The Non-Verbal Expert: These Behaviors Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Someone

Facial structure and features influence perception of trustworthiness and villainy (William Dafoe is 'naturally cast as villain' due to angular face structure), and there's research from UPenn on how face structure advantages some people in social contexts.

“William defo is usually the villain cuz he's got that really like angular sort of like type of face... there's a professor out of upen that's done does a lot of stuff uh about Impressions and the structure of someone's face... like that stuff's an advantage in life”

In early dating, there's a balance between being authentic and managing perception; excessive authenticity can overwhelm, but excessive inauthenticity will eventually be exposed and feels inauthentic.

“don't everybody's got a song playing and sometimes you just need to dial the volume up and down some people try to play a completely different song so they try to become someone completely different... after three or four dates it's just like this is not really me”

Most executives who claim to want open communication have no idea their own behavior contradicts this—they screamed at someone, then were shocked the person stopped bringing problems, not understanding the impact of their non-verbal feedback.

“I have met people that are wonderful wonderful wonderful people but yeah the way they give feedback oh my God it just ripped the person apart and they're like no I I love them they're one of my best people”

In forensic settings, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) uses empirical keying to detect lying by asking the same questions in different ways across 530 items, so respondents can't remember earlier answers and pattern inconsistencies reveal deception.

“there's a professor out of upen... like one of the biggest tests I think still use the mmpi 2 Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory it's like 530 questions and a lot of the inventory is asking questions in different ways so you don't remember what you said on question 26 and that's the point of it”

People are reluctant to update opinions after forming them—they build Bayesian models and stop looking for new evidence—and the only reliable way to change someone's view is to show them they were really wrong repeatedly until they question their framework.

“we have this basian brain and even people that are the most like think they're the most basy in approach when it comes to human behavior we get lazy and we build these things and we don't change and I feel like the only time we're changed is if we're shown we're really wrong”

An identity shift happens when you decide that failure is unacceptable and commit to changing how you approach work; Eastman experienced this going from terrible student to straight-A student through deliberate identity reconstruction.

“I felt like a complete failure... I had this identity that I was a smart person... I was like this is when everything changes and literally it was the it was a massive identity shift... and when I started teaching psychology those were the two big things that shifted me”

Shared interest in self-development and growth is a critical compatibility factor that many people don't realize is important until they experience it, because they've been in relationships with people who don't value it.

“she was like really interested in self-development and I was like I didn't realize how important this is to me... met somebody that was like really interested in self-development... I was like I didn't realize how important this is to me and it was so funny CU then it was all these things that are like truly important to me”

A reliable predictor of relationship dissolution is when two partners interact primarily through transactional communication (groceries, diapers, errands) without asking each other deeper questions, repeated across multiple interactions.

“my uncle gave me this test I think it was like a decade ago now and without fail it is predicted every divorce the test was so simple it was like if you hang out with people and they talk to each other but only in transaction and transaction being like you get groceries you change the diaper you like errands you know sort of like day-to-day life stuff and they don't ask each other questions like that is a huge red flag”

Building a proprietary language model trained on your own curated dataset (e.g., all non-verbal behavior PDFs) would allow domain-specific querying more powerful than general ChatGPT, and this is now feasible.

“we have a pretty robust database of all like the PDFs on nonble behavior from every academic Journal... I could build my own little language model on that and just ask questions and query that”

Society progresses through people who operate outside norms, so optimizing everyone toward normal would halt progress; the goal is helping people understand normal well enough to deliberately break it strategically rather than accidentally.

“our society progresses because of people who are outside of the the norm like on an individual basis it might be very detrimental to you on a societal basis it's hugely advantageous... I'm never pushing people towards normal I'm getting them to understand normal to be themselves in the most powerful way”

When evaluating experts, look for 'I don't know' responses; experts who admit uncertainty distinguish themselves from charlatans who always have an answer, because complex domains don't have universal answers.

“so it's like this is my opinion about this thing but not like it's absolute fact and nobody else and I think when you find somebody like that I like to look for I don't knows so whenever I talk to any expert and there every there's always an answer sometimes it's nice to be like I don't know or there's not always an answer to something right they don't always because I feel like there's a compulsion to always contribute or always to be confident and the truth is it's just not possible”

Some highly effective leaders violate every best practice in leadership literature but succeed because their behavior is perfectly aligned with their organizational KPIs and incentive structure—their 'bad' behavior is actually optimal for their environment.

