Joe Navarro

If you wish to enhance your effectiveness as a persuasive speaker — at home, at work, even with friends — attempt to become more expressive in your use of hand movements.

Joe Navarro (born May 26, 1953) is an American author, public speaker, and former FBI agent and supervisor.

Quotes

What Every Body Is Saying (2008)

with co-author Marvin Karlins

• I have come to realize that there are two principal things we should look for and focus on: comfort and discomfort. [...] Learning to read comfort and discomfort cues (behaviors) in others accurately will help you decipher what their bodies and minds are truly saying.

• If you wish to enhance your effectiveness as a persuasive speaker — at home, at work, even with friends — attempt to become more expressive in your use of hand movements. [...] Whether you naturally speak with your hands or not, recognize that we communicate our ideas more effectively when we employ our hands.

• One of the most important observations you can make in relation to the hands is noticing when they go dormant. When the hands stop illustrating and emphasizing, it is usually a clue to a change in brain activity (perhaps because of a lack of commitment) and is cause for heightened awareness and assessment.

• When we press our lips together, it is as if the limbic brain is telling us to shut down and not allow anything into our bodies, because at this moment we are consumed with serious issues. Lip compression is very indicative of true negative sentiment that manifests quite vividly in real time.

• When confronted with mixed signals from the face (such as happiness cues along with anxiety signals or pleasure behaviors seen alongside displeasure displays), or if the nonverbal facial messages are not in agreement, always side with the negative emotion as the more honest of the two. The negative sentiment will almost always be the more accurate and genuine of the person's feelings and emotions.

• When we speak, we naturally utilize various parts of our body — such as the eyebrows, head, hands, arms, torso, legs, and feet — to emphasize a point about which we feel deeply or emotionally. Observing emphasis is important because emphasis is universal when people are being genuine.