YouSaid · the spoken record

Blake Eastman

lines on the record: 148
first: 2024-01-09
most recent: 2024-01-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I'm calling it the Ebenezer exercise. I'll credit you with that because that's a perfect sort of analogy. And also about that destination principle. I think 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 candor or some concept. And then the way that they apply it.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I do this cool thing. It's an exercise that really works. So leadership principles and all that stuff. I'm not there to tell somebody how to lead. I'm not there for any of that. I'm there just to make sure that their intent is aligned with their behavior. So I do this thing where I'm like, close your eyes and imagine your funeral and everybody you've ever worked with in your entire life is there. What are the stories and things that you're saying about you? Just make sure that those things are in alignment with their behavior. And they choose and solidify what those things are, and then I kind of hold them accountable to making sure that they're carrying out those things.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the kind of stuff that I correct. So that's the bulk of my when you say something, but your patent, a lot of these people often just don't understand. A lot of executives don't understand the impact of their own behavior. So I have met people that are wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people. But yeah, the way they give feedback, oh my God. It's just ripped the person apart. And they're like, no. I love them. They're one of my best people. I think they're great. I'm like, well, let's take responsibility for what that interaction looked like. And that's why Zoom and Video is so important for me. Because 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? They're like”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. Yeah, you're right, but I just don't know. You get in your head like that.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, just from what you have quote-unquote permission to do or say, it's all a perception. I've worked with people, I've worked with CEOs that are the most open. 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.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you just were able to have those conversations, you would be able to navigate and see the power structures way easier. And people just don't have that social skill set, that people skills to sit down with someone. And a lot of, I've just seen a lot of people get power structures. Oh, I'll give you a good one. 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. And I feel like people do that a lot inside of organizations and doesn't give them that creative freedom to actually read what's going on.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's something that a lot of organizations don't do. I can't tell you the amount of times where I'm just like, so I have this really cool perspective because I work with often the entire C-suite. So like the COO, CTO, like everybody I work with. And it's like, you two need to talk about this because this is blocking. You two need to talk about this. But the amount of communication. Level that's like blocking decision making is kind of crazy. I think organizations need to talk way more than they are in this siloed environment sometimes.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So power structures, oh man, that's such a big question. They are these invisible things. That's what I, when we talk about reading the room in a corporate structure, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about power structure. We're talking about permissions, all these things. 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 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? And just map out all what quote unquote is possible and then start using the data and evidence that's coming in on a daily basis to like cross out which one it is. And then sometimes just to straight up ask.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I truly believe that the most world class 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 I even feel that now, like I'm stepping more into my own self after the first 20 minutes. Like at first, it's a little bit, you know, it's a little different. I'm trying to be more measured. Now it's more me coming out of it. And the truth is, how do you get to that immediately and build from there?”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And some people can take a cue and immediately change it. And other people just get them comfortable. Just get them comfortable. And then using video, but you want to hear something else fascinating. So what do you show people video themselves? I once work with this woman. I hope she's hearing this because I love her, but not to call her out. So she gives one of the worst initial presentations I've ever seen in my entire life. She was extremely flat. She was like moving her hands. She literally spoke like this for an entire 20 minutes. And it was like painful to watch. And at the end of the video, I was like, okay, so let's see what we're working with. And I put her video on her projector. And the first thing she says to me is like, I need a nose job. And it just shows you like that's where that person's perception is focused on. Like we're focused on these weird little different things that no one else recognizes or no one else cares about.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Barnot every single time. So the whole joke is people think I teach, oh, stand this way. No, like step one is get you to the level where you're the most comfortable, where you feel the most free, and then build on top of that. So I try to get you there first. And I wouldn't be focusing on, I mean, it really depends. If you're doing like a TED talk that was like 20 minutes, I'd probably tell you just to rehearse it and get that down. But if you're doing like an hour presentation or the most presentations that people have to do, it would be all outlines repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. And it's a careful balancing act to understand where you're at because some people with a lot of anxiety, I will know, or some people that are trying to get it right, I won't be focusing on little details. It's way more dynamic process. Like, so some people that have like these facial things to getting better at presentations, like it's different for every person because if someone you're telling someone, listen, you're moving your hands too much and they're going to get in their head about moving their hands too much.