“I've seen certain leaders be horrible and get incredible things done you violate every book ever written about leadership... and you look at their kpis and their metrics and how the organization structured and they're like they're actually in perfect alignment with how they should be acting”

The Rockefeller Method is examining small operational processes (how many tar pieces are needed on oil barrels?) looking for unnecessary complexity or waste—and this scales from industrial operations to SaaS spending to personal life.

“Johny Rockefeller was in a oil barreling facility... he's going why do you use nine or 10 or whatever pieces of tar... made this like Rockefeller method internally where every quarter I would sort of view things from that perspective”

Video content is permanent and subject to future re-analysis, whereas in-person moments are ephemeral—this creates different strategic incentives: you might not care what people think today but will care what they extract from a permanent record 10-15 years later.

“nobody cares in day-to-day life and interactions a video lasts forever so what people care about today and what somebody's going to pick out in 10 or 15 years uh are two different things”

Presentations fail because people treat 'presentation' as a different social category requiring special behavior, when in reality a presentation is just talking to a group of people who are responding with head nods and body language—breaking that construct is the first step to improvement.

“the biggest thing that gets in people's way when they're presenting is the social construction that a presentation is something different... you're just talking to a group of people and they're responding by shaking their head and nodding”

When assessing whether someone is morally bad, Blake uses counterfactual reasoning: 'What would the world have to look like for me for that to be my default behavior?' This perspective-shifting exercise typically reveals that most people would commit similar acts if they shared the same circumstances, trauma history, and social context.

“whenever I see somebody who does something that I think is uh not something I would do I always ask myself what would the world have to look like for me for that to be my default behavior and it can be often an Illuminating process to get out of your perspective shift into a different perspective”

ChatGPT could replace expensive data science/analyst workflows (Eastman spent $150k on dashboards and data cleaning that could now be done for $20 in ChatGPT in a weekend).

“I probably spent maybe $150,000 in hiring data scientists to clean and to produce dashboards for Beyonds chat GPT I could have done it all in a weekend 20 bucks”

Blake's software analyzes language patterns and tonality; he doesn't fully separate non-verbal from verbal because words don't mean anything in isolation—meaning emerges from the full context (tone, body language, words, situation).

“all of our software analyzes language patterns it analyzes tonality and I go into every you can't really separate non-verbal from verbal I maybe the only place you could do this is poker and a couple of other things the truth is we we're always so the model for how we read a behavior is we're looking at Behavior within a context and we're coming up the reason for why it occurs if you don't have like words you don't understand the context that's why like a lot of these body language people like take a 10-second clip and be like you know uh because my feet are sitting this way that means this or that and they just like build this narrative words allow you to understand the consistency of that narrative”

People exist on a spectrum from 'literal' (unable to detect tonal or contextual variations) to 'contextual' (extracting meaning from tonal shifts), and most people over-contextualize certain communications, creating friction with more literal people.

“first you have to understand where you are on this threshold of I call it literals and contextual so there are certain people that all right I can say these things three ways I can say Shane how are you I can say Shane how are you I can say Shane how are you there are people out there that see no difference between those three things they're all just Shane how are you and there's other people that over contextualize”

Blake explicitly targets building three-standard-deviation-right behavior in trust-building: finding nuanced topics others rarely discuss, and then ensuring his behavioral response (facial expressions, body language, tonality) matches the emotional significance of those topics to create authentic reciprocal connection.

“so for me I always look to have conversations or do things that are like three standard deviations to the right of a bell curve so like if me and you had a conversation for an hour we're bringing up topics that you normally don't have with other people which is going to create a higher level of trust between me and you so I'm looking for more nuanced topics and nuan areas to draw that conclusion and then to have the mimicking of my behavior to be associated with the excitement for those things”

Trust forms through behaviors that align with society's bell curve distribution of trustworthiness—eye contact patterns, response timing to emotional questions, and consistency—and people have individual thresholds for what behaviors trigger trust, often rooted in childhood experiences.

