Transcript: The Impact of Facial Traits and Personality

 

Alan Stevens: Guy out and I said oh, what's going on? He says I'm thinking of dating him. Is he? Would he be a good partner? I went hang on. What we need to know first of all is what are you looking for in a partner? You need to know yourself first of all what you're looking for and everything else, and then what sort of a partner you're looking for. Then you can find the facial look for the facial features that you're that'll fit that partner. But it always comes back to yourself.

Brendan Rogers: In a world where communication extends far beyond words, one crucial skill can transform the way we connect and lead. Can the subtle art of facial profiling unlock deeper insights into communication and leadership? Today's guest, alan Stevens, is a renowned international profiling and communication specialist. During his career, his profile politicians, celebrities and even royalty. In our conversation, alan invades the secrets of facial profiling, demonstrating its impact in enhancing leadership, negotiation and building lasting relationships. Get ready to see the world differently as we dive into the intriguing topic of facial profiling with Alan Stevens. Tell us a bit about the sort of origins of facial profiling and what it actually is.

Alan Stevens: Well, everybody is a profiler when they're first born. And if we look at that side of it first, well then you'll understand how far this goes back. It actually goes back to when Adam and Eve were boys and girls, sort of thing. Yeah, in short pants and all that sort of thing. It comes back to. Everybody looks at somebody, we make judgments on them. We look at their face first of all. When we're young children do we recognize the person? We get to know what mum and dad looks like and the family around us, and then we always say, also looking at their body language and expressions to know whether they're happy or sad. Look at a baby it's crying, it's smiling, it's laughing. It just changes so quickly because it's picking everything up and everybody. We're perfect profilers when they're born. But as we get older, we're playing sports, we're going to school, we're doing all these other activities. It's like you know, if you've been in sports, if you're not exercising, you must have that trophy, and that's what happens to our skills. So we understand that everybody's born as a profiler. When you go back over time you realize that everybody was a boy or a girl, you know young child, and so they all had the skills right back to the beginning of time and so that's where it all came from. But we have the actual skills started to get recognized.

Well, what was his name? Alexander the Great. He picked his generals by their facial appearances Because if you have a look at it, you know, you see some of the movies every actor Could you imagine. Say we looked at what was in our Troy and you've got De Caprio as a young fella playing Ulysses or what are those. He'd go, no, it doesn't fit. Or you get somebody with a really skinny neck playing football. It's supposed to be a football hero, it doesn't fit. So we profile people, we categorize them, and that's always been around. So Alexander the Great and other great generals like that looked at people and went okay, this is what their appearance is giving me, and they found pretty much that. That's the way they were. What took you into the space? Oh, I always have to laugh every time somebody asks me that, because it takes me straight back to divorces, a lot of broken relationships and even business partners who emptied the bank.

Brendan Rogers: I could tell all of that by your face, yeah.

Alan Stevens: I learned this because absolute necessity and well, most of us we do in life. We learn because we have a necessity in that area. People who become counselors they had a need to work on their own issues, so when they're doing that, they then get a desire to help other people as well. So we're affected by our past and we make our decisions on that.

Brendan Rogers: You say that we if I understood what you said before correctly we're born as profilers and so there's maybe a bit of intuitiveness to that. Where does that go? How do we lose that intuitive thing?

Alan Stevens: Well, when I was younger when I say younger, I was in my 30s I was a lifesaver and I worked out, so I had a great physique.

Brendan Rogers: You're saying you don't now.

Alan Stevens: Yeah, well, as I've gotten older, mate, have a look at it. You know, I remember in my 70s. You know everything that was North before has now gone South. This is what happens. That's one way of looking at it Exactly. So we all get older and because I don't work out, there's a lot of guys that are my age who are fit because they continually work out. I haven't. I got involved in what I'm doing here and getting excited by that. You know, working with families, working with communities and with corporates, and so I'm exercising and so my body's going to atrophy.

It's the same thing with us when we're young children. It's an absolute necessity that we are able to read people. We need to know be able to recognize mum, dad, the family, etc. We need to be able to recognize if somebody's somebody that we shouldn't be around. But then we also that's the facial feature side of it. Then we look at the expressions and body language.

We have to read those as well, because if it's a family member and they're angry, we might want to find out why they're angry. If it's somebody we know we shouldn't be around because of the facial features, we'd recognize that and they're angry, we know to get the hell out of there because it's a dangerous situation. So it was naturally just our survival and a child. Why do I say to parents who've got young children how often do your children push you to the edge but not push you over the edge? If they feel if you didn't get pushed over the edge or you feel like you're falling over it, it's because you've already had a bad day and the kids haven't known about that. But all of a sudden they'll recognize it in the way that you escalate and children recognize that they'll push it. At a level they'll stop. They'll push you in until you finally give in. But as we get older we don't need to read people as much because we know our family. We know how to recognize when they're angry and things.

Brendan Rogers: We don't have to concentrate so much.

Alan Stevens: So now we can concentrate on our sports, that we're playing, going to school, studying and as we get older it gets even worse. Because now we're looking at, well, what sort of partnership we have and we start looking at finding the right partner and all the things that we get up to in that going out, playing sports and having a good time and because we have the people around us. The ones that we have as friends are similar to us, so we don't have to worry about those as much. But this is one of the reasons why, in another workplace, so many people have problems because they don't know how to read the people who are different to them, because we've forgotten that skill.

Brendan Rogers: So let's expand on that a little bit more. Why is it important? Do you think it's important that leaders should care about something like this facial profiling topic?

Alan Stevens: Well, I've talked to kids at school and I actually asked a whole bunch of children in one of the town halls one day. I said look, who are all your friends? And they pointed their people out. And I said who are the kids you don't like? They pointed another group out in the hall and I went okay, why are your friends your friends? Oh, they like the same things that we do the sports, the hobbies.

When I said to the guys, do they like the same girls? I said yeah, so it's the same sort of group of girls you're all getting together with. And they said yep, and I said and the others, the ones you don't like? Tell me about them? And they said, well, they do stuff that we don't like. We don't even understand what they do. And I said right, eo, would you realize that when you go out into the workplace, your friends are going to be the competition, because they're all going to be applying for the same jobs that you're going for, because you all love the same stuff, and they're going to be going for the same girls. And the guys' faces just look nice, and remember the ones that you said you didn't like that, didn't like the same things, didn't like the same girls, you're going to be able to the jobs you don't like doing. You push those across the table and they're going to thank you for it and at the same time, the girls that they're going after you're not going to be interested in. So there's no competition on that side of it. So do you see that these kids who you're giving a hard time to, now that if you make sure you understand them, you talk to them and everything, because you don't have to go on holidays and things like that or play with them on the weekend, but treat them in a way in which there's no animosity, because when you get to the workplace they're going to be your allies if you know how to deal with it properly.

And so, in the workplace or for an employer, for instance, knowing how to read somebody, you know what tasks and hob you know that'll suit them. You know what careers, first of all. So at school we can guide the kids to the studies, to the employment, the type of jobs that matches their personality. How many people do you know that do several university degrees and never use it? So if they do this, then the end result is that they're now studying in a field they're more likely to go and work in. They're going to enjoy the work they're doing.

We know if somebody is happy, they're more productive. If they're unhappy, if somebody has been bullied at work, their performance will drop 70%. Those that perceive that there could be, you know there's bullying going on in the organization. They're just not happy. Their performance drops about 40% On average. In a large organization performance is usually down around about 29-30%.

So when the employees realize that, get the people, find the right people to do the particular jobs, find the look at the gain that their profile is, to work out what tasks will suit them. So you give them those tasks. You put a team together. You know who to put in the team and who to give what tasks to. They're going to be happy. They're going to be more productive, so you make more money. You'll also find if they're happy at work, there's less bullying in the workplace. You have to deal with that. If they're happy there, they're going to be happy when they go home. So it's going to be less domestic violence problems because anything that happens at home will come to the workplace. Anything that happens at work will go home. So when you put all that together you're finding that you've got happy staff. If they're happy, they're not going to go off a sick leave. They'll be healthier because we know anybody who's happier has gets less bugs. Now, as far as getting, you know, flus and things like that, they're reduced.

So, as I say, laughter is the best medicine and being happy. So the more happy your people are, the more productive they are. And if you're a boss and you want to work on the business because that's a big catch cry, you know, work on your business, not in it Well, if you've got a micromanager staff because everyone's unhappy, they're not only doing what they have to do to get by, you're going to stay there and work in the business. So if you've got happy staff and everything else, then you can go and work on your business and then you can really grow the business. These are all these little things that most people miss.

Brendan Rogers: Again, it sounds pretty important potential skill to utilize. How does the? Are there dangers of just boxing in to say, hey, I know a lot about facial profiling and making decisions off the back of that. What are the dangers, if any?

Alan Stevens: Yeah well, the more you understand it, the more skills you've got, whether the better you're going to be. Everybody is a profile of some form in later life as well. But it's usually based on biases and judgment past experience. So we become very judgmental when we look at people with it, when we don't have the skills. But I'm still making judgments, but not being judgmental, I'm making judgments on what I can see. But again, I profiled thousands and thousands of people, but not once I've said to somebody this is who you are. I've always looked them and said, well, I can see this in your face. This is two extremes. One extreme you do this and the other extreme, you do that. I reckon you do this. And somebody said to me one day if you've ever been, is this 100% right? And I said, well, nothing's 100%, but I'm yet to be proven wrong.

Because, every time I do that with somebody, they come back and they go yes, and if they say no and there's people around them, they're friends, they're usually nodding yes and so. But the facial features tell me the personality, but I'm never arrogant enough to say, as I said, that that's who you are. I then use the. Now I know how to change the way I like to speak, be spoken to, to match the way that they need to be spoken to. So now I'm using the language that they need and the amount and everything calls. I'm now tuning my transmitter into their receiver. Then I've got the body language and expressions to give me the feedback have I read them right and is there something emotionally going on and are they telling me the truth? Now, when I use the micro expressions and body language for that truth side of things or you know whether they're telling lies, I use it as a light, not as a lie detector, but as a truth seeker. Because if I got a staff you know staff member and they you know they're not there's something going on. I know they're not telling me the truth. I want to delve into it to find why. And it could be a problem at home, it could be a problem with another staff member. If I can find that out, I can then fix the problem. And when I fix the problem in that way, I've now got a loyal staff member and then I can go work on the business.

The more people I've got in the business, you'd love what they're doing and are focused on making sure the business grows. Because every human being wants to feel that they belong, that they contribute, that they're valued, and so you know it's the same as your partner at home. They want to feel valued, they want to feel that they've got a place, that they contribute and everything else. Because we keep saying that people, the only difference between the relationship with the people at work and the other person at home is that all those conditions are exactly the same. The only thing is at home, yes, you're going to have sex, but not at work. So and that's the only difference and when bosses understand that, or executives and team leaders understand that they have a staff, that will, then the staff members as a team or work as a team and they don't have to worry as much about micromanaging, because a boss can go on holidays and the company grows in their absence. That was the true definition of a boss.

