Truth, Lies, and Authenticity— Interview with Mark Bowden Body Language Expert

in the connected era information is always at your fingertips what makes your messages stand out in this series we are going to meet a diverse range of people whose messages I influence in the masses let's find out how in this episode of gallery of ideas connect we have an inspiring engaging energetic and entirely entertaining TV with the legendary mark the number one body language professional in the world clients include leading businesspeople politicians presidents of Fortune 500 companies and prime ministers he's written best-selling books about body language and human behavior Mark Bowden [Applause] so great to be here with you I've experienced going on in front of thousands and in some cases millions of audience you aren't predestined to be a great communicator you learn that everything can be learned so you've already decided whether you like me or not I'm Mark Bowden and I'm an expert in human behavior [Applause] [Music] mark welcome to gather your ideas Watson honor to have you here with us it's really amazing after so long I will audience him by someone of this so excited about so many questions people asking me Patricia please ask him there's the first one is where are you from what happens I mean when when did he gets to North America what was the shift their way you know from where you come from and what inspires the little mark to become the world-renowned body language experts so I was originally born in a town in England called Northampton which is 60 miles north of London and when I was around the age of 17 18 I moved down to London in order to study there and I was studying visual arts performing arts how to tell stories with pictures essentially and I was in that area because I'd been obsessed as a kid with with images and how you how you tell those stories with pictures how images and especially moving images actually of people and influence and persuade other people so I studied in that area I spent many years working in the area of Performing Arts and visual arts and helping or all kinds of things film TV theatre tell the stories that they wanted to tell by helping them construct the exact images they would need in order to trigger audiences into patterns of behavior I then started working in business and politics around that by the by the way at that time I was now living in London London is still I think the city that I've lived in the longest yeah probably the lot yes yeah would still be the city I've lived in longest no I was working all over the world as well in this field in this area and then 13 years ago myself and Tracy my wife we were having our first kid let and we had the ability to come to Toronto and live here Tracie's Canadian and it seemed a great opportunity to try out and the right time to try out somewhere else and take advantage of Canada's proximity not only obviously to its own market but also the US market in the world market from for what I do which is helping people all over the world stand out win trust gain credibility every time they communicate and really that's from the standpoint of nonverbal communication working out what you can do exactly with your body language in order to win trust and credibility Nega related to talk that he gave 2013 [Music] never feeling that we are leaving now in this world that we we are almost obliged to be happy all the time right there's the sense of happiness that it's related to success you need to be happy you need to be authentic to me to go up there and show your true self and then you come with you talk the importance of being authentic just break all the rules and so look first of all obviously there's something in the title about being inauthentic which absolutely is the exact opposite of what I felt to be the culture and the the overriding zeitgeist of of of a certain niche of the world and this idea of being authentic and also what I what I might call authenticity shaming which is people saying to others you know I don't think you're really being authentic and that being some kind of insult as if they know if somebody's being authentic or not truly being themselves as if they'd know that people had set themselves up as these kind of mind readers of being able to tell if somebody's being truthful or honest or authentic you know true to themselves only that person can ever work out whether they're being true to themselves so so I was seeing a lot of this going about and and and as you can probably imagine it really annoyed me really I just found it very very very very annoying and also I found it very closed-minded because it didn't take into account the understanding that we have we play roles in lives we have personas we very complex human beings and and one of the joys of being human is you can pick on aspects of yourself that you specifically want to bring forward to people at a certain time in a certain place to better serve them to better serve you even if it feels uncomfortable to you you can bring forward an aspect of your personality a persona especially in professional circles you might need need to bring forward a bit of a professional persona to help and serve other people and that's what I would believe is social this we are in now the medium of happiness that's the culture that surrounds ya and you got to understand that we all have the ability to create this media we're all therefore consuming this happy media and then looking at our own lives and going cobble mi why don't I am I not successful and happy as Mark was on that on that webcast that he was doing today yeah no one can enjoy anything anymore just by experiencing let's say you go to a mountain in you observing the nature and it's there is no space for this anymore you have to be in the mountain selfie hashtag Mountain Wow I arrived I'm here I'm sharing the location [Music] yeah many qualities that you have that I admire you are and very open-minded friendly funny wise but that is one quality that I love which is you're very humble you know it's I have a feeling that is never about you you're always trying to you know to create greatness for the other how how do you see you know the people that are still struggling with that mindset of I have to compete to survive because I believe it is more about being you know in inner togetherness space yeah question so first of all I would say though it may not come up come across to you for reasons that I'll explain in a moment I am very competitive however I'm competitive in a really small area which is the area of nonverbal communication little ism just never compete players in of course because there's not many of us out there why wouldn't I I mean it's it's and their competitors to me gosh you know that that they have they have different niches to me they're thinking about it in a different way they have different backgrounds to me I mean we all have the same aim pretty pretty much entirely I would probably say so you know let's take take Joe who's of just a fantastic guy and a great expert in his area and an incredible incredible background that gives him that that wealth of knowledge and massive credibility you know why would I need to compete against against hip can I compete against him I don't compete against somebody you can't win I don't know whether I can win against against Joe in his area I don't have no way I can't I can't sit here and go yeah you know I was one of the youngest person people ever to be taken into the FBI so I wasn't extraordin of the youngest people ever to be in the FBI extraordinary came to America not knowing English taught himself English I mean no no not not not done that you know interrogated and interviewed you know some extraordinary Criminal Minds no I'm not I'm done it so so there's no point in competing in areas that you cannot win or in my mind I know there might be people out there who go hey ya know go on go on compete at something you can't win that's right now I'm only alive so long do something I can win at be there and be the best that so yes I am competitive but I'm being really careful about choosing exactly where I'm competitive so I stand myself the best chance of success in that area because I know that's successful yours very very good and when you're successful at something you tend to get just more successful at it and the key is is getting your first moments of success so the body and mind get used to that idea and they go is the body of mine go okay I think we could we could manage a bit more of that so I kind of work this out and I've decided only B only completed stuff you can you can win at yeah there's also this sense you know collaborating with others and sharing others creations and things that people that are very competitive well maybe taking it in a bad way saying that they are even jealous of that you know potential something that they can never become because it's completely different from their very stories and and I think that's when that person gets really limited and there is no way you can grow so for me the areas of growth is actually taking the you know the example your example which I find it fantastic I think the way you always are pushing everyone in the industry and highlighting everyone as a ward you can't do it you can't do it on your own you can't you can't forget you you can't get an area recognized and and really helpful to people on your own you know Joe helps promote that that area Amy Cuddy helps promote that area the more successful they are the more people go oh yeah body language that's the kind of interests yeah so so the more I can help promote them the more people might reach out to me there's another guy out there a little newer on the scene I mean he's been it being around this area long long time but but mainly working in the in the US Army and so been dedicated to that but a guy called chase use take a look at him get some incredible work in this area just retired from the US Army a couple of weeks ago is now out there delivering some incredible training around nonverbal communication so a little little promotion of more at the more I promote chase the more people learn about this area the more they get fascinated and the more they might go hey Mark come in and do a keynote or come and train my people or absolutely it doesn't doesn't hurt me look you know the seven point six billion people on the planet right now most of them are not thinking about me really that I exist and and and how can I get more of them to know that I exist well it might not be about shouting about me it might be about shouting about other people so that they really get the I hear of the of the of the area and then come into my world [Music] your books you've written several books and the last one you with Tracy yeah life so what inspired you guys to write truth in lies yeah yeah what inspired as well like a lot of things in my life first of all there was no inspiration we were just asked to write it the publishers when you write a book on reading body language so that was their specific thing we want you to write a book on reading body language and pretty much instantly within a few minutes I'd sent back a message saying no no I'm not gonna write that because there's a lot of books out there on Nick written already written too on how to use your body language to influence and persuade I'd written one on neural evolutionary neural architecture the way your brain is built why therefore you behave in certain ways and other people behave in certain ways and they annoy the hell out of you and what you can do about that and and and there are already a lot of good books by others around reading body language and I was very unsure as to what I could to make this world you know to add to that world anyway so so instantly we kind of said no and then I thought I should have said no because I should think a little bit more carefully about what would a really good book on reading body language like I wrote it what would the perfect you know great book on reading body language looked like if I wrote it and what I came up with is it would actually be a book on critical thinking disguised as a book on body language so it would help or think better about other people and they they'd learn how to do that because they were interested in reading body language they would end up knowing how to do that but they'd know a more critical thinking process a better process for that so truth in life I'm really thinking it takes you through a critical thinking process so that you can think better and more accurately about others it does have one body language stuff that you want to know like you know what does this mean or what does this mean or you know what if they if they touch that you know what it's got all of that in it but what it's really gonna do is help you think more carefully and accurately about that so so that's what inspired us to write it now it's also the first ever book on body language that is gender-neutral so at no point does it ever go hey guys do this and girls do this men do this and women do this it's because the majority of that has zero accuracy to it people do all kinds of stuff genders and sexes tend to be and their behaviors be amplified or or diminished by culture by ideas it's about how certain agendas or sexes should perform because physically we're absolutely you know male and female masculine feminine feminine we're more similar than we're ever ever gonna have any differences what tends to happen is ideas about us in for or or constrain or amplify the behaviors that we have and then societies or cultures go hey that's male that's female so we strip that out and of course Tracy was a huge part of that it's very difficult as a male to write without gender bias very difficult for a female without gender bias we all have bias so having the two of us write it not only bought some really big new ideas that helped with that idea of rather take the ginger back then not because eradicating gender bias is you know a popular thing to do right now simply because it's accurate it's just more accurate just more more truthful about the way people behave and also how to think about people there's the the impulse for it like there is a question which regards dr. Albert Mehrabian where he explains about he has this formula Mountain rubber communication where 93% is nonverbal and 7% is verbal why do you think this study got so much attention and what are your thoughts about this yeah so first of all I've looked at this study as opposed to many other people have never looked at the study it's it's a pretty good study a long time back now with with seventies yeah in the 70s with less people in it than you'd need now to make it a a robust study however all that said what he comes up with is that the data that your brain wants in order to make a prediction about somebody else's feeling and intention towards you the data that your brain wants it mainly wants to see images of that person it's somewhat wants to hear the tonality of their voice and it really has no concern for what they're saying okay and that gets mashed into this idea of 93% of all communication is nonverbal now he never said that never said that he kind of said what I just said to you a while back which is your brain when it wants to know when it's thinking I wonder what that person is thinking about me or feeling about me right it goes mmm what are they doing notes that it won't the the majority of the data he would have said maybe 55% of the data that it's wanting to make that decision is the images that it's seeing the context of those images as well and how they move the brains also going ah how do they sound what's their tonality what's the music of their voice and about a third of the information that it's wanting to take in is that musicality and then only 7% is the words but that isn't ninety-three percent of all communication is nonverbal if that was the case you could go and watch any feature film with the sound turned off and you would get exactly pretty much exactly what anybody with the sound turned on was getting a book would be pointless because a book is verbal you'd never listen to radio or podcasts be pointless because because you know 93% of of all the communication would would be gone totally that's not true that's a total misinterpretation how - Wow especially for the people in the industry then there's coaches and trainers that are maybe you know you've trained and you've worked with high politicians business leaders you know 300 fortune you know teams and so on so for that person that is starting to get that first powerful clients it needs to enter you make that impact and make that powerful person look at him and trust him what would be you know they give trips okay so his three tips and then I'm gonna move them a little bit away from body language because in terms of to an extent in terms of the body language piece it's really about using what I call the truth plain if you want to know about that just get over to truth plain calm because it's just so full of stuff on on that that the really you'd only get to hear if you were training with me personally so here's my top tip and it does come in three parts that it's and it goes like this make a choice make it bigger and keep it tidy make a choice make it bigger keep it tidy so when you get when you want to wow people first of all make a choice as to what you're going to do a choice not many choices choose one thing the key to really good performance and especially nonverbal performance is being razor sharp being focused on what you're going to get across so make that choice and then all you do is make it bigger yeah you're now gonna you're now going to amplify that choice so the initial choice that you make is usually a safe choice here's the next bit is is keep it tidy what we tend to do is we make the choice we make it bigger and then we go home and we'll add a bit of this and we'll add a bit of that and we'll add a bit of this just to counter measure the risk of this and then you muddy it you just muddy it what about one-to-one sessions where somebody from the agency how you brought you front of this guy woman and then something they look okay for you what are you supposed to do so you know that sense of I don't trust you and the normal you are how do you get them to instantly look at you and say wow I like you I'm gonna open up and we're gonna start our session yeah so I've got one of those tomorrow I'm with I'm with a leader tomorrow who is a leader government so yeah so now first of all you've got to get in the room okay no point like you judge you can't walk up to these people and knock on their office there's a whole bunch of security and you have to give people passports and they have to frisk you know go check you for weapons and all they do background searches on you and all kinds of stuff all over your hands we have to see yeah absolutely so let's just say that on the whole before you even getting in that room you have proved yourself or been proven to others who look after that person in some way but that's that's not enough because you go in there they're very worried okay entering my space you know you are absolutely well you know it's it's it's a risk for them to introduce somebody new in the team anyway what what you need to do is is is look at them and say it's okay don't worry it's gonna be fine it's going to be alright and when you walk in that room now also when you walk in that room and you see that person and you've seen them on TV and you know what they run and how much power they have something inside you goes oh okay wow that's the person isn't it yes they're the person who runs runs a lot of stuff they okay and then you kind of go wow what have I done now what kind of mess have I got myself into now you know you can get some performance anxiety around that you can get some so you got to manage that for yourself in your case it's something that you are totally in your flow myself described by csikszentmihalyi you know the you have the challenge at hands and your abilities you know kind of line up obviously if you are in a situation where your skills are very low and the challenge is so big as checks and behind signs we had to learn you know oh it's gonna it's gonna it's not gonna work out but in your case you were there in a situation like this you miner from so anyone there is a situation like yours it has the skills that's confidence that they have the knowledge to help that person if they are trainer or coach that's the first step the second one is it's just a person like you know with all the basic needs like no it's just another person so I think that's you know so I would say not taking everything so seriously because that's where we get sometimes trapped in our minds know like oh my gosh tomorrow I have this thing with this I can't sleep because this person is that important so I guess for me is the combination of three having the skills to be able to do it as a device get out of there being confidence because you know know you fake and uh I'll take so seriously [Music] now mark to end our interview I wanna - so do a game with you so I'm gonna points out five Brazilian gestures very specific never seen in your life okay I want you to decipher and tell me what do you think they mean okay okay so we're talking with totally talking a different language yes so it's just a novel okay I'm gonna help with it so let's start with this one okay yeah okay okay so it feels to me like I so what's interesting is I've never seen okay so so it sees so you had with it this downward turn of the of the mouth so there's some kind of negativity in there and it feels to me like you're you're brushing and hitting stuff away so so I'm gonna say something about brushing off and casting away something that's bad so it's kinda like we're not we're not bothered with with that like what it what are circumstances that you might do that is a casual gesture is a day gesture it's more so it's so quick yeah yeah because in in in in European culture we might have the run along brush away she's just with one hand this I mean this is interesting because it takes more energy it's bigger but you could see it more whereas we kind of go you know we're not bothered with not bothered with that and it's a little so little gesture but then Europe can be colder and you don't want to do too you don't want to do you'll open up your body and you'll get cold too quick nice and warm there give me another lovely oh okay hmm okay so there's there's something there was something in your face as well that it was slightly kind of almost a little bit seductive a little bit kind of mmm-hmm what's going on there and and there's friction between two things here yeah and so I'm guessing it's about a couple of people getting on well it's like are they're getting on they're making something they're making some heat yeah they're planning to something here who is that is that gesture would that be about people getting on at a friend or a sexual level or could it be to business people who are getting under this is to mmm okay yeah it's like they're rubbing they're rubbing two sticks together they're making some fire yeah it's not sexual it's just you know into something that we don't know this - yes okay so it's it's it's whatever it is is you don't know at that point it's like you don't know I like that I like that you are amazing okay gosh okay the ice cream in the head okay I think that's okay so so it's a fist to the head so there's some kind of impact their hammer like impact to the thinking hammer like impact of the thinking it's like I don't so it must be something about I've got it wrong or I don't understand it oh okay so yeah in in in a lot of kind of European North American gesture it's more the slap to the head rub the this has a lot more right I love that gesture three three four three okay okay I think that is something that is something like a more casual idea of the full hand push away which says you know get out of my get out of my territory but this is like this is like you really this is when you don't need to make much effort about this it's like come on get it get out instead of like just hold back get get back get out this is like ah come on you know that don't ya yeah yeah lovely okay is it go bumpy okay yeah this okay so we got a fist against a flat flat hand okay I'm gonna say cuz you know we really are into the world of hand signals here and there's so much good that can happen in these it becomes more like language whereby it's very easy to interpret this wrong so I'm gonna go with with what I can know very well which is it makes this sound let me have with my face yeah hmm so your your face is is one of has a pain in it right so and the and the sound is final so I don't know it's something that it was something about something being final and it causing pain in some or distress in some way yeah okay yes this is the like final I know Allison's final and then there's the pain in the face you send a group we are totally screwed okay can it be done without the face or does it need that yeah yeah they can just go usually the face will somehow right the face will react if I just do it deadpan face was great fun that was great fun listen I learned something today look here's the thing great thing about my world in the world of body language is is you've you never know it all no you have a day like this where you go wow I didn't you know because they these different cultures you know it's not just fulfilled it it's all over the world there's these different things that that happen that that are language like real language which means what you know this might happen somewhere else on the planet and it means highly different like that you know that that if you did that in American Sign Language that's light so you know you go around you know with some some you know people who have impaired hearing and start doing that they'll be like alright we switched on the lights so you know it's them some body language is language it's a signal and it and those signals because they're their cultural can mean things in different areas and some of it is is universal so it was great to be introduced to those ones already like thank you so much you are brilliant beautiful love it's love your minds love your style love your openness it's just wonderful to have you here and send a big kiss to Tracy and thank you very much and then we send a Brazilian case which is like this thanks for having me it's been a great conversation and I will talk again [Music] you [Music]

Channel: GALLERY OF IDEAS in Clubhouse

Views: 5,197

Rating: 4.9491525 out of 5

Keywords: #galleryofideas, #goi, #publicspeaking, #barcelona, howtopresent, howtospeakinpublic, #patriciacurty, markbowden, bodylanguage, business, leadership, training, goiconnect, Dr. Cal Lightman, lie to me, interview in english, body language, body language analysis, entrepreneur motivation, entrepreneur, entrepreneur academy, business english, read people's body language, reading people's secrets, how to read people, how to draw a face, how to basic, how to read facial expressions and body language

Id: mZM6dud-Peg

Length: 37min 21sec (2241 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 23 2019