“trust from a non-verbal perspective is just you could think of behaviors on a bell curve distribution right so certain people are going to act in certain ways that are not in alignment with how Society perceives that behavior to be trustworthy... everybody has their own sort of perceptual lens for what trustworthy behaviors are aren't right”

Blake's coaching methodology focuses on ensuring that a leader's intent (how they see themselves and what they want to be perceived as) is aligned with their actual behavior (how they come across); this alignment is what determines whether an open-door policy, feedback approach, or leadership style actually works.

“so that's why zoom and video is so important for me cuz sometimes when you work with an executive or you work with anybody and you tell them something they don't see it like the way that you describe but when you show them on video that feedback I was like listen go back 20 years in your career if you were given this feedback how would you feel”

Most people cannot articulate why they perceive others the way they do; they hold implicit theories about behavior but when forced to break down frame-by-frame why they made a judgment, they lack awareness of the origin of their perception.

“a lot of these body language people like take a 10-second clip and be like you know uh because my feet are sitting this way that means this or that and they just like build this narrative... most people don't know how they're coming up with these perceptions they don't really understand the origins of it and when you break it down systematically and they start to see it they get to understand a little bit more depth”

Trust formation is highly idiosyncratic: some executives report they never trust someone who doesn't shake their hand first—not because handshakes inherently signal trustworthiness, but because their father taught them that rule at age 12, and they've never updated that mental model.

“I've met with Executives that have these weird things that like oh I never trust somebody who walks in the room and doesn't shake my hand first I'm like okay so why and we look at it and it's like when they were 12 years old their dad taught them that right so you got to understand that it's build trust build trust there's not this like step one two 3 four five it's way more complex than that”

Blake observed that at a dinner with six friends, when one friend began complaining about his wife and others joined in with their own complaints, the conversation shifted into normative wife-bashing. He interrupted by asking why the complaining friend didn't just divorce his wife if he was unhappy, which reset the conversation to positive expressions of spousal appreciation.

“I was at a dinner once and I was with like six of my friends and one of my friends started like complaining about his wife and I everybody else started to like it was like such a cool Dynamic everybody else was like yeah you know my wife does that too and it bothers me and I looked at my friend I was like why don't you just get a divorce and he was like what I was like just get a divorce and he was like obviously L not going to get a divorce I'm like well why are you sitting here like bad mouthing your wives like I don't have anything bad to I love my wife I love spending time with her like why are we doing this and immediately the conversation switches to be like yeah you're right like I love my life wife for this reason”

People's stated ideal partners often don't match who they actually pursue; there's a gap between 'mimic desire' (what you think you want) and actual desire (what you choose), and understanding actual desire requires observing patterns of past relationships, not asking people to list ideals.

“I think people have this real weird concept of it's almost like mimic desire like there's a desire of what you think you want but what you actually want and I feel like the first step in really dating is like what do you really want and for a super young super somebody's young and their 20s or whatever you don't know it's going to take some time to sort of like figure it out but I think doing that work of like what what makes me happy like what am I looking for in somebody else”

Performance storytelling (practiced, polished personal narratives about life-changing moments) feels inauthentic; authentic social storytelling is spontaneous and simple, like how you'd tell a friend something that just happened.

“the problem is people are now in in our society going into performance storytelling which is a lot different than social storytelling so performance storytelling is the when I was seven years old something happened that Chang the course of my life and it's kind of like I find it icky um a real story is just telling a story like you tell your friend friends but it has a beginning it has an end”

If you perceive yourself as significantly lower status than another person in an organization, it becomes difficult to read that person accurately because you're operating under a power hierarchy assumption rather than seeing them as a peer.

“if you are falling in line with a power structure it's often very difficult to navigate it meaning if it's like oh my God this person is this and this person is this and I'm just this you're very rarely going to be able to see eye to eye with that person because you perceive them here and you perceive yourself here”

The most effective communication style is when the speaker is maximally comfortable and free, not when they follow technical rules about hand placement or vocal delivery; coaching should first establish comfort, then build skills on top of that foundation.

“with a lot of the non-verbal Behavior stuff and movement I have found reliably that the most effective version of someone is when they're the most comfortable barut every single time”

For hyper-literal people (who don't naturally pick up on context and tone), learning contextual communication is not intuitive but rather learned as an algorithm or set of rules; they can improve through explicit coaching, but it requires systematic instruction rather than natural osmosis.

