The Secret Service Guide to Influence | Brad Beeler

14:14AJ Jacobs:When I was teaching at the federal polygraph school, we had all the different intel and law enforcement agencies would come through and we'd have about 12 weeks with our students. And one of the things I would do, especially later on, is I'd have them write down what they were going to say as far as in their pretest. And I would look at that. So that was just the words. So there might be some things that I would have to cut out or whatever the case may be. Then I would film. And when I would film them at the end, I would have them just watch without the volume on. And they'd be like, oh, I'm boring.

14:41AJ Jacobs:I'm not doing anything. Oh, geez, that's terrible. I'm like this, or I'm frantic, you know? And then what I would do is I would turn the TV off and I would just have them listening to something like, oh, I'm so nasally. I have, I'm so boring, you know, or I'm too loud because confessions don't come to screams. They come to whispers. So something as simple as a slightly deeper tone with a slightly, you know, less of a volume, it could be all the difference in getting somebody to open up because what I'm trying to create is I'm trying to create almost a mythical confessional. And in the Catholic faith, why does the confessional work?

15:14AJ Jacobs:It's obviously ingrained in the religion, but if there was a microphone like one of these fancy ones we have in the confessional, would anybody talk? If there was judgment and the priest said, really, when you said something? Or how did you do that? Or why did you do that? So that's what makes good communication is being able to modulate that voice, non-judgment, curiosity. Those things are very important.

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18:14Brad Beeler:I think a lot of people can also equate that to, everyone has AI note takers now popping up on Zoom or they're recording calls. It just pops up because they do a lot of business. And then you want to do a beer Zoom call with a friend and the recording goes up and it has to get removed or no one feels comfortable just being themselves in those moments. And I've certainly been on those calls and I've certainly have censored myself on calls when I know it was being recorded or even asked, why is this being recorded? We're just supposed to be having a frank discussion.

18:54AJ Jacobs:Yeah. So the traditional interrogation room that would have that two-way mirror and that big old video, you know, with the light hanging down from the top, the setting was obviously terrible because you thought, who's on the other side of that window? You know, we had one when I was in St. Louis, the government had installed it backwards and I'd be training a lot of agents and they didn't understand when they were doing their polygraph or interrogation that you could see into the other room. And I was talking one time and one of the agents walked into that room and he was trying to get dressed for his flight and he's changing his clothes, not realizing the bad guy's watching him, you know, basically get naked, you know, the two way mirror.

19:30AJ Jacobs:So yeah, setting is very, very important. I want to create a really good setting that makes people want to talk. If you look at dental offices, a good dental office, what do they do? When you walk in, they give you choices. You get courage, you get tea, you get, I can watch this on the TV. If you put the headphones on during the procedure, you can pick what music you want to listen to, what kind of fluoride they give you, what kind of color toothbrush. The perception of choice is very, very important. And if you walk into a dentist's office and there's like the remains of the previous procedure there, that's not going to bode well, right?

20:01AJ Jacobs:Whereas if you walk in and it's very clinical and clean, you're going to think, okay, I'm in good hands here. So that's what I really try to teach our folks is your presence with the way you look that enclose cognition. You want to look the part, but also, you know, I want my setting to look like this is going to be a professional interaction.

20:17Johnny:One thing that I want to point out is that oftentimes when all those three channels are combined, so the words, our tone and our body language, things get muddled and it's hard for us to pick out what's actually going on. And we have a self-perception that maybe doesn't actually line up with reality. And we do the same thing with our clients. We actually go to the video and turn off the volume just to see what is going on with that body language. And in those moments where your body language or your tone doesn't match the words or your intent behind the words, that critically breaks trust in that communication.

20:51Johnny:And that other person, this is happening instinctually. They're not thinking about it consciously, but subconsciously they're saying, I can't trust Brad anymore. He furrowed his brow when I shared something with him that I was really excited about or was an identity marker for me. And now I feel judged. And oftentimes we have a really difficult time perceiving how others perceive us because in our mind, we're seeing a different version of that tape. Yeah.

21:16AJ Jacobs:That incongruence between what I'm saying and how I'm being received. Definitely. I mean, you see that with deception, detection of deception is one of the big markers that we look at when somebody shakes their head yes and says no, or vice versa. It's very, very telling. And a lot of times people are going to default to the body language at a primal level. Like you said, under the surface that we don't see. I remember a situation I had one time I was at a jail and I felt very good and it was recorded and I felt very, very good about the words I was saying, how I was saying them. But I'd thrown my back out the night before and I was leaning back, my legs were crossed.

21:48AJ Jacobs:It was definitely not conducive. And the subject was mirroring me because I think I had good respect, but he was mirroring me in the most, in the worst body posture you could ever have to try to get a confession. A confession posture is head down, you know, hands between the legs. And he was actually mirroring me with my, you know, legs crossed because my back was all messed up. So very, very telling, as far as you got to have that congruent message.

