Tony skinner 00:03
Hi and welcome to the podcast channel with podcasts my business.com.au and today we have Alan Stephens. I put a spell that because different ways to spell Allen and Stevens Li n s t e v e n s.com.au. How are you, Alan?
Alan 00:22
Very good. Thanks. And you’re right they both names can be spelt differently. But I always tell people who are looking at the LM with one l or two L’s people with two L’s had more money than my family didn’t I could afford the the extra l?
Tony skinner 00:35
Well, that explains it. Good. You said that line more than once?
Alan 00:43
I think so.
Tony skinner 00:45
Cool. Okay. So what we’re covering today is something that’s quite interesting. Which is harnessing the power of reading people by reading their face. And it’s more than just body language. Much more.
Alan 01:02
That’s right.
Tony skinner 01:04
So how does it work?
Alan 01:07
Well, if you think about it, first of all, that we know that everything that we feel inside, we express outwardly. So if we’re feeling angry, we’ll have an angry look on our face, etc. Also, so that gives away somebody’s emotions. But before that, I can read somebody’s personality by just seeing their face that could be a photograph, it could be in real life could be on their LinkedIn profiles, websites, or anywhere else. And how it works is that if you think about it, you lift weights, you’re going to build muscles. At the same time, as I just said, If you feel any emotion, you’re going to express it outwardly.
Alan 01:43
So if you think in a certain way over and over again, and you’re concentrating really deeply and pulling expressions, sooner or later, you’re going to build ridges and crevices on your face the giveaway, how you like to think and process. So your facial features, become a history of how you like to think and process, which is your personality, so that I know how you like to take information and like to be spoken to. And from there, then I know how to speak to you. And now I’ve got your body language and expressions that give me the feedback. Have I read you, right? Is there anything emotionally, emotionally going on? And at the same time, while you’re talking to me? Are you telling me the truth?
Tony skinner 02:22
That’s interesting. So when you’re walking down the street, and you see someone up front, that looks like a crabby shit, they really are a crabby shit.
Alan 02:33
They may have that expression on their face. But it could be that they’re concentrating, it’s not just assuming because some people have, as they say that resting? Well, the term is switch face. Yeah. And so with that, they get accused of being cranky, or whatever, it can just be the level of concentration they’ve got on their face, if you concentrate really deeply. And think hard, you’ll pull your eyebrows together, you’ll build those little ridges above your eyes, your eyebrows, and at the same time, those little vertical lines as well. And so if that’s the way that you walk around, concentrating all the time, you’re going to look like a pretty Stern, and people are going to go and misjudge you.
Alan 03:14
That’s why I look at it and go, Okay, I want to see all the indicators that I possibly can. And I look at the big picture, not just one indicator on its own. But what else is happening if I’ve got that expression on your face? What is your body telling me as you’re walking, if you’re slumped over and everything else, okay, well, it probably heading in the same direction. But if your shoulders are back and you got a bit of a stride, and everything goes, you’ve got that expression on your face. Now. It’s just a determined expression.
Tony skinner 03:42
Now, because we’re doing this, okay, you’re speaking to me. So it’s a bit different. And we’ve spoken a few times in the past. But just for fun, let’s have a look at my profile photo on LinkedIn, if you can call that up. Because I guess we should do a little bit of an exercise. It’s like I say, it’s somewhat unfair because we have chatted before online.
Tony skinner 04:05
And you know a bit more about my personality now. But yeah, and that’s a photo that I took on someone took it about almost a year ago now. And I have the lucky habit of being able to smile and laugh instantly. Yeah, yep. I know people have to work up to I’ve done answering in the past. So I know all about that and whatever. So looking at that, and I guess you can’t zoom in enough for the lines and whatever. How would you describe myself?
Alan 04:46
Well, the first thing I look at is the Well, those lines with the smaller you got there, obviously stand out. You don’t get those lines out the corner of your eyes from frowning. You get those from really smiling. The only two reasons You get those lines, if you’re out working in the open, and the glare is so strong that you’re squinting really hard and tightening the muscles up around your eyes. The other time that we tighten the muscles that are over our eyes, is when we’re really feeling a lot of joy.
Alan 05:14
So somebody’s got those lines, it shows that they’re naturally happy person. Now in your photograph, yes, you’re smiling. And so the mouth is open, the corner of the mouth is turned up. But from what i’ve remember seeing you on some of the zoom calls that we’ve been on, the corner of your mouth has that natural slight turn up on the on the very corner at the outside edge, which means that you get the lines around your eyes from being happy most of your life, and you get that little turned up corner of the mouth from being happy now.
