are thinking about body language. It’s very black and white. 

However, you actually provide a really good overview in your book about why that might not be the best way to look at this field of study. Why do you feel that way?

Joe Navarro  3:32  

Well, you nailed that question. I would say, 90% of the time people ask me, “Am I lying? Am I telling the truth?”

I just shrug my shoulders and say, “I don’t know. First of all, I don’t care. Second of all, I really don’t know whether you’re telling the truth or lying because there is no Pinocchio effect.”

There is no single behavior indicative of deception. It’s so much more subtle than that. We know that we very effectively communicate comfort and discomfort. 

When we are asked questions and they cost us some sort of difficulty, psychological discomfort, we usually see it manifest through some sort of leakage. Be it a nervous tic or a behavior, which we may do occasionally, but is hyper emphasized when we’re asked a difficult question. 

For example, you’re asked, “Where were you last night?” All of a sudden, we’re lip biting, we’re jaw shifting, or the jaw muscles become tense. That’s telling us something is wrong. Not that you’re lying. Something is at issue. 

Preston Pysh  4:40  

Joe, one of my favorite parts in the book was your description on how the limbic system works and how it’s tied to our inherent body cues that are expressed. 

Can you explain a little bit of this to our audience because I really think that this is a great foundation for people to kind of understand why this body language stuff occurs and why it’s so reliable in some cases?

Joe Navarro  5:02  

It’s extremely reliable. For decades now, scientists have been looking at the limbic system and it truly is exquisite. Not just exquisite, but elegant. 

We say elegant because of the simplicity of action. If you think about survival or if we had to stop and think, is that snake a friendly snake? Is it an ill tempered snake? Is it nasty? We would have died out as a species. We either evolved or we were given a system which reacts to the world and does not do a lot of heavy thinking. 

Because then it doesn’t do a lot of cognition, it does reaction. It tends to be very authentic. Now, what that means is we have a certain amount of shortcuts. 

Well, what are those shortcuts? If we see a nasty dog growling at us, we’re going to freeze in place. In the same way that if we hear a gunshot, we might freeze in place. 

Sometimes you see a child out on the street, it sees the car coming and it just freezes instead of getting out of the way. You say, “Well, why would we have this freeze response?”

That is because the limbic system has only a limited set of shortcuts that it uses for threat. You say, “Well, why the freeze response?”

Because when it comes to humankind, the number one predator for a very long time were large felines and large carnivores. To avoid the chase-trip-bite sequence, we evolved the freeze response. It still helps us, but it’s a very short response. For the most part, it works.

Stig Brodersen  6:54  

Would you say, Joe, that this is still to our benefit? How do you look at the limbic system today in a modern world? Is it good or bad? How is it helping and not helping us?

Joe Navarro  7:05  

It helps us today, because there are things that can still threaten us all of a sudden. The other day, it happened. There was a young woman going to get into an elevator. That elevator door opens, I’m standing behind her. There is a group of unruly, intoxicated men in that elevator and she just froze. She just froze and I froze myself. I’m not getting into that elevator. There’s just too much party going on. 

Anyway, it still helps us, even in this modern society. There are a lot of things that it helps us with. 

Though those are just reactions to maybe negative things. Think about how many times you’ve driven miles and you’ve been thinking about other things. You say, “Wow, how did I get here? I wasn’t even paying attention to traffic.”

The subconscious mind is extremely powerful. It’s extremely efficient and it handles so many tasks that we don’t think about so that we do have the time to think. It’s not like we don’t need the subconscious. We primarily need the subconscious, both to survive and to deal with the world around us.

Preston Pysh  8:21  

You would argue that because we’ve basically had that programming take place on our subconscious, that our body is expressing itself to these pressures or these stresses somewhere in your body. 

Then you don’t even realize you’re doing it so if you would go up and ask somebody a question that makes them uncomfortable, they’re going to express themselves subconsciously somewhere in their body. 

Does it happen quickly? Does it happen slowly? Talk to us a little bit about that idea.