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So cool that you did that. So my question was always what was the constraint? So if you said three hours a week, one hour a day of your time, the first week would probably be reps of just let's get you comfortable. So the thing is, with a lot of nonverbal behavior stuff and movement, I have found reliably that the most effective version of someone is when they're the most comfortable.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really, just the social construction that a presentation is something different. So it's got this whole cultural narrative. Oh, you have your big presentation coming up. It's hyped up as it's this different thing. You're just talking to a group of people and they're responding by shaking their head and nodding and you're sitting up there. I think that's the first construct that needs to be broken. And then also just 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 every day for the next three weeks, do a presentation. It'd be so much better.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That approach without The feedback loop is instant. So that's how that was such the value. Like when I was teaching psychology at CUNY, 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. But that comes from that audience interaction. But most people when giving a presentation, they're not even present enough to do that because they're so in their head about the presentation. So it's sort of a skill set that comes after you've been more comfortable being on stage to be able to process and sort of predict the behavior of an audience.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's another big problem. So, in presentations, we had a program called Dynamic Presentations. I used to do it for in New York City for like five years and a lot of corporate stuff around it. And people are obsessed with recording the person on stage. What's more interesting is recording the audience because the truth is I'm always asked how did my presentation go? I go, I don't know, let's see the audience. My presentation is for that group of people. So what often happens is a lot of communication experts will watch like a presentation and they'll go, well, 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. So I used to record my presentation and the audience every third presentation for like three years. It was fascinating.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's just, yeah, like sit down. And the truth is people talk about the observer effect with video and all that. It goes away in like 10 minutes. Like if you have like a small iPhone, you forget about it and you're actually seeing patterns of behavior. And that's something I say to my wife a lot. Like, oh, like, let's get a video of it and see what it was actually like, right? Because it's so difficult to just You ask two people to recall an event. It's just wildly different. It's like what? And then you show the video and you see that it's like somewhere in the middle of what those two stories were. And I just find that fascinating. So I'm obsessed with video.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are so many interesting nuanced themes. I remember we used to do a bunch of studies in New York City and I had this one couple come in and they're like, oh, can you study us? And I said, sure. So they come into the office and they sat down on a couch and I recorded them from like three different angles. And they're like, what do you see? I was like, I'm not going to say anything. I'm going to leave the room. I'm going to go get lunch. Sit here and watch your interaction and write down what problems you think you have. And they did it. And it was like, they saw so many things. He's like, I don't really listen to her. I was looking on the video and she was speaking and I was just kind of nodding my head and distracted. And they both had, I was really impressed to see that level of awareness. But I think that video does in a world with so many different perspectives and perceptual differences. Video doesn't lie. It's just like raw data. And I think it's so helpful to see yourself on video in a relationship.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think that's hard for a lot of couples. And it's a good question before you get married. Like, you know, what are our characteristics of, yeah, which was an ideal relationship? What does it look like? Some people are like, no, I hang out with my friends. You hang out with your friends, and we get together on the weekends. I know couples that have been together for 45 years that have that paradigm. To me and my wife, we're like, well, they're not that close, but that doesn't matter. It's what their relationship of should look like.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, totally. I mean, like, I think there's just This is like all the work that Gottman did, relationship labs, and all predicting signs of contempt and all these things. This is a problem with relationships. Everybody has a different version of what a relationship is. So one of the reasons why me and my wife have been together for 12 years. are together like 99% of the time. It works because both of us have the same definition for what a relationship should quote unquote be. So we view things through the same sort of lens. And a lot of conflict comes from when two people have different ideas of what a relationship should look like. And there has to be that negotiation between that.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I really believe. I hate that I hate saying this, but I do believe people are sheep in that regard, where there's a narrative and if a powerful person just comes along and shifts the narrative, you see how quickly everybody else falls in line. And we're all on both sides of this. Sometimes we're the wolf and sometimes we're the sheep.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And 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 and 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 not going to get a divorce. I'm like, well, why are you sitting here like badmouthing your wives? Like, I don't have anything bad. 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 for this reason. I love my wife for that reason. And it's just like.