Alan 05:43
Because if we frown a lot, then the muscles that we use to frown will get tighter and stronger, and they will naturally pull at rest, we’ll pull the corner of our mouth down. And if somebody’s got the corner of their mouth pulled down, where you can pretty much assume that they’re more pessimistic than optimistic. Yours turns up and with the small lines you’ve got, I’m just seeing somebody who is naturally just a very happy person.
Tony skinner 06:06
Yeah, that’s interesting. Because I, I came across somebody posts on LinkedIn, talking about being happy and happiness. And I posted the photo against my photo in a closed Facebook group. I would never do something like that publicly whatsoever to embarrass the person or what have you. And I posed the question along those sort of lines, and the feedback was you just don’t know, that person hasn’t looked unhappy. Okay, you look more overjoyed than anything else. So it’s quite interesting how two different perspectives from different people looking at the same photo?
Alan 06:45
That’s right. So this is one of the reasons why my focus now is to train as many people as I can even create and train my own competition. Because we need more people doing it, we all look at people’s faces. And when I do a workshop, I’ll put a couple of faces up. And actually, it’s one face. But on one hand, I’ve got three pitches, but one of them slightly narrowed in width, and the other one’s slightly wider. And I asked people, which one do they feel is the most confident, and the widest one or the original face, it’s in the middle, though, people will oscillate between the two. Then when I asked him, Okay, which one looks the most trustworthy?
Alan 07:22
People will oscillate again, between those two, not many people pick the first one for either the more confident or the more trustworthy. But some people will pick the white faces being the more confident and more trustworthy being the middle face, when others will reverse that. And this is one of the reasons why do we need to profile people with a standard. Because otherwise, when you look at someone else, without the skills, you’re just judging them on your background, your biases, you’re not judging that person as the rest as the world sees them.
Tony skinner 07:56
Yeah, it’s interesting, because I talked to friends about faces, and faces on TV and movies, and I go, Oh, there you go. There’s a perfect face. Because it’s round. And being eyes, which makes it look like a baby’s face, which we’re in sync to find attractive.
Alan 08:15
That’s it? Well, a baby’s face, because they’re round in the eyes, and nose, and mouth are all close together, we also get that feeling of protecting them. That’s one of the reasons why babies have the round face. You know, as we get older, most men on average, you know, their face, and the eyes and the mouth and nose start to spread away from each other, we get the longer faces, because we don’t feel as protective to somebody who’s got the longer face. And as mean, we want to be seen as the providers, the hunters. And so we profile everybody, these skills, when you were a young child, the first thing you need to be able to do is recognize somebody by their facial features. Did we know them?
Alan 08:58
Were they a friend where they have failed? Were they somebody that we could trust or not? Then we needed to be able to see their expressions to know what they were feeling at the time. So if it’s somebody that we realized that they weren’t somebody, we should be around and now we’re looking angry, then the warning wants to get out of there as quickly as possible. If it’s a friend, though, who’s angry, we might want to step up and go, what’s going on?
Alan 09:21
Can we help you? This is why the skills, we had them as young children, but as we get older, it’s like any muscle if we don’t work it, it atrophies. And so while we’re doing everything else, like going to school, playing sports, all the other activities that we have, if we’re not practicing reading people all the time, we just lose a skill over a period of time. And that’s what happens to most of us. Some of us will have an innate self confidence. So sorry, innate self ability, where because they focus is more on the people will get a stronger gut feeling that they’ve picked something up or they haven’t picked up, pick it pick something up in somebody face him. So some people just are oblivious to what’s going on because their focus has been elsewhere.
Tony skinner 10:07
Yeah, that’s interesting. So do you have some tips to help us mere mortals to understand faces, either understand faces better or present Actually no, present our face to the world better? Well,
Alan 10:24
the whole thing is people like to think about it, you walk up to somebody and you scale. Yeah, I usually pull away, they’ll scale back. But if you walk up to them and smile, then they’re going to be more open towards you. They’ll smile back in most cases. And people who are smiling usually find it easier to connect with each other.
Alan 10:43
But one of the things that I always point out to people, one of the, when you’re meeting somebody, for the first time, this is a tip that everybody can go and trial, when you’re looking straight at somebody, imagine a vertical line going through their pupil. And you look at the heart of the iris, and you then look at the gap between the top of the top eyelash and the underside of the eyebrow, if it’s a really large area.