22:10Johnny:Now, getting people to open up is a real key to building that trust. And I know for a lot of our clients, they find curiosity is easy when there's shared interests. You know, maybe it's sports, maybe it's AI, maybe it's engineering. But then in those moments where there's not shared interest, they find curiosity is really challenging. Now, when you were sharing earlier, you're walking into situations with criminals where you probably don't have that much in common, if anything, and yet you have to be curious to get them to open up. How can we train and strengthen that curiosity?

22:42AJ Jacobs:Yeah, the acronym I like to use is, and so you're getting away from how's the weather, these types of things, these little transactional conversations that are terrible. It's called feel, family, education, employment, and leisure. So with family, a lot of times I'll talk about who raised you. You know, it's a very, because everybody I talk to doesn't have the white picket fence. Okay. They don't have the Truman Show like a lot of people. So it's anti. And so I'll talk about that. And I'll have them educate me on how they learned, you know, what's right and what's wrong in life. Employment. You know, what do you do for a living?

23:11AJ Jacobs:A lot of people I talk to, they make money in ways that are kind of outside the normal economy. Right. So don't say what do you have as far as what you have for a job. Then I'll talk about education. They may have dropped out in 10th grade, but they've got a PhD in other things that I need to talk about. But where we make hay is in leisure activities, what people do 40 to 60 hours off the clock. What do you do in your free time? Where their time is, that's where their priorities are. So, you know, if we just did this, Johnny, and I said, Johnny, what do you like to do in your free time? What would you say if we were just having that conversation at the bar?

23:43Brad Beeler:I don't have much of that, but the first thing would be music.

23:46AJ Jacobs:Yeah. What kind of music?

23:48Brad Beeler:It would be some sort of rock and roll.

23:50AJ Jacobs:Okay. What is it about playing music and being with the band, whatever the case may be? What is it about that that brings you so much joy?

23:57Brad Beeler:It's a moment of freedom.

23:59AJ Jacobs:Here's where we make a mistake. So if I'm sitting next to the plane with Johnny and he's, you know, I may see it from the hair. I may see it from his backpack. I may see he's a rocker, right? But if I don't, and I'm just talking about that, and if, let's say I play in a band, if I did, the worst thing I could do is say me too, right? I steal the dopamine from Johnny. I know you guys probably talk about this in some of your classes, right? The whole Me Too moment. We think we're connecting with people, but we're stealing the spotlight. We're these fun suckers that are taking away their dopamine that they would associate with us if I would just go down that rabbit hole with Johnny for a second and say, hey, Johnny, tell me about that.

24:34AJ Jacobs:What kind of music? What kind of band? What's that like? So I may know nothing about music, but I don't say Me Too. But you know what? Brazilian jiu-jitsu, that's for me. That's my tribe where people from all walks of life come here. And you know what? It's my freedom. just like he can play music i can sit here and do things on the on the mat with jiu-jitsu so we connect at the bottom of that iceberg so the big thing i want people to avoid is the me too moment because you know hey what are you doing this weekend i'm running a 5k oh i ran a 5k it's just terrible it just it just erodes that so just let people go down that road and eventually if you ask informed questions a lot of times you know let's say let's say i was a musician and i asked johnny what he plays what is uh you know who's the manufacturer's guitar whatever eventually he's going to hear those questions.

25:17AJ Jacobs:And he'd be like, do you play music? And I'm like, oh yeah, I do. And then now we connect.

25:22Johnny:Right. And he's seeking that connection versus you. That's the key difference there. Again, going back to the dental office, when we feel we have choice and we are the one choosing connection, we actually trust you more than you forcing it. And oftentimes I know even with our clients in these video sessions, there are moments where I don't play music. I don't know anything about being on stage with a band and I feel flat footed in that. OK, I don't know what Johnny's talking about or I can't connect on that because I don't have a shared experience. And what you did there by asking those clarifying questions was get to what's the emotion behind that music for Johnny.

26:01Johnny:Well, I can relate to that freedom in any capacity. Freedom for me is vibe coding for an evening and learning how to build and solve a problem that I have that now with AI, I can software engineer my way to the solution. That for me is really freeing. But so often we short circuit that by saying, well, I don't know anything about rock and roll music or I've never been in a band. So I'm going to ask another line of questioning or I'm going to shift the subject to something that I feel more comfortable about.

26:28AJ Jacobs:The emotion that part of it, I think is big because for me, when I'm curious, they're not thinking about this as an interrogation. They're not thinking this is a significant investigative interview because even a lot of people I talk to are innocent, but what's their heart rate when they walk in? I'm talking to a secret service agent. I'm being accused of this, whatever the case may be. I have this polygraph coming up. So it's one of those things where I bring that heart rate down to where now they can actually give me good information because my whole job is to get the truth. It's not to get a confession.

26:57AJ Jacobs:And you're not going to get good information when people are so hyped up. I need to bring them down to a good baseline.

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30:18Brad Beeler:the why questions bring up multiple mechanisms too it may be motivations for doing it it's inspiration for doing it more mechanisms for connection that people don't think about the first thing they think about is well what is the emotion there i have those emotions well what is those emotions tied to what's the drive for those emotions those emotions don't come out of nowhere there is a drive that pushes them.

