Skip to main content

How to Speed Read People

Lesson 12 from: Master Your People Skills

Vanessa Van Edwards

How to Speed Read People

Lesson 12 from: Master Your People Skills

Vanessa Van Edwards

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

12. How to Speed Read People

Next Lesson: Conquer Your Fears

Lesson Info

How to Speed Read People

(clapping) Alright, we are on Day 12, How to Speed Read People. So I want to start with something a little different today. I want to start with the Golden Rule. Everyone knows the Golden Rule, right? Treat others as you would treat yourself. Now I like the Golden Rule, but I don't think it actually tells the whole store. I think there's something way more that we can do than just the Golden Rule. So I want to introduce a new concept, which is the Platinum Rule. Which is a little better than the Golden Rule. And that is treat others as they would treat themselves. Right, why would you treat someone else the way that you want to be treated, when we want to treat them how they would treat themselves according to their personalized traits and their values and their intelligences. And that's what today is all about. It's about treating others as they would like to be treated. And I love this quote by William James. A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearrangin...

g their prejudices. So today, anti-lensing, right, not pretending, not wishful seeing, see people for who they actually are. Now speed reading people is kind of a, oh I have to be careful with that one, so I just want to be really clear what I mean when I say speed reading. So speed reading is not prejudiced, it's not manipulative, it's not shallow. In fact, it's just the opposite. When we speed read people, we are honing our intuition. We are thinking about what is the impression this person gives me and can I trust it? We are honoring others by treating them as they would like to be treated. And we're paving a way to a deeper connection. This is laying the foundation for the next level on connection we're gonna talk about atatn20 is love, and dating, and relationships. And to be able to really connect with people, you have to be able to know their needs an interests. Someone asked me earlier, Michael you were saying, I'm trying to keep straight body language and personality and everything, and I said that it's about lifting a muscle. But we're gonna actually expand our neural pathways to be able to do all of it when you meet someone, to take in all aspects of them. And I wanted to clarify and add on to that answer. That speed reading people actually makes your first impression easier. 'Cause it's not as if when you meet someone, you're not trying to figure them out. In fact, now I'm actually giving you a much easier way to figure someone out. So instead of meeting someone and being like, what do they like, who are they, do they like me, what do they think of me, how should I talk to them, how should I communicate with them, what are their values? I'm just giving you a systematic way to do it. So it actually speeds up your first impression. In a weird way, it almost gives your brain less to do 'cause it has kind of a checklist to do with someone. And that's what speed reading is. I'm actually just trying to speed up that initial first impression or connection. Goals today is I want you to be able to bond quickly doing that, I want you to trust your first impression, and the art and science of speed reading. Let's do our warm-ups. Our warm-up is taking some of the skills that we've learned and putting them to the test. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna show you videos of our interviews with Creative Live staffers, and we are going to try to fill out their matrix. We're gonna guess their intelligence type, we're gonna guess their personality type, just based on a few answers. So, at home I want you to pull out your work book, turn to day 12, I have a matrix that's waiting for you. I want you to go along with us and fill out the matrix for our warm-up people. Are you guys ready to meet some people? Alright, here we go. Here's the first one. The personal passion project I'm currently working on is I'm trying to do a different style of lettering everyday using a different tool of my choice. So, last week it was pretty heavy in calligraphy using a nib pen. And then this week I'm using different styles of chalk markers, and this is due to like, some lettering classes I took and so it inspired me. And I've been following this person that I know that does daily drawing, so he makes something everyday. And so, I committed to making something everyday, even if it's just one word to practice lettering. The high point of my day so far was getting email from somebody who was pitching me an idea, and it was like, he put in time and energy, and it was just this fabulous email this evening in my inbox. The low point of my day was being on the bark train, and having this woman two seats in front of me, have a seizure and fall down and hit her head on the edge of the chair. So, the interesting thing about the bad part of my day, was that it actually make me feel grateful. And that all my problems, my first-world problems, seemed to sort of disappear when I saw her lying on the ground having a seizure. My ideal Sunday would be to wake up at whatever time I happen to wake up, to have coffee and read the whole Sunday New York Times. Not worry about having to do anything or go anywhere. And then to take a run with my dog. To come home, I'd probably shower, but whenever that needs to happen, that would happen. And then allow myself to sit on the couch and watch reality TV back-to-back with popcorn. (laughter) So, first of all what I want to point out about this video is, you know, we talked about color conversation starters a lot in the first few segments. And these were a couple from color conversation starter list, and you can see she talks about calligraphy. And she's talking about the nib, and the pen, and I don't know anything about calligraphy, but you can clearly see this is something she really gets her going. These are very simple questions that aren't too challenging that really tap into someone's inner needs. That we can really read their personality just from a few of these answers. So, let's try to guess more about Lara's personality. So what do we think her intelligence is? What kind of intelligence? Yeah? Erica? Visual-spacial. Yeah, absolutely. She is visual-spacial intelligence. How did you know that? The drawing. Drawing, talking about different shapes and letters. Absolutely, so that was a very easy question. Easy answer, what personal passion project you working on? You can see she really appreciates visual-spacial. Alright, here are some of the clues that I heard. Calligraphy, making a new thing everyday, pitching with details, she said the high point of her day was getting pitched a beautiful pitched with lots of details, so that was interesting, empathy, so having gratitude for this woman who was suffering on the bark train, and getting up whenever, showering whenever, whenever that happens, those are some of the clues that I picked up on. So what does this tell us? What can we guess? About an aspect of the matrix? Who wants to throw out a guess on one of the areas of personality. High openness? High openness, and what makes you think that? 