Alan 11:08
And the reason I do that vertical line, because some people have flat eyebrows, some people have curved and some people have really strikingly angled eyebrows. So you read it at that middle point. And if it’s a large gap, just remember that person needs a bit of space, when you meet them for the first time, don’t invade their space. If they got low set, the eyebrows are closer to the eyes, then expect those people to walk straight up to you and stand fairly close to towards you. And so if you’re meeting somebody for the first time, and you’re trying to make a good connection with them, as I said, if they got high set, I said eyebrows, don’t step into their space, give them a bit of space.
Tony skinner 11:47
That’s interesting. Because if you smile, then what does that do to your eyebrows as I make them go up or down?
Alan 11:54
Well you find is they usually come a bit closer. Because fear and surprise is when the eyebrows go up. It’s a bit in happiness, they’re more likely to because it looks like the whole face around the eyes and the mouth and everything goes, that looks like it becomes more concentrated. And so it’ll look as though there’s a little less gap there. But the smile takes over.
Tony skinner 12:18
Now, I’ve been doing a I’ve got a reflection on my monitor here. And I’ve been doing that trick with my eyebrows. And Yep, you’re 100% spot on that when I smile, everything crunches up, which I paint and I paint self portraits every every term in art class. And last term, I did a really big, loud smile. I could not paint it. Hmm. And neither could the teacher week between us we couldn’t paint my face. Because the mouth was too wide open and the eyebrows were too far up. So yeah, you’re right. It’s a it’s a very unnatural position.
Alan 12:56
That’s right. And this is the thing I always say to people, this thing is get your phone out on selfie mode or find a mirror somewhere we can see your reflection as you have in your monitor, and just pull a few expressions and get a feel for what you look like in different expressions and axes.
Alan 13:14
So when you’re pulling that expression, what are you feeling. And that will give you a better understanding of how and why people respond the way they do towards you with when when they’re looking at your expressions themselves. But then try and put a really angry look on your face. And at the same time. Get a posture where you feel relaxed. You can’t, when you’re angry, all the blood goes to your upper body, it goes to your face, and it goes to your arms ready to strike. And so to have that casual stance and have an angry look on your face at the same time, it’s impossible. Yes, so that’s one of the reasons I’m using everything. I’m not just using one trait or one skill, I use everything when I look at people. You know, when we grew up as kids we used to have on the the lounge room wall there were these plaster docks I had on the wall, the three ducks one bigger than the other, you know going in size and they look like they’re flying away.
Alan 14:11
And the old saying was getting all your ducks in a row. And so what I’ve always done is get as many indicators I can if they’re all pointing in the same direction, then I’m pretty accurate in what I’m reading. If there’s discrepancies like you’ve got that angry look on the looks like an angry look on their face, but the whole body is casual and everything else, then I know the look is not likely to be anger. It’s more likely to be around the more than concentration.
Tony skinner 14:40
Well, look, you know, what can I say? This is really, really interesting. We should have another chat. We’ll see if we can. I know I’d love to get you dressed up as a fortune teller. And when I tell everyone, especially women I go are the fortune tellers and on and on what they do they ask you very clever questions. And they read your body language and also your face. But they read you like a book, which is true because they look at, you know, lean forward so are yet and you’ve had some issues maybe maybe with children. And if you lean forward, they can tell if you lean back to five and you know it’s a negative or a positive, but maybe with children, you don’t react and has nothing to do with children and blah, blah, blah, blah. So that is very, very clever that it’s asked the right question. So
Alan 15:29
you’re setting the environment up, you got a camera there as well, and people realize they’re being filmed. They’ll even be more expressive, and leak more information. That’s why the micro expressions are such a magnificent and powerful tool to use when you’re communicating with people because everything happens unconsciously. And something happens around us we give the expression that our conscious mind steps in and shuts the expression off. And that one 10th of one fifth of a second down to one 20th of a second. tells us out their emotions what’s really going on. before they’ve even had a chance to hide it.
Tony skinner 16:03
Yeah, absolutely. All right, alan stevens Thanks so much, very much for your time. That’s Alan, with M one l because I couldn’t afford to stevens.com.au
Alan 16:17
That’s right, your Stevens with a V because we couldn’t afford the P h as well. That’s an extra very poor family.
