Keynote: The Power of Nonverbal Communications | Joe Navarro | CMX Summit West 2015

we're gonna get the show rolling now our next speaker is somebody who who's really really well-known on the speaker circuit he's a former FBI agent and he's one of the leading experts in nonverbal communication in the world he's published over 11 he's purchased 11 books and he's uh he's going to basically show us how the way we act our nonverbal cues can affect the way people communicate with us the way we present ourselves is going to help you understand other people's nonverbal cues and how it all relates to community right this is what we do like we talked a lot about the theoretical stuff before we talked a lot about the ways that we can integrate into our business but this section is all around how to build engagement with people so we're going to start with this talk which is very hands-on it's about engaging people in person we're going to go into a lot of online engagement and understand a little bit more of the practice of building community and actually building engagement for people so let's give a big cmx welcome to Joe Navarro thank you for the for the kind introduction it's a it's hard to follow a break because I know the break was a lot of fun it's a David tell you it it took me quite a bit to get here I was supposed to be with cmx earlier in the year and unfortunately we had an illness but it's a pleasure to be here in 1960 and this explains why I'm in front of you something happens that nobody expected and that magical thing that happened which explains why I'm here is that there was a presidential debate and it was the first televised debate and prior to that debates had been covered by newspapers or on the radio and for the first time it was on television and something weird happened weirder than what we're seeing nowadays and the weird thing that happened was those who listened to it on the radio said Richard Nixon won and those who saw it on television said Kennedy won and not just one but decisively and whoa you can't have both how can you have one group who listens to it say he won and the other group who saw it say the other one won and that difference was the nonverbal communications now in 1960 that's what I looked like and I was in Cuba and I was actually that week getting my passport picture because the Communists had taken over things were getting nasty priests were disappearing they had just closed my school and my parents were thinking we need to get out of here and at that time the the word refugee wasn't a dirty word like it is today so we were going to take refuge somewhere and that place was the United States now I wanted to save people and be heroic and so forth and well things didn't quite turn out that way so I ended up here in the States I learned English and somehow I became an FBI agent and there's some things that I learned along the way both as a refugee and as an observer of life and that's all I was I was a paid observer and I want to share these with you because as fascinating as criminals were that were not nearly as fascinating as these people that I studied along the way and certainly in the last 15 years in writing books that I define is really being exceptional and they're exceptional because of things that are non verbals so I'd like to cover that with you today and nonverbals is very broad it's everything that communicates but is not a word so this room has its own message its own history you have your own message that you communicate if your mother didn't dress you and you chose to dress yourself today you are communicating how you feel what you think maybe where you're from we communicate in all the things that we attach ourselves to whether we use a Montblanc pen or we use a big pen so it's a very broad field and it's interesting how many things that we observe non-verbally you don't walk up to somebody and say excuse me are you honest nobody does that and yet how do you let people in through the front door somebody knocks on your door who do you decide to talk to who do you decide who you're going to lend money to or assists or whatever and a lot of the things that we do we do non-verbally because we have been for a very long time every time you're at an ATM machine and you're looking over your shoulder you're non-verbally assessing is there a threat to me is everything going to be okay and this we do without really thinking about it we look at this individual and we say oh wait this individual looks professional this is what we call thin slice assessments he looks competent he looks friendly now it's possible he's not but at least on the surface we're going to try it out and then we look at this individual then we say wow he looks competent but he doesn't look as friendly one of them is telling you you can talk to me for several minutes one of them is saying you can talk to me for several seconds but one of the things I learned about studying body language is the little things and one of them you see here is the thumb displays and I don't know if you've ever seen thumb displays these are high status displays you see them with royalty in Europe you see them in certain professions and I assure you when your plumber is done he doesn't he or she doesn't finish the job and go oh hello this is a high status display as our other thumb displays this was a young child I began to observe these things because I learned as an immigrant actually as a refugee not an immigrant that nonverbals were more truthful than the verbals because people will say things but they don't always mean them but you can't really fake the nonverbals and then I learned along the way that there are some other things that were troubling how many of you been told that this behavior is not a good behavior to do right right there's a clinical term for that and I hope David will forget me but the term for that is crap that's just sheer nonsense for in fact many of you when we had the breakout we're doing this and you were quite comfortable weren't you it's a self hug it's just a self hug it feels good that's why we do it in public more so than in private and so there's a lot of junk up there about nonverbals and of course there's the problem of sometimes we don't see the nonverbals because what we're busy with a device now I'm not here to change the world I can't tell you to stop using devices but I can tell you this no matter how many devices we have we as a species evolved to communicate non-verbally a text will never will never supplant a hug or a kind smile or a head tilt it just won't do it now whether people will abide by that that's not my responsibility but there are some things that we can master here today that you can take away today because that's what David wanted give them something they can use immediately and that is focus on comfort and discomfort just that comfort and discomfort we're not here to learn about deception we're not here about you know power displays comfort discomfort if you focus on that you'll be blessed from the moment we're born we are doing pacifying behaviors in fact we do pacifying behaviors in utero just as other mammals do elephants suck their trunk in utero and if you've ever wondered why we bite our lips smoke touch our faces do all these things these are pacifiers this is our body saying chill relax calm down and we do these things all day long yesterday I'm watching the flights and there was two canceled flights and people are standing there they're biting their lips and it dawned on me people bite their lips and they don't know why they but you know why we bite our lips I'll tell you why because you can't suck your thumb anymore because at my age this looks bad I want to but I can't and so we have all these little behaviors repetitive behaviors foot bouncing leg jiggling all these little behaviors we dislike that are repetitive we do to calm ourselves down what do they reveal the revealing that the brain is dealing with some sort of stress so let's talk about the first important one and the first one is i blocking behavior right so when something bothers us we cover our eyes and say well wait a minute I cover my eyes when something's yeah when something bothers you how do we know this because in 1974 I studied children who were born blind they had never seen and when they hear things they don't like they don't cover their ears they cover their eyes that means it's part of our paleo circuits this is millions of years old and so when we hear somebody say something or you ask them something and they go oh thank you for that question and they're covering their eye you know you know they didn't like that question and then there's the nose right we wrinkled our nose when we don't like something and we do this all day long whether we're reading a contract or somebody suggesting you want to go to this restin I don't think so but it's interesting to see how often for instance this betrays our negative sentiments as do our lips you ever wonder why when you're asked a question you might go hmmm I don't know when you purse your lips it's because it means I'm thinking something alternatively or I disagree Wow can you imagine being in a discourse in a conversation you're seeing this behavior what a great opportunity to say wait what do you think because I know you're already disagreeing with me instead of just talking we know that when the lips disappear something's wrong which is why anytime you see somebody testifying in Congress they have no lips their lips are sucked out of their mouths they're gone lips gone issues any time the lips narrow they're gone and then there's the neck you ever wonder why we touch the neck issues insecurities oh my god there's that guy again oh he's gone he's back and we cover this little area called the suprasternal notch and we do it because since the time of australopithecines what has mankind witnessed large felines large felines and so we adopted these behaviors that when there's a threat when there's something negative we freeze we cover our mouths or we cover our necks because of large felines and we ventilate right you ask somebody is that going to be done by July and they go yeah no it's not no it's not why do you know that because they ventilated and we only ventilate when something's wrong not deception but something's wrong and you know we do funny things with our hands we rub our hands all day long when when we're dealing with any kind of stress you should be in the green room I'm watching all the speakers before me and they're all wringing their hands and I was wringing my hands but there's one behavior we do which is a reserved behavior when you see somebody doing this their fingers are interlaced fingers are straight and they start doing this something's really wrong something is really wrong and yet how many people miss this because we don't take the time to learn the nonverbals this is a reserved behavior and then there's behaviors that potentiate our messages if you ever wonder why people steeple this is called the steeple let's all do it together put your fingers together it won't hurt separate your fingers right wide and high don't arch them there you go the only behavior the only behavior on this planet that says I'm confident no no it's true and how do we know this because when we look at blind children they do this behavior to other blind children which means that they've learned to perform it and they're receptive to getting that message so when you have something important to communicate don't sit on your hands don't put them in your pockets steeple there's a purpose for it it potentiates your message don't do it weekly don't do it under the table do it high do it high and the feet I talk about the feet because the feet are the most honest part of your body most people don't know that you see our faces have by social convention contracts you smile I smile but our feet don't have a contract with anyone if you see a threat your feet turn away if you have to go David was up there with me and he had to leave and immediately one of the feet oriented I know I Drive people crazy I knew he had to go so why stop him that's called social intelligence and in the last few minutes that I have I want to talk about something else that has to do with non verbals and that is influence because we influence each other primarily not with word not with words nobody's that clever we influence each other non-verbally we think of houses as having a curbside appeal but the question I always ask is what is your curbside appeal what would drive me to you are you clever are you smart are you funny are you interesting do you have a great story did you read a great book or is it time to repaint the house cut the grass and change the shrubbery and I say that because I'm old enough to know and have talked to people who haven't changed in 15 years and then they wonder why they're stalled and I say have you changed your curbside appeal read a book I love this photograph because when I look at it I see serenity and we are drawn to things that are serene the human brain dislikes this harmony we like things and we like individuals that make us feel good I love this photograph for that we like this guy even though he's the same as I don't know how that picture got switched with that one but look at it for a second why are we drawn to one and not drawn to the other one and here's the message clothing does matter oh yes but it does oh but it does look at the research now I realize that I'm the one that's overdressed here and maybe I need to apologize but that's the way I feel comfortable but don't ever ignore the fact that how we appear matters because the research shows that at six months we already prefer at six months of age a baby we already prefer beauty at six months we like smiles but we like head-tilt better I loved when I was watching all of you and so many of you had your head tilted head tilt means I'm receptive to you can you imagine as a child your parent always addresses you like a drill sergeant hi how are you nice to see you have a good day versus hi because at four weeks a baby recognizes head tilt and if you don't believe me borrow somebody's child god it's excuse me that bloke says that head tilt and watch how the baby smiles and we humans smile when we see head tilt it means we're receptive and we love great attitude you know what we hate bad attitude how many of you know somebody that has a bad attitude and they still breathe you're always going to be around people with bad attitude but we gravitate towards people with great attitude and that's really who we want to work with and associate with and here this princess is doing what we call a gravity defying behavior she's arching her eyebrows right when you say hi to somebody and you divide that defy gravity you go hey how are you versus how you doing which one do you like better do you like the one with the the animation with the arching of the eyebrows or do you like the how you doing nobody likes the other one and that's because you're burning blood Sugar's you're burning you're actually creating doing something energetic that says I care about you because when I don't I won't lift a finger literally and so just with the arching of an eyebrow when you see somebody you'll be perceived as more kind and to want to be with you you know oftentimes when I was speaking with Tim oftentimes we set the wrong goal we set the goal as I want to achieve this when the goal is I want to have more face time think about it the difference when I came into the FBI they said well well you got to get a confession i reframed it I want to have face time with this person if I have face time they'll tell me whatever I want to know why because they want to spend time with me and that's what I did if your goal is I want to sell this or I want to achieve that maybe you should reframe it and say how do I achieve more face time to do that you've got to do everything I've talked about so far that's what you don't want to do you don't want to look like that we want to listen we want to listen for the words that are used because not all words have the same weight my generation use problems your generation says issues it doesn't resonate with me if I say mom and dad don't say family you need to listen because words have different weight and people will front that which is important and they will use weighted words with you but we also have to be curious you want people to spend time with you be curious benign ly curious they'll gravitate to you they'll spend time with you they want to know more about you just by asking them questions really where you from oh my god what was that growing up like whatever because we humans seek to communicate and when people are curious they gravitate towards us and we want a mirror non-verbally if you're relaxed I'm relaxed if you're stressed I want to help you to deal with that stress I want to mirror your words so that we are in synchrony how many of you have had a bad handshake right it's like how can you screw that up right you've had the jujitsu you've had the wet fish right go ahead and do it good for me yeah there you go I've had everything I've had the probe I've had the one where the index finger is halfway up my arm and and I didn't know index fingers were that long first of all and secondly are we engaged or you know I said how can you screw up a handshake but here's what's important we remember negative things for about 13 years it goes to that part of the brain that reminds us that we don't can't touch a hot stove every day and that's why it sticks with us so long so the first time we touch get it right because when you get it wrong just tell yourself I'm going to remember it for 13 years yuck simple things like even how we point right everybody point at me oh this is what it looks like do you like it no this is what it should look like let's all do it together ah it's like I want to be with you everybody point to the wall just do it again it won't hurt you there you go now with your finger like this like piss Simon Says why because the brain is prepared to accept this far better than this that's how sensitive our brains are to nonverbals and yet how many people we see say why don't you take a seat right there and right away we hate that take care of the little things because the broken windows when you show you don't care other people will not care that's in your home and at business you see garbage outside people who will dump garbage they see you picking up the garbage they'll pick it up they see you cleaning up your language they will clean up their language you stop wearing torn jeans they'll wear nice jeans you stop dropping f-bombs they will stop dropping f-bombs but the minute you don't care other people won't care how many of you do presentations always be framed by blue there is no other color to be framed I and that's why you see what you see always be framed by blue the research is ample I don't have time to explain it all what happened oh yeah that's the head of Xerox simplicity humans like things simplified they'll make it complex the simpler the better just when you write it if there's one thing I've learned after eleven and a half books is you simplify simplify simplify write it edit it write it edited cut it down does anybody know who Edward ever it is nobody does and he was the most gifted speaker of his day the reason nobody knows who he is and they should because he was the president of Harvard and was paid to go give the most momentous speech of the day which was at the Gettysburg Address but his problem is he spoke for two hours and 30 minutes but then he was followed by this guy who basically tweeted Abraham Lincoln gave the first tweet he spoke for two minutes 26 seconds he spoke so fast they couldn't set up the cameras in time but it's his speech we remember because of its brevity and its simplicity next time you think you're clever remind yourself we are not keep it short nobody remembers that two hour and 20 minute speech not one word of it no we're nobody but we remember four score and seven years ago humility is huge and we all need a little humility check every once in a while every one of us every once once every once in a while you need to take a step back and say do I need a little bit of humility go to that humility bottle in the wherever you've parked it take it out and take a little you know tablespoon of it because we all need a little bit of humility and we all need empathy and empathy is tactile and its present remember this empathy is not over the Internet that's communication empathy is tactile and it is present and it is powerful I still remember the day when Princess Diana picked up a baby that had AIDS and the world changed the world's perception of AIDS changed because oh my god she touched a baby that had AIDS and like oh now it's okay even doctors took off their masks empathy folks is powerful and I've learned some things along the way because of our situation in my life because when we came here we were very poor very poor and we didn't speak the language but I learned that there's five things that differentiates the average from the exceptional not the average from the good and not the average from the great the average from the exceptional and I want to share this with you because I found these while doing my research and the first thing is we must to be exceptional we must have mastery over ourselves if you read the front page of a newspaper every time you read about somebody going off to jail or having a breakdown or this or that they have not had mastery over themselves you cannot achieve great things if you don't master yourself if you can't focus and if you can't just plow through whatever life throws at you and believe me my family had many things thrown at them you can't build a violin if you don't pay the price and the second thing is to be exceptional you have to be a good observer we are taught to look but we're not taught to observe most of us don't know what to look for we're not taught to observe and yet we know exceptional people are great observers they see what your needs wants and desires are so they can act on them and observing is not looking an exceptional people communicate both verbally and non-verbally verbally and non-verbally not just verbally and they do it effectively with a purpose effectively with a purpose think about it what if you were to bring together these two powerful forces of communication both the verbal and the nonverbal exceptional people act they're known by their actions not their words they act immediately and they act ethically and they do it to accomplish whatever is needed at that moment they're undeterred I was in Washington DC when a plane hit up a bridge and I saw one of my fellow Bureau agents jump in the water it was three degrees he can sit there and have a debate he didn't wander here should I jumped in is it a 'they know you do what you have to do exceptional people Act they get up and they meet you and they comfort you want people to come to you to spend time with you to gravitate to you provide psychological comfort that's all we want we actually don't want perfection we humans don't look for perfection we look for psychological comfort there's a great picture on the internet I wish I'd brought it and there's a little puppy and there's a chicken hand right on top of it providing it warmth I tweeted about it I said love doesn't have to be perfect it just has to be good enough and you know what psychological comfort is that what does this person need in the moment five things five things that I learned from my family this is right before right when we arrived from from Cuba but the most powerful thing I think I learned and I'll leave you with this message because we really don't have much time is this it doesn't matter what you own it doesn't matter what you make it really doesn't and it doesn't impress me at all did one thing that I've learned the only thing that matters is how you treat those who can do absolutely nothing for you have a good day you

Channel: CMX

Views: 1,272,942

Rating: 4.8763695 out of 5

Keywords: Joe Navarro, Nonverbal Communications, cmx summit, community, strategy, cmx, training, conference, education

Id: HRl0dvPRkSI

Length: 34min 11sec (2051 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 04 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/bigkids]

is CMX like TED?

Good video.

[u/[deleted]]

Communications.