How Reading Body Language Helps Influence People | Rich Ferguson | TEDxSanLuisObispo

before we start I needed to pay close attention I'm gonna need you to pay close attention I'm gonna use sleight of hand to switch some hearts let's start with this one watch very carefully [Music] [Music] [Music] now one more time pay attention so how many switches did you see did you see six card switches if you said six you'd be right but did you happen to catch the other things we've switched for instance now Mar in a suit and my card to blue my furnitures gone and everything behind me is switched while you are focused

on watching me change the cards my team was changing everything else clear it's evil I'm sorry we're all blind that's called inattentional blindness or change blindness we're all affected by it and that's we're gonna talk about today I'm rich Ferguson I'm a magician you might know me as a magician but I bet you didn't know that I didn't learn to read until I was 11 years old and that gave me a very deep appreciation for human behavior and today I'm gonna share my greatest secret with you which is crazy because I say magicians don't share

their secrets so I don't know if there's anyone in the Union here but no huh but I'm gonna be sharing with you more of a life skill how to read human behavior so you can use it to apply it in cells communications hiring fire negotiations poker anything where there is a situation where there's something on the line a stress factor or a situation where someone might not tell you the full truth but before we start I thought we'd play a little game I want you all to close your eyes for just a second all of

you close your eyes I've been up here Cup been up here in front of it for a couple minutes imagine what I'm wearing but specifically imagine my tie is it dotted or is it striped I imagine what color it is now open your eyes now a few of you probably got it right but some of you might have been led astray by what I was saying of course it's black I'm a magician it's required by the Union all right not a big deal but before we get into the whole program I have to give you

a warning body language and influence go hand-in-hand but you can't try to influence somebody when it comes to cells or negotiations or anything like that without observing first so the first rule of in and persuasion is you must observe details and clues before you push your agenda otherwise you're just a cheesy salesman and you're just pushing your thing on them without any regard to their nieve their fears their beliefs or whatever so we're gonna start with human behavior from a body language standpoint but since we're at a college and were at this beautiful place I

thought I would give you a pop quiz that's I can see the stress on some faces already and say you could trust me I'm a magician it's okay maybe not so quiz number one do is a person lying if they look up to the right you've heard that a lot right it's very common knowledge but it's not true they keep you looking at a lot of things they they could be look at those balloons there's no balloons he looked you totally looked like you I knew it there's a lot of reasons people could look that

way but more importantly the real takeaway here is you haven't baselined this person you don't know how they tick normally maybe they're left-handed maybe they're right brain dominant you don't know if that's where they look when they lie or if that's where they look to fabricate information you don't know so if it's commonly known that someone looks to the right and they're lying well did it make sense if they look to the left they're always telling the truth no you can you don't have context you don't know them so the real secret to body language

is evaluate in a person and understanding their baseline before you make a judgment call because if you make a judgment call and call somebody out on something like oh why you touch and you're likely are you nervous well now that says more about me is me projecting than it does about the person so I always be careful on that now if someone's staring directly at you this is very common of compulsive liars be very careful know what does that mean are they lying no it could mean a lot of things one it could just be

how they are socially - it could be they may be if they're in love maybe they're awestruck or maybe they're just lying to you who knows so when you go home tonight if your significant other is staring at you a lot they might be lying to you or they might love you I don't know the answer the fact is we don't have context I don't want y'all going home and fighting now all right you don't have context it really comes down to context and more importantly though win-win does the shift of behavior happen that's key

the fact that they're in a certain position means nothing this all comes all this ice stuff comes down to the visual auditory regions of the brain over 25% of our brain is entirely devoted to vision alone and another 25 is loosely related to vision so it's a lot of your brain devoted to this so it makes sense that your eyes might track when I'm researching information from my database versus me fabricating it because I'm a certain dominant in my brain arm right hand it's stuff like that so you can't base on you can't take this

information and say oh someone is lying because they looked away there's a lot of reasons they might test number two what's it mean if somebody's arms are crossed are they disinterested or are they not listening to you you know that's the common thing you might think when it comes to human behavior but this is just a snapshot we don't know why this person's like this if you came across this person and their arms are crossed it means nothing to you because you didn't do it now if you're trying to sell them something you might want

to get them out of this state because they will be more receptive to information if you can remove them from that state however if they're like this and you say yeah the price is $13.99 I go oh really and they've crossed their arms now you have great Intel and that's what we're talking about we're talking about the win this is a great one is the person on the left or the right more confident and receptive to information now a casual observation might say well you know the person on the right here he's leaning back he's

comfortable his legs are crossed he's got a smile on his face of course he's the one I want to talk to and you'd be dead wrong let me tell you why the person on the left is doing a couple things you might not be aware of and this all comes down to subconscious behavior this is key to reading people and gathering Intel for you to create your best strategy and success for sales on the right his legs are apart that's a very confident position now it's different if he's next to you at a poker player

and he's got his legs open and he's taking up your personal space now its dominance that's far different from confidence and it's sometimes very misconstrued unfortunately he's also sitting forward he's engaged another subconscious sign of engagement he made it not even know he's doing it but most importantly the two things you're gonna notice here is on the on the left his thumbs are up and on the right his thumbs down and that's a really strong sign of engagement and interest in what's going on on the right his thumbs are down his legs are crossed he's

leaning back all out of comforting himself he's very nervous and he's not digging what he's hearing and you might see that face he's smiling that's out of nerve nervous tension released because he's nervous with the situation but then again I just made all that up because these are snapshots we don't have the context but if it went from here to there I know exactly what it means and that's the key now I'm playing poker it's my turn to play it's not his turn to bet yet yet he's already mad dogging me he's already got his

hands on his chips what does this mean and who's got the best hand most evaluate it for a second well I can observe a couple things right now one he's playing his the magician duh well I don't know why he's doing that he's gonna lose his money I can change the cards so that's that but moving on to body language there's a couple things you might notice one I'm wearing the radiant wedding ring he's not what's that tell you I have someone to answer to when I go home he doesn't so he might play a

little looser and more aggressively take some risk that's just something to observe has nothing to do with body language but it is all about clues and assessing the whole package couple things you might want to know he's mad dogging me he knows he's doing that he's consciously doing it and when it comes to conscious acting under a situation when there's a stress stimulus not just in general life but when there's something on the line you can just bet the opposite of what he's trying to portray so that alone tells me his card - probably no

good he's just trying to steal some money - early in the hand I'm holding my cards because they're valuable to me you've heard walk down the street and you see something kind of weird going on here let me just feel for your wallet you always protect what's valuable to you and it's a lot of times sub conscious and subconscious signs are key to this stuff he's not protecting his cards you've already been thrown out on the table now let's look at motive if his cards were so great and he was he's got the winning hand

why would he do things to intimidate me to scare me from giving him more money he test number five who's telling you less or more than they should what's going on here somebody knows more let's see how can I tell you this have you ever encountered a time in your life where you're talking to a young child and a couple of their friends and you already know the truth like who broke something and then you've pin them down you're like Johnny did you break that vase and you're met with this I don't know well I

was playing with Kathy and she was playing with the ball and then it's just a whole lot of talking and filler right one shoulder shrugs mean they literally are telling you half the story put your shoulder down sir okay what message is being sent here this is a perfect slide to demonstrate that other items can be an extension of your body language here a woman is shaking my hand but it's very delicate her fist is not in there sister finger tips very timid but she's also confirmed this timidness by bringing up an item between us

that's called blocking that lets me know in this particular environment or the setting or something we said is causing her to be very fearful of it so I want to get her out of this position if I want her to be receptive to information this is my favorite slide because it shows how you can project or miss read somebody based on just a snapshot in life you walk into a situation you see someone doing something I you so nervous bad thing to do because you don't have the context so here's a situation this tall good-looking

dude shaking my hand his hands on top very dominating kind of position to be in he's bigger than me he's tall he's good-looking he's tan what's he got to be intimidated by you know he doesn't need to be dominating oh what's the hair that's what it is it's no sorry uh but let's evaluate this I'm gonna give you two scenarios they end up in this exact same shot one let's say I put my hand out neutral like this to shake his hand at a business meeting where everything should be neutral and fair it's a fair

playing field we should start off neutral and be open to information to each other I put out my hand nice to meet you and he turns my hand and brings it toward him and squeezes it hard he's trying to dominate me I can tell you right then and there he's not gonna care what I got to say it's all about his agenda so what can I do I'm a magician I could do lots of stuff one his pockets unprotected I could skill stuff you can't even see it right I don't suggest to do that from

a body linguist standpoint here's what you could do he's got the control I simply invade his space and put my hand on top just like a politician and guess what I just did I invaded his space letting him know subconsciously that's all under the in the back of the brain he doesn't even know I've done it but the vibe sent is I'm in control now thanks for trying it's very cool but that's not what happened here that's not what happened cuz I'm a professional observer I already knew where I stood with this guy here he

calmly seven-foot tall he's good-looking I'm like okay I got this guy's number I offered my hand face up I offered it that way and that's how I got to this scenario so it gave him the illusion of comfort and control because I'm sneaky that way so the strategy of body language is very simple first you identify if there is a shift of behavior or not and then decide what you're to do with that information that's completely up to you if we had two hours to talk about it we can talk about strategy so now you've