Joe Navarro  8:50  

You’re exactly right. As we experience either something positive or something negative, or even something neutral, we know that our bodies transmit in real time what we’re thinking, feeling even desiring and of course, what we fear. It’s kind of interesting. 

You see candy in the window as a child then you see the child leaning towards it. There’s your desire. You’re talking to the business person. He’s in a hurry or she’s in a hurry. The right foot orients towards the exit. Well, we don’t have to wait for, “Hey, I gotta go.”

They’re already communicating, “I have to leave.”

You’re having a discussion with a colleague and somebody says something that maybe isn’t very professional. All of a sudden you see the person pressing their lips. This is an immediate reflection of our sentiment.

Preston Pysh  9:47  

I got to tell a funny story that happened to me last night. The thing that I’ll tell the audience is, after you read Joe’s book, and you start observing this stuff, you can’t even hear what people are saying anymore because they’re body is screaming so loudly. You just can’t even hold it together. It’s just so funny. 

Last night, we were at a birthday party for a six year old. It was at our neighbor’s house. We’re sitting there and all the kids are there playing. It’s November, okay? It’s not really warm out. 

Anyway, they all go over there. They’re jumping on the neighbor’s trampoline. There are probably ten of them. My wife is over there trying to corral the kids on the trampoline because they’re wild and crazy. 

Then one of the little brothers, he’s three or four, he goes and gets the hose. It’s November. And so, he gets the hose. He’s right behind my wife. He turns this thing on, sprays my wife right in the back, and then gets the rest of the kids on the trampoline, because they were being mean to him or something like that. 

His mother flips out. My wife thinks it’s hilarious. She comes back. She’s there at the adult table sitting down. We’re all laughing, while the mother of the little three or four year old, she brings him over to say his apology to my wife. He then walks over and he’s standing there. As soon as she takes her hand off of his shoulder to bring him over, he literally spins and turns around backwards. 

He knew he had to say sorry, but his head was down. His shoulders were slumped down. He was literally turned backwards, just trying to get out of that situation. 

There are subtle things that you see that have informed me so often. It’s such a valuable skill. I’m just so thankful for your book, Joe. I’m excited to have you here. 

I’m sorry to distract the audience here with my story but I had to tell that to you. I want to get to the next question. 

Stig, you got the next question. Fire away.

Stig Brodersen  11:45  

Joe, this is one thing I really, really liked about the book, because it surprised me because you were talking about where you should look, if you really want to understand the other person and really read their body language. Perhaps people can pause this right now for them to think about where they would look?

I personally would look at the face, which is apparently the worst place to look. Joe, where are you looking and why?

Joe Navarro  12:12  

By the way, it’s interesting, because as you’re talking to me, I can see the arching of your eyebrows, which we use for emphasis. I think I have to apologize, but I’m reading you as we’re doing this. 

When we think about nonverbals, it’s so often about the face, the face, the face. The fact of the matter is we are very social. We tend to put on a persona, a social face, which can be very inauthentic sometimes. We give that false smile or somebody says, “Is everything okay?” We say, “Yeah,” when it’s not. 

However, in studying body language over the years, one of the things that I found was that the feet and the legs are so authentic. They tend to be more authentic than our faces because of the need for survival. 

You think about it. You see somebody at a party that maybe you’ve had words with, or you don’t particularly care for. You’ll turn toward them or look at them. You want to give a social smile, but you find that your feet are already oriented away. That’s done at a subconscious level like Preston was talking about, the child that had to apologize. He already was changing directions.

There’s something exquisite about the limbic system, which protects our ventral side, our belly side, and tends to turn us away from things that are negative. You see this on television where you’ll have people talking about a topic and they’ll literally turn away from each other. This is very, very authentic. 

Watch children, when you say, “Hey, we’re going to Disney,” and they get happy feet, Their feet are jiggling and so forth. Then the minute you say, “Here’s some broccoli,” you see those feet immediately turn towards the exit.

Is there anything more pure than their body language that says, “No, not me. Not today”? There’s a lot to be gained from looking at the face, of course.

However, I guess the emphasis I was placing in the book was don’t ignore the feet, because oftentimes the feet… because they’re responsible for our safety and for getting us away from difficulties tend to be very honest as to our true feelings. AThat has not changed.

Stig Brodersen  14:31  

For the audience, if they want to apply it in real life, which way are the feet pointing? Is it pointing towards the person they’re speaking to? Is that typically a good indicator of liking the person? Is it pointing towards the exit? That’s not as good as a sign. 

Though as you also said, it’s not so much about lying or not lying. Say, for the sake of argument, there might be a lot of different things. It might mean that they’re busy and that they’re uncomfortable. 

Could you, in that relation, talk to us more about that? Is this kind of like you’re a detective, right? You’re looking at all these clues to come up with a conclusion. What is your thought process about that?

Joe Navarro  15:08  

That’s a very good question. Conceptually, that’s exactly right. I’m looking at everything. 

Look, you’re in a business meeting. You sense there’s restlessness under the table. Well, what is that? You see a lot of movement and the shifting in the chair and so forth? Is it because someone has something they want to say but they’re not given the opportunity to say it? Is it because there’s a topic that’s creating some sort of psychological discomfort? 

Somebody might say, “Well, maybe the person’s had an operation and they’re uncomfortable.” Yeah, there’s any number of things.

You have made an observation of the question: what’s driving that behavior? That’s what makes for really good business people that are both socially conscious, and they are aware of their surroundings. 

Why is this behavior taking place? Why is it that every time we talk about this merger, or we talk about this particular issue, we see the behaviors that are associated with psychological discomfort?

Again, it has nothing to do with deception. It has to do with the fact that we reflect when something is wrong through our body language. Now we must pursue this there in his utility. 

If your only focus is deception, you’re going to have a really tough time because it is so difficult. We’re no better than 50-50 coin toss at detecting deception through nonverbals. But if we use it to identify issues, if we use the two cents… 

I’ll never forget, we were in France. I was hired by a company I can’t name. We were part of the negotiating team and we were across from… This is a global company that deals with aircraft and we’re reading their body language. 

We’re literally going paragraph by paragraph on this hideously long contract and we get to one paragraph, immediately the attorney on the other side does the bunny nose and that’s where you crinkle your nose up board. With children, that’s how they do that “eww” thing. 

As he’s reading it, his nose is pulling up. I immediately wrote a message to our lead negotiator. I said, “There’s something wrong with this paragraph. There’s an issue here.”

Sure enough, it was a huge issue. Here’s an example of how a nonverbal revealed something in real time that was helpful for our side of the team. That’s how we use non verbals, whether you’re using it in the conference room or you’re socializing. We use it to sense if things are okay or if there is an issue.

Preston Pysh  18:08  

Joe, you tell some absolutely incredible stories, just like the one that you just told us. Your book is filled with stories like that, which for me really helped me understand and to remember the queue because there was a story to it. 

One of the examples you talked about was an ice pick. Could you tell the audience this story because I think this was such an awesome story? It also helps identify how you’re using some of the tools real time in order to extract the information you’re looking for.

Joe Navarro  18:36  

I’ll never forget this story. It would have been 1979-1980. I still remember it vividly. It took place on the Colorado River Indian reservation. A man had been stabbed, but here’s what’s interesting. He had been stabbed with an ice pick, but nobody knew that except the coroner, myself, and the person who did the crime. 

When one of the suspects that we picked up… We started the interview. His name was Ricky. I said, “Well, Ricky, you’re telling me you had nothing to do with this crime?” He agreed. 

I said, “But if you had done it, if you had killed this guy, would you have done it with a machete? Would you have done it with an axe?” “No.” “Would you have done it with an ice pick?”

When I said ice pick, his chin just hit against his chest and his eyelids came down. I said, “Ricky, come on, just get it off your chest.”

He confessed right there. 

His body revealed the cognitive load that he was carrying that he had used an icepick to kill this man. It was because of the precise item, so not all words have the same weight. If I had said did you kill them with a gallon of milk? No. But ice pick, that had a lot of weight. His body then reflected that. He pled guilty to that.

Stig Brodersen  20:07  

Joe, a lot of the listeners that we have here on our show, they’re business executives or they have a business focus one way or the other. What is the best advice you can give to them, in regards to reading body language?

Joe Navarro  20:21  

My best advice is probably not what you’re expecting. My best advice is that we begin to read each other’s body language at a distance so we are reading the body language of people that are coming to visit us in the parking lot. Maybe when they’re at the security desk. Maybe when they’re at the receptionist, and so forth. 

Just as we’re reading their body language, they are reading ours. The fact that nonverbals is everything that communicates but is not a word. So how responsive we are to people, even at a distance, that begins to register.

Let’s say we see somebody that’s coming to see us. They’re 60 feet away. Are we waving our hand at them? Or are we ignoring them until they come to us? When they get out of the elevator, do we go out to read them or do we wait for them to come to us? 

These are non-verbals. Stig, as I’m watching you. I mentioned earlier the flashing of the eye, because if I had to tell an executive, one behavior to use that makes you more likeable, that makes you more interesting would be to use the eyebrow flash to emphasize, especially when you greet somebody.

I mean, think about how many times you’ve gone into a business. They just look at you. and you see no expression on the face. When you walk into a business and you see that eyebrow flash and you go, “Hey, how are you, Joe? Good to see you.” And boy, you just feel so different about that.

We have only about two seconds anymore. It used to be the first 15 minutes to impress, and then it came down to four minutes, then it came down to the first minute. You know, boys and girls, we are down to the first two seconds. That’s how first impressions are made. We’ve got to get our act together and do it in a very short period of time. 

We don’t have this longevity of living in the same village where we can affect impressions over days. Those days are gone. Two seconds and we’ve got to have our act together.

Stig Brodersen  22:38  

I showed Joe a note I have in my wallet with five pointers that I learned from Joe’s book. One of them, number four,  is eye blocking is negative and that bigger eyes is positive. 

I don’t want to try and manipulate you here, Joe, but I have actually made a habit out of whenever I’m meeting people that I’m happy about, even though I might be tired, I actually do make an effort in terms of making my eyes bigger. Then I’ve tried if possible not to eye block too many things in my daily life.

Preston Pysh  23:14  

He has been working on that compliment for years, Joe. 

Joe Navarro  23:16  

You can see it with babies. Just the other day was Halloween, a mother with a stroller and a father nearby… As I approached the baby, I flashed my eyes and you could see the baby just light up. At a very young age, probably within the first three months of life, babies react to the eyebrow flash. 

Let me tell you 65 years later, nothing changes. We react to it. 

I’ll give you another example. When you couple a smile with that eyebrow flash that greets and then you marry that with head tilt.. Head tilt is one of the most powerful behaviors that we have that guarantees greater facetime. 

Think about this. In business, it’s about talking to each other and increasing the connectivity. What if there was one behavior that I can guarantee you that will increase that face time? And that’s head tilt.

Had tilt exposes our necks, but what it’s saying is, “I am really interested in what you have to say, I may have an agenda, but I’m suppressing it while I attend to you.” 

Watch the Royals. Princess Diana was exquisite in her ability to convey care just by that little head tilt, but if you notice her children, they use this all the time. The reason that they do it is because it is singularly effective in getting people to relax around you and to open up around you.

Preston Pysh  24:54  

Joe, this reminds me of a different book that I was reading recently. This book was called the “Wisdom of Your Cells.” It did a great job of talking about this idea of how babies are reading the facial expressions primarily of their parents, but also of everybody else around them. 

The book talks about how we’re genetically kind of coded within the first… I want to say the first three years to really study and learn facial expressions and what they mean to the baby. 

What I found even more fascinating is whenever the child goes from, say age three to around five or six, what they’re then doing is the example would be say, we’re out in the yard, and my son sees a snake. He’s around this age. The first thing that he’s going to do isn’t scream, “Snake, I’m scared,” and run away. The first thing he’s going to do is stop, like you said in your book. 

Then what he does is he looks at the snake. He turns and he looks for his parents’ face. What he’s doing is he’s trying to understand what snake means based off of the facial expression of the parent. 

You see this so often, especially at that age between like three and six years old, where they don’t know what a snake means. They don’t know what car is driving fast down the road… They’ll stop, they’ll look, they’ll see the parents face. Then based on that reaction, they now know that “snake is bad.” 

Something else was interesting and this is how the child at that age is being completely programmed at the subconscious level. An interesting thing that I had read that completely corresponds to what we’re talking about.

Joe Navarro  26:40  

It’s not just interesting. It explains so much. We know with experiments with toddlers, I think the earliest experiment I saw was with an 11 month old, perhaps younger, where they put them on a glass sheet, and half of the glass sheet has a bottom. The other half has a drop off. The baby will crawl along the covered area, but when the baby reaches the purported drop off, there is no drop off, the glass continues. He or she will look back at the mother or the father and look at the face. 

If the face smiles and there is no psychological discomfort displayed by the parent, the child will continue across that glass even though it looks like a drop off. If the mother or the father reveals any kind of psychological discomfort, such as the squinting of the eyes or compression of the lips, the baby will stop and not further cross. 

Now think about this. Think about how many times we’ve seen where a baby falls down or a toddler falls down. It’s looking at the parent to see, “Do I make a big thing out of this? Or do I make a small thing out of this?” 

The parent basically says, “You’re all right,” and walks away. All of a sudden, any attempt at crying and histrionics or anything are just shorted out. “What is this not a big thing?” 

However, a parent who reacts to it and makes this big theatrical presentation of this, the baby immediately invokes that. 

The same thing happens in business. Since retirement, I give about 30 to 45 presentations. I’ve been everywhere from China, to Europe to South America. Invariably you see this. The people in the company will look to the CEO to see how he or she reacts to a situation. Then that carries the day.

Organizations that really have their act together realize that we can act with unity. If the boss looks at something and he says, “Okay, yeah, things didn’t go our way but we move on,” that just changes your organization. It’s like getting over it in an instant. We look forward, not backwards. No different than what we saw with our child. Looking back to its mother. 

One of the things that I teach in my seminars is leadership is visible. Leadership is not in an office. Leadership must be seen. One of the great things that I like about military officers is they go out, they walk, they eat and they sit with the troops. A great organization sees the same thing. 

Sam Walton was like that. He’d get in that old truck and he’d go and hang out with the lowest person in the organization. 

When you look at the nonverbals of leadership, I say first of all is present. You must be visible. But what does that visibility look like? That visibility must be humble. Number one, because nobody likes arrogance. Number two, think about the gestures that you use. Leaders use gestures that are smooth, but they’re broad. 

Preston Pysh  30:16  

I’m curious about the answer to this. Talk to us about the least reliable body cue. Is there such a thing?

Joe Navarro  30:24  

Probably the least reliable body cue is the one that you often see where the person puts their hand on their chest and says, “Honestly, I’m telling you the truth, or I don’t know what happened or whatever.”

To me the hand to the chest, I completely ignore that. I ignore that in the same way that I ignore crying. I’ve seen both the guilty and the innocent cry. 

To me, it’s that these nonverbals are neutral to me, because I know there are other nonverbals that are even more potent. 

For instance, if your daughter comes home from school, and she’s talking about bullying or something that’s happened in school. She’s rubbing this neck dimple, if she’s touching that, “Whoa, I gotta pay attention.” This is a nonverbal that potentiates whatever is being said. I give greater weight to that than tears or that hand to chest behavior that both the guilty and the innocent use. 

Stig Brodersen  31:28  

Joe, I’m really curious to hear your thoughts here on the next question. With all your experience, everything that you have seen through the years, what’s your favorite story that you can tell really about how to apply these body language tools?

Joe Navarro  31:45  

Let me tell you this story, because I think it’s a humbling story. Here I was, at the pinnacle of my FBI career, I was the Bureau’s expert on body language. One of the agents on my squad came in one day and said, “Hey, we’re short on agents. We’ve got a ton of people coming in and need to be interviewed. Could you help out with this one?”

I said, “Sure, no problem.” 

It was a white collar crime case, typically not something that I worked, but it wasn’t terribly difficult. The woman comes in. I sit her in the interview room. So the first 20 to 30 minutes, you spend that time calming the person down, because obviously, they have these preconceived perceptions of the FBI. They’re nervous and so forth. 

What I’m noticing is rather than calm down, and I haven’t even asked any difficult questions yet, this poor lady is becoming more tense. I mean, she is ventilating. Her hair, right? She’s pushing her hair away from her neck, which is obviously a clue of psychological discomfort. I’m starting to see jaw shifting, where she just pulls the bottom jaw in one direction. There’s a lot of lip compression. 

Right underneath the nose, there’s a little area called the philtrum. Little droplets of sweat are building up there.  

I’m thinking, “Okay, Navarro. You’re the Bureau’s expert. You got this one, this is easy.”

And so finally, I said, “Ma’am, I hate to say it, but you look like you need to get something off your chest.”

She just closed her eyes. She gave me this blocking behavior and then she gives me this cathartic exhale. When she says, “Thank God, Mr. Navarro because I only had two quarters to put in the meter and it’s about to run out.”

This was one of those cases that I wish I’d had early in my career to just humble me down to where I needed to be. I was reading all the behaviors, all the behaviors were there, the ventilating behaviors, the jaw shifting, the lip compression, the buildup of moisture, under the nose, and so forth. All these things that in the past, people have told me all these are equated with deception.

All she was worried about was hurting the meter running out. So I take her downstairs, she doesn’t have enough quarters. I feed the machine. This is how long ago this was. So we put some quarters in, we go back upstairs. 

As it turns out, her identity was stolen. It was being used by some criminals and she had nothing to do with what was going on.

However, it taught me a great lesson. You’re observing behaviors. My job is to determine what is it indicative of and it was very humbling. Every time I catch myself saying, “Oh, yeah, I was able to see that behavior,” I’m always reminded of that instance. 

I think that’s wise for all of us. We may see behavior but we may not understand the reason for them. That’s our duty. 

Preston Pysh  35:05  

Joe, I know the audience got a ton out of this. I have no doubt if you’re out there listening to this, and you want to get a lot more, and let me tell you, there’s a lot more that Joe has put out there that will just keep you captivated. 

I was telling Joe before we started recording that I have trouble hearing people whenever I’m talking to them sometimes because the body language and the things that I’ve learned from this book are just so overwhelming when you start to see this stuff. It’s fascinating. 

Joe’s book is called “What Every BODY is Saying.” He’s got another book out right now it’s called “The Dictionary of Body Language.”

Stig and I cannot recommend these books highly enough. Joe, I want to give you an opportunity. I know you have an active Twitter account and some other things. Tell the audience where they can find you.

Joe Navarro  35:56  

I appreciate this opportunity and I have to tell you I appreciate you Preston and Stig for what you do, which is sharing knowledge. I’m like you. I see your bookcase and I am a lifelong learner. I love guys like yourself who share knowledge with others. 

You can find me at jnforensics.com. Most of my books are at your local bookseller, which I always encourage people to go see. They’re all available. All 13 of my books are on Amazon, but go visit your local bookseller. You can follow me on twitter @NavarroTells. I’m happy to answer any question that’s thrown my way so thank you again. 

Preston Pysh  36:37  

You bet, Joe. I’ll tell you. Your Twitter is a really great account to follow because, Joe, he’s teaching you. He will post a picture and it’ll say this is this cue. I closely follow your Twitter account because I’m continuing to learn some of the things that I read about in the book and it’s very useful. 

Joe, thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s such a pleasure to have you here.

Joe Navarro  36:58  

Well, it’s my pleasure. Though I waited a long time it was well worth it. Thank you guys.

Stig Brodersen  37:05  

That was great. All right, guys. That was all that Preston and I had for this week’s episode of The Investor’s Podcast. We will see each other again next week.

Outro 37:14  

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