Oh, get your bloody champions. Craig, Anthony Harper, Tiffany and Cook and Blake. I'm not sure what's your middle name? Blake, Christian Blake, Blake, Christian Eastman, Christian.
What a good name.
Let's start with the girl in the top left corner on mice Green, Tiffany and Cook, the pugilistic thug, the one that gets angry.
How are you? I'm not hungry, I've eaten well. But do you want to tell everyone how you gave me a stern talking to to behave myself this morning? What was it about my morning energy that provoked that?
What did I say? I can't remember what I said?
What do I say? You behave yourself this morning? Yeah?
Well, because you're a lot, you're a handful, and we've got an we've got a guest, we've got.
Someone from os and you know how excited you get.
You know when we get smart, clever, handsome, dynamic people, and you get a little bit out of control. So I need to It's like working with tiff Blake is like hurting trying to herd cats. It's just an exercise in frustration. But how are you? How are you?
I'm great? Good day, beautiful day out. Just did a did a long run this morning and a workout and just feel good. Perfect.
How far do you run? How often do you run? And how far do you run?
I used to train for like ultra events, so I would run like sixty miles a week, but I stopped that for like the last year, and this is the first time I'm starting to pick up running again. So I like to optimize around five k times. Yep, so just trying to run a solid five k I don't I don't really love the long term or the sort of dedication and time requirements are running like yeah all the time, you know, so I prefer the shorter, harder, quicker runs. Hey, I'm speaking of that.
This has got nothing to do with our interview, but you might both find this interesting because one of you is a runner and one of you is a trina. So I didn't know this. This happened a year ago, but listen to this. So there's a guy called alexandor Soriken. This is almost impossible, but he ran one hundred kilometers right, so sixty two miles or something blake in six hours and five minutes. So he ran a hundred k's in
six hours and five minutes. His average mile time Blake was five point fifty three average, right, So Tiff, that means he was running two hour thirty three marathons back to back.
Plus Wow, how the fuck does a human being do that? Now, there's just some There's just some people. Like when I would do some of these events, I'd be like running alongside the pros and they'd be like they'd look at me and they'd be like, you're looking great, Like what lap is this for you? And I'm like, lap number three? What about you? And they're like, oh, I'm my number nine, but I'm going to be I'm like, what the hell,
It's just a completely different dynamics. Some people are just built for certain things and then they train and get more precise and hold their craft. Yeah.
Well, you know, I always say, hang out with people who drag you up, so it's good for you to train with. My training partner for the last twenty years has been a guy that's a former pro bodybuilder, one of the strongest, best physiques in Australia, blah blah blah. And he's better than me. He's always been better than me. He'll always be better than me. But I like it because when I train with him, I kind of get carried along in the momentum.
You know, it's not the worst thing. It's not the worst thing. It's so true. It's like one of my favorite things to do is like run or box or whatever with people so much better than you and just tell them that, like I'm going to try to and I might be like a mile behind them, but it's still something to chase, which is so much easier than just running on your own.
What's that saying. If you're the smartest person in the room, go to another room.
The same thing with everything, right.
Yeah, all right, So tell us about you. Give us a snapshot rather than me read out some bio, tell us a little bit about your background, who you are, what you do, and then then we'll do a deep dive into some of your research and some of your works. I find it really fascinating.
Yeah, so names Blake Eastman. I run a behavioral research company called the Non Verbal Group. I was my background's in forensic psychology. I was an adjunct professor for six years, and I have done a bunch of different projects related to sort of more deeply understanding human So one was the largest behavioral study ever conducted on poker players, which is I work with some of the best poker players in the world on teaching them how to read their opponents.
And then my company, the Non Verbal Group recently has another like incubated startup out of it called Behavioral Robotics, and we're using a lot of computer vision and machine learning to sort of break down human communication or human movement and behavior into very specific movements. And I my business is a lot of things. I work with a lot of high level companies and organizations, coach teams and executives,
and our main mechanism for helping people is video. So we do a lot of video analysis and tend to just show people the same way a coach, which you know, when you're punching saying like your shoulders are too high or whatever like they we use video as a mechanism for that. And I'm very uh, I guess I'm like the most anti body language advice person. So there's just a lot of bullshit out there that I try to
explain the nuance you'll appreciate this. There's like you know, there's there's like academia on one side, and then there's like the thought leader coaching public facing thing on the other side, and it's like the middle is like a complete mess because people take academic research and like spin it to their own narrative and they're not really understanding it.
And then some of the academics I study this stuff for a living, couldn't have an actual conversation with me or you and not be awkward, like it's just fascinating, like the whole back in front of dynamics. So just try to really help people can act with each other. Yeah.
Yeah, there's a lot of space between the actual research and then what gets spoken about, and you know, what gets wheeled out as research or science is often pretty far from that. I guess you're I think I saw you talk about the it was it Paul Eckman that did that research? And how many times you've been asked about the lie to me stuff. You must get sick
of talking about that. So are you telling me that all that stuff about micro expressions and body language and the science around that is kind of rubbish.