Brendan Rogers: There's. You mentioned something earlier about identifying sort of strengths and weaknesses through profiling and all those sorts of things. So, and also just before we started recording talk, I'd asked you something around triggering. So could you identify something that could trigger a person? Now, full disclosure. You and I have known each other for quite a long time. We're friends, we know each other. It reads me well. What do you see in me, in my facial profile, let's say, that could be triggering for me, where I'm maybe not as controlled in my emotions and responses?

Alan Stevens: Well, as I said, every trait's got an upside and every trait's got a downside, but you can't have an inside without an outside. That's just the way life is. So the traits tell us where the person's strength is, where they're happy, but at the same time we know then there's certain situations where the trait will become a problem. You've got a little bit of career call possession, but I've probably got a little bit more than that. It's great when it comes to looking at documents, finding errors in black and white, but it's a bugger in relationships, in the intangible, the stuff that happens around us, that we sense things.

Well, I look at it and, as I said, I've been through two divorces, a lot of break relationships. Now, as I've gotten older, I look back over that and I think, yeah, I know who was part of I'm definitely part of that blame and because I thought there was something going on. But because I've also gotten but you've got it as well aesthetic appreciation, we withdraw into our cave and we're upset, we don't express it and if our partner's not talking, you know, pulls back. Because we're pulled back, we think then that something's going on and we think we're right. So we create a problem. But if we understand the traits, we know how to talk to our partner in a way in which we alleviate all that. What?

Brendan Rogers: Is it about my face that says I've got the user term aesthetic appreciation.

Alan Stevens: Aesthetic appreciation is in the eyebrow shape, now those that are more horizontal. You've got some people that sort of angle down towards the outside that's what we call aesthetic appreciation when the eyebrows go off at a rapid rise like that 45 degree angle type thing. That's what we call dramatic appreciation. Now, in relationship you see a lot of women who've got the dramatic appreciation, but there's also a lot of women now who have the aesthetic appreciation. Now, a few generations back you could sort of align these were male traits, these were female traits.

But because of our roles and everything else. With the way society's gone, the traits have mixed up between the two genders now. But somebody who's got dramatic appreciation, the highlight of them is that the expression they put in things, great performance and everything else they really put flair into everything. Well, on the downside, they put flair into stress as well. And to somebody who's got aesthetic appreciation, the upside is we look like we're all laid back. We take all the pressures and nothing seems to get to us. But when we get stress we pull back into our cave and then we're on the things. They're sulking. What's going on Now?

If you've got, and it doesn't matter which way it's male or female on this. But if one partner's got the dramatic appreciation and they need to they're looking at their partner who's pulled back because they've got to expect aesthetic appreciation and they look like they're worried about something, they've gone quiet, they want to know what's going on, but the aesthetic appreciation that's nag, nag, nag, nag, nag, because I just want to work on the problem and so we'll pull back. And the more they ask questions and more we pull back, and that creates problems in the relationship. Now, if it's the other way around, the dramatic appreciation starts expressing themselves and the aesthetic partner goes oh my God, this is too much and they too much energy.

It's almost like your partner's saying you're a drama queen. Well, if we know how to talk to them, the aesthetic appreciation when the dramatic appreciation talks to them goes is there anything to do with me? The answer is no. Okay, is there anything I can help you with? The aesthetic appreciation says no.

All the dramatic appreciation has got to go and say I know you need to work on this on your own. You need some space. I'm going to give you the space, but come back and talk to me when you've got it sorted out. So I know because I care. So now the partner knows that the first partner hasn't just turned off altogether, so you're not talking to me, I'm not going to worry about it anymore. But they know they've been given the space to go and fix the problem. But the partner still wants to know so they can go back and talk to them when they're relaxed. The other way around and I did this with a couple of us doing a presentation in Melbourne with a room full of dentists, of all things, and one of the couples kept asking me all day would I profile their son?

Because there's certain traits you can see, and even in a newborn, that passed down from the parents and then traits we pick up over time, which we call our nurture traits. But anyway, I said, only if you bring him out the front of the class at the end of the day and that was what I was going to use that as a sort of selling the online ongoing course from there. And that's why I profiled the son and said right, this is how both of you need to change differently to each other, but talk to your son the same way. And then I said, and, by the way, I said, would this be going on in your relationship? They both sort of looked at me and looked at the audience and went yeah, she had the dramatic appreciation, he had the aesthetic so I just give that description. And as soon as I'd said that, big smile on his face. So I just turned around to him in front of everyone. I said, right, mate, now it's time to wipe the smile off your face. And I said when your wife gets upset and too much energy and he goes, oh God, yeah he's.

I said, okay, you've only got one question to ask and it's very simple and that is is this something you want me to fix or do you want me to listen. I said, and she says you want you to fix it. Either you screwed up in the first place and she wants you to fix that, or you just have the ability to fix things. She thinks, yes, you can fix this problem. I said do you love your wife? And he said yes, I do. I said so. If she says no, I just want you to listen. You know it's got nothing to do with you. Just sit there, get used to her. You know unwinding, because if you do that she'll unwind a lot quicker. And the big smile on her face. And then they looked at each other with a very big glint in their eyes. That's how easy a lot of relationships can be fixed. Every trait, as I said, has an upside. Every trait has a an impact on the other traits. So when I look at somebody.

Brendan Rogers: So you have to. As a novice, I guess you've got to be very, very careful that and I know I've taken some of your courses and really great from my own perspective about what sort of fits in my bucket. But you don't have to be very careful about thinking that you can read someone when you're just reading a really narrow view, because I mean, how many Traits are there that fall into a full profile?

Alan Stevens: There's a couple litter in the body, the shape of the body, etc. I'll length of the upper torso, little legs, etc. But there's a total of 68 traits. You've got some of them. You either have have them or you don't have them, and others you will have, extreme at one end or extreme at the other end, the middle position. So the possible combinations I'm angry, retentive and analytical, so I had to sit down one day. I've got four monitors on my computers. I've got the Excel spreadsheet up and spread it right across with one column and I did the calculation. It's Two to the power of 29, because there's either 29 traits you either have or you don't, and it was three to the power of 39. That's two with 27 characters after it. That's far more people than there are on the planet or have ever been.

So the possible combinations you combinations, and people say, oh, but how can you remember all those? You don't. When somebody walks towards you work, look at what. What stands out the most? What stands out second, how does that moderate and enhance the first one, this, the third, the fourth, the fifth, five out, seven or eight traits. You got the things that are at their most of the extremes. You got the bulk of their personality. Everything else is in the middle.

Now, as I said, each trait on the extremes. There's a real gift in those areas, like somebody with dramatic appreciation, really great at presenting Hmm. And so their partner on the other end is somebody who's very relaxed and everything cost. So they're the ones that will take, sit there when everything's going rough and everything costs, and be able to fix the situation. But the one in the middle then becomes a mediator between the two extremes. So each position and I will use a sliding scale from one end to the other, about a sliding scale of nine, whereas I teach people the ABC Now the two extremes, extremes in the middle position. So just using that number of combinations, as I said, there's two octillion possible combinations. Hmm, because I had you know, I don't really send you I go and find a word for something that had 27 characters after it and it's octillion. Octillion is it well okay.

Brendan Rogers: What one of the key things in relationships, I think, is that is that first impressions in building rapport early Hmm what should somebody be Aware of or what? What sort of helpful advice would you give around facial profiling that helps build rapport For people meeting for the first?

Alan Stevens: Time. Well, I've had some. I remembered one of my earliest students when I trained her. She then turned around and got a phone out and I knew what was coming. She brought a photo out of this guy out and I said, oh, what's going on here? She's, I'm thinking of dating him. Is he? Would he be a good partner? I went hang on.

What we need to know first of all is what are you looking for in a partner? Because you need to know yourself first of all what you're looking for, and everything kills. And then you know. You know what. You know what sort of a partner you're looking for. Then you can find the facial look for the facial features that you know It'll fit that partner.

But it always comes back to yourself. The same as when I read somebody to work out how to speak to them. I know where they are on the sliding scale, but where am I sitting on that scale? So if I'm somebody who I build confidence by doing things over and over, another person might be a little bit more towards the innate self confidence only a little way up the trail. So I only have to change a little bit.

But if somebody's right at the far end with a very strong innate self confidence, then I've got to really behave in a different way. I've got to put that confidence on more to be able to connect with. Otherwise I just see me as somebody who's wishy-washy, who hasn't made a commitment or anything, and it's because I need to go and test things and Make sure I've got them right before I tell everybody else. The innate self confidence I'll hear at the first time and they'll be out there telling everybody about it. Now, depending on and, by the way, as I said, there's no right or wrong traits, because now I look at the situation, I want to put somebody in and if I've got, say, a new, we've been doing things a certain way in our organization for a long time.

All of a sudden, because of changes and everything else, we have to now look at a different way of doing things. So then we have to come up with a new plan. So I'm not going to give it to the person who's got the high innate self confidence. They're going to go and find something you think they got it right and bring it back. We put it in place and it might crash and burn. But if I give it to the one who builds their confidence, they're going to go away, make sure they got it right. They're going to agonize over it and you know, check it and everything else, and they're going to bring it back.

If they tell me and they're talking confidently I know they know this stuff and it's this will work I can put it in place. Then that's, it's that position. Really well, but I know they're going to take a fair bit of time to do that. And this is where, by understanding that, now I know how to talk to them in the first place and say right, we need this done by a certain date now and, by the way, there's going to be a lot of questions that come up. But instead of agonizing over them every time one of those comes up, come back and talk to me so I can then work with them, get the solution faster and they'll be confident faster as well because I've worked with them.

The if I've got to do a talk and for some reason I can't and another situation here. I've got two people, one at the extreme in eight, one who builds their confidence and they know the product of service equally well, but neither of them have done a presentation before. It's not going to be the Builds confidence are going to give the job to, because they're going to go up there nervous people are going to pick that up and people who are the innate self confidence people look at them and see them as more confident. They're going to behave more confident, so they're going to do a bunch better.

Brendan Rogers: I'm going to fake it till I make it type person, not that extreme, but that sort of thing.

Alan Stevens: They're both. It's not even that they're faking it, because they have a natural what I call it confidence. So it's just part of their behavior.

Brendan Rogers: It's not that they're thinking while I'm faking.

Alan Stevens: And, by the way, on that one term, I really love that if I get a presentation, I'm sitting in presentation.

Brendan Rogers: I must have known that you love that, which is probably why I used it.

Alan Stevens: You just want to make sure I get wound up in the Sitting you up.

Brendan Rogers: Yeah, that's it.

Alan Stevens: But if I've got go to a presentation and I got some Motivational person on stage and they start talking about fake it till you make it, I'll just pick my gear up and walk out, because that came from. Act as if you know. If you look at Hopkins in silence of the lambs, he you know. Moment we see him he looked like a psychopath. He went and studied it. He was acting as if he was already there.

Now we're somebody who's faking it until they make it knows they're faking it. They're never going to make it because that message in the back of their brain is stopping them from getting there. So we've got to be careful about the words that we use absolutely.