30:45AJ Jacobs:I'll get some of that on the front end. You know, I may see if I'm doing a search warrant, I remember one case specifically where I'm walking through and I see the guy's Bible and I see it's, you know, up to, you know, Matthew. And I don't get biblical. I don't get religious with most people. That's generally not a good thing to do in most conversation, but I don't know where I'm going to use that, but it was highlighted and it said fear and it said hope. And it said, you know, I'm, you know, all these, he had all this stuff written in the margins. And, you know, it was a part about Peter getting called out of the boat.

31:15AJ Jacobs:And so three hours later, I'm talking with him and he's afraid. And so what I say is, hey, you know what? I was in, you know, I was talking with my pastor a few weeks ago and he brought up the book of Matthew and brought up Peter getting called out of the boat. And I figure in this situation right now, you're scared. And this is very similar to that. You know, metaphorically, the waves are bouncing against the gunwale of the boat and, you know, the wind is whipping. And in that situation, when Jesus called Peter out of the boat, he was afraid. And he started to sink when he had that lack of commitment.

31:43AJ Jacobs:I want you to work with me in order to hopefully resolve this situation. I reached out my hand to him and he grabbed it and he started crying. You would think that somebody would see through that, that you think somebody would think like, you know, you would almost view that as manipulation. But there's a fine line, obviously, and I know you guys talk about this a lot. The fine line between influence and manipulation is that you can use this stuff, obviously, for ill well. It's just what is my intent behind that?

32:06Johnny:so often we don't pay close enough attention to those opportunities, not to manipulate, but to influence. We get so focused on ourselves and what we're doing and how we are being perceived. And oftentimes that signal is then lost if we're so self-focused and focused inside. So looking at some of these situations where obviously there's a clock, you know, oh, you only have a short amount of time. Many of us are not in communication situations like that. Walk us through how you would approach when someone is pushing back and not actually going in the direction that you had hoped because sometimes this preparation doesn't actually meet reality.

32:48AJ Jacobs:Yeah, so some of them I'm going to know on the front end, they may not be a fan of law enforcement. So there's certain things I can do from a priming situation. And one of the things I remember distinctly, I was working a homicide case in Texas. And I say cases because with Secret Service, with our polygraph program, we would reach out to the locals as kind of a give back for everything they do for us. So that's how we got involved with a lot of these cases. And this individual, there was a missing female. And my partner and I had kind of caught wind that this guy was not a fan of law enforcement.

33:14So what things can we do to potentially put our first impression on the right foot?

33:20AJ Jacobs:So what we did is we had the police dispatcher come in. He ruffled up his hair. And as they walked him down, when they opened the door, we were finishing up this interview, this mock interview. And I had this individual give me a big hug. and he said, hey, Brad, thank you so much for letting me get this off my chest. I really appreciate you being a stand-up guy. Thank you for taking care of me. And he walked out. Now, that was an orchestrated situation. And my view on it was it would help an innocent person as much as it would help me talk to somebody that had some guilt because it would create the impression that what?

33:48AJ Jacobs:I'm going to be fair. I'm going to listen to him. I'm not going to be disrespectful. And then about 15 hours later, he led us to the corpse of the female in question. So I think that that first impression, what we can do from a primacy standpoint is extremely helpful. So that's one of the things that I do to set us up on the right foot. Obviously, we've already done the prep. We do that great first impression. We do the wonderful room setup. Then we try to exploit all those different senses. All five senses, we try to bring to bear from the smell of the room. If my room smells like cigarettes and stale urine and whatever the case may be, somebody that's been around the block, and I've had this, I've had literally a person say, this place smells like jail.

34:24AJ Jacobs:You know what? I think I want my lawyer. that reinforcement from previous interactions. So I'm not saying I carry Febreze with me everywhere I go, but, you know, all these things can affect people in ways that you don't understand. So I will usually sense pretty early on from an investigative standpoint, is this somebody that, you know, is going to be difficult? And then after a failed polygrapher in the pretest, I have an acronym called buddy. And that's what we try to do. We try to be someone's buddy. And, you know, if you look at it, we blame anybody but them. We understand, you know, where they came from.

35:02AJ Jacobs:We don't agree with it. I diminish the impact of it, not the culpability. That's where you have to be very, very careful. If you diminish culpability, you can get false confessions. I demonstrate that tactical empathy that's so important in the form of metaphors and stories. And then I focus on the why and not the what, because the what is often horrific. It is central. And so I focus on the sin and not the center. I have to separate that because hundreds and hundreds of people I've talked to were pedophiles that molested multiple children. And I have to keep my face just like this when I'm talking to them.

35:29AJ Jacobs:Because the first time I had a significant offender in front of me, I furrowed my brow for about a tenth of a second and he picked up on it. And that was it. It was over. They are that adept. These are people that they groom situations and they are very adept at seeing are they safe or are they not safe. They spot that type of stuff very, very quickly. So almost keeping the duct tape on the forehead is what I teach my students just to not furrow that brow because you hear the craziest things in those types of rooms.

35:56Johnny:Thankfully for most of our audience, they're not in those situations. And I can't even imagine what it's like to have to hide your emotion when it's so emotionally charged like that. But I want to key in on that tactical empathy because we've heard it on the show a couple of times. It's going popular on social media. What do you mean by that? And what can we do actually to evoke that empathy in these key situations?