'Cause she tries something new everyday. Love it, what else? Openness we got. Low extraversion. Low extraversion, what made you think that? It was more just her body language. Oh, yes. We are talking about body language today. And I would guess she falls a little lower traversion too. We're gonna find out in a second, yeah. Also, her ideal of a fun day was alone. Like it was just her dog. With her dog, yeah. Uh huh. Yeah, I saw some other hands up? High conscientious. Absolutely, how do you know that? Because she's going to do this everyday. Yeah, um, there's one other I think that we can get, actually two others I think we can get, and then we can get on with our matrix. Agreeableness. High. High, why? You know this. Mic, please. Oh, sorry. I know that you can get this. You knew agreeableness, how did your intuition pick up on that. I think it was something to do with pitch. The pitch? Pitch email. How she was pitched well. You know what, it was my intuition hit, my intuitive hit was how she talked about the person on the bark train. How she felt grateful, and how she felt so sad for this person, and her first-world problems. That was a huge amount of empathy for her to say that really affected her, either one, absolutely. And I think we can get neuroticism too. Higher or low on neuroticism. She's high on neuroticism because she's sensitive. She felt kind of bad about the lady who fell down, and after that. Okay, so sensitive to emotions or having feelings. Being able to predict the mentality of another is agreeableness, so that is a, I'm so glad you brought that up. Sensitivity is a hard one 'cause it could be emotionally reactive, alright, which is neuroticism. But sensitivity can also be being sensitive to someone else's feeling, which is agreeableness. I actually think she's low on neuroticism. Does anybody know why? Yeah. I kinda felt the same and it was more based on her reaction to the person, like, someone with a high neuroticism is like oh, so terrible! And, and we have-- What if that happens to me? Yeah, exactly. What if it affected the whole train, right? I mean, you're absolutely right, the reaction. And I want to get up whenever I want, and I'll shower whenever it happens. Let me tell you as a high neurotic person, if I go work out, I need to shower right away when I get home. So instantly, I was like ah! I think this is low on neurotic. So here's what her personality score said. So, high openness, we got. We got high contentiousness, making a new thing everyday, and very detail oriented with the calligraphy. Right, that's very detail oriented. High agreeableness, very empathetic to the person on the bark train. We got low neuroticism. This is how she ranks. And also from the clues we picked up. And then, extraversion is equal. Equal extraversion. So I guessed when I was trying to speed read her, that she was also low intraversion. Now, she clearly balances that out. She didn't mind talking to the camera. So that was not a bad guess, obsolete. Her energy was definitely more low introvert. More calm. You know, very calm energy. Let's try another one, yeah. I think these kinda good, they're kinda like puzzles. I know, it's kind of fun, I know, I was like can I put everyone in the course, they're like no, we do not have time for everyone. I was like aww, so I picked, okay, I picked only a few. Alright, let's watch this video. At home, I want you to be filling out your, I hope you got a lot right out of that one. Hopefully you got all of them. Let's do one more. My dream job, I wanted to be a travel writer and I wanted to live in a different place like every month. I wanted to always be on the go. So I always wanted to be a writer. And I always wanted to explore and travel. Oh, describe myself in three words. I'd say I'm kind, creative, and really funny. No I'm just kidding (chuckles) sure. We'll go with that. (laughter) My ideal Sunday? Yesterday was pretty close to it, so... Seeing friends, waking up late, like being relaxed with my boyfriend and my cat. Having coffee, relaxing around the house, getting out of the house and seeing friends, and doing something enjoyable outside, coming home, making dinner, relaxing. Lot's of relaxation, reading, relaxing, seeing people I love. Alright, so. Let's look at her matrix. So, here were the ques I got. Travel writer, adventure creative, she mentioned that a couple times, kind is one of the words she said, she uses relaxing a lot for her ideal Sunday, I'm shocked about her boyfriend and being around the people she loves. Those are a couple of the clues that I picked up on. So let's guess, what do we think her intelligence is? This is a hard one guys, what do we think her intelligence is? What's the one about the words? Yeah, you're actually right, yes. Linguistic. Yes! The word I choose yesterday. Yes, yes, yes. You are right. It is, sorry I just gave it a one. It is linguistic, and why'd you get that. One is that she enjoys writing, she's not only writing, she's enjoying it. And then the way she talked about being funny. I mean, that's, that's an insight that not everybody can do, would do. Right, being good with words. She's also very communicative. She was a smooth communicator. She was able to choose answers on the spot. I love it, that was a really hard one. Alright, let's conscientiousness. What'd we think? So, we had, what do we think about conscientiousness? Could we guess it? Anyone? Which ones did you know? Let's start with that. Which ones were easy for you to get. Extraversion. Extraversion, absolutely. What told you about that? 'Cause all of the relaxing part also involved the people that she loved. Yes, and a funny, typically? To be funny you have to kinda get jokes out there and put stuff out there. We're also gonna learn non-verbally some of the things she did to hint that she's an extrovert. What else? She wants to be a travel writer, she want's to move around all the time when she was younger. High openness. Yeah, high openness, absolutely. What else did we find? What else sort of struck you, neuroticism? Could we guess that one? Low. Low, why? Wake up whenever. Wake up whenever, wake up late. Relax. Kinda hang out. I wanna compare that to Dana, who we talked about yesterday, where he said house work was on his ideal Sunday list. So that would be more of a high neurotic thing to do, because you want to get everything done. You want to prepare for the week, right? So, low neuroticism. Yeah, relaxed. I wanna have a relaxing Sunday. So you'll hear a couple of others. So I think she's high agreeable, why? And by the way, she is high agreeable. Why do we catch that, yeah? She described herself as kind. Yes! That was I think the first word that she said. Kind, creative, and funny. Kindness, that is a peak, one of the first things that she calls herself, absolutely. Anything else? Yeah. Would her saying funny and then saying, well maybe not, be an attribute for agreeable. Um, hmm... Like did she didn't know if other people would think she's funny, so she's like, well, I'm not gonna declare it. Would that be? Yeah. I don't know where modesty fits, or where humility fits on the personality traits, but that feels right to me, clearly you could be like I dunno if other people would feel that way or not, but yeah. I like that, and that was your intuitive gut that was agreeable, that's an intuitive hit for