Brendan Rogers: What, what is that? See talked about an eight Self-confidence, and they're an eight self-confidence in building confidence. So what, what is that feature? You'll see that in the shape of the face itself.

Alan Stevens: You'll find people who have a narrow face usually build their confidence. People with a wider face and they did test on that they they've had people. I'm a builds confidence sort of dude, aren't I?

Yeah very much so, and that's why I know that Whenever you're talking confidently about something, I know to take it, as you know, being gospel. You know yourself because you wouldn't be talking that way if you hadn't, you know, got to that level with the understanding of fully. And then the confidence comes out, the conversation, somebody who and and do it yourself just walk around and look at people and just figure out which one looks the most confident to you. You know we judge everybody all the time.

Brendan Rogers: Hmm, understanding judgment to some extent, and you know this sort of Awareness and again. You don't need to get to an expertise level like yourself. You've studied this for many, many years, if not decades, but at least having some awareness can really help double down on the relationships, both professionally, personally, the meeting of people, rapport building, all those sorts of things, and and then, ultimately, what decisions you could work to make in order to get the best out of people.

Alan Stevens: That's what you say exactly and, when it comes down to it, always look at now. Okay, I've done this for a long period of time. As I said before, I never assume anything, always test everything. All I'm really doing is I said everybody were profilers when they were younger and think about if you're a sportsman and you were fit and everything calls, and then you have a family and you're working and you're bringing the money in looking after the family. Of course you know fitness is going to drop away and then one day the kids are growing up and everything goes and you look down.

You think, well, what was in the chest is now in the in the stomach, it's gone south and you think right time to get fit. So what do you do? You go and get a personal trainer so they can guide you to get there quicker. Because you go and do it yourself without any Knowledge. It's going to take a long period of time if you get there at all. That's all I am. I'm nothing more than really a personal trainer. So when somebody brings me in, I'm Getting them to understand what it was when they were children again, but I'm removing the the biases, because we'll ask everybody how often have you seen somebody that reminds you of somebody else who's done the wrong thing by you in the past. Watch your natural feeling don't trust them.

And so, and the whole thing is, people who look similar will focus, will focus on things and process information in a similar way. That's the personality, the character is what they're Profiling. That's completely different. So two people who look similar will process in a similar way the how, but what they're processing will be different depending on the character. So one could be a saint, one could be a sinner.

And so when we see somebody who looks like somebody else and we've judged them and go, no, I'm not, I don't trust them, we're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy because they will recognize that they will pull back, they won't trust us, and we go see, we're all right. Well, we created the situation. This is where I come in and I go okay, now let's look at this and you'll be able to realize whether, okay, is that your bias or is it you've actually intuitively picked up something? Yeah, I say to people how often you heard somebody speaking everything sounds fine, but you had that gut feeling something was wrong. You know communications. Hundred percent of communications are made up of the words, the tone of voice, the body language, mm-hmm, they say the words, the actual words themselves, not the tonality or anything like that. But the words themselves are worth seven percent when you in communication. By the way, that seven percent is equally important in the communication because without it you don't have communication, but most of the information is in the nonverbals. Mm-hmm.

So if you take that in, you say that person looks, there's something going on here, that the words don't correlate with what you're seeing. You'll always go with what you're seeing and you won't trust them. Mm-hmm. So there's all of these issues that come into it when you're profiling people.

Brendan Rogers: Let's take a slightly different tact. Let's. I'm just gonna bring up An image of Adolf Hitler on my phone, is it? I guess you call him a leader. You know they were, there were followers, and whether he used his influence for good.

Alan Stevens: Yeah, it was definitely a leader. Yeah, but it comes back to being good or bad. Yeah, that's another thing.

Brendan Rogers: If you looked at a Person, a person of the past, like that, are there Features within his face that would give up? Give us and I guess you know History is what it is but some indication of the things that he may Get people to do or to instruct people to do over periods of time. That obviously happened.

Alan Stevens: Yeah, what you find is that when you look at, I said, the way people Take information, why they process, it is their trial. Facial features give us the personality. It doesn't give us the character that we can pick up in a conversation between what we actually Hearing from them, what we're seeing from them. So we get.

Brendan Rogers: What do you see then you, as from a facial Perspective, as his strengths and weaknesses potentially?

Alan Stevens: Yeah, well, I hate to come back to this one critical perception which you and I both got I have. That doesn't make it there. I was a Hitler.

Brendan Rogers: It's a that's that. Come back to the what we again, I guess, character, how we choose to use these Talents.

Alan Stevens: That's it, so our talents you know, we can get triggered emotionally but not taken out on people. It comes back to other issues, which comes back to the Neuroscience and other things like that, and that's some of the research we're doing at the moment the correlation between the facial features, also the handprints and also the neuroscience. There's got a friend in Switzerland I'm doing some research with. He's absolutely brilliant with the palm prints. It's not around astrology and that sort of stuff, but he's picked the character up in the hands. He's shown me the face of all the hands that go with the hands and the correlation is incredible.

Brendan Rogers: Yeah, so we're doing some work into that area.

Alan Stevens: But the One of the things is the you know as far as automatic giving, he has not got much about at all. It's all about you know more about himself. So when you look at the what, what says that like what in his face says that well, this is more about the very narrow lower lip, and yes, I've got a narrow lower lip as well, so I think, before I give is that what you got a beard. You're trying to hide it.

Brendan Rogers: I'm hiding a lot of features. I can tell you yeah, but grow up.

Alan Stevens: Rest of the rest of the place, I'll be able to get rid of the wrinkles as well. Yeah, there's so much symmetry in his face. That's the whole thing. Where you've got a symmetry, you got mood swings, and so that's the thing that if you got a lot of mood swings, then the Character comes across as being, or the person comes across as being, unstable, and that's what he was found to be. But then a lot of what happened to him was the impact it had on the neuroscience, these emotions and how they're affected then with critical perception.

Yes, if you're in a situation where you think that everyone's against you, that will compound really fast and that will then come out in your behaviors. So, and also the Shape of the base of the nose skeptical, questioning everything as well, never taking anything on face value.

Brendan Rogers: That's interesting. How do you talking skepticism? How do you approach people who are skeptic around a topic like this?

Alan Stevens: Well, I usually find that when I see somebody who's got that skeptical trait In the way in which I presented to them, they usually come back and go okay, they become my best advocates. When I meet a skeptic to start with, I say look. Now they say I'm sorry, I'm a skeptic, and I go. Well, first of all, are you a skeptic with an open mind or a closed mind? So what do you mean? Are you looking to put things down or you asking questions to understand? If you're there to ask questions to understand, I'll talk to you all day, no problems. But the moment that you just do this to put it down, I'm not gonna waste me time with you, because that's to your own detriment. You know, because I'd learned a long time ago.

The most important thing I'll ever learn is the next thing I learn after. I think I know everything. I'm always learning. I also go by another Arabic saying, which is you know, trust everybody. Would lock up your camels at night. So when you put those two together, I trust everybody, I listen to everybody, but then I analyze it and go does this really fit me? Doesn't fit the situation. How true is this for me? It might be true for somebody else but doesn't necessarily mean it's true for me. So I'm looking to see whether it is. But to do that I've got to listen to everything first. I've got to look for what. What do I, what don't I know? And let's face it the more I've learned probably yourself and the way We've learned in life the more we realize we don't know because it's so much more out there.

Yeah, always learning, and so once you get to understand that and then you realize you're moving forward. Those people who you know there are, confidence levels are down, their self-esteem is down. They don't want to feel that they don't know everything and so they actually hold themselves back. The best thing that I've ever found in my life was to embrace them. If the wrong things I was doing, I thought things are right, and the where I thought they were failings, because my understanding those more effectively, I was able to move forward.

Brendan Rogers: No, is there? Is there something that's regularly misunderstood around Facial profiling?

Alan Stevens: Yeah, well there's, you've got reading faces, you've got face reading. Now, reading faces, all the psychologists will think of micro expressions, body language etc. But then you have the, the face reading. Then you get them thinking for knowledge and this is we were, this is Mind reading, etc. It's like when I come out on stage always, you know, walk out on stage and I say to everybody, who'd like I did this morning in a minute knowledges the crane.

The bumps on the head. That's right and that was character Hmm, and any of the psychologists or I got my head over, got a bumpy character, yeah well, the whole thing is if you had a situation where you had a Knock on the head, you got an extra bump. Doesn't change your character. It might change your moods, depending on how you got the bump, but it doesn't change your character. Trinology was something that was brought out by a doctor to start with, was then finally proven to be wrong, and and yeah anybody can be a serial killer, anybody can be a criminal.

It's a matter of choice and the in the neuroscience it goes with it, but the bumps on the head. Well, now I've got about one of my sons. When you look at his, his skull, it's sort of screw. If now people would say, oh, that was a force of button. He was born by yams as Arian.

It's just the way he's shaped of his it's go. If you think about it, when a child is born, the skull is Soft. You know, it's all this. The sutures are soft, it's and that's the skull small as the top. We go older, our face gets bigger and that sutures start to expand and they fill in. It's only in our early 20s that they finally seal. Is that right infuse? And so, and why do they do that? Because, well, number one, yes, we had over small head or otherwise we're gonna tear our mother to pieces. But secondly, our brain hasn't developed yet and, as we were thinking, we're creating synaptic connections and they take up space and.

I know that Albert Einstein he had a similar shape Skull to most people, but at the prideful section where he's doing most of his thinking, it was 15% light to the majority of the population the average. So if you're concentrating in a certain way, thinking in certain ways, you're going to create more and more synaptic connections in that area, and as the brain grows, if the skull doesn't go with it, you've got brain damage, and so that that's why the skull keeps moving and takes the shape of the, the brain that you create. There's no two skulls on the planet. They're the same, same as fingerprints on the hand. And so when you understand that size of it, you realize that the synaptic connections that we develop over time they've virtually come to a link to our, our nurture traits. But we have traits that were passed down, the DNA from our parents.

Now I know there's a lot of new age will say, okay, well, I might have been a biking maiden in an earlier life. Well, if the memories that you have at the time or parents have at the time they can see the child, all of those memories are stored in every cell of the body. They fall into the DNA of the child. So now the child's got those memories and there's a passes down. You know, I've got three sons and I always talk about them being chalk and cheese and still trying to figure out number three. And Most parents will say, yeah, I'm like they all. You know, it's like one of the guys the other days if they came out of the same factory With the same production manager. But they're all completely different products. They think differently, they behave differently and that's because the foundation we had at the time that each of us were conceived Was the memories the parents had at that time.

So therefore, this is where the nature traits come down and this is where the basis of our facial structures because how many parents look at a child and go, I've got the father's eyes, or it's got this or it's got that Because we see that, that's, that's there. But then we create our the nature traits where we choose how to respond to our environment. So somebody frowns a lot all the time because life is miserable. Corner their mouth turns down. I know with you, I see yours. It's always turned up. You got these laughter lines out here and you know, or too much sun, yeah, well, the thing is, you can sell, if it's too much sun, the inside of the lines are fainter, that's more the light-colored skin, because you kept the sun out of it, and this is why, if there's any women listening, to this is.