passed the quiz do you feel safe you feel good now no stress you I'm gonna judge you and not gonna grade you now you've met the peer go career prerequisite for my super secret flow chart and the one thing you're gonna take away from date today is subconscious tells I'm gonna train you to look for those and ignore everything else because they're always accurate they always tell the truth and they are awesome so here's what we're gonna do we're gonna stick on here for a couple minutes think about reading a person you walk into a

situation only two things can happen one they're already in that position or two you put him in that position so let's just go through this we're gonna start with the static side the static side is interesting because you come across a person who is already in a position you don't know why they're there so you don't have context and then also you need multiple indicators you need other clues to tell you what's really going on so you're going to be left with a vague outcome that's not actionable information now I have to back up for

a second it's really important to understand this pertains entirely to situations where there's a stress factor and when there's something on the line that someone may not be telling you the full truth very important because on the static side you could of course just go up to your girlfriend pick oh why are you sad and they'll tell you this is under a situation where there's negotiations or poker or hiring or firing this is different so when it's side of static behavior you don't know anything so it doesn't leave you with actionable information now let's go

to the shift side this is the world I live in as a magician on the shift side only two things are gonna happen either it's conscious behaviors or subconscious behaviors if it's conscious behaviors you know they're doing it they're thinking about it just like the poker player they know they're doing that but they don't know they're holding their cards tighter or looser or moving their feet so that's the difference between hundreds of conscious and subconscious so on the conscious side only two things are gonna happen it's either gonna be natural and honest and all the

other clues also support that or there's gonna be overacting for instance you're selling something to somebody and you finally hit him with the price that's gonna be thirteen thousand five hundred dollars for this used car and the oh yeah you know and they're their feet retreat their thumbs are teeth across their arms everything about them says oh no red flag but their face lights up oh that's great you know I'm talking to my wife tomorrow we got three other cars we're looking at but yes you're my man let me call you tomorrow all that's acting

and it's overacting and you can read it simply if you can compare it to subconscious pills because the subconscious tells are always correct they never lie because the person doesn't know they're doing it that's why I want you to focus on the subconscious tale so if there's acting involved under a stress situation go with the opposite and you're most likely gonna be correct it's very counterintuitive but that is how it works if it's natural it's probably true either way it leads to actionable information information you could take to build your strategy to improve increase your

sales or whatever it might be now on the subconscious side of things and this is the one thing I want you to take away with today that is just awesome they always tell the truth they never lie they don't know they're doing it think of the power and the gold of that right there so a subconscious tell Abby I have playing poker with somebody let's say the cards are dealt they look at him and they just subtly shift up a little bit they might as well tell me their cards are great or if you're dating

somebody and they're like oh you know that sounds great we should go out again tomorrow but you see their feet retreat and crook around the corners of their chairs out of comfort they're just saying stuff but what they really feel is I'm done if you're selling something and you see some of his hands retreat or their hands go in their pockets and their thumbs disappear thumbs disappearing big sign of no good so you're looking for sub-conscious tells they always are accurate and that is the key to success of reading people in magic in life so

the golden rules of body language are very simple I'm possessive posture or gesture means very very little without context subconscious signs are almost always true in conscious signs when there's that acting involved or almost always false so I'm gonna leave with a couple more ideas here that go beyond this because we're talking about reading other people taking advantage of situations selling to them negotiating with them but you have to stop and realize you're only half the equation right there because what about you so now we have to evaluate ourselves so here's just an example what

message is being sent here here's a woman at a business mixer let's say she's got a fistful of business cards we are sure she might not have a purse on her she may not have an outfit that has pockets so she's got this fistful of business cards out of just the situation but the message sent subconsciously to the other person is still the same so you have to be careful of what message you're unintentionally sending so in this case it looks like she's this there to hand out her cards and she doesn't care what you

have to say it's a very dangerous thing to do now in this situation who here has a desk lots of us have desks have you ever sat on the customer side of your desk what messages are being sent is it intimidating or dominating what's woody what does it feel like well in this situation here here's this guy on the other side of my desk who maybe I'm trying to negotiate with I want him to open up I want him to be receptive to my information but he's gonna be 25% less receptive to my information if

there's junk in the way and it's blocking him off and making him feel less secure than me it's not an equal battlefield so what you want to do is clear your junk away and sit on the other side of your desk and look at it and go does this feel inviting or just get up and leave your desk or better yet if you want to push this person into a corner and this is your objective then by all means crowd your desk just leave it you know there's so much more I can say but I

just hope that I've helped just expand your horizons when it comes to body language especially subconscious tails because they are gold my name is rich Ferguson and I have one last thing to ask you keep your eyes open this time but just tell me what color my tie is [Applause] you