you. What else, so we had low neuroticism we talked about, high extraversion we talked about, linguistic-verbal, that was, that was good, wait, I want to give you a kiss! That was great, and if someone at home got that (kiss blow) to you too. Alright, um, the only one I think was hard to get, was high conscientiousness. I don't know, I did not get an intuitive hit off of her being high conscientiousness, anyone else, I miss it? I'm thinking she's not as controlling her schedule just because she's more whatever, kind of person. Yeah, so that could have been a hit, absolutely! Isn't her, it was the weekend, so, it was a laid back time, so, I would have thought that she was low. That's why the red is a little bit confusing. That's why I put it as red. Because I was like, I'd need to verify that one, definitely. So I actually thought it was high, because when she was describing her weekend, she like was listing one after the other, she knew what she wanted. You're right, she did go through a schedule in her head. Hm, I like it, okay. There's where the hit is. Again, this is about speed reading people. So, everything needs to be verified. We're just saying if we were to meet someone really quickly and they were to answer a few questions, what intuitive hits could we get, and why? What are those little clues. And for some of us, we're gonna spot that little agreeableness, the extraversion right away, but maybe conscientiousness neuroticism we have to wait and find out about. We're gonna talk about how to do that categorically in a little bit. So we are here in the bond section of path to connection. We learned first impression, making deposits, fracking to get a little deeper, and now we're in speed reading. We learned the matrix and how to optimize their personality and now we're gonna turn it on others. And a skill that we're gonna use for this whole lesson is number 17, the Platinum Rule. So, treat others as they would treat themselves. We learned 33 different people skills roles throughout this course, and we want to make sure that we're interacting on the level that they want us to interact on. Not the level that we want to interact on. How do we speed read people. There's a couple different steps. First, second, and third. We're gonna go through these all in a row. I want you to, I want to teach you how to read their nonverbal cues. So a lot of personality comes out non-verbally. And I didn't get to talk about this at all in my power body language course, we talked a lot about confidence and sales and persuasion. We didn't get to talk about personality and body language. So I'm really excited to share this new data. We're also gonna listen for verbal cues. What are the words they used What are they stories they tell us? What's the pacing? I think when you were picking up on Lara's introversion, it was her pacing. She had a very slow pace, a very calm pace. And so we're gonna talk about that. How they speak and what they say. And then lastly, we have to use skills eight, nine, and ten. So people skills eight, nine, and ten. Being relentlessly curious. Wanting to discover what someone's personality is. Number nine, being a master listener. To be able to truly see someone we can't engage in wishful hearing. We have to really hear them for what they're saying, and see them for who they are. And number 10, being nonverbally attuned. When we show someone that we are listening, they are much more likely to open up with us, and give us true and authentic answers, which helps us speed read them more accurately. So nonverbally attunement, do we remember the three skills that we're using in nonverbal attunement? Yes, go ahead, Ericka! It's like footing, Funting, yes! And what is it? As long as you know what it is, I don't care if you remember what it's called. It's the toes, the, I was gonna say the shoulders, (chuckle) shoulders Torso, and-- Tap. Tap. Yes. Yes, you got it! I don't care if you use the right words. But you got it, yes! Fronting, so making sure that you full engage with a person that you're speaking with. I always talked about the power of nodding, the triple nod, slow triple nod if you want someone to continue, and the head tilt. I am engaged. I am listening to you. Yeah. So, let's talk about the cues for each of the levels. Alright, so while I'm going through these, I want you to think about the risers, and the intimates in your life, and see if you can fit them in to either side for their nonverbal and verbal cues. So, a high extrovert, how to spot them. Nonverbally, they typically take up space. They use a wide stance, they love gesturing, and they typically are smilers. That's because extroverts are typically more optimistic, and more cheerful. So you're gonna see a lot more smiling, a lot more wide gestures, and higher confidence stance. Especially because they're around people. Extroverts love people. If they're around you, they're around another person, and they're typically a little more confident. They like that. Verbally, they are much more vocal, they use a lot more words, and they are cheerful. They have a much more upbeat tempo and pace. How to optimize them. This is a little bit from yesterday. When you meet a high extrovert, what can you do to optimize interaction with them? Camaraderie. They love to celebrate with people. They love to be engaged, oh my goodness. Ask an extrovert a master questioner question, or a particular conversation starter, and they light up. They're like yeah! I wanna tell you all about it! And let them lead. Sometimes that's the case. Sometimes they have a lot of questions they want to ask you. So maybe you have to be an master answerer, right? They're like I wanna engage you in something. And so you can actually take a step back if you want, and let them lead, it's a great way to engage with a high extrovert. Low extrovert, oh, oh, I want to show you an example. Okay, so I found this little video of Brian, look at this. Look at this! Smile! I think someone said smile on Brian, right? That was the numonic device. Wide stance, smile already on the freeze frame, (chuckles) so what I did was, I already have a silent answer from Brian. Okay, don't even listen to the words he says. You can already guess he's high extrovert, just from seeing him across the room, and then I'm going to let you hear the real answer, okay? Hi, I'm Brian. So, Brian is very high extrovert, right? And you can see huge smiling, super wide stance, high energy, he only said two words. You didn't even have to hear the words, just sort of already gave that kind of cheerfulness. Okay, low up, smiles, wide stance, cheerful. Low extroversion. So, on the low side, how to spot them? They engage in more distancing behavior. So distancing behavior is something we talk a lot about in power body language, it's when you're nervous, or something makes you anxious, and your body actually wants to physically distance ourselves from it. We can't even help that we do this. We can distance ourselves by taking a step back, literally. So you might see more introverts be just one step back from the conversation. It makes them a little bit nervous. We can also distance ourselves by having the head tilt, or tilting our head back. We learned peering down your nose in power body language is kind of a judgemental gesture. It's actually a distancing behavior that someone is just trying to