“I had a client once that um this is years ago...he walks in and he goes Blake how are and introduces everyone hey how are you...everybody starts hysterical laughing...I was explaining to him like this is why the context was different M and I'm drawing Circles of all the layers of context in that Dynamic and he's like okay I I understand it now...that it was inappropriate for that Dynamic and I have so much empathy for people that don't see the world that way because it's so so so hard it's it's learned almost for people like that right it's like now next time he knows in that situation but it's not intuitive for him it's like a learned behavior and algorithm he's follow”

Most of the problems people perceive in presentations (hand movements, filler words) are through the speaker's own perceptual lens and not what actually improves audience engagement; Blake's clients often identify issues the audience never noticed while ignoring what the audience actually responded to.

“a lot of communication experts will watch like a presentation and they'll go well I I think you should move your hands more or less or I think you should speak up like they're doing that through their perceptual lens they're not optimizing for the engagement of the audience”

The distinction between deception (intentional falsehood) and self-deception (believing your own story) and status-seeking (performing knowledge to be included) is important; these reveal different character structures and should be distinguished.

“it's just different but yeah but you know people lie for different reasons for shame for embarrassment”

The industry of non-verbal behavior focuses on assigning meanings to behaviors, when it should focus on perception—understanding that a behavior falls outside the distribution of what's socially normative, without claiming fixed meaning.

“the biggest problem with this industry of non-verbal behavior and body language is it's pushed towards meaning not perception... it's just understanding that your behavior is outside the distribution of what would be perceived as socially relevant”

If you're a coach, you should have three coaches yourself; if you don't, you should stop being a coach because you've lost touch with being coached.

“if you're a coach and you don't have three coaches you should stop being a coach”

The most effective dating paradigm is storytelling rather than question-and-answer, because stories contain multiple threads of connection that would be impossible to capture through direct questioning, and story-based interactions reveal authentic patterns of relating.

“the best paradigm for dates is storytelling never questions because when you fall into this question and all right so if we take if we write a story out let's say you told me like before we started this you're telling me a story about your kids right and we list that out there were so many threads of connection between me and you in that story it would have been impossible for you to do that in a question and answer”

People viewing videos of interactions on dates perceive more attraction and connection in slightly awkward, deeper interactions than in smooth, surface-level ones, contradicting assumptions about what makes good dating chemistry.

“the best date is the one that was a little bit more Awkward a little bit weird but it had more depth to it and those people connected at a much deeper level the surface ones they look”

You can validate ChatGPT accuracy by back-testing on domains you know intimately (e.g., facial expression research), then track improvement; Eastman found significant errors 6 months ago but much better results now.

“I I sort of back tested this and did it on things that I have an intimate knowledge about... it wasn't... it was bad I was like you just made up a person... I did it like six months ago and it wasn't Oho... it is getting considerably better”

Setting up physical spaces so people face each other rather than across desks (couch-based meetings instead of desk-based) creates feelings of equal standing and presence, increasing psychological safety.

“I had worked for one person a long time ago that had like a desk and he had a like really large desk and then there was a chair and he would every time somebody came to the office he would like walk behind his desk like shake their hand and then bring them to like a couch setup where they were faced one-on-one”

Many leaders and thought leaders are disconnected from the actual pressures executives face (board demands, stock price, team conflicts), making their advice disconnected from reality; the real skill is identifying the 80/20 changes that have maximum impact.

“I think a lot of let's say like like thought leaders and Leadership... they're disconnected from what leaders actually go through... it's so much harder than just like oh you know be a little bit more happy... I think you really as like a coach you have to feel like you know what's the 8020”

Power structures in organizations are invisible and often unspoken; one way to map them is to create a decision tree of what could be happening (e.g., is the new CEO driven by PE incentives or company growth?), then cross-reference against daily behavioral evidence to narrow possibilities.

“the first way to do it is to do this exercise where you sort of do a decision tree of the potential like show people what the potential landscape could be so for example let's say all of a sudden uh a new CEO gets pulled in and we want to say okay what is this CEO going through is this CEO just pushed in by the PE company does the CEO have Performance Based incentives like what are they trying to do”

The speaker has a 'disarming quality' where he projects low judgment and accepts people across a wide spectrum of behaviors, which gives people permission to gradually reveal more of themselves; they keep pushing boundaries and he remains open, which builds trust but also allows people to expose hidden motives (like the man who revealed infidelity).

“I definitely have a disarming quality to me when I meet people cuz I'm very I'm not really judgmental I'm a I'm have like a low judgment so I have I have friends on every spectrum of everything right so I I think I give permission to people to just sort of be themselves and then they keep pushing and I'm still fine with it and then they keep pushing and I'm like okay like it is what it is you keep going there”

Social narratives are powerful and shape behavior; when one person shifts a cultural narrative (like when Blake asked friends why they were complaining about their wives if they wanted to leave them), others quickly fall in line and adopt the new narrative, suggesting people are 'sheep' in their willingness to follow powerful voices that challenge the current story.

“I was at a dinner once and I was with like six of my friends and one of my friends started like complaining about his wife and I everybody else started to like it was like such a cool Dynamic everybody else was like yeah you know my wife does that too and it bothers me and I looked at my friend I was like why don't you just get a divorce”

Teaching requires frequent practice (80-100 hours per week in Blake's case) because instant audience feedback creates rapid calibration of what stories, examples, and explanations work, which is impossible to develop through theoretical study or infrequent presentations.

“when I was teaching psychology at cuni I was speaking like 80 to 100 hours a week both at my office and both instant feedback loop of what story worked what story didn't work like did that land did that offend somebody and you just start to develop this quicker repertoire of things that actually work”

There's a gap between the theory of leadership concepts (e.g., 'radical candor,' 'give direct feedback') and their application; people read a book about a concept and then apply it in ways that violate the principle (e.g., being harsh and calling it 'radical candor'), because they don't understand the contextual element that determines whether a behavior lands as honest versus cruel.

“there's a major Gap in leadership or organizational culture that whole world between Theory and application so somebody reads a book about maybe radical cander or some like concept and then the way that they apply it is completely different”

Helping others and prioritizing their needs should come from genuine concern, not from transactional calculation; if you offer help while expecting reciprocal benefit (e.g., mentioning your own shoot when helping carry equipment), it signals inauthenticity and undermines trust.

“you can never measure the ROI of a social interaction you have no idea what one interaction will lead to...you can't do it from a place of trying to get something like like it's super weird if all of a sudden I bring this stand in and I'm like hey guys I have a shoot after this were you willing cuz it's like oh I I see where it's going right so now it's insincere”

The compound effect of consistent genuine other-focused behavior is immeasurable; one social interaction can lead to unexpected positive outcomes (connections, opportunities, relationships) that would never have happened if you hadn't shown up with integrity in that moment.

“you can never measure the ROI of a social interaction you have no idea what one interaction will lead to I mean I went to a an a a Meetup and I met you and now I'm here right like just you never know what one thing is going to do”

Creating a personal operating manual that explicitly names your quirks, needs, and communication preferences is valuable because it controls how people perceive you; without one, others imagine a narrative about you that may be inaccurate, but if you define it first, you create the narrative.

“I really believe that uh the personal like operating manuals that sometimes people I've seen some people do them that are so good and just like listen you need here my quirks here my things about me you get it all out there first so that you create the narrative and not somebody else is imagining The Narrative”

Blake color-codes his highlights by purpose (blue = interesting writing, red = research needed, yellow = lifetime perspective), and wants to build a spaced repetition system using flashcards to retain key insights from reading.

“I have this different colors mean different things so I'm trying to improve my writing right now so blue is a I like the way a sentence or a paragraph is structured red is I need to do like more research on this yellow is one of those things that I want to sort of like take away from a lifetime perspective”

People in prison lie on sensitive inventory questions (e.g., about sexual behavior) for shame and embarrassment; their reactivity to such questions is contextually sensible given the environment (men's prison population being asked about sexual behavior) and shouldn't be interpreted as deceptive or pathological.

“people lie for different reasons for shame for embarrassment I remember I I had to ask this inventory about um sex like how have they had sex in the past like 12 months 9 months 6 months 3 months and they're in prison in a men population when you ask that question people get like very like what you saying like people react in a different way and it's like it makes total contextual sense that they would”

Invisible social norms (how to act on a podcast, in an elevator, at a dinner) are only obvious after you violate them; people with low social conformity face constant low-level ostracization for breaking norms they never explicitly learned.

“right now in this room there's just this invisible Norms of how I should act on a podcast how you should be like and if you don't know those Norms you're sort of like ostracized”

The speaker was on a double date and identified within minutes that the other man was cheating on his wife by observing: (1) his gaze pattern—prolonged staring at an attractive woman with 'predator-like desire' rather than a casual glance, and (2) his verbal testing—asking questions probing whether the speaker cheated, which indicated he was assessing whether the speaker was 'one of us' (someone who cheats).

“I was like 100% confident I would have placed a lot of money uh there was two things one it was like the Gaze Direction in the person's eyes so for for example like you know an attractive woman walks by it's not uncommon for men to go like that and glance away the way that he glanced was like there was just a certain amount of desire in his eyes where he just like stared and was like and what he was doing he was doing all these like more like a predator”

Many open, collaborative CEOs report that employees avoid bringing them problems despite repeated explicit invitations; employees don't believe the CEO's stated openness because of the CEO-employee hierarchical gap, regardless of the CEO's actual behavior.

“I've worked with people like executive I've work with CEOs that are the most open every all of their behavior suggest that they're the most open honest come to them with problems but people don't come to them with problems because they're CEO yeah they say it over and over and over again and I look at why and they're like I don't want to bother the CEO with this I'm like they said seven times this year come to me with this specific kind of problem”

High-status people (Elon, Steve Jobs) can violate social norms because their authority and power buffer them from social consequence; low-status people must learn and follow norms before they can safely break them.

“sometimes one of the things that happens is these like hyper or really successful people who violate those Norms get modeled and it's like whoa whoa whoa like Elon Musk could violate all the Norms he wants Steve Jobs can too but like you can't you don't have that Authority you don't have that that contextual understanding of who you are so you have to sort of play the game in the beginning”

The fundamental barrier to getting honest feedback is that most leaders don't create the psychological safety or permission structure to allow direct feedback; even when they ask, people self-protect rather than be honest.

“the truth is a lot of people don't want to do that work yeah like they're just going to protect themselves from that and and listen also I think we have a problem in this kind of like self-help personal development world where I I think a lot of let's say like like thought leaders and Leadership and all I think they're disconnected from what leaders actually go through”

Andrew Huberman exemplifies the new model of expert: distinguished senior professor with extensive research, but maintains boyish passion for science and admits uncertainty, which makes him more credible than experts claiming definitive answers.

“I think this is one thing that like uberman does so well of just being this kind of like like you know senior uh very distinguished Professor tons of research but has this like boyish kind of passion for Science and for that and I think that comes across is that's the new expert one person that's not just I have all the answers and trust me and I'm right but one person that's able to have humility and adapt over time”

Blake adopted the 'Rockefeller Method' as a quarterly practice: systematically reviewing processes, questioning assumptions, and finding marginal efficiencies that accumulate into significant organizational improvements.

“so after reading that I made this like Rockefeller method internally where every quarter I would sort of view things from that perspective right and uh it it comes up in weird like SAS ways right now where it's like oh wow we spent a lot of money on this like reach out to them and see if we could maybe get a bulk discount and the amount that comes back from that method is absurd like just it just works”

To identify incompetence masked by confidence, introduce fake information (e.g., 'Have you read the Dillington 2014 study?') and see if the person admits ignorance or pretends knowledge—this reveals their willingness to sacrifice accuracy for appearing knowledgeable.

“I think the easiest way is to throw out fake information and see how people respond... I just like make up studies I'm like have you read that like dillington study in like 2014... they're like yeah I think I've read it and I'm like yeah where they did the double blind... I just made it up”

The best communicators have 'range'—variability in tonality, movement, and predictability that keeps the listener's brain engaged, whereas auto-complete-able speech (predictable pattern) disengages attention.

“one thing that I've noticed in the best communicators is they have range so the they have the ability there's a lot of shifts in their tonality there's a lot of uh movement you kind of can't predict what the next word is going to be there I just think there's something that the brain loves that it love it loves the chaos”

A powerful way to get feedback on communication is to ask predictive questions (e.g., 'How many times did you leave an email from me feeling frustrated on a 1-5 scale?') rather than trait questions, because people can easily conceptualize and answer predictive framing.

“you ask somebody a question would on a scale from 1 to five How likely are you to invite this person to a dinner... the answer is so easy for them to answer so I like questions that are about predictive type of things right not about just your trait”

Deception detection is harder than other behavioral reading because it's multifactorial and context-dependent; there may never be a universal system for detecting deception because people lie for different reasons in different ways.

“I think the best way so on the non-verbal Behavior Spectrum dating is probably the easiest Paradigm to understand and deception is the hardest because it's so multifaceted it's so complex uh I don't know if there ever will be a system that can predict whether or not someone's lying or not because it's just it's a Nuance that's very difficult to encapsulate”

'Go positive and go first' (Peter Kaufman's principle) means initiate positivity and generosity without waiting for reciprocal permission, which unlocks unmeasurable returns and is distinct from waiting for others to go positive first.

“go positive and go first... most people don't go positive go first they want to go positive but they want the other person to go positive first and so they sit around waiting for people to recognize their potential”

The best non-verbal improvement tool is recording yourself in interactions—reviewing both your own behavior and the real-time reactions of others to you—so you can see when you're losing people's attention.

“if you work I promise you you have a good amount of video on zoom on whatever you just basically want to re-watch those videos and make sure that your intent is aligned with that”

The biggest talkers are the ones most likely to become violent when their ego or sense of disrespect is violated, whereas truly dangerous people (particularly those genuinely dangerous) tend to be quieter and operate unpredictably.

“the biggest talkers are the ones that just talk talk talk talk and they don't really do much but the problem with them is that like if that threshold of ego or disrespect gets viol violated I feel like they feel the need to actually assert themselves”

Most people can't develop effective presentation skills without doing repeated practice, yet people typically prepare intensively for one presentation and then stop, rather than doing presentations daily for weeks; this explains why most people remain mediocre presenters despite being smart.

“people just don't put in the Reps like that's something that just takes time and most people work so hard for a presentation and they do it and it's like oh it's flood of release where they should have just done them every day for the next three weeks do a presentation it'd be so much better”

Control-oriented people (do-it-myself ethos) need to build teams that will push back and do better work, and the culture should value employees who say 'I'll do it and do it better than you'.

“I am a very big control do it myself ethos... it's like often hard for people to work for me... I have to almost get people around me that I'm like listen the thing I value the most is when you say no I'll do it and I'll do it better than you”

Comedians achieve presentation mastery without deliberate training by using instant feedback from audience response, whereas most presenters don't attend to audience signals in real time because they're too in their head about delivery.

“comedians effectively take that approach without recording the audience because it's based on oh that joke got a laugh I'm going to use that next time that joke fell flat I'm not going to use that next time it's the feedback loop is instant”

World-class presenters are focused on their audience, not on themselves; they're not trying to appear a certain way but rather trying to connect with and serve the audience, and this shift from self-focus to audience-focus is what distinguishes elite from average communicators.

“I truly believe that the most worldclass best presenters are truly about Their audience and not about themselves they're not trying to come across a certain way they're trying to like”

When someone recalls an emotionally significant memory, looking away is socially congruent because it's authentic emotional processing; looking directly at the listener suggests the memory is less emotionally real or the person is performing authenticity.

“if you ask me Blake what is the most important moment that happened in your life and I go well the most important moment that happened in your life and I look at you dead at your eyes when I'm saying that look it looks better when I'm like I mean the most important moment that ever happened in my life it looks more genuine because it makes sense that I'm looking away to recall an emotional event and then look back at you so it's in alignment with how Society perceives things”

Younger incarcerated people (20s-26) show different danger markers than older institutionalized people (40+) because older prisoners have learned to navigate institutional norms and control behavior; age and time in system are significant variables in dangerousness assessment.

“also the younger population like you know people in their 20s that are just 25 26 in prison um it's different it's a different time for someone versus 40 or 50 that have had that experience and that lifelong uh it's just it's completely different when you've been institutionalized and grown up in that area and understand how to handle yourself and how to play the game and how to navigate all these things”

Bill Clinton's famous ability to make people feel like 'the most important person in the room' stems from piercing eye contact, sustained focus, and warm intensity maintained over several minutes—a combination of behavioral elements that creates presence.