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think he was. I think also, I mean. I definitely have a disarming quality to me when I meet people because I'm very, I'm not really judgmental. I have like a low judgment. So I have friends on every spectrum of everything, right? So 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 go on there. But there's just like these cultural narratives. Like I was at a dinner once and I was with like six of my friends. And one of my friends started complaining about his wife.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then that gave him a little bit of trust with me to kind of go a little bit more. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure Gina and your wife.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, but he knew about this poker game. There was like a couple of things that he stated that I was just kind of like, this is a little sketch. So he's testing the waters. Yeah, he was like testing the water. Yeah. Are you one of us? And I think what I did is I walked the line of like, oh, I know that game or I know that person, but I didn't actually cross it.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, more like a predator, more like a predator. That's a really good term. Predator desire for it. And he kept saying things to me, like little things that were like, are you one of these people that cheat on your wife? Like I could just, he didn't.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was like 100%. I would have placed a lot of money. There were two things. One, it was like the gaze direction in the person's eyes. So 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”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and when you hear these people's stories, they're real stories. It's like you're doing quite well considering just like the most horrible things that people can't even sort of fathom and”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there's just this massive fallacy that people are like, well, no, you grew up in a completely different world, in a completely different context. So be careful with that.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, that is probably like my advocacy. So my foundations will be all for prison reform, all for giving people second chances. I believe that society, it's kind of crazy to me that. If you were put in that situation, people don't understand. You see somebody commit a horrible crime and they do something horrible, but that person has a story. And if you were to touch that person and see every step of that story, most people would be like, I'd probably commit that crime too.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think they're more erratic in that regard. Like all of a sudden, you say something like, what'd you say? Like, it's quick, where like some of the bigger, if they want, they'll just lay you out right there. Like they're big, they've got that aggression. They've got that power. But yeah, I would definitely say that. And also the younger population, like people in their 20s that are just 25, 26, in prison, it's a different time for someone versus 40 or 50 that have had that experience and that lifelong. Just 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. But I've met some really, really, really smart people that weren't like just really ingenious ideas and concepts that came from prison.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've always, in my experience, I've always found the silent types to. Not because 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 if that threshold of ego or disrespect gets violated, I feel like they feel the need to actually assert themselves. But some of the big tough people are just big and tough.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Great question. So, I would always focus on massively erratic behavior that worries me more than anything else. So seeing somebody, seeing like a schizophrenic in a full violent rage or episode like that, which society thinks it's way more common than it actually is. It's not. It's like a stigma that these most people walking down the street that are talking to themselves just continue to talk to themselves. They don't really hurt anyone. But when somebody has really lost their touch with reality and they're violent, I think that's the scariest thing by far. And that's always like, all right, just watch out.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's the whole point, right? So there's like this embedded in these forensic instruments, this embedded concept of the person might be lying and we're trying to figure that out. So I think it's just different. But yeah, people lie for different reasons, for shame, for embarrassment. I remember I had to ask this inventory about sex, like how have they had sex in the past like 12 months, nine months, six months, three months? And they're in prison and the men population. And when you ask that question, people get like very like, what are you saying? And like people react in a different way. And it's like, it makes total contextual sense that they would.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's how they determine whether or not they're lying or not. There's always, and that's why, like one of the biggest tests I think still used the MMPI2, 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.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Honest answers well, in a forensic setting, like so like that's one of the coolest in all forensic psychology, there's a lot of personality tests, which I'm very anti, but forensics has one, it's built by a process, I think this is correct, empirical king procedure. So it's really cool. What they basically do is they'll like ask people that have been diagnosed with like schizophrenia, like 15 or 20 questions, and they find the patterns that like 99% of people hear voices in like one year or two years or whatever it is. And then they ask people those same questions that are malingering.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I used to be scared by people when I was a kid. Like a lot of social anxiety, all of that. And there's been so many instances in my life where even on the street with somebody that's looking like really tough or on the way here, something happened where I was like, oh, just a person. And I believe through discourse and through conversation, anything could be settled. I wasn't really, yeah, it's a great question. I can't remember fear.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I never felt my friends' background is no way as robust as some people who have been doing this for like 30 or 40 years, but I never felt unsafe in a forensic setting. I just didn't. I view people as like, most people are still reasonable. And if they're sitting down and talking to me, there's a level of reasonable there. And yeah, I mean, I think I just through conversation, through looking at my lens for the world.