Brendan Rogers: This is where, again going back to being careful in that there Maybe cultural difference. Well, there are cultural differences. Let's let's talk a bit about that. Actually, what? What do People need to be aware of? They're going into this facial profiling space or approaching you to get some understanding, some training from a cultural diversity, all these sort of things, which is super important and what needs to be. What do we need to be mindful of in the, in various facial features of different cultures?

Alan Stevens: First of all, the first thing is Every trait. There are different extremes within every culture, so you'll have those that are highly Confident, those are less confident, those that need more space than others, etc. Those are the more self-reliant. Now, what we look at is we look at the culture and then we go okay, wherever my middle position was before with a particular culture, I might move it a little bit over here. So I move it a little bit, but I still look. Then from that point, are they I've further up the line from there or back this way, and so I make an allowance for that.

Brendan Rogers: Now, when it comes to Can you give us an example of that?

Alan Stevens: First, let's say, I guess a Person like my face versus someone who has Chinese background well, if you look at a lot of Chinese, you'll find the same with Islanders and with some of the Indigenous Cultures. There's more of a flare of the nostrils. Yeah, now it comes down. It sort of goes out in well, deadseer and tutu it comes down. It looks like a tea shake because they go right out and this comes from. Well, think of a ball. It's about to charge, is determined, and as it flares its nostrils, you keep flair in the nostrils. You're going to build the muscles up there and they're going to flare out.

So with the Chinese, with Islanders, etc. If you think of their culture, they had to do everything themselves. They were the masters, not just the jack of all trades, but they were the masters of all trades. So they had to be self-reliant. But when we live in a large society and we've got some, you know officers, and we've got cold, you know Agriculture and everything else, of course there's going to be changes. You know, I can see that you're more of a team player, so you work well within the teams. The person with the flare nostrils they want to be in charge of the teams but quite often clash with my nose tells you that Indication on a team player a team player.

So if you're, you'll manage teams, but you'll work within the team. You just won't get them to do things and stand back. So I know you're going to be there and but it sounds like.

I've chosen the right field that I play in. Exactly that's the thing. If we're lucky enough, we gravitate to those things. Hmm. But by being able to read somebody in the earlier stages we can get them there faster. So well, I'm doing the stuff that I'm doing today. As I said, I'm in my 70s and because of that, you know the first 50 years of my life that was a mess Now, breaking relationships, always trying to build relationships, and got nowhere near at all.

Later on in life, I started focusing on Understanding people more. When I started understanding them, I Then started. The focus was deep on them, and so I wasn't worried about me anymore, I was thinking more about them, and so I naturally changed in that period of time and now, well, I've got some relationships all over the place. You know, when I had my birthday in the middle of COVID when I was 68, that was celebrated on seven continents.

Brendan Rogers: I've spent hundreds of hours interviewing leaders across business and sport. From this, I've collated ten of the most practical Leadership strategies to help you be a confident leader and enhance the performance of your team. Download your free workbook containing these ten strategies at the culture of leadership com. Don't wait unlock your leadership potential today. It was a great day.

Alan Stevens: It was incredible, you know, for the people I've connected with, and that's a big cake. It is big cake.

Brendan Rogers: How'd you manage that?

Alan Stevens: Because I remembered one of the. It was in the, as I said, was in COVID, one of the ladies that I profiled her son when he was six years old. He's now 18. He's an entrepreneur. It's that time.

The school didn't want him. The afterschool scared, didn't want him. The. They wanted him medicated and she was trying to oppose it. Being a single mom, she was under a lot of pressure. So I profiled and gave her a report. She took her to the school in the afterschool scare and she played each of them against the other, saying that one was doing it, if the other didn't do it, it crash and burn and nobody wanted to be responsible for that. At the age of six, they said he never amount to anything. You never do presentations in front of the class. At the age of seven, he's up in front of the class. A Year and a half later, psychologists was let go, they didn't need him anymore and with the doctors, approval, no medication. He's now an entrepreneur, which he never would have been if he'd been on that medication all those years. And, as she said, the relationship, the conversations They've had, there'd be magical things he never thought she could have had with him.

Brendan Rogers: And so, just through understanding his facial features and that's it how he likes to be spoken to what he may be interested in and nurturing that sort of stuff and think about it.

Alan Stevens: You walk up to somebody With a scale on your face or you walk up to a smile on your face, you're gonna get a different reaction. You know that's obvious. Well, this is no different. If you talk to the person, you talk to their personality. They feel that you've connected with them and problems are solved. This is why it's so easy to do. You know, as I said, it's got a couple of guys who are still doing testimonial videos. I did one the other week and I've been putting them out a couple of months ago. I'm putting him out in small segments of you know, less than 60 seconds, and the life that's changed their lives, not only with their children, but also with their partners and also with the people around them. It impacts everywhere. And when you've got people say, oh, but this stuff doesn't work, and I go well, go and talk to the people who I've worked with, I don't have to say anything, they just stick up all me straight away.

But so that mother came around in the middle on, like their birthday. She's standing at the front door, she's got a mask on, she's baked a cake herself because she couldn't find one anywhere. So she baked the big cake. Yeah, she baked a big cake, it's. It was too big for me to wait, I can tell you it's. It was funny because she also brought me a birthday present, which was a roll of toilet paper, because that was a shortage at the time.

This is laughter and fun that we have and the connections that we've got Mm-hmm, they've only come about because of being able to read people and connect with them. Mm-hmm. Yeah, these are all members. Of you know, I create the campfire project and that was a place where people could open up and tell their stories. For people to open up and tell their stories, I've got to feel safe Absolutely and I can do that instantaneously with them, and that's what's worked really well.

Brendan Rogers: Mm-hmm, and we will link all this stuff in the show note, because you mentioned a few things I'm sure will. People will be very interested in having a look at some of that stuff, joe Rogan mm-hmm the biggest podcaster in the world, mm-hmm. What does his face say to you?

Alan Stevens: Okay, well, first of all, the thing that stands out as soon as you see him, I can tell you straight away he's somebody who just likes the best way to do it. Give me the best way to do it and get the hell out of the way and let me get it done. He's got pretty critical, that's all he's got to do the critical perception as well. So he's not going to take any crap from anybody that represents something to him. It better be presented right. He's tenacious, gets his teeth into something, is not going to let it go. But the squareness of the door also shows me somebody what I call pugnacious, which means like to debate, like to wind people up and have a bit of fun with it.

Brendan Rogers: It sounds like his pod pod cast to a tee. Yeah, all of those things you mentioned.

Alan Stevens: Yeah, well, you know, it's one thing he has got as well as mechanical appreciation he's great at organizing people in events. So be very all great at organizing his podcast and everything else and have instruction away in which the person he talks to he can steer them exactly where he wants them to go, depending on whatever his motive is for that interview. So, yeah, he'd be a well, he'd be full on in a in an interview that he's. Also he's analyzing everything as well. He's going to make sure he's got all the information before he makes a decision.

But once he's made it, as I said before, the physical motive just give me the best way to do it and get out of the way and get it done. So he's coming through as a powerhouse, but he has a little bit of the builds confidence, which means that these confidence, when he's talking, he's covered everything. So don't challenge him because you'll have your time cut out.

Brendan Rogers: That's so fascinating. When shouldn't? When is it dangerous to use this stuff? Is there a time that it's dangerous to?

Alan Stevens: Use this stuff. I would say to anybody who wants to manipulate people is dangerous If you use it to the end of the use is important. That's the main thing. So, if you're using this to create better relationships, see, I've had people that I've clashed with and the end result is now, if I talk into them the right way, they've turned around and they become great allies. You know, some of them have paid me a lot of money than to be trained.

Hmm because I won't fight with anybody. See, when I live only a conversation with people, I'm not listening to them to respond, I'm listening to them to understand. Now, I have viewed people from all different walks of life, all genders, cultures, religions, and when they start talking, I'm listening to find that common thread so I can understand them and then, when that conversation, I can then deal with any differences that there are. And In that you know, if they've done something young, the past you know horrific as things like that I can understand why they did it. I don't condone it, but I can still have a conversation with them and something that's passed, instead of being, you know, giving them a hard time into that, guiding them in a way in which they can then move forward and become more of a benefit to people, so into themselves. So this is it's the intent always that you would in which you apply it.

You know, in sales, for instance, it's all 80 20 rule for the tech, 20 percent is divided into two. There's 10 percent up the front. No matter who you are, they will buy from you. You know they could be Eskimos and you're selling ice. The personality, the connections are so strong that they just like you and they'll buy anything from you. There's 10 percent on the far end that will never buy anything off you. The people where you make your money is the 80 percent in between and that's on the sliding scale. Because you got the ones who are, you know, really love you at the front and they're a little bit less, a little bit less and further Less down again down the line. But having these skills means you can get further down that 80 percent, to the point that you can get to virtually all of the 80 percent. So the 10 percent up front, you got a hundred ninety percent of those people, the people down the end. Well, you just get to a point where you realize that I only go where I'm, you know I don't go where I'm tolerated, I go where I'm valued, where I'm you know. So say yeah, that's the right word for it, had it in my mind a moment ago and last it where I'm celebrated, and it's the same thing there. That 10 percent.

I don't get upset with them because I know that their personality is different. We're not going to get over those differences because I might be able to talk to them, but they haven't got the skills, so they've going to have turned off. We already, you know, we speak to somebody, we make an impression in that moment and, and quite often for a lot of people, that's the impression that stays with them forever Because they can't get over it. Hmm. Whereas I can look at somebody and go well, it's the impression I got first up. But this is what I'm seeing and because I can listen to understand, I can find the value that everybody's got. Even, you know, even associate person or psychopaths have a value. If you're going to go to war, you don't want somebody who's worried about people and everything cause really leading you because you're going to worry so much About losing people, I'll lose most of them. Hmm, if you've got a psychopath running the organization, they just want to get the job done and they'll get it done with the least a number of people copying it, hmm. So everybody has a place. So you just work out where that place is. So it's the same thing with the facial features.

What task, what jobs will suit this person? What task should I give them to do it? And how should I then put a minute? What? How do I structure the team? Who do I put in charge? How do I teach the person who's in charge, to how to talk to those people. You do this. You've got to control over your organization. Where you can go and walk away from it. I'd say say that if you want. You know, if you take care of your employees, they'll take care of your business.

Now, richard Branson a lot of other people have said it before him that say your customers don't come first, your staff come first. And what people don't realize is when you put your staff first, you're actually putting your customers first, which is start for the ones who are dealing with the customers, hmm. And so if your staff are happy, they impact on the customers who are also happy. And you know, ask anybody who sticks with a firm and they go yeah, all the people I deal with, they're great. They're not just saying the boss is great and everybody else is an asshole, they're saying no, you know everybody's great and so they'll stick with it.

So when you do that, then it's a boss. Now you've got people looking after the organization for you go off on holidays, hmm. Or you can spend more time building your business to bring more people in. See, everything's connected. This is the thing that we're not isolated beings, hmm. And the more that we understand the other person and understand their differences. We don't have to accept the differences, but we can understand them. We can have better relationships and everything's more productive.

Brendan Rogers: This show is all about creating confident leaders and we focus through Experiences like people like yourself and their, their aspects and their skill sets they've developed in life. If we look at a key thing about any of us, you know we touch on learning. Like it's that self-awareness About ourselves and learning about ourselves. How does this facial profiling support that?

Alan Stevens: Yeah, so how should it be used to support that? As I said, upside and downside the traits if you understand the downside of your traits, then you have dominion over them. If you don't understand them, they got dominion over you. Hmm, as I said, critical perception In my case, seeing issues and things were wrong and then believing it was for other people's problems. Hmm, once I realized it was, that trait was mine and therefore that was having an impact on my relationships. I could control that. I go. If something happens, I go. Oh, is that Really happening or is this just my traits starting to get? Now raise a duckly head. Hmm, I know, when I talk about the traits as well, you know very fine, here You'll find those people are very emotional, very sensitive. They pick up everybody else's emotions Great skill to have as a counselor or, you know, clergy member and things like that. We are dealing with people. And when.

I'm talking to people, I train people on that. I make sure they might, you know, pull my hair and show me it's baby, fine, it's that fine. So I said and I talk about the old there was a fairy tale where they had this young girl, that founder. They didn't know she was the princess or not, so they tested by putting a P on the ground, a little hardened P, like a little pebble, put a mattress over the top of it and which is slept on. If you could feel it. She was therefore more gentle and everything cause and therefore more likely to be the princess and not just a commoner. And they put more mattresses on, kept on feeling them, and people look at me and I go and I'm that princess.

Now I'm extremely sensitive, which is reason one of the reasons why I've been so good at being able to counsel people, pick up their emotions and everything cause, being attuned to it, empathetic. But the thing I had to learn them was to not take their stuff on. So I can sit there and listen to somebody telling the most horrific stories, I can empathize and everything cause, and then, when I get up and walk away, I can go back to whatever I was doing reading a book, going and having coffee with somebody and chatting and everything, because I've learned how to use the upside of the trade but not let the downside get triggered. The upside of the trade but not let the downside get triggered. That's the power of it and that's one of the reasons why people are worried about I might find something wrong with me. I go great. The sooner you find it, the sooner you got power over it and the sooner your life is improved.

Brendan Rogers: And so let's talk technology Hmm, and facial profiling. So maybe let's start with a. I is the buzz, but let's start with facial recognition Technology. How does facial recognition technology and what we're talking about facial profile? How do they work together? And if they do work together, what are the the good and they're not so good of that?

Alan Stevens: Well, again, it's who's using it. That's always going to be the issue. What's the intent behind it? The lady who taught me the facial features. She's a good friend of mine over in America and she rang me after I did the master training with her and she said look, I'm working with a couple of engineers and we put a program together on the website. If you can just send a couple of photographs in, now there's, you know, put the camera on your computer, load the cam, the photo, straight in, and we'll do your profile. And I thought she's forgotten something she taught me. I said do you mind if I do it twice? And she's okay, she's why I said you'll find out. So when I looked at the first time, as I said, a symmetry comes into it.

It shows, mood swings and other things. I look straight at the camera, dead on, so I wasn't up, wasn't down, wasn't to the left, all the right, I was looking straight in and then I sent that in and then I looked, with my face slightly turned to the left and slightly down. Two different reports that came out. That was the problem with the the stuff back then. Because you and I can look at a Photograph on a computer, for instance, and we see the depth. The computer systems only saw the two dimension. They didn't see the depth, only the width and the height, and so that was an issue.

Now I built the first two apps for profiling apps and they were designed on. You bring a photograph up, you look at it, you look at the person you were profiling and, because we could see the depth, which one of these three photographs are closer to that person, click that one if that's what they want, but at the end of it to give you a report. But so that was as close as we could get to it. Now I'm looking at the new AI and technology, because when I spoke to the university in Newcastle they said right, what we can do is we can use stereo cameras, get two photos at the same time and do a composite, and I went. Well, you need to do four, because you got the left and right, you got the up and down, so you need four shots simultaneously. Then you put that together. You come up with a direct in the face image. Most people don't have access to that type of equipment and so that didn't go anywhere. But one of the clients I worked with a little while ago they're a software firm and they now believe that some the algorithms are good enough to be able to read depth.

If that's the case, we're getting closer to being able to profile people's personalities as far as body, body call it, recognizing whether somebody is a particular person that's been around for a long time, because that looks a whole little different.

A lot of points on the face and then, as from a video and there's no other faces moving, they're able to then look at that against a still photograph and say, okay, that's so and so. So in border control and things like that, the expressions with cameras Well, they give away the emotions. The micro expression is as fast as a fifth of a second down to 125th of the second. It happens when something is set around you or happens around you, we respond unconsciously, and then Our conscious mind steps in and it shuts off. So in that moment which, because it's unconscious, people can't fake it If you got someone like Barack Obama, who's extremely good at not moving his face at all, his body will give it away when he's angry. So you heard him in a interview one day and this guy in the background in the wings Yell it out liar and as he did that, his elbow went up.

So, it was a movement to strike. His anger came out there, but he's faced it and show it. So it'll come out somewhere in the body every time.

Brendan Rogers: We're making me pull up his photo now and you need to tell me more about Barack Obama's face.

Alan Stevens: Yeah, well, again, what we're talking about here is going to be person out, because this is still photograph, course, but so happy to do that, you know it's definitely not. Some, you know, because of the angle of, comes down more to a point. These are the people who tell you no to your face. If you they don't want to do it, they're gonna tell you no straightaway, automatic resistance to it. Somebody who's you know one now, like Brad Pitt, more of a curved, rounder face, they may say yes and then later on just not do it, whereas it's you know you may not like him in the person says to your face, no, I'm not gonna do it. But I take that as honesty and if that's the case then you can work around. At that point there's no, you're saving somebody appease you and say, yes, I'll do that, and they're not do it, especially for something you need done. But again, he's got the critical perception as well, but with the, the ears that stick out a little bit like mine. But he's a rollout, it's all about being in control. Mm-hmm.

Very much focused on what he's doing, but they're you know he's got the self-reliance President's a decent role with control, exactly. Well, what's his name? Tony Abbott. He was super in control, mm-hmm. If you ever saw him in Taran Count when who is the opposition leader at the time there was, I think the the Prime Minister had gone to Taran Count.

He was a real little war and everything else and he was invited there, but he gave some excuse because he was coming back from somewhere else. He was jet lagged, mm-hmm. The media gave him a real hard time over. It's the next thing. I went to Taran Count and you could see him when he went up to what he was being interviewed by one of the local officials and he made the mistake of saying to him my name is Tony Abbott, I'm the leader of the opposition In a third world country where the guy just doesn't like opposition because, you know, those things turn into coups. So as he was shaking the guy's hand, the guy just held his hand but then brought his other hand around and shook his elbow.

So, gripped him there. It was almost like little boy, I've got you Mm-hmm. But you can see the way he moves. It was always stiff and controlled and so that's why you freaked out when that interviewer was asking him questions and he froze Because he wasn't in control at that point and therefore the brain shut down. So you can see how that can be used in a negative way with people Mm-hmm. But um the more people understand it.

Then they look at the person who did that and go, okay, what was the reason for that? Mm-hmm. So when somebody uses this nuance around at all yeah Well, you use it to manipulate somebody else, and other people have the skills to recognize that. You may lose credibility completely because you've done that in the first place.

Brendan Rogers: It's um how do people feel about when you're having conversations with people and they know your background and they know your abilities? Like. Do they does that? Do you feel like there's a guard up sometimes from them? They're just, I mean, hard to put a guard up on your face without physically putting a guard up on your face. But what sort of reaction do you get like? Do people feel like god, my privacy is being Taken and I'm not allowing it? Or but I have no choice? Yeah Well, people were shut down.

Alan Stevens: I used to say when I was giving my 15 second elevator speech, for instance, I used to say to people, when people asked me what I did, I said I clear rooms. They want your clean rooms. You were clean. I said no, no, I clear rooms and they go. What do you mean? I said when people find out what I do, yeah when people find out what I do, they all run out of the room.

But when they find out how and why, they usually come back with their colleagues, if their workmates, and their family and friends. And because it's the intent behind it. Once they understand the intent, they're fine with it all. They're fine with it all, but the number of had one politician. I was sitting there and she had a clipboard in front of her and as we talked the clipboard came up and the more I talked to be asked me about what I did, it just came up further. It's almost like kill Roy's on the fence yeah, it's After they.

As I always say when people understand why I'm doing it, because I Manipulating people just means you've got to continue doing that all the time. It's too much like hard work. If I can build a relationship with somebody, they want to do what I want them to do Because we've built the rapport. Isn't that what we're doing? Sales? We go out, we talk to somebody. The more we understand them, the more we understand their problem and how to help them. With that, we're no longer a salesperson, we're a problem solver we don't have to worry about. If people was worried about being a salesperson, they start to relax, because I'm not a salesperson, I'm a problem solver. But I need to understand your problem so I can solve that problem. So I Ask the person questions and find out as much as I can.

As I say to people, you've got two eyes, two ears and one mouth. Use them in that proportion. But when you use your mouth, ask every question you can possibly think of and then ask one more. And because my son asks what Moldersboy asks me that one day and he said in the world, can I ask one more question if I've asked every question I can think of? I said, well, when you get to that point, you say to the person from what you've been telling me, this is what I understand, have I got it right? And if the person says yes, you have, you'll have rapport with them. They know you've been listening and everything else. And you said what if they say no?

I said now you're it's, I say even a better, bigger win, because now you're having a conversation with them when you're really going in depth, because I really want to explain that to you and rapport will be even stronger again, because once you got to that point, they know you're going to fix your, their problem for you. At the same time, we know that. You know Sales is all about, first of all, saving the person time, saving the money or helping them make money. It's getting that emotional outcome that they're looking for, that solution. It's so removing their worry and stress and giving them a solution to their problem. You know, once you put that together, people will buy from you because you're giving greater value.

Brendan Rogers: And if you can do that in a way that they're really listening, you're Providing information, a way that really resonates with them, based on maybe a handful of features that you can identify, that's pretty powerful stuff.

Alan Stevens: Especially when they're able to walk away with that and use that to grow their business even further. So in people may doubt how well this works. I had a sales old business coach over in Perth and he did one what I call a three-step program where he did an online course and he sent me his by the way, I do this from photographs as well. So he sent me his photographs five photographs the way I wanted him taken and I did a profile for him and on that profile it was an audio 45 minutes in length over there about, and I sent that to him and then we got together for the third step. He would show me faces of people he wanted to build better relationships with. Well, at that point, before I even did that section, he sent me a review on what he done, the profile. That was when he told me he'd been an undercover narcotics agent for two decades and in that time he'd used skills that he believed were 85 to 95 accurate, as he said. If they weren't he wouldn't be alive today. Uh, but the fact that I could take five photographs, give him an audio report that was 45 minutes in length. That not any match, but nuanced everything. It took him two decades to learn. That's the sort of feedback that I get from this stuff, but in that it was always how do I build this relationship? How do I help that person then learn from that?

When people come to me and they do my course especially those, because my target now is to create and train my competition we need more people doing it, but they've got to be doing it right Now. If we look at life coaches, there's some really brilliant life coaches and they're struggling Because of the reputation that the bad life coaches are given. And so I looked at. I thought I don't want people out there doing the wrong thing. So I've got a moral obligation to train my competition and people go. But you're going to have competition. I go stop and think about it. I've got turn them into strategic alliances as I'm coaching them Simply because I've got online materials that they can use as affiliate partners, which means, as I'm getting older and that I can do less running around, less presentations. They're out there doing it and I can sit at home and just create more and more stuff that they can use well will your the skills that you have and developed over a period of time will.

Brendan Rogers: Artificial intelligence, facial recognition, maybe even combining those two, make what you do redundant not necessarily well.

Alan Stevens: It will enhance it, I think, because you've still got to be able to do it yourself. If you're going to wait for a report to come from, from that, unless it's instantaneous, then it's not going to work for you. You know, if you look at the um.

Brendan Rogers: I gotta make it pretty instantaneous or theoretically.

Alan Stevens: It'll do it, but then you got to read it. Now You're talking to somebody. You've got to get that from that before you can react. If I can see someone's photograph, I've got their personnel before even going see them. I've got my presentation worked out. So when I walk through the door, I know exactly how much space to give them. When I first meet them, I know whether they're going to buy on the service or the bayou. I know, um how much information they're going to need.

Are they somebody just wants the overview? Are they somebody who's going to analyze it? Are they going to be somebody who's going to have mental motive as opposed to physical motive? Physical motive, I just want to give me the best way and get the other way and let me get it done. Or somebody who wants to look at all the possibilities. That's what I call mental motive. They focus on the the thought side of things and they go okay, what are all the options here? And then they want to work out the best one for themselves.

And, by the way, if you had somebody with physical motive and mental motive, two of people in the same team, they'd work well. You would always give the mental motive to go away and look at all the different possibilities, work out which is the best, give it to the physical motive and they just get the job done. But you turn it around the other way the physical motive is not going to get there because it's going to get stressed out with it. When you give it to the mental motive, they're going to be saying is this the best way to do it? And they want to go back over it again. So you can see no right or wrong traits. But when you put them together different people, when we've got all those differences, we've now got teams.

Brendan Rogers: What's the indication of in the in the face around physical versus mental Well?

Alan Stevens: Physical. You've got someone who's got this larger lower face Compared to the overall length and the overall length, by the way, is you can see where the the glare point from the lights. There's a bit of a turn on the forehead. That's the top of my forehead, the chin is the base, and then you look at how long is this section in between underneath the nose to there, if you look at, say, jeremy Clarkson from top gear.

Half of his face is in the under his nose, you know, rushes into everything, you know, always quick to do things. Um, he's also loves fast cars. Oh yeah, now, always got all the traits that compound each other. Yeah, he's an objective thinker, which is a great trait for a rally driver or racing car driver to have. He's also got the risk taker trait, and that's why just so many stupid things, not just for the team. They hired him because of the way he was and then it just, you know it's snowboard to the point. They created a problem and they're whinging about him. Well, the people who brought him in were the ones who were using all that and just let it go and got to a stage where it spiralled, skyrocketed.

So again, you know, knowing the, the traits and knowing how to do all of them properly changes things completely.

Brendan Rogers: Hmm, you mentioned a number of things Like sort of breakthroughs, I guess you could say, in personal relationships and parents working with children and those sorts of things from a leadership context. Can you give us an example of like where there's been a breakthrough Based on some of these skills that you've got?

Alan Stevens: Well, it always comes down to where people have had teams and they just haven't been able to do it. There's been problems Straight away. Somebody comes to me and says, look, I've got problems with my staff. We need you know, the loyalty is not there. There's always problems and everything goes. Can you fix my staff?

And I go, yep, okay, we'll fix your staff and Done and I sit there and I talk to them and I say okay, because I profile them straight away. I've looked at their staff and I go I can see it's because of the differences in the traits. There's nothing wrong with anybody, but the communication is wrong. So I go okay, this is the way I know that you're talking to them, which is not the way that they're going to receive it. You need to turn your Turn your transmitter into their receiver. So I will say to them I tell them they got a problem, because they don't have a problem, they just have a misunderstanding. So what I'll say to them is look, I know that if I can get you to do this with the staff, I guarantee they're going to change. And that person thinks that I'm changing them. You know they're staff. No, I'm not. I'm guiding them on a better way of communicating. It's going to match tune their transmitter into the receiver of the staff. The staff are going to recognize that At the moment. They recognize that they change.

As I said, if you're walking around, first of all, always scowling all the time, your staff are going to pull back from you, but then one day you start putting a smile on your face, you'll see a difference in their behavior. They're not going to switch immediately. They're going to get a bit of suspicious. At first they're going to be going Well, what's going on here? All of a sudden you're behaving in a different way. What's happening? But if you continue doing that, over time that then becomes the norm and they get used to it. And now they're smiling at you. So you can do it over a longer period, or I can show the. The biker can then go up to his staff and say look, I understand that. You know the way I've been communicating hasn't been coming through, but I really and give the reasons why.

I would say to somebody look, the company's going, you know going backwards. We know we're losing a lot of productivity, which affects my role, the productivity of the business, which in turn affects your roles here. I don't want to lose any of you. So I'm going to behave this way. I'm going to ask you to do things in this way, and if you can do it in that way, then We'll all be able to build the business.

So you, in the conversation, they realize that you're doing it for a reason. You just having using it to manipulate, they can see the benefit to you. When people see a benefit that you have, they trust it. If they think there's something going on, they won't trust you. So how to then talk to them in that conversation first of all, but then also deliver it in the way in which they understand it. So if you've got somebody who just likes the overview and you're analytical I'm analytical we go up to them, we start telling them the way we need to hear it to make a decision which is far more than they need. They switch off.

Brendan Rogers: Sounds like what my wife does to me. Yeah, I'm trying to give her a bit too much information. She says, brendan, I don't need all this Exactly.

Alan Stevens: And so what you're doing to say, look, there is a lot of information here, but all I'm going to do is I'm going to give you the overview. You ask the questions that you need to ask, but if there's something there that you haven't asked it's not, if I tell you that, then. So you give the overview. Okay, what questions are you? Right, they, they know that they're not going to be talked at. They're going to be talking with you. You're going to be. You know it's a conversation. You get to the end of it and you go.

Well, in your case with your wife. You remember, sweetie, I mentioned there was something there that, just in case you didn't ask, the boring stuff were there. Now, is that all? If I tell you, well, they know you're not going to be. You know, bashing them with so much information. It's been a conversation, and for you to just sell this is something you need to know. That's not an issue. And generally, when I say that the people you like the smile on their face, they're nodding, and usually, if I get to that point, I say well, the prepping of the situation.

Using this to be a setting expectation for them.

Yeah, and the way to set the expectation really well is by being able to read them and deliver it in that way. And so I said before, if you got the aesthetic and dramatic appreciation, how to set that up so the person knows that you care, but you're going to give them space. If they're aesthetic and if they're dramatic, that hey. Now, if I, if you want me to fix it, I'll fix it. But if you want me just to listen, I care, it's all listen and I know it's got nothing to do with me, so pour it out, that's it.

Brendan Rogers: Let's get another famous face, oprah Winfrey. What does Oprah's face say about?

Alan Stevens: Her. Well, there's been some changes over the time, and that's the other thing you can see as well.

Brendan Rogers: Are you saying she's had cosmetic surgery?

Alan Stevens: No, there's probably been a bit of that as well, but if you've got somebody, you know that they haven't had. That's always a question. Like, as I mentioned before, the laughter lines up here and as.

I was going to say, before there's any mature age women listening to the podcast, that when I say that you know they used to say that beauty's only skin deep, but ugly goes all the way to the bone. The lines that you've got on the side of the face here is beauty that goes all the way to the bone, because you don't get those lines out here. There's only two ways, as you said before. One is in the sun, squinting, because you work out in the sun all the time. You've got to keep the glare out of your eyes or you're a happy person. If I walk into a room full of mature age women, I don't know anybody there. I'm looking for the woman who's got those lines, because she's the one I'm going to go and talk to. And this is where the traits work together.

If they've got the lines up there and the mouth is turned up as well, I know they're in a happy person. The corner of your mouth can turn up and down. The more you smile or the more you frown, yours are turned up. So I know that you've got to really be happy life. If something goes wrong, you're seeing that as okay. That's one thing. Wrong Now what's going to go right, whereas somebody's got it turned down. If something goes wrong, what else is going to go wrong? They're the pessimists, whereas you're all the more the optimists. And so, with that, if you've got those lines and that mouth turned up, that's the person I'm going to talk to. If they've got the mouth is turned down, they've got no lines up there. Cosmetic surgery they got rid of the lines. Oh sorry, if the mouth is turned down, the lines aren't up there, then I know they've been miserable all the time. If the mouth is turned up and the lines aren't up there, then, I know cosmetic surgery, so I'm looking at combinations of things.

I never judge anything on its once, so like if I see a twitch in the face that looks like contempt, I go okay, what was said at the time? You know, contempt is where one side of the mouth flicks up, the other side of the nose goes up on one side.

If I see that if I've been talking a lot, I'm articulating a lot because the face has got nervous that are very close to the surface as I'm talking a lot, they will start to itch and I might do that while I'm talking. But you then look at it in context, what was said at the time. You know there's a conduit with what had happened as well, If I see that. I said nothing, so now it's not me.

Brendan Rogers: Yeah.

Alan Stevens: I'm not taking it personally, so all of those things come into. This is why I say to people there's so much going on. Of course, in NLP they say that we have, we take in two billion bits of information every second. Two million, I should say. But we process 134 bits. It's one tiny fraction 115,000. And that's why wherever our focus goes, our attention goes as well and that's why, as I said before, we focus on sports and things like that. We're not going to focus on reading people because we're too busy enjoying it over here.

Brendan Rogers: Muscle atrophies, so all right, tell us about Oprah. You've told us enough about her cosmetic surgery.

Alan Stevens: Well, straight away dramatic appreciation that comes out in a face straight away. Yes, the natural self-reliance and everything goes, but there's also those high cheekbones. It was all about travel, adventurous, willing to try new things. We know a lot of her past and what she went through and everything goes, so we can see how that affects in the emotions and stuff and we can see then how that would have changed her facial features. If you take cosmetic surgery out of the scenario altogether, if you've got a photo of somebody very young and then a photo of them older, you've got a pretty good idea of what life they've had, how it transpired through, and so that comes through.

