Issue 33: Reading People At A Glance
THE LEAP
BY QUANTUM ORANGE
GROW, EXPAND & EVOLVE
ISSUE 33 | READING PEOPLE AT A GLANCE
Each week The (Quantum) Leap summarises a key aspect of success into what you need to Think, Feel and Do to create a personal shift.
THINK
Reading people ‘at a glance’ means being able to understand and interpret their thoughts, emotions and behaviour simply by observing them. This skill can be valuable in building relationships, understanding the needs of other people and in resolving conflicts.
In Silent Messages, Dr. Albert Mehrabian discusses the fact that only 7% of communication is words; the rest comes from vocal cues and nonverbal messages, like facial expressions and stance.
Psychologists at Princeton University found that it only takes us one tenth of a second to make an initial judgement of someone, primarily based on body language - observing how they stand, move, or talk. But most of what we believe about body language and analysing others is based on myth or guesswork, not real research.
If you don't know how to read people, you could interpret something incorrectly and start to assume things about a person that aren’t accurate. We need to consider the situation, the person’s usual behaviour and what might be affecting our judgement.
To improve your skill at reading other people, you will also need to get better at reading yourself. You’ll need to increase your self-awareness, particularly when forming or changing opinions of other people.
Take a moment to ask yourself:
- Have you ever perceived someone attractive as nicer than they really are?
- Do you look for signs that confirm your current opinion of the person, and ignore those that contradict it?
- Do you place too much importance on your first impression, even if it is now clear it was incorrect?
- Have you ever assumed someone agreed with you more than they actually did?
- Have you put more emphasis on the signs that suggest someone is similar to you?
- Have you ever looked at someone’s face and thought that they are an angry person, and later found they were just upset about a situation?
When forming these opinions you’re picking up on subtle cues. If you get good at noticing these feelings, you’ll get better at picking up the cues and separating your biases from your perception of others.
FEEL
Body language is an outward reflection of a person’s emotional condition and therefore signals how they might be feeling. To read the emotions of others requires identifying the cues we get from their body language and tone of voice.
Facial expressions can express our emotions as well as our mental state - even if you can’t understand the other person’s verbal language, as long as you can interpret their facial expressions you will understand the emotions at play.
According to the American Psychological Association facial expressions are culturally specific and have their own verbal language. A person can control facial expressions but micro-expressions, on the other hand, are involuntary. They occur when a person tries to hide their real emotions.
When an emotion is felt, micro-expressions in the face can typically last for at least 0.5 to 4 seconds before a person can try and conceal it. However, micro-expressions can happen so fast that some people can’t even recognise or catch them in real-time.
Check out how good you are at reading what someone else is feeling by completing this quiz.
DO
When you meet a person for the first time, your gut feelings will occur before you even have a chance to think, and your first impressions are usually fairly accurate. The tricky thing is learning to adapt your impressions rapidly as new information becomes available.
Paul’s system for reading people at a glance is broadly personality based and is a very effective tool for quickly and easily seeing the big picture and assessing how to communicate with someone in their language.
For example - if you’re communicating with a warm natured extrovert, summarising the facts with stories and anecdotes will put them at ease.
This week, try using the summary in the flow chart below to read people at a glance and adjust your interactions for maximum success. It’s not difficult to do, but it does take practise.
Read. Watch. Listen.
