How To Display Confident Body Language [Interview With Mark Bowden]

how many times have you walked into a room or a networking event or a stage to give a big presentation and you're terrified about what am I supposed to say what am I supposed to do how can I show that I'm calm and confident and assertive and powerful and you're certainly not going to do that if you get nervous and you crunch into a ball and you go like this and you don't use the proper body language so today I am extremely excited to share with you an interview that we recently did with body language expert Mark Bowden who's going to give you the one simple secret to make sure that when you are on stage when you are talking to that person when you're negotiating your salary that you are doing this one thing to make sure that you are seen as calm confident competent and in charge of the situation you want to find out what it is then stay tuned we had an awesome interview we talked about all different types of things if you are ready to master your body language and discover the mistakes and the things that you should be doing to make sure that you are always seen as the man or woman in charge then stay tuned because we had an awesome interview and I'm going to share it with you right now hello hello everyone today I am extremely excited because we have an incredible guest with us mr. Mark Bowden he is a body language and communications extraordinaire and Mark has trained the political and Hollywood elite CEOs and royalty and is one of my absolute favorite TEDTalks of all time on why we should all be a bit more in authentic he's the author of three wonderful books winning body language the follow up winning body language for sales professionals how to control the conversation command attention and convey the right message without ever saying a word which are three things everyone should want to be able to do in his newest book tame the primitive brain twenty eight ways in 28 days to tame the most impulsive behaviors at work mark was voted number one in the world's top thirty body language professionals for two years running and we are extremely grateful that he has taken some time out of his very busy schedule to be with us here today thank you so much for joining us mark it's great pleasure to be here thanks for having me and I hope I'll be of use to everybody they're so far away with your questions now before the interview I did some research and I saw on your Facebook that you have been traveling all over the world recently doing speaking and training people and I just wondered how long have you been training professionals and doing public speaking appearances yeah so I've been doing this I think for almost a decade almost 10 years now as you say traveling all over the world I spend a lot of time in airports a lot of time just for moments in a country and then getting back on a plane and trying to get to the next place or back here to my family so it's a pretty busy time but it's great to get the chance to go out meet a lot of different audiences and try and help people as much as I can stand out win trust gain credibility when they're speaking just like me so I I try and emulate and use what I always use the techniques that I want them to learn in order for them to stand out and win trust and gain credibility whatever conversation they're having beard at home or work what got you interested in started in the study of body language and nonverbal communication so originally I was just fascinated by life out there on the planet and especially sea creatures I was a bit as a kid I was a big rock taular used to like it get in there and look at crabs and and you know jellyfish and anything I could get my hands on really and then I got fascinated with human behavior I used to think to myself well why did they do that why did I end up doing that why don't we have a good relationship or or you know why do we have a great relationship I was just interested in in the behavior that went into life going on and getting on well with life or getting on badly with life so I started to explore that whole area when it comes to learning value language it's incredible how much you can learn about others simply by being observant and watching their body language in the nonverbal cues but so many people go through their day-to-day lives and they just don't pay attention they aren't observant to what's actually going on out there well I think you're right you're right there actually if I just jump in there because it's really important what you say there about some people aren't observant and there's no reason why you should be because you can really get on fine in life without being very observant you won't die you'll carry on and you'll do okay depending on you know where you're born and who you're born to you'll probably do pretty much okay it's only really when you start thinking well I want a little bit more or I'm not quite where I want to be at the moment at that point it's usually that you're not being so observant about what you're doing what other people are doing in the reactions that are happening around you so thanks for mentioning that now you train thousands of students per year through your speaking engagements and trainings as well as all your online courses so what would you say to someone who who knows absolutely nothing about body language where should they really start yes so first of all body language tip number one is think about your body language more than you think about anybody else's and I say that in terms of stopped reading start leading so stop actually probably what we'd talk about would you stop observing the body language out there and start observing your own body language so become interested in your own behavior then the second part of that would be very simple it's start observing when you think you're being open with your body language and start observing when you think you're being closed with your body language open and closed is very easy to see yeah imagine you're warming yourself at a fire you know you're cold and there's a fire in front of you and you're warming yourself and think about how much you'd open up your body to receive that warmth and and that would be open body language whatever you think you might do around a fire to open up and receive the warm yeah start doing that as open body language now think about your app there's no fire and you're cold and you want to warm yourself yeah but now you're having to use closed body language to do that think of all the stuff you've gotta do is to keep yourself warm when there's no fire that's kind of closed body language so pay attention to your own body language rather than anybody else's and start to perform on purpose the behaviors of open body language if you do that alone in fact if you are not saying you should stop listening right now but actually if you just stop listening right now and went out and did that you know as much as you can many times a second as you can for the rest of your life you would see a profound difference in the way people respond to you you'd see a profound change to the positive so just two tips there and you know if you switch off now and start doing that you'll do very well many of our students understand the theory and they'd like to learn about body language but they never actually pay attention to their own body language and what they are exuding in terms of their nonverbal cues and they get so wrapped up in their own head that they don't actually think about what they are projecting yeah yeah so here's what I'll get you wrapped up in your own head if you start going down the route of trying to decode other people's body language if you start doing that reading aspect now I'm not saying that you shouldn't do body language reading it's a really interesting area and if you like reading about stuff if you like getting into fine detail if you like critical thinking if you like to explore different possibilities and different avenues of what something could mean if you like things like crossword puzzles if you like thing you know if you like if you like kind of discovery games then you know or long-long dramas it'll be great for but you could well get very very wrapped up in it and never really make any better contact with anybody you might walk around going oh I think I'm pretty intelligent I think I know about you and I think I can read you like a book and you might be right maybe you knew that that's not going to make people like you nobody ever liked anybody who when I know what you're thinking right now they just thought they were being a bit of a smart you know smart aleck and and and it was over their status so of course so so explore the world of behavior as much as you like but if you're one of those introverted people who also likes to get into a lot of fine data get into the data about your own performance rather than the data about other people read about your behavior that you can send out rather than reading about the behavior of other people because that will help you make better contact with other people and it's about making those good strong relationships that's the key hope that makes sense now that is some phenomenal advice now I'd like to take a second and talk about your TED talk on why and how we should all be a bit more inauthentic when it comes to creating a favourable first impression for someone new yeah yeah so we often assume that and we'd be quite right that there are kind of two responses the approach or a void response to somebody else and that's that's pretty accurate but within that you've got some other subcategories that the primitive brain your brain stem uses it's a five hundred million year old brain it's very old and has simple what we call heuristics way of making ways of making decisions based on the world that it sees around it and a very simple that's calling an algorithm to make a decision and it's got four categories it can put people into so you know as you're watching me now as you as the audience you're watching me now I would say there are four categories that you can put me into first category and no real order is you look at me and you look at my behavior and the tonality of my voice and you think is Mark to me will I benefit from him if I spend time with him will I come out with more than I went in with will I profit from being around him and if you do that with me a message is sent from that brain stem to the smart brain the neocortex saying go and get me all the data that proves mark is a friend so you get what we call a cognitive bias but the bias is based on my behavior you're not bothered about what I'm saying in fact you'll adapt you'll manipulate you'll distort and delete and pick cherry-pick the good stuff the friendly stuff that you're hearing from me to fit your bias and if there is no friendly stuff you'll just make it up you'll just create an imaginative idea about me being friendly now alternatively another category is I start behaving in front of you and I trigger you with the idea that I am a threat I am a predator if you spend time with me you will come out with less than you went in with I'll take from you again if I hit that you get a cognitive bias and you only get the bad stuff from me and if I'm actually telling you good stuff and I'm being a great person to be around but essentially my body language has told you that I'm a threat you'll make up a story about me being a threat regardless of the great content the great work the great person I am to be around your distort me into a bad person to be around now third category is you see certain signals within me and it triggers an innate response you to think oh yeah I'm a potential sexual partner for you I'm a potential make for you and there's lots of things that might hit that we look at things like hair whether it's shiny whether it's strong in color that denotes high mineral content high Omega freeze and the diet means I come from a land where there's a good rich food source and if with a mate the offspring stand a good chance of that food source okay now you know this that you see here this just comes out of a bottle so you know I put this stuff on and tell you that just so you can understand that we as human beings have been putting on signals for millennia to get people to feel the best about us to think the best about us it is natural it is authentic for human beings to put on behaviors actually it's very authentic for us to lie lying is one of our most important social skills if you can't lie and there are some people out there who don't have the ability to light slaughter they choose not to lie ok they don't have the ability because of some cognitive processes some differences that they have they find it very hard for other people to get on with them they have to be well supported by a community because lying is one of our most important social skills in fact some of the people out there who I've noticed tried very very hard to be very very authentic with people they're not that nice to be around because because they say something they go oh I'm just being authentic then you have to go yeah big nasty actually it's like I don't want to go out with you you're not very pleasant yeah so so we put on behaviour in order to get along with other people it's an important skill of ours last category if I don't hit friend or enemy or sexual partner for you you're just indifferent to me then you give in fact if I didn't hit friend for you when I first came on here you've already switched off you're not here anymore yeah you've gone yeah those people that aren't watching this anymore I didn't trigger for them enough of a sense of reward being around me and they're already gone but I'm gonna guess that most of you are still here so because I'm doing some things on purpose in order to be able to attract you to me and therefore for you to be positive around my content a bit bit of a long talk there but I hope that made sense Brendan absolutely that makes perfect sense and it really ties into what we teach a lot of our students and that you don't have to change who you are you just have to become a personality chameleon to adapt to the person to the specific situation absolutely yeah you've got to decide how you think you best fit in and you've got to decide what you might want to perform what behaviors of yours you might want to perform in order to best work socially I would say and this this might be a little bit extreme for some people but I often think that this idea of authenticity is actually a little bit antisocial this idea of you know what I should be able to be whoever I want to be you know I should be able to be me yeah and if people find it offensive that's their problem you know because I got to be me well no that's just sometimes antisocial that's that's in fact there's levels of that that we just call it an anti-social disorder to be honest so it's getting the right balance between you the you that you really enjoy you're comfortable with and how does that fit in with the other the others around because we human beings we are social mammals we're not designed to be on our own yeah the moment you're going you know what I'd like to spend a long long time on my own well that's that's the start of an anti-social disorder yeah that's definitely not what we're going for so if someone wants to really convey that they are confident and competent it's really all about the use of open body language more so than anything else yeah so look it's really simple and I wish I could make it more difficult I wish I could make it more difficult so so people wouldn't go was that it so at all like that and I have to go yet and they'll go they'll go well okay but but what else I know nothing else just just just do this just do this what what else like nothing else just do this okay here's what I want you to do is open body language just open body language and I'll be a little more cific I would like you to do open body language at exactly navel height I'm going to push back my chair a little bit so you can see this better when I'm sitting down okay so I'm being very open in the palms of my hands yeah and I'm being open at at navel height as well so that's different from being open at chest knife it's different from being open at at head height and it's different from being open below my belt line okay it's open at navel height I call this area of the body the truth plane the horizontal gesture plane of truth because when you gesture here openly people feel that you are calm assertive open honest good together long with there's really no downside to this especially if you're symmetrical but all you need to think about is being open in this area here you can do this standing or you can do this sitting as I'm doing with you now so it really is you know really is that simple I wish I could make it more difficult for jokes right it's actually just the act of doing it especially when you feel uncomfortable yeah so so when interactions get more tricky for you when you get stressed when you're feeling that you don't quite fit in when you're confused when you're angry upset your body will authentically want to do other stuff it'll want to be authentic and do closed body language it will want to conceal it will want to cover the feelings that you have rather than be exposed and so that's what I talk about being inauthentic under stress and under pressure when you're feeling that you're not fitting in when you're feeling like people might be against you when you're feeling that you might be in the wrong place yeah your authentic self will go let's do fight or flight let's cover up or let's get really aggressive around this and control this situation and it won't want to do calm assertive body language what you want to do is do that on purpose force yourself to do calm assertive open body language open palm gestures of the truth plane it's as simple as that I love it just keeping it simple no need to make it hard on yourself it's just tapping into that primal part of the brain and forcing yourself to do to do the opposite and fight that initial impulse now speaking of impulses I'd like to take a second and ask about your newest book which I haven't had the chance to read yet so if you could give us a little bit of an overview yeah so so what it's about is an understanding of neural architecture so it's an understanding of how your brain is built and how our brains are built not nearly really Adam at a very detailed level I look at the structure of it because the form follows function the way it's structured is in order for it to function correctly in the outside world and with other people if you know how its structured then you don't necessarily need to fight it you can countermeasure it very hard to fight your brain because it's it's running it's running your whole body especially the brainstem you can't really fight it it's not it's not designed to get fought it keeps on running the same way for the whole of your life what you can do is use your neocortex to countermeasure some of the are authentic responses that it has that actually are quite antisocial and they're designed to protect you and not your ability to work in a team yeah there comes some stress points in your life when you start to find that your brains going oh yeah I'm on my own here I don't fit in nobody understands me not even my family not even my best friends understand me anymore that that's because the brain stem has taken over the neocortex from the social mammalian brain drawn blood from it and decided it doesn't need it anymore because it's about the protection of the self you start to act in a very selfish way that's okay that's normal there's no problem with that we've all done that the key is is can you know that that's happening and can you countermeasure that response by being way less authentic and putting on behaviors that countermeasure it which are to the advantage of you and the group you want to be part of the organization you want to be a strong and leading aspect of so really that's what the book is about tame the primitive brain twenty-eight ways in 28 days to manage the most impulsive behavior at work I will have to add that to my to read list it sounds absolutely fascinating now one of the things that we work on with our students is being in the moment and staying present and rather than focusing on the 15 different body language things that they can do or what questions to ask next and just being present not what you should or shouldn't be doing at that exact time can you give some insight on this right so you put your finger on it which is if there's 15 different things for us to think about we're not going to be able to do it and you won't be there in the moment you won't really be responding to the other person they'll see you're not present and they maybe will see you as being manipulative because they're seeing the cogs whirring and they're seeing how an adept you are at it and they're they're starting to see somebody who they don't think is social so they think it's that scientific um antisocial because they're thinking too hard about this and so what if there were simple things that you could do that have what we call a cascade effect so you do one thing and lots of other behaviors cascade out of that and I wish I could make this more difficult but I've been doing this for a long long time and and what I've tried to do is get it down to some behaviors that will cascade other positive behaviors and they're so easy to do they will look absolutely natural to other people because they're so easy to do and so a good one is open palm gestures at navel height in order to for you to remain under stress and under pressure calm and assertive because it affects your own endocrine system it affects the way you breathe your breathing will change if you gesture from here your breathing will change if you gesture from here your breathing will change if you gesture like this yeah you'll get less oxygen you'll get more blood blood acidosis see if the hydrogen ions will go up in your blood you'll get panicked even more if you start doing this because the vagus nerve will see the blood has gone acidic and it will start getting worried because it wants more oxygen but it can't get more oxygen because you've closed your chest cavity and so you start doing this sharp breathing as you're seeing in me now and people see that and they get worried about you because you've got a great idea for the organization and you really want that that that step up in the organization but they can see how panicked you are and you're getting even more panicked by this but if you just do open palm gestures that navel height just see how much I seem to calm down and I can do this on purpose now all I'm doing is working these muscles there's only four muscles pretty much involved and those muscles talk to the other muscles not by some magic yeah it's the fashion on the muscles that the outer coating of the muscles have nerve cells in that talk to the other muscles without the use of the brainstem or they or the spinal column muscles know where other muscles are it's not magic it's just biology it's just the way we're we're built so back to it I can palm gestures that Mabel hike just do that exactly see sometimes we get wrapped up in everything and we're in study mode and we give it our own way and we end up handicapping ourselves when it comes to body language absolutely our innate responses in some case can be handicapping they can stop you getting what you want the important thing is is that you get what you want and what you need now your brain stem sometimes has a very different idea about what you want what you need yeah your brain stem is only in it for you it's not social and so under stress and pressure it will be anti-social nothing wrong with that it keeps you alive on a daily basis yeah it stopped you getting run over by cars again and again and again it stopped you going down dark alleys again and again and again but in a social situation where it's trying to work out a lot of difficult calculations it gets confused sometimes and it then takes over as if you're about to get run down by a bus and so you have to stop it doing that and the amazing thing about using open body language especially the truth plane that you just discussed is that you're never going to come off as aggressive or overly dominant no absolutely it's calm and assertive you know when when was there any ever downside in being calm and assertive when did anybody say oh I don't know don't give them the job they're just too common assertive was right whenever I ever happened yeah no don't bring him on the team way too calm assertive yeah yeah don't hire him he's just too calm and assertive I love it now outside of open body language we work a lot with our students in terms of the importance of eye contact because it's something that's severely lacking in many conversations and I think using the truth plane and focusing like that really makes eye contact a big part of it well for sure you'll find eye contact way more easy to do if you use the truth claim because it's calm and assertive it's not aggressive and it's not worried so eye contact all that means that that's our targeting mechanism it's the way of showing each other or others what the target is but it doesn't tell us what we think feel about the target the rest of the body does that so I can get eye contact with you right now but put in aggressive or angry body language and my eye contact won't feel very good for you or I can get eye contact with you and do a du chien smile and now it feels good so you can think it's not about the eye contact the eye contact just means you're the target this is between me and you or it tells others this is between me and him or her out there yeah me and then ah but the rest of the face and the body especially is going to tell you how I'm thinking and feeling about our relationship without eye contact there's not a good relationship then we need to know what is the nature of that relationship and the rest of the body does that thanks so much for that insight now just a few more questions for you if someone wanted to get in touch with you or find your books or read more about what you do how can make yourself yeah sure I just go to my website so that's WW truth plain comm TR u th PLA any truth plain comm go there lots of video there there's video training you can go to and get hold of lots of videos there to watch you'll see information about my various books and so forth just just get on there explore around and and pick up any videos there that you think will be useful for you great just a few fun questions now to get everything wrapped up here who is an inspiration to you oh yeah lots of people are big inspirations Charles Darwin really important in the world of behavior he is really the you know the the grandfather of human behavior and understanding its evolutionary background so for evolutionary behavioral psychologists it's a really important guy some other kind of strangers at stranger people Robert Anton Wilson look that guy up Robert Anton Wilson very interesting in terms of what processes thinking differently having a different view of the world and understanding that we make up the world in our head and if you could understand how other people make up that world with you included in it you'd be able to alter how you're seen the perception that they have of you so you know just to let you know I am in your head right now so you know see I exist in my world as well but you're making me up in your head right now what if there are ways that I could change the way you make up the picture and image of me essentially I'd come across as a different person for you so Robert Anton Wilson look him up I will definitely be looking from up in researching a bit more about him now what would what is one book that you would give away a recommend to someone oh so uh winning body language first book that I that I wrote it's a great all that we've talked about today if you go to that book and it's available as an e-book as well with videos in it so you know go to you usual book monopolies like Amazon and pick it up pick it up there but it's it's really helpful in terms of what's the body language you need to do in order to create the impression you need to have to get what you and your group need so that's I give that away loads all right another oddball question here if you could have a conversation with anyone in the past or the present who would it be good you know here's what interests me is is the conversations that you have now so so you know if I could have any conversation I'd be having the one that we're having now with you and with the audience out there because that's going to have the most immediate impact on other people you know the people in the past like you know what I want to go and speak to Charles Darwin not not so much I don't know whether he'd be very good at conversation for start he's written some books and he did some amazing stuff and I'm happy to read that but some people in the past I'm not actually interested in talking with them I'm actually more interested in talking with people now this conversation because actually that's more important than what happened in the past doesn't really answer your question there but think that maybe one of my favorite answers of all time and it cuz that's what we said we've said before about staying and being present in the moment in engaging in the now right well there's a lot of risks to this there's a lot of risk to this you know we're doing this live we're not going to go back and rerecord it so what I say is what I say and what you say is what what you say and it's really happening now and if we get on we get on and if we don't we don't and so there's a lot of risk around that you know I think what you have to have is just some techniques to counter measure some of that risk alright one last question is there any question that you wish that I had a no because no because you've got out all the important questions I think that that other people are interested now of course I mean there might be things that I think are you know why don't we get really in-depth into this why don't we get into into the world that I'm kind of detailed fascinated on a daily basis but that's not helpful it's not helpful to you and actually it's not helpful to me you know what we've done is talk about the biggest most impactful things rather than the details that the only kind of specialists would want to get involved in and you know you don't need to be a specialist in body language everybody out there doesn't need to be a specialist I just need to be a specialist because I need to give you what you what you've need to pay attention to rather than all the peripheral specialist stuff I need to you know take away you know until this there's something which has a heart and and some power and some value to it so there's nothing that you should have asked me that you didn't well that is great thank you so very much for being here today for taking the time out of your schedule you have given some incredible advice and insight I've learned some things I know my viewers and our students have learned some things and we really truly appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to be here with us well I'm happy to come and chat to you in your your audience any anytime so so you know welcome you back at some time and I'll and I'll sit right here and do the same again thanks again what's that soon thank you and thank you all and that's a wrap what did you think did you learn something cool about body language marks a pretty incredible guy like he said check out his books check out truth plain comm for more information on what he's doing he has one of my favorite TEDTalks on why we should all be a little bit more in authentic you'll find links for all of that in the description below as always click subscribe right down there in the corner so that you never miss a video and if you're ready to unleash your inner awesome that make sure that you stay tuned check us out on the web ww-wait secret source calm until next time ciao for now you

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Keywords: how to display confident body language, how to read body language, how to show positive body language, mark bowden, how to start conversations, how to have more confidence, importance of body language, interview with mark bowden, mark bowden truthplane, mark bowden inauthentic, mark bowden ted talk, mark bowden body language, brandon slater, samantha field, life's secret sauce

Id: 3Vv9Czubb3I

Length: 36min 49sec (2209 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 05 2017