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, like, we have this Bayesian brain, and even people that are the most think they're the most Bayesian 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. And that's one of the things that I do a lot. So in like working with executives and programs and training, I get somebody to make a read or a prediction about someone else's behavior. And then I show them like, oh no, you were completely wrong. And they're like, really? And they're like, oh yeah, this was the reason why they boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And enough of those wrongs, it gets people to sort of challenge how they're viewing the world. And then you can start to have the self-growth. But it's not an easy path. Like some people will hold on to their perceptions. They were like, oh no, like I've been doing this thing for 25 years and it's never got me wrong. All the cognitive and decision making bias stuff that you're famous for gets up.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you got to understand that it's build trust, build trust. There's not this like step one, two, three, four, five. It's way more complex than that. But the first thing is don't be so outside the bell curve distribution of how someone acts that you're just not trusted from the get-go.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If my behavior is just asking you standard questions and I'm doing all that, but it doesn't actually look like I'm interested. It's like something's off here. Like, what's this person trying to do? What's this person trying to get? But the truth is, it's different for each person, which is why the puzzle is so fascinating because, I mean, 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.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. And that really, in my opinion, is what it's about. So everybody has their own sort of perceptual lens for what trustworthy behaviors are and aren't. 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 nuanced areas to draw that conclusion and then to have the mimicking of my behavior to be associated with the excitement for those things. So for example, like if me and you had like a very long conversation about your children, for example.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a great question. Okay, so trust from a nonverbal 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. So an example of this is eye contact. If all of a sudden your eye contact is constantly darting all around the space, people have a perception of like, why are they doing that? Like what's going on there? But on the other hand, like 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 my life, I look at you dead at your eyes when I'm saying that. It looks better when I'm like.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm like, sure what? I can't stand that stuff. And I don't know why, but I have to know that first. So there's behavioral signs of this as well. So you'll have people watch videos of a 20 second interaction and they'll say, oh, this person doesn't like them. And I'm like, well, why do you say that? I'm not really sure. And we break down second by second by second. And they go like, oh, I think it's the way that they're smiling. Or 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. So the true work is video work. Looking at videos and understanding what's going on with those.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think people are so first, you have to understand where you are on this threshold of, I call it literals and contextuals. So there are certain people that I can say these things three ways. Like I 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 or try to extract more value from the tonal shifts in what I'm saying. And the truth is most people over-contextualize certain things. So for example, 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. That's my own weird cultural type of thing.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The meaning you're deriving from it. So the truth is a lot of people using body language experts will look at someone's behavior and be like, oh, like this means this and this means that that's not really what you're doing. I think it's more about noticing than making meaning out of. So just like noticing. So for example, like noticing that the way that you're nodding your head at me right now, that is a facet of social coordination. You're showing me that you're listening to what I'm saying. It doesn't mean that you're quote unquote interested. But if we really looked at your head nods over the course of like a six month period, we could find out when you're genuinely or probably really interested in something when you're just socially coordinating because you're all right. I got to shake my head because this is interesting. So it's a multi-step process, but it really starts with confronting all your biases.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, that's a process. All right. So it starts with evaluating how you process behavior as it is. So it starts with your default approach. So the problem is this. We go down through life. have this like neural net in our head and it's based on past model of all the interactions that we've had and the truth is you have to understand how much you're wrong before you can improve the accuracy of what you're right on so there's a lot of like pop science stuff or cultural biases or just experiences in your life that shifted the way that you view things and the first is acknowledging all of that that's like the first step which is a pretty robust process which i'll talk about it's really looking at your perspective for life and how you view social interactions and then after that it's increasing your behavioral awareness so this is just the ability to notice and pay attention to the shifts and the variation in somebody's behavior and understand in real time”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The best paradigm for dates is storytelling, never questions. So as soon as you get in the table, not just like, hey, how are you? It's just like the craziest thing just happened.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is a problem with relationships. Everybody has a different version of what a relationship is, and a lot of conflict comes from when two people have different ideas of what a relationship should look like.”
2024-01-09 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT