Words: Your Most Powerful Weapon | Evy Poumpouras | TEDxStLouisWomen

[Applause] [Music] I'm often asked by people you know how can I read people how can I know if somebody's lying to me how do I elicit information from people and I'm asked this because in my previous profession prior to working in the media I conducted a lot of interviews I spent hundreds of hours in the interview room as a special agent I interviewed people that had committed some very horrible crimes I interviewed people who wanted to work for the government I interviewed people who wanted to harm our country I interviewed people from all walks of

life and over the years I learned or rather I discovered that there were some basic principles recurring things that I was seeing when I was speaking with people and trying to elicit information because that's all I needed to do I was trying to get information out of people and at the end of the day it all came down to communication when people ask me how do how do I get people to tell me you know what I want to know how do I read people they think I'm just going to pop out this checklist and

be like just follow 1 through 7 you'll get what you want and it doesn't work like that yes there is a science when it comes to communication but communication is more of an art form than anything else communication is what gets you to where it is you want to go whatever that is I want to share those basic principles with you here today but most importantly your your words are what matter we live in the world where we speak words and we don't really even think about we're saying we say things just to say them

we tweet what we want we email what we want but we don't understand the impact of our words prior to being a special agent I went through the New York City Police Academy I was a Cadet and when you're in the New York City Police Academy there's a class you have to take it's called police science and during one of my lectures my lecturer my instructor was Sergeant Corgan Sergeant Corgan got up there in front of the class and he said if you all go through your entire career and you never have to use your

weapon well then by my account you've had a great career because he said this is your most powerful weapon this is how you get people to give you what you want this is how you get people to comply not this this listen the fundamental principle in having communication is listening and I have to tell you we don't listen And when I say listen I mean be an active listener half the time when you're speaking with someone you're not even absorbing a word we're not absorbing what they're saying we're thinking what am I going to say

in response we're thinking about what when is it my turn to speak we don't even let them finish sometimes and I do that on occasion sometimes I do it to my husband and he'll say to me you know for someone who's a great interviewer you kind of suck at this sometimes but when I say listening I mean with more than just your ears you have to absorb people and what does that mean you want to feel people with your mind with your soul with your heart what vibe are they giving you and this may sound

like an awkward thing but it's not and you've all experienced it you meet somebody they introduce themselves to you within the first five minutes you either like this person a lot you're like you know what I just found my my BF love this person or within those first few minutes you say to yourself you know what don't like this person I want nothing to do with them and somebody can ask you they'll say well why not and you won't be able to articulate at it you'll say you know what I just don't like them you

know what I'm just don't something doesn't feel right you know what they're just off we all have that instinct and you know what we don't listen to it we don't sit there and think and feel and see when I would do interviews I would listen to people all of them I would never put a table between myself and another person ever I still don't even in the now I'm working in the media when I interview someone when I talk to someone my preference is in person no table between us cuz if there's a table between

us all I can see is what's going on from here and up I want to see all of you I want to see what every part of your body is doing because then I can understand you now when I can understand you I can begin to communicate and listening also means what you listen and you speak less we have this this myth where we think if we speak more if we control the conversation we're in control and it is the exact opposite it's the person who speaks less who's actually in control because you're giving it

all up you're an open book here you go what do you want to know about me and people love to talk so let them think of it this way 8020 rule you listen 80% of the time 20% of the time you speak especially when it's something that you need from this person especially especially when it's something that you desire that you need to learn because if you're talking you're not learning anything and having patience when people speak and then silence a lot of us don't like silence sometimes you speak to people and there's a moment

of silence and we feel like we have to keep talking and talking silence is beautiful because when you're silent you also telling that person I want you to answer my question but when you keep speaking you don't allow them special I love special I tell everyone make people feel special and they look at me like what make people feel special when you speak to someone and you're looking to have a communication with someone you have to make that person feel that they are the most important person that you are dealing with at that moment doesn't

mean you do do one of these or even glance at your watch doesn't mean you pull out your iPhone and talk to people and we've all had that done to us and it doesn't feel so good during my previous career I had the the the the privilege of being around some amazing people to include world leaders and presidents and often I was you know assigned to former President Clinton and I would accompany him and supplement his detail and I was amazed at how he mastered this he would walk into a room it didn't matter where

we were who he was speaking to and it didn't matter what was going on in his life but he would walk into a room and he when he would speak to someone he would make that person feel like there was nobody else in that room but him and that person and this is a former president of the United States a man who's quite busy and you know what else he would do he would ask people their name what's your name and he would remember it and then halfway during the conversation he'd mention that person by

their name because when you mention somebody by their name our name is our identity that's how we identify ourselves we're proud of our name and when you can remember of somebody's name that speaks volumes that is the ultimate compliment to remember somebody's name earlier on they asked you to look to each other introduce yourself ask the person next to you their name I bet you 80% you don't even remember the name of that person you introduced yourself to because you're not listening you're not trying to make somebody else feel special and it's okay in this

environment but if it's in an environment where you're looking to try to get somewhere it it's going to hurt you make people feel special listen to people be present nobody matters more than that person across from you when I would do interviews I would take my phone I would put that thing away I would take my watch off because obviously it was very important to me because I was trying to get an admission or confession I was trying to solve a crime to get information and I wanted that person whoever it was to know that

I had nowhere to go and all that mattered in that moment was them perspective when I say perspective I speak about in the way in which we look at people and the way in which we see the world and as human beings I've learned in studying human behavior and dealing with people we are all egot we all are egotistical people in some way we see the world truly through our own perspective we try sometimes to see it through other people's perspective but we are so subjective and so biased and look we've each lived our own

life and we are a culmination of our own experiences of our life's experiences and that makes us who we are but when you're communicating with someone you have to take a moment and learn about that other person's perspective and how do you do that well you have to know your audience you have to know who you're speaking to and if you're not listening you really don't know who you're speaking to I was in a situation or I was on an assignment in uh in Florida and we were doing an advance as we called it and

I was doing the security preparations for one of the people we were protecting who was going to the site and my responsibility was to secure the site the event site to make sure everything was safe for whenever our protes a high level protecte and I had to work with other members there staff members people from the uh facility and whatnot we had to negotiate terms and of course being that I had the security angle I wanted every everything locked up and tight I want to know who's going in I want to know who's going out

and I had to compromise on certain things to with the other entities that I was working with because they were you know focused on the event being a success we were at one point where we were discussing something and we're trying to compromise um part of the security plan when one of my counterparts came up and he said to me you're acting as if somebody's going to fly a plane into this building now I realized in that moment he didn't know his audience because I am from New York City I was in the World Trade

Center on September 11th I lost colleagues and a friend several of my colleagues and I stayed behind to help evacuate people to set up a triage and we were caught in the collapse of the towers both by the grace of God I was able to go home that night but in hearing him speak he had damaged those lines of communication and although I continued to work with him and stay open and receptive without realizing he had sabotaged something because he didn't know his audience when you speak to people you have to know your audience and

you're not going to know your audience if you're just seeing things from your own perspective if you're the only one who's talking and if it's just about you because it can't be when we don't have perspective we have ignorance and ignorance causes conflict causes conflict in our Rel relationships it causes conflict in our personal relationships with our loved ones at work with our colleagues it causes conflict within societies when one group doesn't understand another group and even causes conflicts between countries because we're too busy trying to shove down somebody else's throat our perspective instead of

trying to listen to somebody else's and when you communicate with people the idea to enhance communic ation is to do so in a way that that person understands not in the way that you understand but in the way that person sees the world self 50% of what we discussed has to do with the other person but the other 50% has to do with you and when I say self I mean selfawareness sometimes we're not really self-aware of ourselves we're so focused on someone else and when when I say self-awareness it means really taking stock of

yourself how do you present and it varies we're different people with different individuals right we're one person at home one person with our a husband or our wife one person with our children one person at work but how do you carry yourself when if you were to see you to if you were to see you walk into a room what impression would that give you I always hear you know it doesn't matter what you look like on the outside and it doesn't that vein perspective but what matters is how are you put together cuz if

you look the part then people are going to think you know what what he or she says is relevant and unfortunately if you look disheveled if you look like you're a mess no one's going to listen cuz it's going to make the assumption that she doesn't know what she's talking about look at her she didn't even iron her shirt today and when it comes to self it's not just on the aesthetic level but also on the level of when it comes to confidence how you carry yourself who you are there was this study done in

Ontario and Canada they went to a bunch of felons and they asked them how do you pick your victims they wanted to know how do they pick their targets to commit a crime on these people and a lot of them said well we look at body language we look at how people carry themselves if you see somebody walking up with their head held high taking up space because if I take up space I'm telling you what I'm relevant I'm matter I'm here that's one thing but if I walk and I'm closed in I have my

head down maybe I'm on my iPhone all the time I'm in my own world what message am I sending out to you not a bad Target she might go down easy but the idea was when they sense that somebody could possibly be a counter Predator they didn't attack but if they since somebody would go down easy an easy victim then that changed the scenario how you carry yourself how you portray yourself that's communication how people see you how people feel you so although you may think you're sizing people up and you are people are sizing

you up too and every time I walked into the interview room every time I went to do an arrest or a search warrant people were sizing me up and you have to be aware of that respect I've talked to you about communication and words and how important it is but there are times where words are not the way to communicate sometimes our actions are the way to communicate to people when I went through training through special agent training it was like my second or third day we were were in the cafeteria it was evening eating

and I sat down with some of my colleagues and a couple of guys came over and they said you know some of the people don't feel comfortable with you being here some of the guys don't want you here I remember thinking okay I don't understand well they feel that you know what maybe physically you're not kind of stacked up to do this job and I remember turned around I said I don't I don't understand I I went through the same hiring process as everyone I qualified like everybody else I did everything that everybody else did

I you guys don't even know me you just met me two days ago three days ago I don't understand and said well you know what the standards for women are lower than they are for men the standards are lower so that women can get this job so I went home that night and I thought about what they said and what they said was true the standards were lower so that women could get in that wasn't a lie and I felt stupid I felt like a stupid girl to think that I actually thought I belonged there

I felt ashamed and embarrassed but then there was this other part of me I felt angry and rage and I could feel this venom coursing through my veins and lucky for me that part of me won over next day I found out what the standards were for the men and I started training I would train during the day and then I would train at night by myself for months pushing and pushing and eventually it got stronger but what I realized is my confidence got stronger and my mental armor got stronger that part of me because

it was all mental it wasn't wasn't really physical and I built up my mental armor and eventually I started competing on the same level as the men in my class and even in some occasions surpassing them I earned the respect not through going to somebody and saying hey you need to respect me I knew that that wasn't going to work but I earned it through my actions and I have to tell you though not everybody respected me no matter how much I excelled no matter how so much I surpassed not everybody respected me and that's

when I learned it wasn't my issue it was theirs that's when I learned you don't need everybody's respect some people's you don't need first and foremost is your own respecting yourself which I I acquired and then knowing whose opinions of you matter and whose opinions of you don't when you learn learn to differentiate which ones matter and which ones don't that's when you're really free I want to finish with this how you define yourself is your choice how others Define you is their choice is up to you to decide which definition you prefer thank [Applause]

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