It's it's not that it's rubbed well, there's so many layers to this. So first of all, a lot of that if you describe the more classical discoveries or insights into human emotion. A lot of contemporary research in neuroscience is sort of contradictory to those claims. So it's like maker expressions definitely exist. It's not that they don't exist, it's just the meaning that their user what we're deriving
from them is heavily up for debate. And I have like my own opinions about all of this stuff, but there is, like it is a pretty heated debate in academia because people have dedicated their entire lives towards sort of mapping facial expressions and understanding the universality of emotions, and then newer people are like, eh, that's all wrong. Not like you're kind of right. It's like your thesis is completely wrong, the methodology you use, the way that
you look at emotions is completely wrong. And I tend to be somewhere not in the middle. I would say somewhere like seventy percent on the side of that more contemporary theory, but I still think that the other side has usefulness. But yeah, it's it's a it is a rabbit hole. So like you did metaicog, you said you're you're doing a PID.
Yeah, yeah, I met obceptions, so I'm trying to understand that you experience. So the core question at the Cinemon research Blanke is essentially, what's it like being around me for others? So, what's the Craig experience like for Blake? What's the Craig experience like for my listeners? How well do I understand me for them? Essentially?
I love it. I mean, it's kind of a lot of the workout I do. I mean it boils back to this. I think one of the more interesting theories right now is predictive processing or active inference BASY and brain. Basically the fact that we're seeing, we're creating our reality
through all of our past models for the world. And that's why I could take one hundred people that you've never met before, put you in a room with them, and then ninety are like, fucking guys, amazing, I have such a good time, and ten are like I hate that guy right, Like yeah, oh why? Like you know, So that's what my companys are really about. It's not about meaning. It's about mapping the perceptual distributions or bell curves.
So it's like, oh, in Northeastern America, if you're in New York City, Why do these certain sets of behaviors in these contexts lead someone to be arrogant, where in another culture it's respect. Like there's just so much nuance in this But even the way that people see the
world so differently, there are definitely themes. So like I can predict who's not liked on a team with a high accuracy just based on facial movement, because there's themes of like social coordination and all these things that people do to let them know that they're listening and all this other stuff.
And there's also the space between what's going on around us, you know, the event, the objective data, the situation, the circumstance, the other person, and our story or our subjective interpretation or perspective. But so that's going on, there's the thing that's happening, and then there's my version of it. But quite often I don't realize it's my version. I think
it's the thing. So when we don't realize that what's going on for me is just a subjective experience of an object the event, then we mistake our personal reality for the global.
Reality, right exactly, And like we've built models to identify when people are like. So, for example, one of our models, I've forgot all the keywords, but one of the big ones is the words should. So like when analyzing interactions is like, well, Craig should have done this, Craig should which is basically someone like forcing their perception or perspective
on how you should act and it's nice. So there's like little cues and clues in people's language to sort of suggest how how they process their world around them. I put up a thing on.
Instagram yesterday other day before, I have this propensity right on whiteboard's blake, and then I photograph what I have written and then I put it up right. So and that's kind of become a thing that people like. But anyway, I put up a thing on my whiteboard and it said, assuming that people think a certain way because you think a certain way is like assuming someone has a soil
back because you have a soul back, right, yep. So there's this kind of phenomena that or phenomenon that you know, what's called a false consensus effect, where people just think that other people think like them, right, And that's problematic.
Yeah, it's it's at the core of It's like one of the things I'm constantly hammering into people's sort of approach to other people is it's just this concept of perspective. So like I really there really is no right or wrong. It's just all a perspective. It's like depending on where you're standing from, and sometimes in order to connect to someone and really understand how they're processing information, you need to understand their perspective without making them wrong, without calling
them an idiot, without saying your perspective is right. And it just takes a little bit more if the reduced your sort of traditional approaches to interactions in order to actually do that. And it's a skill set. It's a skill set that a lot of you know, good leaders and people that have like networks and are well connected and living Greek lives have, and some people that just don't. And the world doesn't function the way that you want it to. It's just not what reality actually is.
Do you think that sometimes I love that? Do you think that sometimes people feel you know that one of my favorite sayings is, which has been wheeled out a million times in a weillion different, million different kind of formats, But seek first to understand and then to be understood, you know, like the whole kind of theory of mind thing of just trying to understand how other people think. And when I suggest that to people, they're like na.
Sometimes they're like, well, fuck them. I don't want to, you know, because I'm like, I'm not saying I want you to agree with them or join their team. I'm just saying, you can't overcome what you don't understand, or you can't navigate what you don't understand.
So let's just start.
Let's open the understanding and the awareness bigger than you door so that you can you know, you can go shite and navigate and interact with other people that I'm not like you and don't.
Think like you. Yeah, I mean, the theory of the theory of mind thing is just it's so interesting in the sense that I feel like some people like there's this whole concept around like developmental psychology where you know, the age where you develop theory of mind, right, like the kid that sits in front of the table and you're like move, sits in front of the TV and you're like, move, what are you doing? You're blocking everybody and they just don't have the conceptual understanding that they're
blocking their world. And I think it's probably a way more nuanced thing in the sense that some people in certain contexts just they don't develop theory of mind like I. And we have some assessments and some tests we put people through, and like I'll show there's just one video of this, uh, this man and woman talking and the guy is just for a better lack of words, just really being a dick, like you know, the nonverbal tone, the assert like he's just being rude, he's being a
he said, he's being all these things. And you know, show that to most people and you say, what's going on in this? They'll be like, oh, you know his tone this You show them to certain people and they're like, what's wrong with what he said? He's just being honest, he's being straight, And they don't even see the themes that they're interacting on. And some of those people have various on various spectrums or don't have the capacity, and they really struggle in life because they don't know how
to calibrate for social dynamics. Yes, one hundred percent. I did a.
Mentor and group that I just started last night, a ten week mentorship and it's it's like a private group.
It's just fifteen people and we're talking about this a little bit.
And I said, you know, so think about talking about that, trying to understand how we are for others. And I said, so, here's my situation right now. There's fifteen of you, and everyone just met last night, so no one knows everybody. So there's fifteen strangers from different We've got people in all over Australia, people in America, people in New Zealand
on the call. So we've got different backgrounds obviously, fifteen different personalities, fifteen different expectations and reasons for being there.
And I said, and in the middle of all this, I've got to try to resonate optimally with fifteen different people, you know, So that whole interpersonal process of having an awareness of how do I need to be for this person or these people, Not so that I'm compromising me, but just so that I have an awareness like that group awareness and interpersonal awareness of how to build connection, how to you know you and I could go down a psychological rabbit hole of academic jargon and bullshit and
everyone's going to turn off, right, you know, because probably ten percent of my listeners are academics and the rest are not. And that's not good or bad. That's just the group. But it's trying to have these conversations which you must be thinking about, especially when you're working with corporates and teams. How do I how do I share my knowledge in a way that resonatees with them?
Rot. Yeah, I mean that's the whole skill set is being able to communicate. Effective communication is relaying what you want to relay, but making sure it's in a way where the person hears you. So if I wire working too, Like I'll tell you back in the day when I first started my career, I was much younger. I was like twenty five, and I was working in finance in New York and like working with these big financial companies, and I would walk in the room and these people
would be like, how old are you? Like they would challenge me immediately, and what they respected is me like being able to hold my own So me saying, what kind of fucking question is that, like, like old enough to run this thing? Like they would be like, h I respect this guy, like I can listen to him.
Now we're in other contexts, it's completely different. So like there's just certain dynamics that require a more warm, more controlled sort of approach, and that's what it is really to be a dynamic communicator, to sort of put yourself aside and adjust for what you need to have in that group. And it's like kind of really interesting, right Like,
even in that coaching program. I've done a lot of ease in my life, and it's like you get fifteen people on a call, and then you get that one person that just hey, Greg, so I have a question and we'll talk for like six or something, not realize they're monopolizing the other fifteen people's time, right like, And it's just such an interesting dynamic. But you could just be more effective with the more context and more information
you have. And I don't think people spend the time or effort to get that context in information, which is why they can sometimes struggle.
Yeah, I was writing about you, and I was reading that you're an adjunct professor of psych at City University in New York, of New York.
I was looking at even now, I'm how old is this fuck out? He looks twelve. I'm almost forty.
Yeah, dude, that is you got some good genetics, broad because you look twenty five right.
Now, enjoy that that was the issue. So I started, you know, I was teaching at like twenty two and I literally walk into the room and people would laugh and think that I'm just messing around, like I can't possibly be the student. And I had to Like people would ask me, like how old are you, and I'd be like old enough to fail you like, sit down and shut up, like it's time to learn, right like. And my way of being assertive allowed me to counterbalance this.
And now this is also a lot of context coming from I grew up in one of the assertive, straightforward places in the world. New York City is where I was born and raised, so I was trained like that's how you handle yourself. I have like clients in China that if I approached it in that way, it'd be they'd ask me to leave, like please leave, you know.
So there's a way of metering. And that's why I think like the best communicators and the best social interactors they have range r They have like a range that they can play for whatever the dynamic and whatever the group is, and show up how they need to show up.
I know there's no simple to this, but I'd just like to open the door on the conversation.
So my question to.
You is, so people that are listening to this and want to know how they can kind of understand themselves more like, is there a process? Is there is the other questions that we can ask about, how do I understand me for me for my own benefit, but also how do I understand me for others?
Any thoughts on that. Yeah, it's such a good question, a lot of things. So first, video is probably one of the most impactful coaching slash self development tools possible because in a world of so many altering perceptions, videos just reality. It's just bits that are recorded and it's what you look like in a given time. So like if you're a manager, or you're a leader, you're a parent, like you know, people think that they're may be like, oh,
I'm an exceptional parent. Well let's put you on video. Let's see what the average interaction looks like with your kids, like are you really present? Like are you supporting them? Are you short? Are you? And video does not lie. So it's extremely confronting, but it's it's just so so so powerful. And then the other really good way is
we do these like three sixty assessments. And there's two questions in my three sixty that is my favorite, which is you send this like inventory out to like, you know, twenty people that know you and or ten or whatever it is in your personal life and your professional life, and it's what are three words to describe this person at their best? And what are three words to describe this person at their worst? Wow? And what's so sort of fascinating is how much for most people it's consistent.
So like I looked at one this morning and it was like, out of twenty four people, out of twenty four people, the first word they used was impatient. So this person was just like everybody was like at their worst, you are just so impatient. And then you can take a deeper discourse to being like, all right, is this some sort of behavior that you're doing or are you just looking inpatient? Were like, what are the things in
your life that lead to being impatient? Right? So it's that kind of thing where you can hedge a lot of these things. And then it's also really interesting when like somebody gets twenty assessments and eighteen are just pretty loving and great, and then two are like I can't stand like they can't stand you, And I'm like, all right, what happened there? Like what happened between you and Tom and you and Jessica? And they're like, oh, they used to work for me ten years ago when I was
a different person, and blah blah blah blah blah. So I think video and asking others and asking others for their perception, not for their feedback. So when it comes to like social skills and interactions, people are horrible at asking for and giving feedback because what feedback is to say, they tell you how you should be, well, I think you should be a little bit more this or that. It's like you're not looking for feedback, you're just looking for like listen when I'm around you, Like what kind
of emotion? What kind of thoughts leave in our interactions? Like the more you can get to see just what their worldview is and where there's similarities, the more then you can start to go back and start looking for how to change them.
That's such such good advice, and it's so it is it's like people want people want feedback connival. You know, until you give them FAA, until you give them feedback, that lot on one faith. So what they actually want is fucking acolytes and price and endorse.
You know, No, it's I really do think like I have I mean I analyze teams and corporations. I have all their zoom meetings and I'll watch I have like one company that I think I analyze like four hundred and eighty one to one interaction, so like one to one manager and the person that reports to them fifteen minute like here's what you're doing, here's what you're not doing. Sessions and a lot of insights came from this for this specific company. But like the biggest thing was feedback.
Is deliver feedback so that the person can hear you and internalize the feedback. Is one of the most subtle and dynamic skill sets in human behavior that can't be like acknowledge them, do this, do that, and they'll like it because like sometimes just timing, Like there have been moments where like my wife says something to me and it's just like the wrong time to say that, right, and then she says it two days later. I'm like, oh, yeah,
totally right. Like it's just such this fickle, constantly moving thing, and I think it's it's a really high level skill set that's made to be like something basic like some people don't like to be ripped apart or I'll tell you this, like in kind of like certain tech cultures, there's just so there's such an inauthentic or not aligned
way that they get feedback. So they'll say things like they'll be like, uh, they start off nice, and they'll just say like really quickly, like Craig, so how are you out by the way, I love your shirt, I love the I love the background. So anyways, I want to talk about your quarter and one performance one year, and then they just go like right into here's everything wrong with you, and the person just like what do
I do with this? Right? Yes, And it's such a special skill set to be able to give someone feedback. They truly hear you, they feel heard, they feel like you care, and then they're actually motivated to want to change right and want to do something different. And I don't think there's enough of that out in our society, which is why feedback is one of the most like messed up corporate processes that you can possibly look at.
Yeah, that's so fucking clever, But also I think too, like even if you had ten people blake and you needed to give them essentially very similar feedback. You might need to do that ten different ways because you've got ten different personalities and expectations. And you know, it's like, I could say something to Tiff, so Tiff works with me and Melissa works with me. Very different people, not
better or worse, just really different. The thing that I could say to Tiff that might work really well might not work with Melissa, right, And so it's thinking, how do I share this identical or pretty identical message with these two very different people.
Yeah, and then the challenge of it is it's so
hard to do at scale. So when you're a manager and you're managing a team of fifteen people and you got all this own shit going on for you, and you're like, ah, so most of it's designing for like what, how do we design a system that's going to work for eighty percent of people even though the twenty percent are going to be problematic even for the people that don't have those skill sets are adaptive, and some people who have these skill sets and are better able to
do this, it just it comes across natural. They don't even they don't even know what they're doing. Like if you ask them like, like, hey, so, can you break down a series of steps or process on how you get it? They're like, I don't know. They're just like one of those people that like they can't even articulate it, but they're just processing so much information at such a rapid rate, which makes them so unique and so special
in the same way. In the same way, like when you're learning using boxing as analogy, right, like you're learning to box and at first, like you're just trying to throw a punch. Like my thing was always like tension in my shoulders. So like every coach I've had in boxing is always like hitting my shoulders because I keep
my shoulders tentch when I move right. And it took no matter how many times I put that through my head, like relax my shoulder, it takes a long time to actually get your shoulders relaxed and be able to connect and be able to move. It's just it's a it's a process. And yeah, it's that's what I'm just so fascinated by and loved teaching because once people see that it's like that, it opens their eyes to people. Do you think that.
Generally that people think much about how they think like that, why do I think the way that I think? And essentially does it work? Like is this optimal suboptimal? You know, because I feel like people don't really lean into that much.
I think what starts? So for me, it's it's like a by a sample because most of the people that come my direction have this like growth personal development, probably most people in this podcast, right, So like if we were to like pull everybody in this podcast, I would make an assumption that most of them are like thinking about their approach that life and all that stuff. But the average if we looked at the average, yeah, I don't think I don't think so. And that's what it
is to live an empowering, exceptional life. It's like working on yourself and doing the work and confronting what you don't want to confront and having coaches and everybody in your life to keep you more aligned.
And I think, like one of my favorite things to think about is, you know, like that, where is my programming and my conditioning finish?
And where do I start?
Like if I if I hadn't been programmed the way that I have with my school and my parents and my culture and my environment living in this city and blah blah blah and da da da and da da. Here I am and now I look through the Kraig window at the wiled You know, imagine if I'd grown up looking through a different window, or with different faith or beliefs or culture or you know, like identity or experiences.
That that just that fascination between figuring out who I could be or might be beyond what I've been taught and told and trained to be.
Oh, it's it's one of my if I could have a machine that can go back and like switch moment, Like how cool it would it be if like we go right, Craig twelve years old, let's modify this this this enter and like let's see how that compounds. Because all these perspectives they do compound over time, right, and and they start to sort of change how you view the world and see the world. Yeah, no, it's and
it's quite fascinating, that's what you know. The interesting thing is I like to read the reviews on the things that I love, the hated reviews on the things that I love. Right, So, like you know, like I love The Dark Knight Rises this movie, right, it's like quote it more than anything else and I'll go and look at the one and two star reviews and I'm just like, how the hell could this person have that opinion about this? Right, Like, and it's just everybody sees the world differently, and you
have to really. I think it's one of those things that's said so often that people conceptually understand that, but they don't get it at their core. They don't really like get it and integrate it into like how they talk to people and how they interact with people. There's, oh, yeah, sure,
everybody has their own perspective. Yeah, that's nice, but it's like, no, no, no, no, no no. This is at the bedrock of all human perception and in order to really interact with people, navigate, manipulate, whatever word you have to, just you have to you have to really get that in your bones. Yeah.
So we're looking at the same thing, but we're not saying the same thing.
Yeah. I mean even at the like where it gets even creepier is like we can think about social interactions, but we can drapulate. So I'll give you an example. So, like, I'm closely related to design. I have a lot of design input in everything in my company, and I was getting into a little bit of a heated dispute with one of my designers about the weight of a font. It was like the Rogan we use this font called Rogan. He was putting in at bold four hundred. I thought
it should be bold. I thought it should have been a two hundred weight, and he's like, it looks to it. What are you talking about. I was like, it looks great. Long story short, I find out that I have a stigmatism in my right eye which skews the things. So I finally get glasses for the first time in my life. I put these glasses on, and I'm like, I am so sorry. The stigmatism was making the text not as bold as so you were one hundred percent right this
whole time. I totally get while you think I was crazy. So this happens at the level of vision, at the level of color, like with people with certain cognitive processing disorders, with people with you know, on certain spectrums of overthinking or underthinking. Like, it's not just social interactions at like every aspect. I mean, people have junior mutations that change the amount of blues and greens in their visual spectrum to the point of when they were looking at your
room right now. They'd be like, why is your room like a light brown? They can't see blue right, like it's happening everywhere.
Yeah, that's so interesting. Hey, yeah, we don't see things as they are. We see things as we are, that old chestnut. I'm fascinated. I just want to jump back a little bit. So you said that you looked at hundreds of one on one interviews that went for like fifteen minutes or something. Do obviously the people that you're that are in the one on one getting their review or their feedback or whatever, they know they're being filmed, obviously, yes.
Yeah, okay, okay, so wow, So the companies everything's recorded. It's like a byproduct of some of these companies. Protocols are processes. Not all of them know that they're looking like, yeah, I'm looking at this through a lens of like development and helping them. So even though they know, they totally forget because some of them they're they're not on these zoom meetings. I'm like, you can't say that, like you
get Nope, you can't say that they forget. And just we're in a zoom culture right now where everybody's on meetings being recorded, being interviewed, being all those types of things. So it's just it's one of those things that like I think people just forget how often they're actually recorded. Yeah, yeah, but there are times where people directly no, I will
tell you one thing. So we've done a lot of video research and we found that for the most part, the number seems to be between like ten to fifteen minutes. I think it's more like eight to twelve, but let's
just say ten to fifteen minutes. So if people know they're being recorded, like we did a dating study in New York City like fifteen years ago, or we put people in like blind dates and recorded them from multiple angles, people can be a little bit weird for the first like ten minutes, and then they just forget that they're being recorded, right, And we're really good at like camera policement and doing things so that you don't feel like it's invasive. But yeah, oh yeah, video is so heavy
in our society now. It's just so easy to get footage on people.
Tell me about the intersection of Like when I think about the people that you work with in corporate I do a lot of corporate speaking, and I'm always interested in the people you know, the bosses, the managers, the leaders, whoever they are, this kind of intersection of business skills and intellect, but also emotional and social intelligence, situational awareness, fucking empathy.
You know.
Tell me a little bit about is there is there a better recipe or formula, like what who makes the best leaders and communicators and connectors and problem solvers?
Yeah, such a great question. So I think it boiled. So this is okay. Let me let me take a couple steps back. So when I start working with these large organizations, you know, years ago, and continue to work with them, there's there's all these things that start coming up that I don't understand. Right. So, for example, I'm working with a series of six teams, and I'm told that I need to go work with this specific team because the manager or the leader of that group is
like toxic and too aggressive and all this stuff. Right, But then I look at all the actual data, and this person's outperforming everybody else. So their team is the most you know, high performing team. So I'm like, why am I working If the goal of the business is to make money and the goal of the businesses to grow, why are you sending me in to work with and like they're like, well, we just were worried about employee burnout.
We're worried about all these other aspects. And what I started to find is that the best leaders, you know, there's all these freaking books, be this kind of leader, that kind of leader. Like there's really just I don't believe there's such a thing. There are some you know, rules, but if the one thing that I could say is the most important that I've observed is alignment. So the
best leaders are aligned. So even if a leader like I work with this guy that was just a piece of work, it was tough, is just like just the definition of tough. And I do this like leadership assessment thing where I'm like, you know, close your eyes, I matching your funeral. Everybody ever worked with is telling stories about you. What are they saying? And he and this guy usually people were like he was great. This guy was like I want them to say, like he was
the toughest boss I ever worked with. But that guy changed my life. So he really did care about his people. But he thought that the way to grow people was to be like a drill sergeant, miserable kind of person. And he didn't want to change that. So what I did was I built like a workflow with him for when people started working with him. He would say, listen,
here's the deal. I have been told by numerous people over the last ten years that I am the toughest person they've ever worked with, that I'm hard, that I'm demanding, that I accept excellence at every single level and a high level of integrity and all this stuff. You probably won't like me, but I promise you over the next if you work with me for two years, I'll fundamentally change the trajectory of your entire life and career. Are
you in? And the people that would hesitate or whatever, and some people would just be like yes, and that changed everything because they saw his behavior as happening for them, not to them, which just really shifted the narrative. So I believe that any leader can be effective as long as you own the context and explain people what they're
getting into. The bullshit comes from the leaders that try to act nice and try to act warm, and they're the exact opposite, like, oh, I want you to have life work balance and you should spend time with your family, and then they call you on a Saturday at eleven and they're like, where is this, Like it's the inconsistency that creates the problem. But I had a conversation with
someone that wants to do something for me. They want to lead some pretty big thing and they have three kids and they right now they're working with me in cushy capacity. And I said it, I said, listen, right now, you know you're working thirty hours a week on an hourly basis with me. You've got friendly, you've got easy blake, you got nothing like that. If you take on this role and something happens at Sunday at four o'clock in
the morning, it's not me fixing it, it's you. And do you really want to do that right now with three kids in a family. And he was like, no, it's all right, great, this is the wrong role for
you then, right, So it's just setting expectations. And also, like the truth is, there is some classic stuff too, like a lot of leaders is so interesting when like a leader will tell their team to do something that they won't like, that stuff just looks so bad, Like it's just so bad when they're just like, oh, you know, I expect everybody to be on time, but then they show up five minutes late for meetings, It's like, why
can you be late and everybody else can? So leading by example, So like alignment and leading by example, I think it cuts through more noise than any other type of thing. And then another point about your point about empathy, which is such a hot topic today and our environment. Everybody wants empathy, and the truth is people don't want empathy,
they want perceived empathy. A big difference. So, like the perception of empathy is me going like, like what you just did, right, You were like hmmm, that allows me like, okay, that was interesting. You could have been like this guy's an idiot, Like that's what could have been going through your head. But the way people receive it is like, oh, he's really listening to me, right, And a lot there's a lot of leaders out there that are very empathetic.
They just don't show it. So they care about their team, they just don't have facial configurations that align with it. Their words don't align with it. You know. It's that kind of dynamic.
Oh that's such a good conversation. You know. Another thing I find really interesting is kind of the balance between like caring for people, understanding their feelings, and you know their drivers and where they're at. You know a lot of people, and even Tiff on the call with us. I coach Tiff in the gym, and I often coach her with someone else, and she'll attest to this. Like I've said to her lots of times, I'm not interested
in making you feel good in the moment. I'm interested in helping you be fucking awesome over the long term. And it's not my job to stroke your ego make sure you feel okay. Like that's not my job. It doesn't mean I don't care. I actually really care, because I want you to be a fucking weapon, right. But there's that sometimes in the moment where people want their ego, not Tiff, but people want.
Their ego fared or you know, like it's that real.
I find that a challenge at times, that balance between you know, helping people feel okay in the moment, but also.
You know, you know, you've been.
Going around in circles with this for five fucking years. You're still not doing it. You're still you're not doing the things required to build resilient and to build capacity, and you're not doing the work, and you give up everything, you know, like there's this there's this kind of you know, two dimensional challenge of how do I not scare the fuck out of them, which I can do with people, but also empower them to do their best.
Yeah. I mean it's it's what it is to take a stand for someone and be able to say the things that other people are unwilling to say and using whatever motivational paradigms that are going to be required, Like there's like for me, like and but that where it gets so different is like the domain of sports is so unique, especially boxing, right, Like you know what you
just said. But imagine like a corporate thing where you have to do the same thing and they're like, well, the company's culture is that we're more we care about our employees and we care like It's just so it's so different, which is why I I think that like sports is such a good analogy to performance in the sense that like some people are motivated by you know, dig deep and go harder, right, Like some people are like that's their true motivational power, Nige. But if you
I see too much, somebody can break, right. So it's just this I think the answer to it is awareness, Like the more aware you are of the other person, the more you're able to see how your words are landing, how your state, when you need to dial in more, when you need to back in a little bit more, and do all that I had I had. I have this coach that would like, oh my god, I remember this,
Like he would we would do to squats. He would do this thing where he'd go like, all, I'm gonna count you down, let's just finish at ten, and he'd go one, two, three, four, five, six, And then he would go he'd watch my movement and he'd go six, six, six, six, And there'd be times where it was supposed to end in ten squats and I'm at like sixty six and he'd but he'd be watching me and he's like you got another, Like yeah, another, I'd just keep going six six,
he goes seven, and he would And what was so interesting is like he'd be able to take me to that like last two percent drop in me where I'm like, I don't think I could do two more squad and just push me to the push me to the thing. And then the next day he'd be able to ease off a little bit, like he was calibrating for me in a way that worked, and I think communication, leadership and stuff is very similar. Yeah, that's very valid. All right,
I'm gonna we're on the home straight. I'm going to just throw a few.
A few words that you maybe and rather than asking you a specific question about it, I want.
You to riff if you would, for a minute.
So my first word is on My first concept is lying.
Lying. Talk to us about lying. So lying is probably if all the domains, if you look at all the domains of human behavior, lying is probably the most difficult to navigate, in my opinion. So a lot of the information and advice from lying often comes from people that have studied deception when they have ground truth. So when an interrogator interrogates somebody sitting there and they know that they weren't at this place at this hour, the truth
is from like an adaptive approach. Having a lens where you going around the world looking to see if people are lying or not is probably not going to serve you.
Like it's a very complicated skill set. Most of the stuff you hear about body language and lying is complete utter nonsense, like if someone scratches their nose or if they don't look at you or just silly shit and if you really want to get good at sort of deception, like it's a process of like interrogation and who wants to go through their social life like interrogating people and checking and like one of the easiest ways to see
if someone's lying is just like this is where it gets nuanced, right. You can just make something up. You could be like, have you found have you found the Seymour and Undertow study twenty fifteen, And someone's like, oh, yeah, no, I read that and I just made that up based on the poster right there. Now, the question is why did they lie? Did they lie because they want to feel appreciated,
they want to feel respected? Do they have like most people just make shit up, not because they're being evil, but because it's just this sort of social adaptability. Yeah, I love it all right.
Next one, identity.
Oh that's a good one. I mean, I feel like that is probably the foundation of so many things when it comes to social interactions. You need to have a strong sense of identity and who you are before you ever enter into an intimate relationship. It's like old school Eric Ericksson's theories of development or Colborg after who did it. I think that most people are in this sort of stage of like identity, of confusion, of like just trying to figure out who they are and not really knowing
who they are. And sometimes I think that's just like a lifelong journey. I think that identity is something that in a such a beautiful way evolves, and such a beautiful way, like your results and your actions are are what should form your identity, not the thoughts about yourself. Yes, so like you build your identity through reality, not through
Oh I think I would be. It's kind of like I always say this, like I I was with a friend at a Knicks game and he kept yelling at everybody at the court and it was just yelling, yelling, yelling. I was like, dude, can you just shut the fuck? Can you stop talking right now? Like please? And he's like why. I was like, because you're not an NBA basketball player, like you if you're in if you were
a former NBA about yell at these people. But so many people form their identity through their own thoughts and not through their actions. So don't trust your thoughts, trust your actions, all right. Trust Trust Trust is people always talk about like nonverbal things or body language things around trust. Trust is simply feedback loops. That's how they're created. You do something somebody, you do something you say you're gonna do,
you do it. You get trust. And you can accelerate the trust dynamics and the feedback loops by showing up and being more consistent. So if you meet somebody at three pm, you get there at three pm. Yeah, you know, you say you're going to do something this week, You get it done this week. That's it. And I think that the whole notion of like certain people are trustworthy or not trustworthy based on physical behavior, it's a lot of it is very it's the perception of trust. The
truth is you can only measure trust the results. It's like the only.
Way great, all right, the idea of success versus the reality of success.
So yeah, success, I think success. My definition success is like you write things down on a piece of paper what you want to accomplish, and you accomplish it and you're successful. And I think the biggest problem people make is they take these pervasive themes of society and they try to follow other people's definition of what success is and they play the wrong game. So I think success is just a game, and I think it. You know, you start off short, you start off small, you win
the smaller games, you win the bigger games. And I think what most people do is yeah, I work with some people that are so hard on themselves that they've never even measured or come up with what success looks like. They don't even know they just pushed themselves so hard. Like what is successful? Is it winning? Is it making fifty million dollars? Is it finding the love of your life?
Like?
What is success? And most people, if you ask people that want to be successful, most people can't answer the question of what its success is. Yeah, that is true. I know I've done that many times.
I go put up your end if you want to be successful. Every hand goes up, and then I go, all right, just write down what that means for you, and they just sit there looking.
At idea like huh, yeah that is changed. All right, We're nearly there. This is great. Thank you so much.
All Right, my last single word that I'm going to chuck at you before you tell us a bit about your work and your business and how people can connect. And I'm sorry that this is cliche, but I just want to hear your thoughts on it.
Happiness. So I think happiness is it's become such a thing in our society that we have to live a happy life quote unquote happy life. Yeah. I am not optimizing my life necessarily around happiness, like the sort of ups and downs and the things that I've gone through and all this stuff. And for me, happiness comes from when I push hard towards something and achieve it and it's like this fleeting moment where I'm like happy for like five or six seconds. So I'll tell you I'll
end this on like a sad note. But my dad passed in November of ALS. So he had ALS for two years. Died a horrible disease that just you know, you can't move. And when he first got the diagnosis, I was like, you know, I was like talking to God or the simulation or whatever, and I was like, listen, I'm gonna work harder than I've ever worked in my entire life, Like I am going to grind and because
that's all I knew, like I didn't know. And then two weeks later I was like, no, I'm just going to try to enjoy and be present in every moment and be grateful that I'm alive, and I'm going to do more than that than anything else. And that has been such a gift that my dad gave to me when he died, because it had me see how short life is. And that doesn't mean looking for happiness in
anywhere everywhere. That sometimes just means experiencing the range of human emotions and the range of human experience, from fear to joy to anxiety, all these different things, but to be more present with it. So I don't I think if you try to optimize for just being universally happy and don't have a really good definition of what happiness is to you, you're going to fail. Like this is going to be very hard.
Yeah, well, Blake, I love chatting with you. You're super fascinating. I mean, thank you so much for doing this. So I appreciate you. How can people connect with you? You point them towards my audience to whatever you want to point them towards. Websites, social media, books, programs, whatever, whatever you want to steer people towards.
Yeah. So the best way I send an email newsletter out every Monday for doing it for the last four years. So it's nonverbalgroup dot com slash newsletter, and we have a ton of programs. We've got a program called the Social Edge where we teach these skills and we analyze your behavior with a bunch of models. It's pretty wild. And I'm going to do start doing a lot more stuff on YouTube, So YouTube dot Com, slash Blake, Underscore
Eastman and Instagram and all those various things. I got to start getting out there more book coming in a year, So still working on that one.
Well, we will get you back before the book, and we will we will crank that book out for you. Well say goodbye off fair but Blake, thanks so much for coming on the Youth Project.
Yeah, and I just want to say I've done like I've done, like twenty five podcast I think in the last like three months is definitely leave my top three. Like just your energy, your questions, your sort of informal like I just loved it. So you did an absolutely amazing job and it was so refreshing. I didn't know what to expect and I was like, oh, this guy's different, Like I like this already, and like because your energy change, it kind of impacted me. I was like, God, I
could be more myself, I could be more conversational. It's not like, so Blake, what are the top three things? So you're doing great? I love it. This was amazing.
Thank you, self esteem restored. Thank you therapy today. Fuck that well, say goodbye fair Blake, but thank you for being part of you project.
We really appreciate you. Thank you.