36:18AJ Jacobs:The key there is I can't imagine and how you would have reacted. I can't imagine being in that situation. You know, it's like the person that goes to the funeral and tries to tell a grieving spouse, like, well, I've lost somebody before too. Like, that's the worst thing you could ever say to somebody. Everybody's grief is their grief. And so you have to say, I can't imagine the situation you're in. So let's say, for instance, this, if we've got Harry S. Truman and, you know, he basically bombed 37, you know, basically with napalm, 37 Japanese cities. And then, you know, basically we harnished the power of the sun with the Manhattan Project and we dropped it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, basically killing over a million people.

36:59Let's say he would have been tried for that.

37:02AJ Jacobs:What would I have done if I was interrogating Harry S. Truman? I would have blamed, too, the Japanese. I would have said, Harry, look, here's the thing. We were isolationists. We were trying to stay out of this. And we lost 3 ,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen on December 7th, and they had a sneak attack. Of course we're going to react. I would understand where he's coming from. I would say, Harry, I understand the emotion you had when you had to make that tough decision to drop the bombs because you had to write letters home to soldiers, sailors, and airmen's mothers and fathers that had lost their lives at Peleliu and Iwo Jima.

37:33AJ Jacobs:Then I would demonstrate, I would diminish impact by saying, Harry, you saved lives. 100 % you saved lives. 100 ,000 people died, but millions would have died if you went in. the war with the Manhattan Project. Then I would demonstrate that tactical empathy and say, Harry, you know, I can't imagine what you're going through. It kind of strikes me as an ER doc at three in the morning when a young boy comes in and he's got a mangled leg from an accident. And you have to make a decision in that moment. Am I going to take the leg? Kid won't be able to walk, but it lives. Or am I going to chance that we might be able to fix him, but he might die?

38:07AJ Jacobs:That's the decision you had, Harry. And the buck stops there with you and you made that decision to take that leg, all right, so that that kid could live, so the rest of society could live. And then I would focus on the why. And the why is here because you're a good man. And instead of using that for bad, trying to take over the world, you use the Marshall Plan to rebuild the world, because that's the type of human being you are. And I would, you could use that in any type of situation. If your best friend has a breakup, you know, you're going to be their buddy. You're going to blame the other person.

38:36AJ Jacobs:You're going to understand the impact. You're going to diminish the impact by saying there's other fish in the sea, right? That's what we do. And if you do that effectively, you can apply it, not just in interrogation, but in your personal and professional life.

38:47Johnny:I think what's powerful about that is a lot of times we confuse empathy for, well, I wouldn't have done that. I could never see myself in that situation. So I'm going to diminish what actually happened with the other person. But it's really important to recognize that empathy is not putting yourself in the other person's shoes or thinking hypothetically, but it's recognizing the emotions behind what led to those decisions and actions for them and keying in on that.

39:13AJ Jacobs:Why they're in those shoes. Like you said, not trying to, you know, how would I be in their shoes? How did they, it's how did they get in those shoes? I try to, Walter Goggin, the actor, you guys, he's on Fallout and several other things, but great actor, loves work. But he would talk about how he learned acting from Robert Duvall and Anthony Hopkins. And he would talk about how he would, they would say, they would memorize the script 200 times and they turn themselves over to an imaginary set of circumstances. For me, learning the script is the preparation, is understanding the case facts, is understanding the person.

39:45AJ Jacobs:Turning myself over to an imaginary set of circumstances is an imaginary set of circumstances that at the age of four, something changed this person's trajectory that's in front of me now, where inherently they were a good person, but something happened. And that's why I need to focus on the why they got in those shoes, because that's going to give me the what ultimately later on.

40:06Johnny:What seems lost in a lot of this is when we think about listening, oftentimes we default to listening to just respond. Like, oh, I recognize that. I see that. I've been there. I love music too. And we don't spend enough time listening to understand what is actually going on behind the scenes under the surface. So walk us through your seams framework, because I think it's just so powerful. And oftentimes we overrate our ability to listen, but the best listeners are actually the best communicators.

40:35AJ Jacobs:Yeah. Some of it's just time-based, you know, and what I mean by that is that whole 80-20 rule. I mean, 80-20, the whole Pareto principle used in a lot of different aspects, but from a listening standpoint, they should be the ones talking 80 % of the time. The best voice we ever hear is our own. So let them use it. And while they're doing it, don't be a stump on the log, right? Give them those minimal encouragers. And what's the worst thing you do is have this phone in your hand. When I start that interaction, I'm taking the phone and I'm turning it upside down. I'm turning it upside down. I'm not taking notes.

41:03AJ Jacobs:My partner's taking notes. I'm completely locked in to everything that you're saying. All right. I'm echoing those last three words, right? I mean, most people have read, you know, Never Split the Difference. Chris Voss does a wonderful job with that. You know, as far as echoing back people's statements, because many times when you echo back those last three words, they clarify. Because the problem we have, right, we speak at 150 to 170 words per minute. And what we're doing is we can listen at about 500 words per minute. That's why a lot of people probably listen to your podcast at two times speed because they can do it.