“he walked right up to her and he looked at her with a level of presence and focus for two and a half or three minutes... the piercing eye contact and the way that he looks deep into your soul... there's Ely a balance of both... he like he never broke eye Conta like he was just very intense but it was like a warm intensity”

ChatGPT is phenomenal at generating language inventories (e.g., measuring assertion on 1-5 scales across 300 phrases) by articulating nuance at a level humans would struggle to maintain consistently across hundreds of datapoints.

“I posted in chat GPT like 300 separate like words... I want you to create an inventory on a scale from one to five measuring assertion... it was phenomenal... it like perfectly mimicked my like what I perceive to be Nuance understanding”

ChatGPT has become reliable enough for generating structured knowledge overviews using tree prompts (discipline as trunk, subdisciplines as branches, academics as leaves) and identifying key conflicts in fields.

“six months ago I was like h don't know like it would just make things up and now it's great... I want you to imagine this academic discipline as the branch... the base of the tree as the discipline the branch as a subdiscipline and the leaves as the academics”

Blake had a coaching client who was hyperliteral; when Blake explained with visual circles how 'how are you?' in a diner at 3am is contextually different from 'how are you?' in a formal business meeting, the client understood and shifted—suggesting literalness is learnable, not immutable.

“I had a client once that um this is years ago this is maybe like 14 years ago in a or 15 years ago in a bar in New York City at 3:00 in the morning not in a bar I'm sorry in a diner he walks into the diner and I was like on a double date and he walks in and he goes Blake how are and introduces everyone hey how are you how are you how are you and everybody starts hysterical laughing and and I'm like good good and on our session later I was explaining to him like this is why the context was different M and I'm drawing Circles of all the layers of context in that Dynamic and he's like okay I I understand it now”

Blake's personal rule on his team is that no one can give him a one-word response (yes/no); responses must include emoji, GIF, or additional text because he over-contextualizes tonal cues and perceives one-word answers as passive-aggressive.

“I'm someone who like on my team there's a rule that no one could give me a one-word response so no one could ever say yes or no it has to be like yes Emoji yes GIF or something like that because I think someone's mad at me when they just say yes”

Blake catches himself speaking confidently about topics he doesn't know well; his wife helped him recognize this pattern and take responsibility for the impact of speaking with conviction about uncertain things.

“I was like a lot like this when I was younger I would talk about things so confidently that I knew nothing about and my wife really changed my perspective on this when we first started dating she was like you have a responsibility with that level of conviction and I was like you're 100% right”

Blake conducted a dating study in 2008 during the subprime mortgage crisis, recruiting participants from Craigslist ($50 per person) for 30-minute speed dates; he recorded and analyzed dates to understand which dating patterns predicted connection.

“our first date uh my first study ever was on dates so I rented a restaurant in New York City this was in 2008 in the subprime mortgage crisis I put put on a add- on Craigslist $50 to set you up on a 30-minute date I got like 300 applications and I set up a series of dates people came in 30- minute date and then the guy would leave and I would ask what's going on like what”

Most people overestimate how much others notice or care about their appearance, choices, and behavior; Blake wore the same J.Crew pants every day for a semester, and only one student noticed (the one who worked there)—everyone else was oblivious.

“I was wearing the same J crew pants every day cuz they were really comfortable and I started like all right I'm just wearing the same pants like every single day... I couldn't find these pants anymore yeah so it was in my head about these pants and my my students looking at my pants so I was like you know what let me ask so I basically set up this cool thing where I was like hey everyone like a month into the course I had like 140 students or whatever um I was like there's something about me that hasn't really changed what is it and I had everybody like fill out a little form and they gave it to me and only one person knew”

Blake demonstrated this principle by helping crew unload gear when he arrived to the podcast; this was authentically helping (not transactional positioning) and the value was generalized across the interaction.

“I walked in here and I was like just as a default approach they were unloading gear and I was like hey do you need help and I picked up a stand and brought it in like it it just CU I know what it's like to carry all these damn stands down the block”