asses the situation. So they engage in more distancing behavior because they're trying to understand the situation ahead of them. And I typically have less movement, that's because when we're nervous around people, we're inhibited with our movement. Verbally, they are usually listener and observers. They have a lot less verbal cues unless they're engaged. How to optimize them? Take lead for them. Most of the time an introvert is very grateful, I know I am when I'm in Survive events. I'm situational introvert. I'm very grateful when someone else takes the lead for me in those places. Giving them space. Sometimes they actually don't want to be pushed. They just need a little bit of space. So you might want to ask killer conversation starters and master questions that are not quite as hard hitting. Maybe a little bit less, right? To slowly warm them up to it. And allow for pauses. So, I have to work really hard when I'm with someone who I know's a little uncomfortable, and just give them a little extra time to think. And so I have to really harness the roles I use during my vow of silence. And embrace my fear of silence. So, how could spotting this be helpful. I think this is incredibly helpful because it shows us how our friends like to spend time in social situations. So how could spotting the extroversion be helpful? It's knowing how friends like to spend time. It's knowing how much space a partner might need. For example, my husband is an introvert, and he does not like networking events. Those are survive things for him. So we call it couple points when I'm like, I really want you to go to this networking event with me, I will spend a couple points because I recognize that he doesn't like it, that it makes him really uncomfortable. So making sure I respect that if I'm going to ask him to go to a networking event, or something that's out of his comfort zone, I really make sure that it's worth it. And how a colleague likes to interact. Right? Spotting them right away. And knowing how you can respect their boundaries. High conscientiousness, so, how to spot them. High conscientiousness people typically lean in. The way that we know these, by the way, these observations we've been videotaping and recording people and then taking their personality tests and noticing nonverbal patterns. We're continually adding to this research, 'cause there is actually very little research on nonverbal behavior and personality type. So we notice people that score high in conscientiousness, they tend to lean in. Now leaning in is a proximix thing, it's closing the space between people, and it means they're super engaged. Right? When we lean in, we're like yeah! Tell me more! Tell me more! So high conscientiousness people, they want to get more. They want to know everything. They typically are very good, they make a lot of high eye contact. They want to see you, they want to know you. Again, they want to know all parts of you. They want to take in as much as possible. Verbally, they're purposeful. They actually use less words. They're more purposeful with their words. To optimize them, high efficiency. You're gonna be dealing with a high conscientiousness person, especially in a work situation, they love and appreciate efficiency. They love to be goal-oriented, know what you're both working towards, and they like fairness, taking turns. Your turn, my turn. Your turn, my turn. Low conscientiousness, non verbally, relaxed. The low conscientiousness are easy going, they're flexible. They typically have very relaxed body language. They're usually inflate, they're very comfortable in their space, they're very comfortable with themselves. And they smile a lot more on average. They take it as it comes. They take it in stride. Verbally, they're easy laughers. You know those people who kind of giggle and laugh quite easily, actually love being with those people. Typically, it's because they are low conscientiousness. They just find everything amusing. They're like, happy to role with it. Their brain likes new information. And they can be yes people. Now yes people, I don't mean that in a negative way. I mean that they typically will start with agreement, they'll simply start with like, oh yeah! As they're processing. They say yes. They say positive a lot. The way to optimize it, never agendaize them. I don't know if agendaize is a verb, but we're gonna make it a verb. They do not like having an agenda or a schedule placed upon them. If you're working with a client, and you're trying to put time limits on them, you might get pushed back from them, because that's not respecting the way that they like to work. Unless it's absolutely essential, you want to be really careful on the agenda. I have a problem with this. I'm interviewing and interrogating. So sometimes, when I'm with a low conscientiousness person, I'm a high conscientiousness person, so I want to find out as much as I can about them, right? And so I'm like, I go with questions, and they feel like woah! Have we entered into an interrogation? So, you have to be really careful, especially for my high conscientiousness folks, to not over interrogate when you have a low conscientiousness person. That's not the way that they like to communicate. They love to go with the flow. Have the flow of conversation. That's much more fun for them. And that might mean allowing for a little extra pauses. So how can spotting this be helpful? Expectations is what conscientiousness is all about. It's expectations from friends, partners, and colleagues. What do they expect from you? What do they expect out of the situation? What do they expect out of the event? Also, work habits and home habits. As I talked about, conscientiousness is the most important part between couples. When there's someone who's low conscientiousness in a couple that puts a lot of pressure on home habits. How often do you clean? How well do you clean? Who does the dishes? Who does the grocery shopping? Did you put that thing on the list? Those are all falling into the conscientiousness category, so knowing where someone naturally falls can help you with those work and home habits. Is this resonating with anyone on partners or spouses? Give me some examples. Ericka, you're laughing? Well, I mean, my husband and I are both low in conscientiousness, and so the house work, neither, we both help each other not do it. (laughter) So even in the other classes, this has been a recurring thing, we really had to put things into place, to make each other do it. Because, we feed off of each other and don't do it. I got it, okay. I never heard that one before. I like it. We joke about it quite a bit. Alright, let's go into openness. Okay? High openness, is how to spot them? Nonverbally, I find this fascinating. People who are high openness, actually do a lot more overhead gazing, overhead gazing is when they're looking at you, and they're kinda looking over their head. They tend to think like, hm, it's almost as if they have all these options in their head. And they're like where do I want to go. It's almost as if that's what is happening when you watch a high open person speak. That's what they're doing. They also like close proximix. So, close proximix is the distance between people. They will close the distance on you. If you like your space, and you have someone who's really coming into your space, it's probably because they're high open. They're just curious. They just want to know you. They just want to ask you a lot of questions. They just keep coming closer. To optimize them, they love to be entertained, right? People who are high in curiosity and new experiences, they love hearing about new experiences. They want to hear about all the new things that you are experiencing, so their brains can experience them with you, right? We know that stories make our brains feel like we're there with you, so high openers, they get kind of a substitute dopamine when they hear about your exciting stories. Tell them stories and appreciate their stories. So you might have a story off with a high opener, if you're also a high opener, this happens with me a lot. So, I'll be telling stories and chatting, and I'll be telling a story, and they'll be telling a story, and I tell a story and they tell a story, and we're just like, vibing off each other's stories about travel or excitement because we both love the experiment. We're like, getting high off of mutual curiosity. Can I ask a question? Yes, of course! How does the distracted show up in the verbal? Oh I'm sorry, I skipped verbal! Thank you! So verbally, high open. Because high openers can go any way with the conversation, right you say something and they're like, oh that reminds me of, they can tend to get a little distracted, either in their own thoughts or you tend to go down rabbit holes. Very good to know if you work with a high opener. They don't mean it disrespectfully. They're not trying to avoid the issue. They're just going where their brain takes them. That's just the way that they think. They're very curious, and they're usually very passionate about many things. 'Cause they find a lot of things stimulating. Low open, non-verbally they tend to engage in blocking behavior and lip pursing. Blocking is when we cross our arms over our body. It's when we block or self-protect our torso. We can also block by holding our hands this way. We can also block with objects. So holding something in front of us to block, it feels self-protective. Holding our purse in front of us, almost as a barrier, and that's a blocking behavior. We do it when we're nervous, when we don't even realize it, to try to protect ourselves. It's almost like a security blanket. We use our hands or objects to protect. Lip pursing, so lip pursing happens when someone is not quite sure they wanna let loose. So, you ask a woman what her weight is, and she'll be like, hmmm, and she'll mash her lips together, we do it when we're like, I don't know, if I want to say it. Someone who is low open and wants to hold back a little bit, they do that with their lips because they're thinking do I want to say anything? They're not sure, they tend to think just an extra beat before engaging in conversation. Verbally, they're a little bit more rigid, it can be a little bit more skeptical, and they can rely on canned answers only because that's safe for them. So, I wanna be really careful here. The skepticism is part of their personality. They want to make sure they see everything before they dive into it, so they don't mean it as a disrespectful thing. They're not trying to be negative, it's just the way that they think, it's a protective gesture. Optimizing, the best way to optimize someone who is low open, is to be gentle, right? Don't push them too hard. And to find their spark. High open people have lots of sparks. They're very, very passionate. Like, I talk about scientific studies as if I'm talking about puppies, you know, I just get so excited about them. So for low open people, they might have had less passions, but they do have very strong passions. So try to find their spark, what gets them going. That's the way to really optimize them. And sometimes, it's also just giving more information. Like, offering more explanation, yeah? I'm a bit confused, mostly about myself. Because I just took the personality test, and it said I scored 18 out of 20 on openness. But I recognized myself in low openness. Ah, so! That means, so what part of openness do you recognize yourself in. Canned answers a bit, blocking, skeptical about people mostly. Uh huh, but you have high intellectual curiosity. Yeah, very curious. Yeah, so where are you on extrovert and introvert? Uh, high introvert. Ah, so that's the reason. Introvert, yeah. Right so you're very intellectually curious, but being with people makes you a little bit nervous, so you might have those canned answers. So you have two personality traits that are working to define the way that you are. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, so that's a really special note. So if I was with Michael first of all, I would have guessed, I think I would have guessed that you were high introvert, and very high open in curiosity, so intuitively I would have gotten that, but it would be really good that when you're talking to people, to explain I might be skeptical now, but I actually love talking to you about this topic, I love researching. So you can qualify and explain, so I have this kind of skeptical mind, but it's because I love to find all the answers. So if you know that about yourself, you can explain it when you're with people so they understand you better. I like it, thank you. Thanks. I wanna show you a video of someone, actually I'm not going to tell you what he is, but we're gonna watch the nonverbal responses first, and then we're gonna see his verbal responses. I want you to look for the patterns that we just learned and see what you spot. (silence) (laughter) Ah, funny, energetic, and passionate. Okay, so we watched that on silent first, what nonverbal cues did we see right away that we just learned? Leaning. Leaning. Set up there. Easy laugher. We could see that right away. We see overhead gazing, right? He was like ahh, we didn't even know what he was saying, right, but overhead gazing. Wide stance, so what can we guess? High extravert, high open, high conscientiousness. Alright, he engages in all those nonverbal behaviors. We didn't even need to hear what he says. Now what he said actually backed that up, right? His words actually backed up those answers. But, just looking at his nonverbal, we can hint at, we can guess some of those things. Did I miss the hand? No? Okay. So easy laugher, smiling, wide stance, overhead gazing which meet all of these three things. Let's talk about agreeableness. High agreeable, how to spot them. They are typically nodders and high touch, so they're like yes, yes, I hear you, I feel you, I get you! We learned that nodding is a way to engage people, and agreeable people want to engage as much as possible. They love high touch, they love the connection. And that's how we engage, we literally close the space between people with touch. Verbally, they're very compassionate and very responsive. Right, they actually engage in the ruck technique naturally a lot of the time, very high agreeable person. The way we optimize is we open up, we connect with them, we show them we want to be a team player. We're transparent, and they love being asked for advice, because that's a way of showing emotional support. And that's all a high agreeable people want to do, that's how they get fulfilled, is by helping. Low agreeable, how to spot them. So peering down the nose, we talked about, kind of a distance