Brendan Rogers: There were traits that you mentioned about Joe Rogan, and he's the most successful podcaster out there. Sounds like those traits that are coming through is really shining through and obviously the audience loved that. What about Oprah? That makes her supposedly one of the best interviewers in the world as well?

Alan Stevens: Completely different reasons. She's got that flair that she puts into things, dramatic appreciation. She has a bit of a mechanical as well, being able to organise things, but it's more the dramatic that comes out, so putting flair into it and everything goes. There's a bit of tenacity there as well with her, but she also has the trait that tells me that she's automatically giving. As I said before, I'm reserved. I think about things before I give. Somebody's got to be worth it for me to actually spend money or whatever on them but to do something for them, whereas Oprah, she's quick to give to everybody. That's going to endear her to people.

Brendan Rogers: She used to give a lot in her when she had the talk show, didn't she? That's it. They'd give her surprise giveaways and stuff.

Alan Stevens: All the giveaways that were given. There were exciting gifts as well. That was her adventurous side coming up. So while she's giving, she's receiving big time, but she's got that rounded forehead as well. Well, some people are very square, they're all about their career and everything, but the round ones, very laid back, very happy to be around people, it's all about doing the same thing over and over and all the rest of it. So she's got all the facial features that show that she's a people person.

She's focused on people. Now, when things go awry with her, as you've noticed, there's been some really big mood swings and a lot of weight problems and everything goes. All that's come from having well automatic giving. Giving to everybody is great. However, the downside is giving to everybody because there's nothing left in the reserve and then when somebody close to them wants something they've got nothing left or they need it themselves, there's nothing left. So if she's given to everybody and then there's nothing left, the first thing that's going to go through her mind is I've given to all these people and nobody's acknowledged it. I've been used and that's going to come out and so she's got to have. Also the takes things personally. So the end result is she's going to, that's going to build up and then it's going to come out dramatically.

But the good thing about dramatic appreciation is, to the rest of us who have got aesthetic appreciation is far too much energy. But they usually don't end up with severe depression because they're letting it out. You and I with aesthetic appreciation got more worried about depression because we hold it in and because more men have the aesthetic appreciation is one of the reasons why we're suicides in this country. It was before COVID, eight people a day were taking their life. Now it's over, that's about nine or 10. And it was three quarters. Only two women, but it was six men a day were taking their life. Why do more men take their life? Aesthetic appreciation, not knowing how to talk to people and not letting it out. That's why I created the CAM5 project, because we're losing too many men. And the men who weren't going to that extreme were miserable and unhappy and in the workplace there was bullying. At home, if you're miserable and everything goes and your wife is upset with all of that, it generally comes out in domestic violence. So by and it's not the men that were bad, it was the situations that drove them to that. So if we're able to then get into that in the front end, we solve that problem. We don't go to the place where men are taking their lives or then taking it out on other people and so it's.

All of this stuff is based on how do I build a stronger relationship, how do I truly understand the other person? And I'm always looking for the gift they've got, and if I can see that gift, then you know we have a better relationship. Some of the people I've interviewed, they've come to me and they've I haven't got a story. I won't be able to do this. They start talking 45 minutes later, before I get a word in. They just keep going. At the end of it, a lot of people have said to me oh, that's the best therapy I've ever had. I said do you want to thank the therapist? They go, yeah. I said well, get off the call, go look in the mirror and say thank you, because you finally listen to your unconscious mind. It's been screaming to you all that time.

But because of the things you took on, like most, you know, baby boomers, gen X, suck it up, be tough. A lot of smiles, you know, don't show your emotions. So what did we do? We were great students, we learned all of that and we applied it, but we robbed ourselves. So we, through being great students, put ourselves in a position where we're no longer connected to people and we isolate ourselves. And when you're isolated and feeling lonely, you know it's that level of depression, of self-being worthless and not connected to anything. I shouldn't be here anymore. So the men aren't weak to take their lives. It's the fact that they've had so much on their shoulders. The problem was they tried to deal with it and didn't let it out. That's why I always say to men find some really good men around you, ones that understand, not the ones that go down to the pub and say I'll have another beer, but somebody goes yeah.

I can listen to that, and because most men had aesthetic appreciation, they didn't want to hear it from somebody else. But once you realize, do you care about your friends? I do so. Will I then sit there and listen to that and take it on? Yes, I will, because I know that when I've helped them out, I can also talk to them. But because I know I'm helping them, I can. Therefore I don't take it on as much emotionally myself, and then I can sit down after that and say, oh, we all feel better, let's have a beer now and we can have a sensible conversation, not crapping onto each other using beer and everything else.

Sort of surface level stuff.

Brendan Rogers: Yeah.

Alan Stevens: So, and the men that I've got around me, you know, we all tell each other we love each other. Why? Because we've connected with the understand that person's soul level and we have that great connection. And again, now, the more I teach them how to read each other, the more that conversation gets deeper. Now because we're using the language the other person wants to hear.

Brendan Rogers: So much value and opportunity. I get that. You mentioned love, and let's relate that to truth or lie. How does what you do identify potentially when somebody's telling a blatant lie or not? Watch? Me for a second, alan, I want to have sex with you. Well, guys, am I truthful? Well, I told my lie. You want me to tell the truth. To me that's a blatant lie, but have I ever because I'm being so silly about it? Like you said, tell me more.

Alan Stevens: Well, because mainly we know that was silly, we know it's set up in everything calls.

Brendan Rogers: But it wasn't a Christian. I'd planned believe me.

Alan Stevens: You're lucky I'm not sitting around there, so the table with you. You never know what could have happened. Cameras off.

Brendan Rogers: Cameras off, that's it.

Alan Stevens: When it comes down to picking up lies, lies you're going to pick up. When there's a person who's got a fear of losing something, the one who's lying?

To you. So when we look at somebody, whether they're telling the truth or whether they're not, see, when it comes to polygraphs it's always based on the physiology and it will. Somebody thinks that they're great at telling lies. You won't catch them. But if somebody is worried that they might be misjudged and when they're not telling the lie somebody may think they are their physiology is going to go berserk and they're going to get false positives, whereas with others you get false negatives. So the micro expressions, this stuff you can always see in the body.

Now what I actually waste if I'm doing that sort of situation with somebody. I think they may not be telling the truth or telling you know they're worried about being misjudged. I'll actually say to people this anytime I tell people how fast I was able to read or how efficient I was at reading people when I first did my training, I was 97% accurate on being able to pick whether the person was telling the truth or not. And so if I'm talking to somebody, as you said before pre-framing a conversation, I would say look, somebody's there. I said look, don't worry about being nervous. I say this to both parties because I don't know which is which yet, but I'd say don't worry about me missing it and getting it wrong and thinking that you're told a lie. When you haven't told a lie, I said look, this is what I do and I'll just mention to them. You know, this is the way in which I've worked 97% accurate. So the person who's worried about being detected as telling lies because they're not being misjudged, they'll relax and so their physiology will change.

The psychopath then starts to question and goes can he, will he? Now they start to get worried. And when they get worried, that's when the twitches and things come out on the face. But at the same time I'll ask questions in a way in which I look for the reaction. If I'm asking somebody who's talking about one of their good friends and I just say oh, you hear that your friend Julie just broke up with a partner the other day, and I say a little twitch up on the corner of the mouth and a little smile I know they're happy about it.

But again, as I said before, I don't go on that one point I then of course it could be that, yes, their friend Julie, you know this guy's been a real so-and-so to get rid of him. It's good again to be her benefit, then it could be a case of well, she deserves a bit of you know, she's been a bit smug lately. It's, you know, a bit of pleasure in that, so they are happy about it. Or it could be that, hey, you know, that guy's gone, now I've got a shot, so it could be a whole range of things. So what it comes down to by asking a few more questions and talking so things that yes, she was happy about it, but why was she happy about it? So then you ask more questions and have the conversation go along and as you're doing that curiosity piece.

Brendan Rogers: You keep mentioning not the judgment or not the judgmental approach.

Alan Stevens: Keep digging, keep digging using this information to gather the story.

That's it, because the more you do that, the more you understand it Then you know where the truth is. When I was growing up as a kid on our most you know what do you call it lounge room walls I used to have three ducks big one, a smaller one, another one going. They're flying off in height and it was like you know, the ducks had taken off and they were flying away and the old saying was get all your ducks in a row. Same thing when it comes to profile and get as much information as you can. If all the ducks are flowing in that direction, then that's the way it's going. But if you've got a mismatch, you know people think folded arms is somebody who's you know locked off. You know keeping you out you can't trust.

Them Like you're sitting there at the moment with your arms folded, I've got my hands crossed, etc. This is more a connection to the rapport between us. You know, I sat there in the town hall when I was doing a workshop for the leadership from the tax office a few years back and it was freezing cold. Most people were sitting there with their arms folded. The guy I'd been sitting next to at the main table had his arms folded. I was holding when I started doing my talk. We'd had a great conversation.

I knew he was comfortable with me and so I first thing I asked everybody was what does arms folded mean to you? And of course everyone's going oh, the person's shut off and all the rest. I could see him starting to get a bit self-conscious. He's uncrossed his arms and anyway he then crossed his feet. So I asked about you know what was it like? What was the map meant? People making comments and he's. By the time I'd finished. Any time he moved out of the corner I could see what he was doing. I kept on bringing those traits up. It was almost like he was swatting flies because he didn't know where to put his hands.

Brendan Rogers: Which is interesting. I have my arms sort of like this and slowly but surely I brought him up here eventually, but I've always had my legs crossed as well.

Alan Stevens: Because this is a matter of comfort in there was because it was freezing cold In some cases. You know, your arms are folded simply because of physical. I've got torn tendons in both shoulders. I've knocked my body around dramatically over the years. As I used to say to people, if you look up the word the crash test dummy in the dictionary, you'll find my photograph next to it. Now my body's a mess for the things I've done in the different sports and so with that I've quite often crossed my arms for that reason. But it could also be that you give yourself a warm hug because of people around you intimidate you. That doesn't mean you shut off.

It just means you want to be more comfortable. So you know, I had a bank manager who asked me one day. He had his second in charge there and he said what about this arms folded business? I said well, what's your problem with it? He said so, what's the situation? It's almost second in charge. He's always got his arms folded.

When I'm talking to him and I could see the second in charge because he had his arms like this holding his elbow and he put his hands down. I can see he was uncomfortable and I said well to the bank manager what's your problem? He said well, that means he shut off. And I went. Really I said what's he like as a second in charge? He says he listened to you. He says yes, he does. Does he do what you ask him to do? Yes, he does. I said does he? More importantly, does he do the things you've asked him to do when you're not there? He said yes, he does.

So I said that is the second in charge. He's pretty good. I said yes. I said what's your problem? And he said but I was always told the arms were folded, they were shut off. I said do you want? Did you do it with anybody else in the depot. He says no. I said do you take him to gatherings like this and head office, to where there's other managers and higher ups? And he says yes. I said, just reflect on it. So you fold his arms and he goes. Oh yeah, he does. So I said do you think he could just be giving himself a warm hug because he's nervous? Now you want him to unfold his arms. He's going to be comfortable or uncomfortable. If he's uncomfortable, he's going to be listening. He's going to be as productive. And I just said, mate, we'll fix your problem, haven't you? Not your second in charge is problem, but your problem.

It was six months later in another expo in Newcastle where it was another finance one, and I saw him in sky from a different bank who was chatting with him. He asked me about what I did, told him and he saw tell me about his arms folder business. It will. What's your problem with it? So I wasn't my problem. So I had a bank manager who every time he asked for me arms, he got upset about it and I said is he still with your bank? He said I know he went to this other bank it was a that was the same bank manager.

So that was 12 years earlier that he had that problem with that bank manager. So that bank manager had listened to somebody who told him that this was a problem. And so for 12 years, how many relationships do you think he ruined because of that bad information on one trait? This is why I say to people a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. But the thing is you learn it each bit. You learn, you apply that you use in that context and then you add more to it.

Brendan Rogers: You build a bigger picture.

Alan Stevens: So my youngest Student a few years back was a 14 year old and a 15 year old boy. When I try, they went through my master course and I asked the 15 year old how he was using it. He saw he said I'm profiling the other kids at school. I said tell us about that. He said I now know why they push my buttons and why they do the things they do. I said, well, what's that? Give me, said, tolerance. That was when I knew I had to get this into the hands of school kids and school teachers. Then I support in your old how he was using it. And that was the end of that marketing progress. He said with the most evil, little small and his face is to imagine he said I'm profiling the school teachers.

And I went how's that working for you? So, ah yes, I know which ones to pick and which ones to leave alone. I'm stirring them more than ever I've stirred them before in my life. And he said and I'm having more fun than I've ever had before and not getting into anywhere near as much trouble. So I thought, hmm, can't use that one at the moment to get it into schools for teachers. But my youngest student after that, was my.

Brendan Rogers: I thought he might have been pro profiling his female Students or something.

Alan Stevens: Oh he probably was, but wasn't being honest to me about that.

That might have been the next thing that I definitely would have been by the time he was 16 or 17. It's after that was my 11 year old granddaughter, and the father complained that they couldn't watch Netflix anymore. I said why is he got problems with the internet? He said no, no, he said Jess, she's always Profiling the actors. I said well, how did that come about? He said oh, she found one of my manuals, so he works for the federal police and he had manuals sitting on the table and he said oh, she's read that now.

Every time we sit down she's talking about all the actors and won't shut up. So I asked her if she wanted to learn and I gave her a manual. It arrived over in Canberra at the time and arrived on the Thursday. On the Friday they were flying out for Helsinki to see her other grandparents and I thought well, that's probably the end of that. You know, five weeks away, novel, we wears off. They landed in Helsinki. I got a message from a father saying she didn't watch any movies on the way over. All she did was read the book from cover to cover and go through, and then she, when she wasn't reading it, she was walking around the plane the passengers, profiling the passengers, and I thought Dr Frankenstein has struck again.

I've created another monster, but so at the age of 15. Now you know we should work through all of that. We've now put a project together which is some flashcards I've got a manufacturer next but it'll be size of a playing deck of cards 52 cards. We're only using the major traits that the kids will really pick up the easiest. You know the extremes of traits and Photograph what physical feature we're looking at on the front. On the back it will have what that trait means, how to measure it, how to read it and then how to talk to the person.

We get that into the hands of the kids. They're off their devices. I know when I was a kid and we played base baseball cards and all those sort of things, we were always talking about the cards and sharing cards and swapping cards and things like that. But I can see the kids having real conversations, actually talking face-to-face to each other and Getting a bit of understanding of each other. Then I'll go back to the teachers and use what the 14 year old told me and said look, I'm sorry I've created a problem for you, because now all the kids know how to read you, and if that one child was doing that, how many other kids in the classroom we're going to be doing the same thing? So if you don't learn, you're screwed. Hmm, and that's the way I get around the education system that doesn't want to look at anything new.

Brendan Rogers: What's the impact you hope to have?

Alan Stevens: What I would like to see is that, as I said, into the hands of all the kids so that they it starts to change their life. Because if we wait for the adults to make a move Now, life is a way it is, this is the way of, it's always been, type thing. I think we change the adults through the kids. When parents realize. Well, these two fathers who were sitting there they had me on a Facebook live and they almost had me in tears talking about how it's changed their lives completely and To hear fathers talking about the results they've got with their sons and their daughters and the relationships that they thought they could never have, that empowers me. But that came through them understanding the kids and they put it in place. But if the kids understand this, kids will teach their parents. How many kids are teaching their parents now because of the way they behave? Now you talk to a Scott in particularly. He's my co-host in the campfire project when I first joined and he did his one-on-one with me, joined the panel discussions. Then I asked him when you got to step up and he said what do you mean step? I was I'm doing one-on-ones. I did my one-on-one, I'm doing panel discussions with you. I said, no, when you're gonna start running them? So he decided the first person he would interview would be his father, who he hadn't spoken to in 30 years. His father walked out when he was 11 and he was here himself, was on the streets at the age of 14. Beautiful interview, beautiful relationship. That's come from that. Now they're finally, you know, reconnected.

But then his son decided he wanted to. You know, scott's son wanted to interview his father, you know Scott. And so he said we sent him away to get his own questions and one of them was why is it, dad, you can give to everybody else, but you can't receive yourself? This came from a nine-year-old boy. He is grown up. He's far more mature for his age. He's definitely going to be a leader, who already is a leader.

He plays those you go games where they go and play card games and all the rest of it. He's 11 years old now and he's playing against 16 and 18 year olds and they just keep taking him under his wing. He's beating them and he's just so mature in the way he does things. So as he grows up, he's, he's an inspiration to his father. He's. His father keeps saying he says this is my son. I couldn't be more proud. And so the way that Oscar had watched his father and learned from that because our kids don't listen to us, they learn from what we do and you know Oscar watch Scott change and do anything he was doing and he went. I like this, I want more of it. And then the communication he now has with his dad.

His dad can do nothing else but keep going the way he's going. So his son has now taught him and showed him yes, and you're on the right track, and I really appreciate it. And now Scott's even more driven to do the right thing and he's out there now working with people on the streets.

Brendan Rogers: The work that I do with Leaders in the consultancy space. There's three, three areas that I focus on around creating confident leaders, and one is developing character.

Hmm building components and creating connection. And I see this again through some of the Experiences I've had with yourself and still some of that knowledge I've retained and is useful in my little space. It really does help a lot in just enhancing those pieces, particularly about this creating connection and the developing character piece which has all come through in this episode so far. So I know from first-hand experience again, I've only taken it to a very, very surface level in my experience but even that level has been very, very helpful for some of the things that I do and some of the people I work with and also in the networking and the network building that I do. So Thank you for interest. I'm not sure how we connected it was so many years ago but however it happened, it's been a worthwhile connection.

Alan Stevens: That's right. I think I was through the school, we we did.

Brendan Rogers: Somehow that came about, yeah what's Final question that we asked our guests on our show? What's one thing that's helped you become a more confident leader?

Alan Stevens: It was, as I said there, yeah, one of the, as I said before, everything you know. The most important thing I learned is the next thing I learned, after I know everything. The other thing was finally realizing that what I do was doing for myself wasn't working, but what I do for others and for the community isn't always will be eternal.

So, that changed my attitude to things and that's where, when I was no longer focused on me but I was focused on other people. Funny enough, I got so much more back than I never could get when I was out there trying to get it for myself. So they're the main things, but I always learned I learned it in telecom. I had star print there that I was putting charge of men who were older me. My second in charge was 38. I was 23. No leadership training whatsoever. Every other staff member that older than me that by the time I'd left was the highest performing Debo in Australia, was in the computer section. I Then joined the surf club. They taught me to be a patrol captain and gave me everybody that nobody else wanted. I turned that into the patrol of the year. I then kept that patrol together, whereas they turned me into the club captain and obbies and that patrol, with one of the guys stepping up into the role of the patrol captain, won the award again without me being involved in the selection. And then when I left the club, well, I was next thing. I was the same supervisor of three beaches. When I left the club I got one of the. I talked one of the other guys into becoming the club captain. A few years later it's somebody hidden like me said to me Mark was a better Club captain than you ever were. And I smiled and he said what are you smiling for? I said because I couldn't leave the club if I didn't have somebody better than me to take it over At least as good, if not better.

One thing I learned with all these things when you put them together, a Leaders job is to make themselves redundant in the role they're in by raising others up to do the things that they're doing right now and hopefully doing it better than them. That way, you can then go on to do something else yourself. Otherwise, if you're indispensable, you'll create a prison for yourself. And if any bosses listen to this, that's when you've got people step up into those roles. You can go work on your business. All of these things are connected and that's what I then realized that people have said to me you want me to become your competition. I'm going to train.

Those people said yes, and they said can I be as good as you? I said but set the bar high, because I expect you to be better. You're going to get everything I've got, plus, you're going to bring what you'll you bring to the table. You're going to complete, put a completely new perspective on it. And somebody said to me one day if you get trained somebody and they become another Anthony Robbins they're up on stage. How you gonna feel about it? I said I'm gonna be really pissed off if there isn't a chair on their front row but everyone of their talks, because I'll be there with pen and paper. Yeah, that's what a leaders about. No worry about what the other people. You're gonna move ahead of them. If you've done your job right, they have to move ahead of you. That then allows everyone to see that you have more value again, to go on to your next level.

Brendan Rogers: Absolutely, mate. I don't think I need to say any more with that, apart from thanks for being a fantastic guest on the cultural leadership.

Alan Stevens: Thank you very much for inviting me. It certainly has.

Brendan Rogers: Being able to read people and build instant rapport is absolutely essential for creating connections with people. In creating connections is a foundation for becoming a confident leader.

These are my three key takeaways from my conversation with Alan.

My first key takeaway confident leaders build rapport. They understand that subtle facial expressions reveal a lot about a person's emotions and intentions. By interpreting these cues, they can adjust their communication style to connect more effectively. This skill not only strengthens their leadership, but also fosters trust and understanding in their relationships.

My second key takeaway confident leaders use judgment, not by being judgmental, but by skillfully gathering information through facial profiling. They observe facial expressions and cues to understand context and emotions. This helps them create a more informed story guiding their decisions and interactions with others. Their judgment is rooted in understanding, not assumption.

My third key takeaway confident leaders have good intentions. They use facial profiling to understand and empathise, not to manipulate. By reading expressions and cues, they aim to enhance communication and build genuine connections. Their focus is on positive influence and mutual respect, leading with integrity and trust.

So, in summary, my three key takeaways were confident leaders build rapport, confident leaders use judgment and confident leaders have good intentions.

Let me know your key takeaway on using facial profiling and good intentions. Let me know your key takeaway on YouTube or at thecultureofleadership.com.

Thanks for joining me and remember the best outcome is on the other side of a genuine conversation. Thank you.