41:34AJ Jacobs:But what's the problem with that? I have all that wasted time. So I start thinking, what's next? What's the next chess move? You know, what's this? What's that? I have to stay in the moment. And for me, the best thing about having my best friend Doug was him being deaf. I had to stay in the moment because I had so much cognitive load when I was talking to him. I had so much cognitive load when I was trying to sign that it kept me from doing that. And that we just had amazing conversations for the last 35 years because of that. But since emojis, okay, we've actually devolved. We've went from Shakespeare back to cave paintings and hieroglyphics, right?

42:09AJ Jacobs:Because the best thing ever for him was his emojis. But the worst thing for him is emojis. So it allows for communication. But it's this, if your wife ever sends you a text that says, I'm fine, and it's just a text with no emoji. Oh, shoot. What does that mean? Yeah, it's probably an uh-oh. but is this a jewelry uh-oh or is this a flowers uh-oh if i see an emoji that helps if i see a if i it's on the phone and she's like yeah i'm fine okay but if i can see her face then i can get the congruence and that's the problem that we're having right now is these kids they're just and i say kids my my parents do the same thing they get into this just a little text exchange it's this um asynchronous communication where okay i just got this text from steve what do i want to say back to him.

42:52AJ Jacobs:Okay, I'll do with this. That's not how real communication works. So I see these people in job interviews, they're used to that, I need three seconds to think. And they don't realize they're doing in the interview. They're taking three seconds and they're going back to the way we speak in text conversations, unfortunately.

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44:07Johnny:Well, I think so many of us would love to just have great conversations with people and leave our emotional baggage behind and not worry about what just happened on our way over to that first date or what happened in the morning before work. But that's just not how life works. And you are in situations where people walk in agitated. They certainly don't wanna share with law enforcement. They know what's about to happen and they want nothing to do with it. And you have to patiently shift them over to actually open them up and get them to trust you and build your own influence. How can we do that?

44:40Johnny:Because so many of us find ourselves in these situations where people are short, they're frantic, there's notifications going on, they're thinking about a thousand different things. But we know our message is so important and we want to get through to them.

44:51AJ Jacobs:Some of it's definitely picking the right time. I mean, don't go in talking about the raise at 430. Don't go in at 830 after they just got them doing that commute, right? I mean, they're catching up on their emails. They're not being disrespectful. They are being disrespectful, but it makes sense, right? Hey, what are you doing? They're not frontally aligned with you. So try to find that 10 or 2 o 'clock to do those conversations because then they don't have that excuse. Plus, you know, I've found with a lot of the people that I would talk to with intermittent fasting and things like that, I go do an 1130 interview.

45:20AJ Jacobs:They haven't eaten for 16 hours or 20, you know, whatever the case may be. Their blood sugar is terrible, you know, so they're just they're hangry. And so trying to get that that right time is part of it. Also, I'll make it a point to actually shut my phone off and put my phone down and frontally align. So I'll come out. I think executives that have a separate seating area in their office is getting up behind your desk and get that separate seating area to make it show that, you know, I'm here for you. This is the presence that I want. So I will make that a point, whether it be, you know, a polygraph or whether it be, you know, as a supervisor or subordinate is I will make sure that they know that I'm 100 percent in that conversation.

45:59AJ Jacobs:If not, my door is closed. You know, people say have an open door policy. Not if I'm not going to be in an open door mode. If I've got things I have to get done, shut the door and do what you need to do. Then open the door when I can step away. And that's what a lot of people don't get. People don't realize just what seating position sets up emotionally and frame and status-wise.

46:27Brad Beeler:So if I go into your office and you're sitting behind the desk, it is, I'm now talking to somebody in higher status of me. I'm hoping or begging or asking for something. But as you said, if we move now to the sitting area, well, now we're equals. Now the conversation takes on a different tone. And in fact, AJ and I, when we've had meetings, we have had discussions. How do we want the seating arrangement? What do we want to have happen? What do we need? What emotions are we trying to invoke first? What atmosphere do we want to set up? All of those things dictate the conversation and how it's going to go and how people are going to feel having that conversation.

47:16Brad Beeler:It's small things like that that people don't don't put much time in thinking about. In fact, it's you know, these are the small details that have great effects that we want our clients to understand and be able to navigate.

47:28AJ Jacobs:Yeah, I want to be able to see their entire body. So for me, one of the best areas to have communications are at really nice hotels that have those kind of separate seating areas with the low round tables. I don't like being across a table from anyone. I can't see their lower body. And their lower body is very, very diagnostic of discomfort, comfort, whatever the case may be, where they turn their feet, where they turn their legs. I can't see that if I'm behind the table. So and I also like to almost set up off of one knee, not knee to knee, because it almost creates the environment we're around a campfire.

