BEHAVIOR SKILLS
You’ve seen a lot of body language articles out there. Some promise to deliver the secrets to ‘when she’s ready to be kissed’ or ‘sure signs he’s cheating on you.’ The trouble is that these articles typically all make one major mistake: The Attribution Error.
The Attribution Error is something that happens when we are told a single gesture has a singular meaning. For instance, one I see regularly is when body language teachers tell you that someone crossing their arms is deceptive, withholding, concealing, defensive, closed-off, etc. This type of thinking and training is deceptive in and of itself.
When we read behavior, context is key.
If you were in discussion with someone and they showed a tiny facial expression of disgust, we might recognize the facial expression, but the training in body language or people-reading is useless without learning how to establish the context, topic, or subject that caused the facial expression. For instance, if you saw disgust immediately after mentioning Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, you’d immediately know a lot about the person in front of you. You’d even have a small window that shows you how they view the world.
If you’re in a sales position, and you see something I call ‘lip compression,’ where the lips squeeze together, you’d be seeing ‘withheld opinions.’ But not knowing what was being said in the conversation when you observed the behavior makes the skill of observation next to meaningless. If you’re talking to a customer, and you start going over payment terms or interest rates on payments, and they tell you it sounds good to them, but their lips compress as they nod to you in approval, you’ve got work to do. Not only have you spotted a concealed objection that has the potential to ruin the sale, but you’ve also identified exactly where to take the conversation next to disarm or overcome the unconscious objection.
In a moment, we will walk you through the Behavioral Table of Elements and how to read it. Before we do that, I would like to illustrate one key concept: clusters.
The table was laid out in a way that resembles the Periodic Table of the Elements for two reasons:
The cells in the Behavioral Table are all laid out in such a way that the elements of behavior must be combined to form a cohesive opinion about a behavior. Without context, we fail. Without clusters, we don’t know much.
THE BEHAVIORAL TABLE OF ELEMENTS
The Behavioral Table of Elements (BTE) was designed by me over a decade ago for analyzing the behavior of prisoners overseas undergoing interrogations. It has since been hung on the walls of the FBI academy and is used in hundreds of police departments around the world. I wanted to develop a cohesive system that had the potential to make observations about human behavior into something that could be communicated and understood by anyone.
You can download a free high-res copy of it at: www.chasehughes.com/6mxbookresources
However, as badass as it sounds, its origins are probably more interesting…
In 2005, I was watching an episode of The Bachelor with my mom. We sat in my parent’s study in two leather chairs as she introduced me to a show I’d not seen before. Each of us sat there in the chairs holding glasses of wine fixated on the television. My mother walked me through how the show ‘works,’ and detailed the girls in the show she liked and the nasty qualities of the women in the show she didn’t like. It was a fascinating concept. My mother then told me how one of the women was ‘really sweet and honest,’ and I had to interrupt. Since they had TiVo, I was able to rewind the episode and show my mom that the ‘sweet and honest’ woman had lied to the Bachelor three times while they sat in a hot tub. I paused at the right moments to illustrate the deception indicators, and she was impressed at my skills (which made my night).
She told me, “Chase, I wish I could just borrow your eyes to watch this show…”
That’s right, she wanted to use my nearly one million dollars of training in interrogation and behavior analysis to watch The Bachelor. It really intrigued me, however.
Later that night, as I laid in the bedroom I grew up in, I couldn’t help by think of my childhood. As a child, my mother had a dozen or so waterproof kids’ placemats. Each of them had educational material on them, so as I scarfed down oatmeal in the mornings, I could look at the placemat and learn the continents, the planets, the list of US Presidents, and even the capital cities of the states here in the US.
I laid in bed, thinking, ‘How can I translate every piece of training I have in behavior into something that could literally fit onto a placemat?’
I spent years researching and countless hours on my knees in my living room, rearranging notecards and counter-checking against academic research to ensure I had something that was a good attempt at getting my entire behavioral training onto a single page.
I learned a lot about behavior doing that, but I learned even more (it seems) about Microsoft Excel.
Finally, I had a product. I sent it to my mom, and she was impressed…and seriously confused by it.
“Okay,” I thought. ‘I can make this right.’ So, I built ONE MORE ‘placemat’ that contained all the instructions on how to read it.
It was done.
You can download the entire Behavioral Table of Elements for free by visiting www.chasehughes.com/behavior-profiling
This thing is something you can simply keep on your phone, iPad, or wherever you can see it often. I promise I’m not going to have you going through this thing cell-by-cell but let me introduce you to how it works.
As the world-first behavior profiling tool, The Behavioral Table of Elements (BTE) was designed to have applications everywhere, from an overseas interrogation room to a first date. The table not only allows advanced, standardized analysis of behavior but it also assists in training operators in recognizing behavior signals and seeing the crucial elements everyone else misses during conversation.
THE CELL KEY
ARCHITECTURE
The BTE is laid out so that the top of the head is on the top of the table. The feet and lower body are lower on the table. From left to right, the BTE indicates the least stressful/deceptive behaviors to most stressful/deceptive behaviors. The bottom two rows contain behaviors that are verbal or take place outside the body or with objects.
COLORS:
DECEPTION:
Deception is rated per question and answer scenario. If a subject’s behaviors tally up to more than 11 points on the Deception Rating Scale during the entire question and answer period, deception is highly likely.
The Behavioral Table of Elements is a lengthy study, and I made a promise I wouldn’t have you going through the entire Behavioral Table.
What we are going to focus on in the coming chapters are the most powerful and reliable behavioral indicators I’ve discovered in my 15,000 hours of interviews, interrogation analysis, and research. I can assure you that once you just get these basics translated from the information-stage to the skill-stage, everything changes. You’ll start seeing the ‘human matrix’ immediately, even after finishing this next chapter.
SUMMARY
If you haven’t downloaded your free copy, you can do so at: www.chasehughes.com/6mxbookresources
Now that you’re at least familiar with the anatomy and navigation of the BTE, you’ll be able to reference it as long as you’d like throughout this book, watching The Bachelor, or even performing job interviews.
KNOWLEDGE CHECK
How many points are needed to grade a response or statement as ‘likely deceptive’?
What does a green background represent in a cell?
What do blue letters signify on the BTE?