behavior. They're kind of into checking out everything before they make a decision. I will also see a little bit of contempt, we're going to learn in two segments from now we're going to talk about contempt specifically. But contempt is a one sided mouth raise. It looks like this. Like a smirk. And typically, low agreeable people will engage in the smirk as they're assessing something. Trying to figure it out. Verbally, they can use sarcasm, and their default answer can be usually no, right? So, um, ah, no, ah, their default answer is typically no because they like to asses first. They want to see what's going to happen first. Teamwork is not their first priority, yeah? So if you're one of those people that mirrors people unconsciously when you're talking to them, typically you're high-- Typically, yes. But, you could start doing things in low, like contempt. Right, and you only want to mirror positive body language, only. Neutral positive body language, we'll talk about in the body language course, are you high agreeable? Uh, no. I think I might be skewing left. Skewing to this one, okay. How to optimize low agreeable, finding common interests. That's the way to engage them with you. Keeping it neutral and letting it go. If they say something that's like a no thing, or like you were kind of offended, you wanna let it go, because that's how they fall, that's how they think. Their first priority is not teamwork, it's not bond building. It's not their first priority. And so sometimes it's better to just let it go. So how could spotting this be helpful? Communication habits, right? Agreeableness really affects communication habits, how we like to communicate. It affects boundaries, so high agreeable people typically have very low boundaries. Or I guess low agreeable people would think the high agreeable people would have no boundaries. So, where our boundaries are, what topics are off topic or not? And then mutually shared interested. Agreeableness, what you like and what you don't like. Let's do the last ones. So high neuroticism. How to spot them. Again, you gotta think high neurotic, Woody Allen, is the highest of the high neurotic if you're going to characterize someone. Figety, high movement, hoppers. Even I do it in this course. Have you noticed? I try really hard to like plant, but I have a really hard time, I like to move back and forth. It is because high neurotic people have more nerves, and their nerves literally find their way out of the body through movement. So fidgeting, touching, trying to make sure everything is okay, hopping back and forth, those nerves actually come out in body movement, that's why. Verbally, they tend to be worriers, they want to discuss one thing many ways. They want to see all aspects of it so they're prepared for anything that could possibly happen. How to optimize. They love reassurance. They love patience. And you can also mirror or demonstrate calm. So you being calm helps them be calm. Low neurotic, how to spot them? This is easy. They're very confident. So they typically engage in power pose and launch stands naturally, they make a lot of eye contact, and they love fronting. 'Cause they're very secure and stable. Verbally, they are very good at balancing, listening, and speaking. Right, they're there to bond, they're there to connect, and they're good at balancing and matching you. How to optimize? Showing them that same kind of responsiveness. Verbal and emotional matching, right? So if you have someone who is very calm and secure meet them on that level, it's a great way to build a connection. Because you're secure and calm with them. How could spotting this be helpful? This is how you show support. Noticing if someone is high or low neurotic, that's how you can say yes, I'm here to logistically, emotionally, or be there for you. I think Jason was talking about people in your family who might be high neurotics that you need to know is, they need my support, they need me to to be stable and a rock for them. That is exactly this. Work modes and emotional needs as well. This is helps us gauge someone else's how they work and their emotional needs. So the last part of speed reading people is called the Fixed Point Theory. Which is that you should start with a fixed point, and then build on top of it. That's exactly what we've been doing in all the videos. Is I've been showing a video, and I'm like what's the one thing we intuitively get right away? That's actually I'm training you to do the fixed point theory. I want to show you the order of what's typically easiest to assess someone. So this is them ranked. Typically it's easiest to spot someone's extroversion first, then agreeableness, openness, contentiousness, neuroticism is the hardest to spot, it's usually the last one we can spot. So, since we're all beginners, all I want you to do for the next few days is try to just spot if someone's a high extrovert or a low extrovert. Just stay right there until you feel like you can spot that easily. That's the easiest one to stop typically from body language and from verbal responses. So I just want us to stay there until we get those brain muscles bigger. I want to practice with Leslie. So, pull out your matrix for Leslie, and I want you to fill it out. We're gonna try to guess her areas. When I was growing up, my dream job was to be a college professor, so I thought that I would be teaching philosophy or maybe English in a university. And I might still do that someday. My ideal Sunday would involve being by myself (giggles), not having anyone ask me for anything, and reading the paper, and taking as long as I want to sit and do nothing, I don't get that a lot. So that would be my ideal. I would say a character who is similar to me would be Monica from Friends. I've been told that I'm very compulsive. If you remember, she had a problem where she couldn't go to sleep if there were shoes left out in the wrong place where she would have to like, get up from bed and put them away before she could go to sleep? I'm exactly like that. I cannot go to sleep unless everything is put away. So, intuitive hits. Let's start with extroversion just like I just said. What do we think? Low. Low, you got it, right? Low, right, low extrovert, she's an introvert. Let's look at the clues. So she said she wanted to be a professor, she liked solitary Sundays, that Monica, not being asked anything, and philosophy. She wanted to be a philosophy teacher. I think that actually hints so I put what I think that could help us with. So what do we think for openness? High. High, yeah, most people who love learning in any way, shape, or form, someone who wants to be a teacher, they have to be intellectually curious, high openness. Absolutely, solitary Sunday, right, that taught us about the introversion. She would rather just sort of be alone. Monica, what did that show us? Two things. What were they? High neuroticism. High neuroticism and-- High conscientious. High conscientious is very tolerant, that was right away. And, not being asked anything. I think that that shows a low agreeableness, which also showed up in her personality test. It was just like she needs to figure out her own thing. On her ideal Sunday, no one asks anything of her. Who can guess her intelligence type? Yeah? Now, I thought that the fact that she didn't want to be asked anything meant that she was agreeable, because if somebody asked her something, she felt like she had to do it. So in order to relax, she needed no body to ask her. Well, high agreeable person feeds off of helping people. Ahh, as oppose to As her ideal Sunday. Finding it draining. Right. God it. Like her conscientious makes her feel that she has to meet it. Ah. The duty has to be met. But she doesn't feed off of it, yeah. Um, who can guess the intelligence type for them. Yeah? Intra-personal. So hers was. This is really hard. Intrapersonal, how did you get that? That was really hard! Just 'cause she was talking about goals and stuff. And, she said someday I still want to do it. I love it. Intuitive hit on that. 