48:00AJ Jacobs:um you know we're we're not directly aligned if you look at people to get together in mixers and you have a group of two or three they usually don't stand completely eye to eye they kind of stand off to the side to take everything in so what i found is when i started doing that it became much less adversarial and it more became more we're working on this problem together yeah we

48:20Johnny:call that open body language getting out of these direct confrontations and you know i remember a a pretty key meeting for us we were going through a partnership breakup and we were setting up in the conference room with the mediator and our lawyers and i remember our lawyer was asking us okay where do you guys want to sit how do you want to arrange what's about to happen and i knew the emotional theater that was going to go on in that room there was one fall guy that this person was very upset with was putting all the blame on and i told our lawyer well he can't sit directly across from him because we are not going to be able to mediate this disagreement if he's staring directly at the person that he thinks is the heart of the problem so we shifted the arrangement i actually sat across from him where i had the most trust built and tried to reason with him to work through that disagreement but oftentimes we don't think about these key situations and how we're positioning ourselves and we share that with clients on first dates if you're on a first date directly across from your date puts a lot of pressure on both of you.

49:21Johnny:But if you actually sit side by side in the booth or angle yourselves closer like your friends, it relaxes both of you in these key moments where you're really trying to build that trust and connection. And I would imagine in an interrogation, if you're leaning over the table, towering over him with the spotlight on them, like we see in Hollywood, I highly doubt you're going to get anything factual out of that criminal. Yeah, I hope that doesn't happen to anyone on their first date or job interview. That's not the impression we want to leave. But let's talk about deception because obviously you've been in situations where people probably go in saying, I'm going to get one over on Brad.

49:57Johnny:I'm not confessing anything to Brad. I am going to actively deceive him. And a lot of these criminals, as you said, grooming kids, serial killers, they're very good at being charismatic, getting the other person to trust them and have influence. So what are we looking for in deception and how are you able to tune in to these key moments?

50:17AJ Jacobs:We're very bad at it. Ekman did the biggest study on it in 1994 and he looked at all different, you know, from Secret Service, FBI to college students. And there's about 10 ,000 people in this study and came back at 54%. They watched two videos. One was truthful. One was not truthful from the same person. And people were 54 % affected. That shows how bad we are. But we, the Secret Service agents that took part in it, were up in the 70s, which is pretty good. It's still not close to 100%. And what Ekman attributed that to is we spent 25 years looking at people in our protective and our investigative roles, is that where we get it wrong is for 300 ,000 years, humans, as we've evolved, have been taught to lie because it makes us look better to our tribe and to allow lying because we don't want to kick somebody out of the tribe.

51:01AJ Jacobs:So we're very, very bad at picking it up. And people are very, very good at it. And people that lie a lot and have committed a lot of criminal acts, the response they get when they lie and the fear that they get from lies is not much. Whereas if I'm afraid of being falsely accused, I get freaked out. You know, there's this this effect that happens. You know, it's kind of like I can talk about it. And what happened is, let's say my wife and I, we bought a new car. and about three days after we bought the car, she calls me up on the phone at work and says, whose female sunglasses are under the right front seat of the car?

51:37AJ Jacobs:And I didn't think anything of it. I was like, I don't know, call John at the dealership. And then the response that got me was, no, no, no. Whose female sunglasses are under the right front seat of the car that are not mine? Okay, now what's happening? I'm being accused, right? So I have nothing to hide, but I'm afraid. It's called the Othello effect. I'm afraid. So my voice inflection goes up. I repeat the question. I probably got sweat. Okay. I look deceptive as hell, but what is it? I'm afraid I can't prove that I've got nothing to hide. So that's the problem is when somebody's talking to law enforcement, especially juveniles, they can exhibit this effect.

52:16AJ Jacobs:Now, luckily in that situation, the neighbor came over and said, hey, to my wife, have you seen my sunglasses? You took me for a drive in the new car yesterday, and I was wondering if I left him in there. So, okay. But the Othello effect is real. Now, what I like to do is a couple of things. The easiest way to lie is through omission, guys. And I'm sure you know this. You've probably taught this. It's so easy to take a dog. The dog can take you on a walk. So when you take a dog off the leash and you let it go where you want, that's great. We have to ask open-ended questions. But what's the problem?

52:46AJ Jacobs:They can omit when that bad thing happens. So what I like to do is I have to ask yes or no questions. I have to put the dog on the leash and I have to ask yes or no questions. When you ask a yes or no question, you should get a yes or no response and you should get it in a timely fashion. If you want to boil all this other TikTok nonsense down and this people say I'm 90 % this and that, we're not. But we can put the odds in our favor by asking you a yes or no question. And the equivalency would be this. Let's say, Johnny do you know anybody that tells tall tales about bands they used to tour with or whatever you know the luck with the ladies do you know anybody that tells tall tales I've certainly

53:26Brad Beeler:known those people but I have I don't allow those people in my life once I got you I got you but we

53:34AJ Jacobs:all have somebody right and they're telling their tall tale it could be about you know what I went in and I told AJ let's say AJ's the supervisor this is bullshit that this thing's not being run right and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Johnny's just sitting there listening. He doesn't want to call this person out. But how do we get to the truth? We turn it to a yes or no question and we say, wow, you told AJ that? Now the spotlight's on. Now they have to make a choice. Before it was easy. Now I have to say, did that happen or did it not happen? And many times what happens, well, in so many words, that's what I said to him.

54:07AJ Jacobs:They walk back that, right? So that's the 20 ,000 foot view of how you do it. Now, what are we looking for? We're looking for delay. Delay is one of the best things for me, especially if I have a baseline of yes or no question, no, no, no, and then it's a no. It's a delay because people don't want to lie or they repeat the question to buy themselves time. Did you shoot that man? Did I shoot that man? That's a simple freaking question. You should know if you shot the person or not. I'm not asking you what you had for lunch three weeks ago, right? But the other thing I look for is how was the no or the yes set?

54:41AJ Jacobs:If I ask my daughter, did you clean your room? yes? She said it with a question mark, not with an exclamation point. I know she's full of it, right? You should be able to answer every yes or no with an exclamation point if we just had our eyes closed. The no is really, hey, are they believing me? And when they're not believing me, we tend to spice it up with, well, ask anybody. I'm the most truthful person on the planet. I swear to my mom. I swear to the grave. I swear to Jesus. None of those are 100%, but they're very telling. Also exclusive qualifiers. Any LY statement. So when somebody's, you're answering a question and it's usually, normally, or typically, why did they throw usually, normally, or typically in there?

55:20AJ Jacobs:It's because usual, normal, or typical didn't happen this time. Okay. They're wanting to frame themselves as I normally don't eat that bad thing, but this time I did. Normally I stay in the gym for two hours, but I was in there for 10 minutes this time. So really have an ear for LY statements. And then we discussed it before. No. And yes, shaking the head and then having the different body language. It's a unicorn moment, but when you see it, it's very telling. So those are the four things that both science and with pattern recognition of doing thousands of these, that when I see that, I definitely follow up.

55:53AJ Jacobs:It's not, oh my God, they did it. Let's convict them on that. And anybody who says that is ridiculous. It's the same thing with polygraph. Polygraph should never be used in court. It should be used as a tool and the right person at the right place in the right situation with guardrails and quality control.

56:05Brad Beeler:we owe it to ourselves to ask yes or no or intention or clarifying questions otherwise people begin to learn our patterns and if they know that oh well this this person takes me at face value for everything i do so i know that i can get away with this i can get away with that but when you start asking those clarifying questions they start to curb that behavior because they know there's going to be piercing questions coming. And it's funny because I make a bunch of short form content on this very specific thing. And it's obvious that there are people that when they watch my video, they see that there's a clarifying question and they lose it in the comments.

56:50Brad Beeler:If you asked me that and I laugh, I'm like, well, you just showed what kind of friend you are in my comments. I see why you took this silly video that actually helps people, why you took offense to it. Blows my mind.

57:07AJ Jacobs:You love the comments, right? Because I'm sure in your comments, there will be a bunch of people that'll say polygraph is pseudoscience. It's nonsense. I could beat it. I've beat it before. Blah, blah, blah. Right. There's a lot of people in their comments that say crazy things. And just to go back to your point, as far as when you call it out. It's definitely when you call it out. So if I'm going through a bunch of things, when we would ask our applicants, did you murder anybody? Did you do this? Did you do that? And I get no, no, no. And then I get no. I'm very careful about not calling it out right away because I don't want to show them that I'm tipping my pitches because they may pause that one time.

57:41AJ Jacobs:They may do the vocal inflection that one time. They're not going to do it again because humans are smart. It's like machine learning. They're going to learn pretty quick not to do it. But you're right that overall to show that we've got these boundaries. You can't pull the wool over my eyes like that.

57:53Johnny:And I'm sure there's been situations where people have gotten combative with you. And I know myself, as someone who tries to avoid conflict, those moments are really high stakes for me. It can be really challenging. How do you approach those situations when someone's pushing back and they're objecting on what you're saying or what you're trying to accomplish?

58:11AJ Jacobs:So calm leads to calm. So I remember a double homicide. My partner, Brian, and I were working in Chicago. And it was one of these things where we got information from the first individual that all the case facts. And the second individual immediately, I think he could hear through the wall that this guy was breaking his other co-conspirator. And the moment we walked in, he started a performance that was just unbelievably over the top right now. So what I mean by a performance is you have to determine, is this anger real anger or is it performative? And yeah, when you get real anger, when I've got somebody that's bleeding their body, when And they're trying to get rid of that adrenaline with that, you know, nasal flaring.

58:51AJ Jacobs:And, you know, they're breathing from the chest and they've got their, you know, their fist clenched. Yeah, I'm going to get some space. But what I'm not going to do is match it because mimicry is so important as far as, but I want them to mimic calm. If I meet them up here, it's just validating where they're at. And it's only going to end with a negative outcome. They're going to say, I want my lawyer. They're going to walk out of the room, whatever the case may be, or it may get combative. the de-escalation of so so important is me not peacocking is me calming my voice down is me having a slightly deeper tone you know for once again we go back to evolution what is a high pitch voice signal i'm in stress okay and i talk to my police officers all the time they get on the radio in their first chase they sound like the 12 year old version of themselves well it also hypes up other people you know when somebody hears the word gun right you freak out in law enforcement.

