Archive | Random Thoughts

I’ll never forget when I first laid eyes on Marco.  It was October of 2010.  I was speaking on behalf of a large chewing gum manufacturer to independent salespeople in the candy industry.  As I looked out on the audience, they were pretty much what you’d expect from people who sold candy.  Mostly young, fresh faced, […]

Leaders use many different strategies to motivate their ranks.  Some try to be everybody’s friend, while others try to be as intimidating as possible.   Which strategy is best depends on circumstances and the personality of the leader, but most studies identify two key dimensions to leadership that can be reinforced by body language:  likeability and authority.  Put simply, people are […]

The Chicago Tribune online has a column today that discusses body language in the workplace.  The author, Daneen Skube, seems to know her stuff, except when she writes this: However, the body is a powerful communication channel that is mostly ignored or dimly noticed at work, even though studies find body language carries 55 percent of the […]

This is what touring is like:  Get up at 3am, take a quick shower, drive an hour and a half to the airport.   Board an airplane, fly two legs to a new city, pick up a rental car, and drive another hour an a half to the hote.   If possible, get in a quick nap, […]

If you have a gaggle of geese and a pride of lions, what would you call a gathering of mentalists?  I’m going for a mess of mind readers! Tomorrow I’m going to convene with said mess, because tomorrow is the day I fly to the Meeting Of The Minds, and annual get-together of about 80 of the […]

Can airport security personnel be trained to spot the bad guys from behavioral clues?  The science journal, Nature, casts a skeptical eye.   Of particular interest to me is this passage: Most credibility-assessment researchers agree that humans are demonstrably poor at face-to-face lie detection. SPOT traces its intellectual roots to the small group of researchers who […]

I always have a hard time when people ask me to recommend books on body language or people-reading.  Sadly, most of the books written for the general public are junk.  Either they’re based on out-of-date research, or they’re filled with content that’s simply made up.   It’s true!  Some authors recognize that you don’t have the knowledge […]

Another interesting article on the power of touch.   As a bit of trivia,  mentalists performing in the late 19th century used touch almost exclusively as a method for receiving the thoughts of  their volunteers.

Recent research is verifying something that mentalists have known for decades:  touching somebody in a gentle yet firm way can greatly increase the chances they will comply with your wishes.  Depending on context,  the odds that they will do what you ask them to can nearly double.  As a technique for influencing people, touching can […]