'Cause that was a hard one! Right, awesome guys! Let's do one more, let's do Stacy who we've met. Alright, let's fill out her matrix. (giggles) My dream job when I was growing up was to be an actress (giggles). I wanted to one day win an Oscar for some sort of movie. I, yeah, I really was aiming for that. And, Tom Cruise was my inspiration which was ridiculous. (giggles) The acting part, is any of that still true? Um, in some, I feel like the acting part is still a little bit there, because I do think it has led, to like my creative goals in what I want to do, and that's sort of a reason why I started to write a musical because I still have that little bit of a bug of wanting to perform in some capacity, or to act in some capacity. So, I do think I have it deep down inside. And if you've ever seen me sing karaoke, you know that it's still there (chuckles). My favorite thing about my job would definitely be the people, like I just love, just interacting with everyone here. Like, we are all very passionate about what we do. So I feel like you feel that energy from other people that you are able to really, you're really connect and feed off of each other. And I think that's been what makes it so exciting to work here is it's been, I don't know, it's a good experience. (chuckles) What I don't like about, I guess, Dayton, Ohio is there is some sense of staggering like, limitations. I felt that I wanted to go somewhere that was a little bit more open with culture and had some more art, and a lot more going on than Dayton. Not that Dayton doesn't have anything going on, but I felt like coming out here to Oakland, and San Francisco, gave me more opportunities to be able to see something different, you know (chuckles)? My favorite thing about my job would definitely be the people, like I just-- Alright, so, let's look at Stacy's matrix. So I think we can actually get most of her things. So let's look at her clues: performer, some creativeness, working with people, musical, goofy, loving. Have we learned that she wanted to do a Keanu Reeves musical so what intuitive hit extraversion what do we think? Probably high. High, right, we saw those ques. She was an easy laugher, she was kind of gesturing, loose body language, yeah, absolutely. What was the next one that you think that we can get? High openness. High openness, and what made you think that? The gazing. The gazing, yeah. A lot of overhead gazing. And, her desire to try to new things. Where she's like Dayton, Ohio didn't have a lot of new stuff. I forget the order that I put these in. Ah, so I said high agreeableness. Why agreeableness? And she is actually agreeable. Highly agreeable, yeah? She loves teamwork, people, groups. Absolutely. What's her intelligence type? Audio-musical? I, that's actually a very good guess, I think that's her secondary one, but what Maggie just said, was her favorite thing about her job. Inter-personal. Inter-personal, absolutely. And we're gonna see that again and again in her answers. I think audio music is her second, right? She talked about karaoke, talked about singing Keanu in musical. What else do we see? Openness, neurotic. Okay so we have high open, contentiousness neuroticism what do we think, yeah? Well, she was easy to laugh. That's why I thought the contentiousness was low. Mmhmm, okay, so equal openness. So actually her personal mission statement which we'll learn about later, clearly pushes her out of her zone. And she's actually equal contentiousness. Alright, that's why it was a hard one to get. I put it in red, and low neuroticism. How did I get that? How do we know that? Anyone know? Yeah? I kinda, just watching the body language, kinda free and easy-- Yeah, free, easy going, she actually leaned back a few times while she was talking, right? So yes, absolutely, your intuitive hit was correct. So in your workbook, I have a couple of different ways, questions that you can use to tap into each of these personality areas. So let's say that you are sitting with someone new, with like, I think I get their extraversion, I think I get their agreeableness, but I want to get their conscientiousness. I have that in your workbook for you to do on your own today, a couple work book problems you can do on your own. Conquering your fears, we're actually going up into the final level on the path to connection. Being socially fearless, stop feeling like a fraud, and making love to your fear (giggle). We're gonna talk about 14, creating value. I'm gonna teach you the nine value languages. The other part of our core in the personality matrix. How to create deeper bonds, and how to understand human motivation. Your challenge today is to build a matrix with an old friend. I want you to see if you can talk to an old friend, give them a call, chat with them, send them an email, see if you can figure out what their matrix is. Second is to build a matrix with two new people. So, two new people could be a colleague, could be a new friend, see if you could build their matrix. See how close you can get them. And start with extroversion. Until you're comfortable with the rest of them. Alright, it's time to talk about what's the most important thing that we learned today? Oh yes! Tell me! I think I've always read people when I met them face to face, but to me, this entire day actually, and a few episodes before then, are teaching me how to read people just from words. Something that you can do over a phone call, over an interview on a call, even when you never, ever, see them, so that's kind of very interesting. And in emails too, yeah! What's something else, yeah? So I think this is what I said a couple days ago too, the reaction of a person in front of me, their cues, their verbal and nonverbal cues, don't necessarily have anything to do with their reaction me. It could be just, their, type. Yeah, so sometimes if some of these different ques might be scale, if that person's exhibiting them, it might be sort of scary or off-putting to me, but it might not be be, it's just the way they are. That's the way their personality type is, yeah. I love it, one more learning experience you've got before we close for the day. Ah yeah, Michael. Take baby steps. That's right. Start with one thing. Because it's so much information, and so much you need to try to read on people. Yes, and this is also the waterfall method, right? I gave you a ton of these little segments so you can go back and sort of go through the skills one at a time. We're gonna talk about how to break that down in Segment 15. So we're gonna talk about sort of how to break that down into a digestible format. Hope you'll join us for our next segment. We'll see you there! (clapping)