59:42AJ Jacobs:What you need to do is you need to take that break. Okay. And then you need to deepen that tone just a little bit because I don't want them to receive a high pitch voice from me because it's going to keep that escalation. So I don't need a yell with a yell. I need a yell with a calm conversation. And in this situation, my partner was so adept at seeing that this was performative from this guy and he just let him back. And you can only play emotion for so often. You know, we see the R. Kelly video, you know, where he's interviewed and he kind of goes from zero to 500. A barometer doesn't work like that with human behavior.

1:00:15AJ Jacobs:Unless somebody is coming to give you the worst news of your life that you've lost a loved one, nobody goes from zero to 600 or vice versa. So that's what we look for. And this was zero to 600. My partner did such a great job at seeing it was performative and he just kept talking like this. And over time, the guy reverted to the meme and eventually admitted to committing the deed.

1:00:34Johnny:Patience in that moment can feel really difficult when we ourselves are flooded by that emotion, right? That emotional reaction, unfortunately, does impact us in those moments. So taking that beat, recognizing that you escalating things and trying to meet them where they are is not going to move anything forward. And then starting to restructure and transition to what is really important here. I think, you know, for so many of us, we come in with intentions, we come in with our game plan of what we want to accomplish. And then that first punch happens and we're kind of reeling and it's difficult to reel it back in to get accomplished what we set out.

1:01:12AJ Jacobs:It's that Mike Tyson, you know, everybody's got a game plan. So they get punched in the face. Right. And that's, that's so true. And for me, I see that my professor in jujitsu talks about this all the time is you're going to have a game plan and you're going against these other people that are amazing jujitsu practitioners. And the thing that you tried to do, you know, you tried to get them in this OODA loop where they're responding to you and you're not responding to them. That's what you always want, but there's going to be a time where that doesn't happen. So what he really teaches is he goes, I want a big exhale.

1:01:40AJ Jacobs:And by the time you get a big exhale, that controls your breathing. It keeps you getting out of this moment. And you just lock in for about two seconds. And that two seconds, because time is so important. I don't care if you're talking communication. I don't care if you're talking scams. When your amygdala is hijacked, you make poor decisions. So what we got to do is we got to get out of that amygdala hijacked. And I can't tell you how many times I'm on the phone back when I was with the Secret service of people who sent money to Nigeria thinking that they were going to get, you know, the prince was going to give them all the money or whatever the case may be.

1:02:09AJ Jacobs:And everything is based on time. Time is of the essence. Time is of the essence. No, it's not. Is it really of the essence? There's not a gun in your head. So take a deep breath. And if you do that, you tend to make better decisions.

1:02:20Johnny:I love ending on that because I feel so often in those moments that we are amped up, we don't know how to slow down. And that physiological reaction of that deep breath, that exhale allows that to happen. I'd love for you to share with our audience where they can find out more about the book. And we really thank you for this spirited conversation, all the acronyms, because they're so powerful.

1:02:38AJ Jacobs:I appreciate it. The book's called Tell Me Everything. It started off as a law enforcement book. And thankfully, the editor turned it into a book that, hey, hopefully parents, teachers, coaches can use to further their communication. So BradleyBeele.com is where they can find it or anywhere books are sold. Obviously, most people get their books on Amazon right now. And then I also try to put stuff on Instagram and LinkedIn. So BradBeele1865 is my moniker on there. But I've listened to the show for a long time, gentlemen, and it's an honor to finally be on it. So I appreciate it. Thank you.

1:03:03Brad Beeler:Appreciate that, Brad. Thank you for coming. Yeah, we are honored to have you.

1:03:17Brad Beeler:That concludes another episode of the Art of Charm podcast. And now comes a part of the show where we showcase one of our X-Factor Accelerator members. Take it away, Preston.

1:03:27AJ Jacobs:Hey, everyone. This is Preston from Mesa, Arizona. I joined the Art of Charm because after transitioning out of the military, I noticed I was struggling with building connections and relationships with people on a personal scale, and it didn't help on the business side of things either. I tried a lot of different coaching programs, YouTube, personal growth videos, the works. And the great thing about Art of Charm is it's not a pill that you can just take to quickly fix everything. They have a system and a structure so that you can build what you need to to see the matrix in yourself and actually get the results that you're looking for in the end.

1:03:58AJ Jacobs:The awesome thing, AJ, Johnny, Michael, they work with you one on one as well as they put a lot of time and effort to set up continual meetings there during the week and groups. again I would highly recommend this you're going to see the matrix you're going to see things that will help you connect and build great relationships thank you Preston and it was a pleasure working

1:04:17Brad Beeler:with you too and good luck to you and your future endeavors if you've gotten value out of this or any of our podcasts head on over to your favorite podcast player and rate and review the show and mean the world to us and it helps others find the show until next week go out there and be charming I remember you. You were the bad boy.

1:04:42AJ Jacobs:You threw your love away. Like it was just a toy.

1:04:48Johnny:And you sold the world. You're a song of a tragedy. Cause you had your taste. All black on the yesterday. Yeah, but I remember you. Oh, yeah. I'll remember you It was a bad day But I found it a wrong way