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Attraction Murderers
Awesome Club One Sheet
High PQ Skills Answer Key
High PQ Skills Template
Love Language Worksheet
Monthly Action Plan
The Matrix
Your Ideal Worksheet
Skills Worksheet
Personality Matrix Cheat Sheets
Questions Every Couple Should Answer
Citation List
Personality Matrix One Pager
The 10 Questions
Superhero Activity List
Your Next Big Thing Worksheet
Killer Conversation Starters
Bonus Video: How to be a Master Conversationalist
Workbook - Master Your People Skills

Ratings and Reviews

Adam
 

This is the best course I have ever taken on anything, anywhere, ever. As an adult with Asperger’s, I have been studying social skills and nonverbal communication for a long time. All the books I’ve read and other courses like these I’ve watched prior to this one, didn’t even teach me half of what Vanessa has taught me in this course. Master Your People Skills has provided me with literally everything I have ever wanted to learn from inner confidence, charisma, making conversation, making a great first impression, being memorable, etc. Vanessa is such a charismatic, passionate, and knowledgable mentor, who has a real gift of taking her many years of research and hard work, and teaching it in a way that is easy and fun to learn. This course is the real deal, you will be a master after you are finished with it, and I would recommend it to anyone.

user-15eb6d
 

I have just finished day 13 and so far the course has been amazing every single day. Vanessa is a great teacher and I love how her work is down-to-earth, practical, very applicable and rooted in scientific research. It's not the usual "ra ra ra, I can turn you into a master people schmoozer-type courses" found elsewhere. Anyone that wants to improve themselves and have better relationships in all aspects of their lives, both professional and personal, should get this course. There is so much quality material in this course, I look forward to going over the videos and the workbook more than once in order to improve my own people skills. The course is worth every penny and much more! Thank you Vanessa!

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES