Body Language During Covid-19: Masks, Zoom Meetings & More

Dr. Cooper

Welcome to the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Bradford Cooper. And I don’t know about you, but these masks are driving me crazy, frankly, for a number of reasons. But foremost among those is I can’t see people smile. Facial expressions are such an important part of communication. And for the foreseeable future, those are off the table in the majority of our social interactions. It was for that reason, we reached out to Allan Pease, the man known worldwide as mr. body language. If we can’t depend on the smile, what are the clues we can tap into in our communication? Mr. Pease has written 18 best-sellers including the definitive book on body language. He specializes in decoding a wide range of subtle cues that appear in our body language that we thought might just come in handy for all of us right now. And folks I’ve heard the interview. I’m recording this after the fact, and it was so much fun. He brought so much more than I ever could have expected. So, you’re going to love this one. If you’re wanting to pursue the national board exams for a health and wellness coach, our two most recent programs to qualify you filled a full month early. So we have added one more program in July. For those that just realized that the deadlines were coming and that everything changes this fall, it will absolutely fill early. So if it’s important to you, don’t wait. As always, if you’re saying, wait, what is he talking about? If you want to talk this through how it applies to you, your career, et cetera, reach out to us. Email is Results@CatalystCoachingInstitute.com. We’re happy to set up some time to discuss your specific situation and answer any questions that you might have. We also have a new ebook on our website that walks you through all the steps to earning that national board certification. You can check that out at CatalystCoachingInstitute.com. Now, are you ready to dig into this topic of body language? This one was so much fun. Let’s get after it with mr. Body language, Allan Pease on the latest episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance podcast. Allan, so good to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us here on the Catalyst Health Wellness and Performance podcast,

Allan Pease

Bradford, my pleasure to be here.

Dr. Cooper

The timing of this is fantastic. You bring so much to the conversation in terms of what people are going through right now. Let’s start by digging into the relationships in this new norm of social distancing and reduced personal contact. So a couple of questions here for those who are spending far more time with significant others in the midst of all the COVID-19, then maybe they’re used to, what advice would you have for them?

Allan Pease

Well, yeah, that’s, it is a tough situation because people are spending more time together than they would normally spend. And that can be both a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that people get a chance to actually find out who they’re living with. I had a guy the other day, he said, he said I came home and there was, there’s a woman sitting on my couch in my living room and I couldn’t believe it. He said, I sat down and talked to her and it turns out she is my wife and she seems quite nice. So that’s good that we get to know each other. That’s a good sign. And I saw a bit of research with kids that showed that when kids think back to the COVID period, when they are adults, when they become adults, they’ll think back of being, spending time with their parents. I actually won’t spend thinking about the disease but that I spent time at home with my parents, played with them or talked with them talk to them, or you get the point. As I said, talking about, so, so what are you doing when you’re locked in with somebody who it doesn’t matter, whether you love them. Somebody said to me this morning, have you and Barbara ever thought about divorced and we’ve been together 30 years, 24 hours a day for 30 years. And I said, to have you ever thought about divorce? Never, never, ever considered it. Murder, that’s a different story.

Allan Pease

What do you do again, if you’re stuck together, the first is, is to understand. And this is where a lot of younger people under, certainly on the thirties have an issue because they’re raised in a politically correct era where you’re supposed to go around pretending to each other, that men and women think the same things they had experienced with the opposite sex. You know, that’s just not the case. We’re different, not better or worse. We’re different, right? And first is to accept and understand that. Scientists have found, very conclusively, that we are different. We have different agendas and originally you’re attracted to the opposite sex in any case, Bradford is because they’re different. I mean, you don’t want to wake up in the morning and have to look at you and listen to you. Like something is different to make it interesting, exciting, and challenging and a little bit uncertain, not too different. Because if you’re too different, it’s like opposites attract yes they do. Scientifically we know opposites do attract, but they also have the highest divorce and separation rate as well. So you’ve got to have somebody just sufficiently different. So men and women are different. We think differently. We have different expectations, different agendas. And that’s the thing that drives us together in the first place. We love the distance, the difference, but couples get together. And then what they try to do, in particular women, they try to change him into something else.

Allan Pease

Women, many times we say this in our books, that the only time you can ever change a man is when he’s a baby. When he’s in diapers, that’s about the only time that’s ever going to happen. So the girl that you hook up with, marry, or co-habit within your twenties, by the time he gets to be in his forties, he’s the same guy. He just, might be a little bit fatter, a bit balder, but he’s the same guy. Whereas women are not because of hormonal changes of the biology of female bodies and brains. Every 10 years a woman is somebody else. So when she’s 20, she’s a totally different person than when she’s 30. When she’s 40, she’s someone else, again. And when she’s 50, she’s completely different. Again, which catches most men by surprise. So if you expect difference, that you celebrate the difference, then you can get on really well. And don’t try to change a person in close contact to be what you want them to be, which is usually you want them to be like you, your best friend is like you, but the person living with you don’t want them to be like you, you want them to be different. So accepting that with your friends and managing the difference, which is what most people don’t do. And those who don’t do that, now get it with the COVID situation. You see this enormous rise in domestic violence and divorce rates are spiking and will spike because people don’t have techniques for living together and for managing each othe r. And if you can manage your opposite sex, they’re damn exciting. And they’re good fun. If you expect them to think like you, be like you, your life’s going to be hell.

Dr. Cooper

So it’s interesting. I’ve, I’ve heard that, that there’s potential for the divorce rate to spike. Maybe once this is over and people are actually able to meet with an attorney, but the, do you think it goes both ways? Cause it seems like a lot of folks, like you said, you see this woman on the couch, you go, wait, who are you? What’s going on here? And you fall back in love. Do you think there’s potential for that for us to draw closer through all of us as well, besides the kids that you mentioned?

Allan Pease

Well, there’s no doubt about that. The opportunity to rediscover who you are and who your partner is and what the relationship is that you want. Because see what happens with relationships mother nature is a con artist. She really feels is. She tricks us, draws us together with these enormous hormones when we’re younger. The purpose of that is to create the next generation that’s its purpose. And it fills us into not seeing the faults or the disabilities emotionally and otherwise of the path. And suddenly we’ve got kids and we’ve got houses and we’ve got mortgages and we’re going to work and we’re trying to pay the bills, put the food on the table. And it’s not until you get something like COVID, that makes you lock in that you get a chance to actually sit. And here’s one of the upsides of COVID for most of us, we’ve got a chance to actually sit and decide what do we really want? It’s very rare in a busy life that that can never happen. We get so busy with life in the way we don’t get to do this. And so for me personally, as an example, my business, which is a seminar business and the writing business, and we run a big rock and roll music business here with, we do the recordings for, the likes of the voice and Australia’s got talent. That’s all gone. It’s all completely out the window because we can’t get together. And so for me, it’s the first time I’ve had in maybe 30 years to sit down and think about what do I actually really want? And it’s very therapeutic because most people sitting, are thinking about what they haven’t got, what’s going on, what they can’t have. And, this is a big difference. You have the opportunity to change your mindset.

Allan Pease

This is one of the rare times, maybe in most people’s lives Brad to be able to think about what do I really want the relationship I’ve got with this person I’m living with? How, how do I really want that to go? And you’ve got to make a commitment that you’re going to make a go, and maybe it’s not the same as when you first met that person, because you’ve got mortgages, houses, kids, and careers, et cetera, et cetera, maybe it’s changed. And that’s, that’s not a bad thing. That can be a good thing, but like accepting that it has changed and desiring that you will have a different relationship and that other person is opposite sex. Even if they’re guys, is simply an opposite sex brain to you, might be the same physical body, but the brains operation is still male and female. And so you’ve got the opportunity to decide how do you want this relationship? And to make a decision that you will make it go. And now’s the time to look at YouTube, read books, such as the ones that Barb and I write. And there’s lots of books out there on how to do all this. They’ll show you what to do and how to do it. So it’s a big, it really is a big opportunity. COVID even though it’s a negative situation, there are big opportunities here for most.

Dr. Cooper

Right. Very good. All right. So the second part of that, how about those who aren’t able to spend time with, face to face time with specific family or friends, maybe it’s kids, maybe it’s a mom who’s in a nursing home or something. Are there ways to enhance relationships that are hindered currently by the, the limits of human contact? So we’ve got this screen between us, other ways to still build relationships in the midst of those limits?

Allan Pease

Well, it’s interesting because the way that most people now are learning and adapting, they’re doing this is that COVID has forced us all into the Zoom era, the Skype era, the virtual call era. We are all in there, whether we like it or not, which is a good thing because how many people have put this off or ignored it. So now that’s really, the only way for many people is to get a Skype call or a zoom call or a FaceTime. And that’s interesting when you look at how that happens, because in a FaceTime type call where you see the person, you can do things that you can’t do if you had been live with them face to face. So if you and I are live face to face, we look at each other on average as Westerners 2/3rds of the time, we look away, one third, that’s the social distance gazing time. On a zoom or a FaceTime call, you can actually stare at that person’s face. So we are actually staring at each other, which you can’t do face to face. It’d be very uncomfortable which I think you’re cracking onto the moral that you’re strange. So we can actually stare at a person. Now we only see that person normally from the chest up to the head and the person who’s looking at you on a FaceTime call or a zoom call, even though we’re doing audio now. So we don’t have that same advantage is that they can stare at every, every X part of your face. They can look at your eyes. They can look at your nose or any movements. And there are lots of signals coming from the face that you would often miss in a real life face to face standing situation, because you’re distracted by your surroundings and it would be socially unacceptable to look at somebody a hundred percent of the time, right?

Allan Pease

And so being able to read faces, not by bodies now has become a really, really big thing because you can get more information on a zoom call than you can face to face. But there are things you can do on face time, zoom type call. So for example, when we like the person we’re with, we’re interested in what they’re saying, we lean towards them on a zoom, Skype type call. You do exactly the same. And we encounter these people who have multiple zoom calls, lean to the screen. When somebody is talking and nod your head in groups of three, one, two, three, stop one, two, three, stop. More than three nods means shut up in Western societies. One, two, three, four, five minutes. Shut up, shut up without even knowing will shut you up. That’s a good way to shut people up. If you think that going on too long, rather than say, look, that’s enough, just nod your head five times. Then you start to speak and you have effectively shut them up at one, two, three, stop one, two, three. And you tilt your head slightly to the side, 15 degree angle, just like dogs do when they’re listening. And that encourages people to keep talking. So there are things that you can do on a, skype, zoom type call that will keep people engaged, make them feel special, make them feel important, but we lack things such as touch. Cause there’s a good chance that when you’re talking to somebody, you might touch them on the elbow, touch them on the arm. And at the moment that’s, that’s just a big no, no, we can’t do that. And, maybe it’ll come back in the future sometime when this is all pass, but right now we can’t do that and we can’t do it on the screen.

Allan Pease

So where a lot of people, when you see them on a Skype call, zoom call, they’re sitting back in their chair, which makes them appear to be two to three meters away. And we stand two to three meters away from people we don’t like and, and that we aren’t interested in. Now they’re calling this social distancing, this the 6 feet, 2 meter rule is not social at all. In fact, it’s anti social because people we don’t like don’t enjoy being with, we keep them at one and a half meters, you know, five to six feet away. So, but if you stand that far away from somebody because COVID, it’s a cause and effect situation, you start to feel like you don’t really like them. And this is part of the reason why everybody’s so suspicious of each other. Two things, we are standing too far away so we feel like maybe we don’t like them. And if they’re wearing a mask, most of the information from their face about their emotions is concealed. And so the only thing missing is a, is a gun in the holster. And so they looked like there might be some sort of a burglary because you can’t see the face and you’re standing too far away, so we really should have called this physical distancing. So that’s what it is. Bradford it’s not social. Social distancing is when you’re standing at a distance that makes you feel comfortable, which in Western countries in large cities is around about, let’s see, I’ll convert this it’s 48 centimeters around about say three feet, about one and a half feet aach, just less than a meter is where we stand with people that we like and enjoy. And we turn our bodies at 45 degrees to each other to form a 90 degree angle. And that’s where people talk the most, feel the most comfortable and most relaxed, whereas on a Skype type call, you’re likely to be facing this person. So that being the case, if you’re sitting turn your chair to a side to form a 95 or a 90 degree angle or a 45 degree angle view, and then turn your head towards the screen, that makes people feel very comfortable.

Dr. Cooper

That’s fascinating. So, so if I’m sitting back in my seat, that puts me in a position that we would normally place ourselves if we didn’t like each other. But if I sit closer to the screen, if I make the screen look like I’m, you know, two feet away from it, that brings it into that friendly phase, if you will.

Allan Pease

What you’re trying to do is recreate the distance that you would be with the person, if you liked them. And you’re in a, in a cooperative agreeing type situation. But if you lean back because we’re smaller on a screen, it gives the illusion, but the brain doesn’t know it’s an illusion. The brain responds to what it thinks. It’s saying it gives the illusion that may be you are two to three meters. That’s like six to 10 feet away, right? And people are six to 10 feet away or two to three meters away. People look, we don’t really communicate with, well.

Dr. Cooper

This is fascinating. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. So we jumped a little bit ahead, but we’ll, we’ll circle back here. Now you have the reputation as mr. body language. So that’s an area that’s obviously always been important, but it seems like even more important now. You mentioned the mask covering our faces. What aspects of our body language become the next line of communication? So if you and I are meeting on the street somewhere, we both have masks on what, what else can I do? Body language wise to communicate different messages to you without the smile and frowns and the things that go with that?

Allan Pease

Well, it’s very awkward to, in fact, the whole world right now is feeling awkward because if we do happen to meet somebody face to face wearing a mask, I mean the natural reaction for most Westerners and Europeans is to extend your hand. And you would have not to, even though the medicals are saying again, handshaking, just leave it be for the time being, cause of germ transmission, we still have this urge to put our hand out because we have for years. And so that doesn’t happen with so, everybody’s doing this awkward dance in front of each other. Here’s a simple way to do this. If you’re wearing a mask, when you’re face to face with someone, when you meet them, you stop, put your hand over your heart and just lean forward slightly while keeping your eyes up and small so they can see you too. It’s important that they see your teeth, having visible teeth for primates as a submission signal.

Allan Pease

So monkeys and chimps do this as well. Somebody smiles at you right but they can’t see your teeth, they’ll become very suspicious of you and women are very receptive to this. If a woman’s standing around with you and she’s smiling but you can’t see her teeth, somebody, or something’s bugging her and other women know this, and most men miss it, like oh she must fancy me. No, she’s upset about something and other women pick this up because women are more perceptive picking up on verbal signals as a collective group than men. So put your hand on your heart, lean forward and just smile with your teeth visible. Now the hand on the heart neutralizes, the fact they can’t get information from your face because hand on the heart for thousands of years has been connected to loyalty, to sincerity, to openness, to love, to truth. And just the action of doing that will neutralize most of what they’re not getting from your face. In other words, you look like you’re nonthreatening, non dominating. Non-intimidating. Now the other thing you can do, which I’ve tried this one and this one works, works well. With your mask, draw on a smiling face with teeth on it. I mean, you look like a bit of a goose sometimes, you’ll feel like a goose, but it makes every body laugh. Now laughter, you’ve removed any possibility of aggressive perception or dominating behavior if people think this, this person obviously has a sense of humor and people do laugh and put your hand on your heart and lean forward and say, nice to meet you. And it creates a very happy, positive, bubbly, warm first meeting, even when you’re standing at six feet away.

Dr. Cooper

Beautiful. All right. What tips would you have for individuals to optimize their body language when they don’t, so we’ve talked a little bit about this, but you said the teeth are so important. We don’t have the smile. So we can’t see the teeth, hand over the heart, drawing on the mask, any other little tips you can throw out there that we can draw? Like you mentioned the 45 degree angle. Is there something as you come to them, we should be at a different angle or a foot forward, or something with the eyes where we look any other tips in absence of the smile piece, the teeth, the teeth piece.

Allan Pease

Well, the other thing we’re really missing here is most of the signals below the eyes. But you still see the eyes and you can smile with your eyes. So the way to give across an eye smile is behind your mask where you might normally smile, make it a huge smile. That’s overact the smile, really open the mouth and overact it because that emphasizes pulling the eyes back and up. And the other person, the limbic part of the brain, which is the ancient part of the brain that we were born with. The ability to recognize whether somebody is aggressive or friendly. And in making I really big open toothy smile behind the mask, it pulls your eyes back and people get a feeling. This person seems happy. Now the reason that you look happy and nonaggressive and monkeys and chimps do it as well, because like, if a dog smiles at you, you’re in trouble, right.? If a big dog smiles at you, you’ve got big trouble going on. Whereas a human smiles at you or an ape, it’s a submission signal. And the reason of submission is very interesting. You look at evolutionary biology shows and this, we have herbivore teeth. We don’t have, our teeth aren’t designed to grind nuts in the back part, and cut fruit in the front. We, we had fully sharp teeth and we smiled and then it becomes an aggression or warning signal. And one of the things we found when I wrote body language 41 years ago and been updated on several occasions and 10 years ago, something we found interesting in the UK is that boys, are seven times more likely to be attacked by a dog than girls. And we found this with the, with the SPCA in the UK. And I thought it was interesting. What is it about boys that they keep getting bitten by a dog? Now, boys are more likely to take risks and approach a potentially dangerous animal than a girl. That’s true, but not enough to make that big disparity in the results. And that’s because when the dog pulls his lips back and reveres reveals its teeth, as an attack signal, boys brains, can’t differentiate that from a primate submission signal. So there’s a good chance, you know a four year old boy sees a rottweiler, when he’s two, he thinks, oh this dog wants to cuddle. Whereas a girl their brains realize on a very deep level that this animal is potentially dangerous and that appears to be, and I’m pretty sure that’s the reason why, why boys are far more likely to be attacked to the face than for girls. And that shows the impact of sharp teeth versus herbivore T. And that’s why it’s so important that, as a human, that everybody would make me smile. And if you’re behind a smile, behind a mask, over emphasize the smile, which makes the eyes pull back and up, which gives the other person a strong cue that you are smiling.

Dr. Cooper

This is beautiful. I’ve got so many scribble marks all over my notes here. This is great stuff. Anything else before we move on to the computer screen, that would help as far as position or arms or shoulders or movement of the hands or anything?

Allan Pease

Well, if you’re going to be in a face to face situation, there’s several things you can do to, you want to avoid coming across in any way with the person as aggressive or dominant. If you want to get them on your side, get cooperation and create an atmosphere where people want to be your friend and want to be persuaded by what you say. And a couple of things you can do first is when you talk, you make sure that you have no crossing of your body. No arms crossed legs crossed nothing. And someone says, Oh, but I got my arms crossed, you know, I’m not defensive or aggressive, uncomfortable. Well, the reason they’re comfortable because they’re aggressive and defensive. Like if you go with all your friends, having a party and a good time, but you’re arms are crossed, that’s very uncomfortable. You’re with a group of people who are saying things you don’t like it and agree with you.

Allan Pease

It’s very comfortable because body language in simple terms is an outward expression of emotional condition goes, what your feelings are, whatever feeling or emotion you might have, right? But it is likely to be reflected in a gesture, posture, movement or expression. So the other thing with body language is what we do, what you’re simply doing is reading a person’s emotional state. You match it up with what you hear them saying in the circumstances and context under which you see it all. And that allows you to work out when you’re good at this, what could be going on on their head. And that’s pretty much how it works. As I mentioned earlier, women have a two to three times better natural disposition to do this then men, which is why it’s so hard for a lot of women to hide your face, particularly ones who know you. And you shouldn’t do that, you know SMS. Ring them on the phone, but not in front of them and say, darling, I love you, probably not going to work. I used to talk and say keep yourself uncrossed. Now, second thing you do as you’re talking face to face is keep your palms visible. Now this is a basic primate gesture and it appears to be linked to the limbic brain, the anxious brain, but that is, we appear to be locked at a, to be born with this because we know that newborn babies in the first six weeks respond to hand Palm signals. If they can’t see them, even though they can’t see that, but you can, hold your palms up, close to their face. They seem to recognize the significance of open palms. And if you look at Primates, it explains why this is the case. It shows that you’re not concealing anything in your hands.

Allan Pease

It’s a no weapons held unopened position. So when you’re talking, you’re talking with palms in an upward position, people will find you easier to listen to it. Now, the minute the palms talk in a downward position, that’s almost like, I don’t know if Hitler used a, the Palm down salute and then frightened the hell out of everybody. You imagine him giving the hail Hitler with his Palm facing up. It looked like a waiter asking for a tip and everybody would have laughed. Nobody would respond to him at all, palm down is a very powerful, the more your palm faces down, the more power and authority and potential aggression you’re transmitting. And so talk with the palms in an upward position. And you’ll see this same thing happens with, with monkeys, chimps, with other apes. So when they have, if they don’t want to fight, they’ll pick their palms held up and visible. So the other guys can say, there’s nothing held under your arms, nothing in your hands. So, a Chimp running along with your hands behind his back is not to be trusted because he’s hiding something. And as, as the King of the primates, that’s us, we respond from the limbic brain with exactly the same responses without being aware of it. If you’re talking to some guy who has got his hands in his pockets, people, particularly women are suspicious of that person. So you keep them out, keep them visible as you talk with your body unlocked, lean forward, nod your head in groups of three as you talk, when you’re standing with a person don’t face them directly because we face people directly if we want complete attention, one of two reasons. Either we want to close that group off because we only want that person in their sight. Or secondly, we’re potentially aggressive. We place ourselves up with the people who really get up our nose that we are real aggressive towards. So turn your body to the side.

Allan Pease

Now this is cause and effect. If you intentionally make all of these gestures, you will feel all the emotions that go with it. This has been an interesting recent discovery. In other words, you can manipulate your own attitude and emotions. So if you’re going for job interview where you might be pretty nervous about it, cause you don’t want to blow it. Chances are you might go in there revealing nervous, lack of competence, putting your fingers together, or maybe holding your arms in, hands in a cross position. Even though you’re trying to fake that you’re not nervous, but we all get nervous in situations. If you intentionally stand out behind a door, go to the, go to the restroom and just practice for two minutes. Confidence gestures such as stapling your fingers together, going up and down the soles of your feet, holding your chin up and smiling with your teeth visible. You did that for two minutes and suddenly your brain doesn’t know that you’re not scared. Now it must, it thinks you must be confident. And two things happen. You begin to feel confident. And when another person sees you that way, they think this guy, this woman, they seem to have it all together. And they perceive you to be competent. That’s cause and effect, but doing things on purpose by intentionally taking body positions, you can change an atmosphere for your own internal chemistry and for the perceptions of other people.

Dr. Cooper

Allan, this is so good. All right, let’s come back to the computer screen. You talked about the specific one-on-one type zoom meetings, any suggestions for the smaller meetings, maybe, you know, three or four folks compared to the large groups of five to 20 that you could throw out to us at this point?

Allan Pease

Well, one of the biggest areas that most people do, whether it’s one on one or a small group or a big group, is that because we’re on a Skype or zoom type call, it’s almost like we tend to behave like us more social on the social and business rules don’t apply. As a result, people sit there in their pajamas. Now last week I was sitting there, he had a coat and tie on and we were talking business on a pretty high level and one of his kids, I guess it was ran past him behind and that’s okay. That’s okay. That’ll happen to all of us. But he stood up to chase him and he didn’t have any trousers on! He was in his underwear. So that was quite funny. However, it certainly detracted from the credibility and the attitude and image he was trying to portray. And with polka dots! Luckily I didn’t stand up because I was in the same condition. So stuff on the screen is, first pay attention to what you’re wearing. What you’re wearing is just as important on the screen as it is if you had to go on to a work environment or to a job interview or somewhere where you want to persuade somebody. And secondly, look at what’s behind you. Now think of the zoom calls and Skype calls you’ve had and I’ve had them and everybody listening to this podcast, have had them where somebody’s on screen and behind them is a toilet door with restrooms on it. Or they’re, they’re out somewhere in a crazy place. Now with zoom and Skype, you can now put in virtual backgrounds at worst case scenario. You don’t need a green screen to do it now you can drop in a background. But pay attention to what is behind you, because what is behind you adds or detracts from any credibility of what you’ve got to say. And if people don’t see images and signs or certificates or qualifications or clothing that portrays authority, then they keep trying to guess what your authority and ability to say what you’re saying is until, until I can feel what it is, and I can say what it is. So don’t start nu letting yourself down, by poor dress and poor background. Think about it all before you go for the call. And I knew this was going to be an audio call, because I think right now, if I look in the mirror, I look like a homeless.

Dr. Cooper

Well doggone it. We should have made it a video one.

Allan Pease

Yeah. You’re probably in your pajamas. Come on. I’ll just go down to the gym. I haven’t had a shave for a week, but I haven’t been anywhere. So I definitely look like the homeless. If I wanted to be convincing someone to believe what I was saying who could see me. I definitely would look, wouldn’t look like this. So that’s why I asked the question from my PI, will this be audio? Will this be video? Because I’ve got to prepare myself if it’s video. If it’s audio, I don’t have to do the same preparation. So my background doesn’t really matter. And my clothing is not as important.

Dr. Cooper

That’s great. I love it. All right. So somebody is leading zoom meetings. So we’ve got a lot of folks in a situation where they’re, they’re in charge of these things. Any tips they could utilize to make it for their group more effective, besides the tips you’ve given us, more effective for everybody? Just some general guidelines that you can throw out there to everyone?

Allan Pease

Yeah. If you’re a leader, two things you need to do first is set the example, make sure that you have, a background that reflects what you’re trying to say. So if you’re trying to talk business and talk about what we’re going to do with the company, with the corporates, or where are we going to go? You must have a background that demonstrates that. And if you haven’t got a background, well, you can drop in a virtual background. The only disadvantage, of course, at this point is you can’t move quickly. Cause you might get a bit of bleeding under your arms from the background. But if you’ve got a close up, if you’re closer to the screen or have even got a green screen, which is the best, a green screen will cost you 50 bucks on eBay now, a pop up green screen, you can drop in a background where you won’t get that same bleed. So make sure the background reflects what you want to say to that group. Otherwise you’ll get an anarchy in the group. Say somebody said to me originally, oh yeah, but does it really matter the way you look. Yes, of course it does. I mean, they introduced in America where you guys are like a dress down Friday. You remember that? Jeans companies introduced that on Fridays, you can dress in jeans and created anarchy because nobody had the authority to be saying what the dress code was, because we weren’t quite sure who the bosses were. Can you imagine if they did that in the armed forces or the police force. Oh, you don’t have to wear uniforms anymore. Guys just dress anyway, it would be complete anarchy. And that’s why it’s important as a leader that you are dressed and the background to reflect the meeting.

Allan Pease

Now in terms of the people you’ve got on on the screen is, here are the rules we’re going to use for skyping, that when you’re talking, lean in to the screen, when you lean in, we would give more eye contact, more credibility to the person who’s leaning in because they look like they’re interested. Even though we’re not usually aware, that’s what we’re doing. But that’s what we do is to lean in. Everybody normally faces a screen. So if you’re talking about tough subjects and things that make people uncomfortable, tilt people to 45 degrees to the screen, but if you’re facing the screen talking about a tough subject, you can come across as a pretty tough sort of a person where if you turn to the side 45 degrees, you can say exactly the same things and they’ll get the same message. But you don’t seem like you’re being dominant. Now if you need to be dominant and dominate this thing, so listen, guys, this is the way it’s going to be. Well, then you would face a screen, but that’s aggressive and aggression normally doesn’t work in motivating people. So teach people these basics that we’ll talk about here, turn to the side, nod your head in threes, as you’re listening, make sure when you smile that the teeth are visible, the same things that you do in a face to face situation and keep your arms just above the screen. And to do this, you need to sit in front of your screen and just practice. So when you talk, people can see your palms coming just up above the screen. No good having your arms to the side because we can’t see them but have your palms in front. Particularly if you’re talking about delicate or aggressive type subjects, things that might have a bit of tension at them. If your palms are visible, people are most likely to accept what you say.

Allan Pease

If they can’t see the palms, they’re less likely by around 40% and we tested this with audiences where speakers were asked to put propositions to audiences. And in the first scene, speakers presented the audience to the audience, gave them the deal. They wanted them to be motivated to say yes. And the speakers talk with a primary up palm position. Then we rotated the audience, put a new audience in, gave the same presentation to the same demographic audience with the palms down, move that audience out, put a third one. And your audience was addressed with a pointed finger. And we tested all three audiences. How much could they remember what it was about? How motivated were they to listen to the material versus judge the speaker? And secondly, from a list of adjectives, we asked them to tick what adjective describes, how they felt about the speaker. And most people can kind of figure out what the answer was that Palm up speakers got the best adjectives in terms of laid back friendly, easy to listen to, easy on the eyes and people recalled up to 40% more information then when the speakers spoke with the palms facing down, finger point is the worst response in everything. And the worst adjectives. In other words, you’re pointing your finger while talking, people are judging you critically and not listening to what you’re saying. And especially with men as long with men, because men do one thing at a time, we don’t listen and read body language. We do one or the other. Women will usually do both. And so imagine if you find yourself with a pointed finger on the screen, just open your palm and have your palm visible above the lens. But you got to practice this before you go on a zoom meeting to know what range, you can move your hands. And so they don’t go out of the screen.

Dr. Cooper

Wow. There’s so much to this. All right. So last two questions. You, you and your wife, Barbara, didn’t become known as the relationship experts because you sit on your laurels. What are you learning? You mentioned you’ve been together 30 plus years. What are you learning about your own relationship in the midst of what everyone’s going through right now?

Allan Pease

Well, I guess where Barb and I are probably different as we’ve been together for 30 years and we’ve been together mostly seven days a week, certainly the first 15 years, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. And we traveled the world together. And that’s, that’s an unusual situation because most couples who’ve spent 24 hours together, it doesn’t work out really well. And in business and businesses, it’s even tougher. Now, the thing about working together in business, this is a hard thing. You need to have very clear rules and the clear rules are that she knows her areas of responsibility and what she has to do. And I don’t need to deal with it. I don’t give comments unless asked, and I know what my, what my roles are and what I have to do. And she doesn’t comment unless I asked her either because as men, our natural disposition now a fallback position, default position with anybody is problem solving. So if we see her, see her doing something or saying something, I think, Oh, she could do it better than that. And would probably like if I say, look, you could do that this way. You could say it that way. You could go here, which is really bad move. That’d end your love life too. And so you’ve got to not confuse your business life with your personal and loved ones because they are different things. So we make agreements in business, but if I don’t tread into her area and comment, unless there’s something dangerous or I’ll feel I need to, and then I’ll ask for permission to come in. She does the same and sometimes she’s said to me, she just did yesterday, she said to me yesterday, I said, what’s happening with this Barb? She said, you don’t need to know.

Allan Pease

And I felt like I probably did, but as I thought about it, well, I said, okay I don’t need to know. And that’s good because if it screws up, it’s her fault. Working together, that is the piece that clear lines of who does what and one doesn’t get into the space of the other. Because if you’re working all night with a personal assistant, who’s the opposite sex. If you’re taught, if you treated them or talk with them how you might talk with your partner or, or spouse, they quit. And so if your assistant screws something up, or doesn’t do it right, you can say I want you to do it this way and do it that way. And they do it that right, because you have a business relationship and that’s what you’re going to do with your partner if you’re working together, which is a question I got, I get regularly, working together is that we are in a business relationship. And so if you were to study your partner, or if I said to Barbara example, look, you should do it this way. And that in her personal life, she’d say drop dead or words to that effect. She’d make suggestions to me that involve sex and travel, I’m sure. If I said that to my PA, I said, ok I’ll go change that because we’d ended the personal connection. And that’s what you want to do to work together.

Allan Pease

Now in your personal life, working together is to, uh, is to read books on gender differences. You know, the biggest selling one in the world is one that Barb and I wrote called why men don’t listen, and women can’t read maps, which is a humorous title, but it’s a sort of title when people hear it, they’ll say, they’d nod their head because they understand what that’s about. The book or science that shows that we are different in how our brains behave. We don’t have the same expectations, or the same agendas. We have different agendas based largely on our evolutionary psychology and biology, but we’re living in an era today, right? But where it’s politically correct to go around, pretending we all are the same and want the same thing. What are ridiculous concept? And the reason that that happens is simply that government departments and politically correct groups, who to some extent are well intentioned. They confuse difference with equality, equality of marriage, the same background, skill education. You can do anything you want, go anywhere you like, regardless of sex, culture, race, religion, et cetera, that’s difference and that’s a legal concept. A difference is a science concept. That’s what we deal with. Do we respond the same way? Do we want the same things? And the answer is no. And most people know this, about somebody who’s opposite to you. The opposite sex called the opposite sex for damn good reason. They’re opposite. 92% of men’s best friends is another man. Why? Because he thinks the same as you, 94% of women’s best friend is another woman. Why? Because they think the same way. But you don’t want to wake up and listen to them in the morning. You want something that’s different. Now those differences between the sexes, are the things that are really exciting and challenging and make your life fulfilled and interesting. But if you try and change them and don’t understand that the differences that are there, they’ve been there for maybe a million years. We don’t know, long time you don’t manage those differences. You’re heading for the divorce courts.

Dr. Cooper

Beautiful. Beautiful. All right. Last one. Just wide open. Any final words of wisdom you’d like to throw in for people that are trying to improve their own lives or the people around them?

Allan Pease

Well, I think right now with what’s happening with the world with this, the pandemic, because we’ve all been locked up and it’s probably the first time in the history of human rights that we all feel the same way. We are all being told to be locked up and not handshake, not do the things that we’re used to doing, not going and seeing our friends, not seeing grandfather. Those things have been foreign to humans, in the last 10 weeks, since this pandemic took off. However, for everything that is negative, that happens there is a positive side, but you’ve got to make a decision to look for it. And the positive side here is whatever your circumstances are, you’ve got to manage them as best you can. However, it’s a chance for reflection. You can think about what you really do want to do with your life. What sort of relationship you really want to do have with your partners, with your spouse, with your kids and with your friends. A Lot of people are finding that people that thought they were friends during the pandemic, those people that disappeared, which means they probably weren’t your friends anyway, they had some other agenda. So that’s a, it’s a good way to sort out what we want and ask yourself the question when this is all I have, because it’s like bad weather and the storm. You know, there’s no, there’s no permanent storm, eventually it clears up. And this will clear up and ask yourself the question. What is it I really want to do with my life? Because we know seven, eight out of 20 people in, in the world, in the Western world, the first world and Europe seven, eight out of 20, don’t like what they do for a living. They don’t like where they are going. They wake up Monday morning, Oh hell, here I go again. And Sunday night is a night of dread for them because they don’t want to do it. So here’s a chance to ask yourself, what is it I really want to do with my life. That is so exciting that I can’t wait to go and do it tomorrow. In fact, when it’s over at the end of the night, you’re disappointed that it’s over and you can’t wait to start again tomorrow. In fact, I love doing that so much, I’d do it for free.

Allan Pease

And if you can identify that thing or those things, you’ll never work another day in your whole life, you might, you make a decision that that will be your future. That will be your career. That doesn’t mean you’re going to quit your job tomorrow or next week or next month, because you still want to pay the, pay the rent and put food on the table. That means that you make a plan to go where you want to go. That suits you. Now, when you’re doing this process, the important thing is you mustn’t tell dream stealers and emotional vampires about this, which means you don’t talk to your family members because they’re going to talk you out of it, one of the biggest things that stop people from moving ahead is family members. What do you want to do? You want to do this? Do you want to go there? You’ve gotta be crazy, you’ve got three kids, blah, blah, blah. They give you all the reasons why they aren’t doing something. And so you do not talk to anybody when you’re going through this process, we wrote a book about this or how to do it. And it’s a simple thing to do. Not easy, but it’s simple. What is it that would drive me out of bed. When you talk to people about this, we run classes on this here in Australia, we talk about this. A lot of people say, yeah, but for example, a woman said, you know, I love having dinner parties, having friends over, that’s what I love more than anything. But she works in a bank, she said how can I make that my career? I said well Martha Stewart started that way, Martha Stewart just wanted to have dinner parties and have a great time. Another guy said to me, Oh yeah, but you know I love playing sports and play tennis, well so did Roger Federer. So did any famous sports person like Roger Federer, he’s called us to get out of bed in the morning at four o’clock and hit balls. He loves hitting those balls. He doesn’t even know how much money he makes, you know, that. And most famous, successful people don’t really even know how much money they make. That’s why they’re always targets for being ripped off because they do not really know, because they’re getting out a big gun to do what they really want to do that they would do, and probably did do for free. And if you’re going to identify that, that if you’re going to identify what you love to do. You love to do this Bradford, right?

Dr. Cooper

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I’m nodding my head because this resonates so well.

Allan Pease

Yeah. Well, you love to do, I love to do with my life is in the seminar business, which is on hold at the moment and it’s given me time for reflection. I love it. I would do it for free. I used to do it for free. I’ve been doing this for 51 years. I used to do it for free. I love it. So I decided to make that my career, my full time career back in the seventies. Now, when you get to this point of deciding, this is what I love so much, I really want to do it. A woman said, and the other day, I just love talking to people all the time, I with that was my career. Well so did Oprah Winfrey, she doesn’t stop. Now she’s worth $6 billion and is one of the most famous women who ever lived. And so, whatever it is that you love to do, there are people out there who were famous with it. Now, I’m talking about famous people for every, every Oprah Winfrey and every Roger Federer, there are hundreds of thousands of other people who make great careers, livings out of doing these things that you’ve never heard of. And they love it. Like and that’s what you’ve got to identify. And COVID-19 is giving us all the opportunity to do this. So what we want to do now, you don’t decide how you’re going to do it. Most people in Western societies that where we start, how, I want to get the money out and how can I get the financing? How can I start this? I’ve got three kids, I’ve got a mortgage. I’ve got blah, blah, blah. And they’re usually repeating what the family told them as to why they couldn’t do it. How would I do it? Don’t start with, if you start with, how would I do it? It’s over Brad, but it’s finished. You start with, what will I do? What will I have? What will I become? Identify the, what, you must not think about how, now this is scary because here you are setting a goal for yourself to go somewhere else. And you’ve got no idea how, but that’s the exciting part. I don’t think about how the minute you decide what you want. Suddenly the how appears because there’s 40 million pieces of information happening in your environment. Every day, your brain can only absorb and process 2000 pieces that doesn’t know what the process. Well, you just saw what it is you want to do have will become, your brain will see those 2000 pieces in the 40 million. You will turn TV on. There’s someone talking about it, you’ll open a magazine newspaper, you’ll turn on a podcast like yours. And there’s some guy talking about it like me and you it’ll happen.

Allan Pease

The minute you decide the, what you will see the how, but most people, you know, they start with the how. How would I do this? I don’t know, two or three days that become despondent, because they don’t know how, because if they knew how they would have done it already, or they’d be doing it so you don’t start with the how. That’s the basic, Western and European era. Start with what? This is what I’ll do. Have it become, just decide, I’m going to do that full stop end a story over an hour, no more discussion. Don’t talk to anybody who won’t support you, talk to people who are currently doing it, or have done it. And the minute you decide what, you will see how, and that’ll take you down that track of the 320 people who can’t wait to get up tomorrow morning and go and do something.

Dr. Cooper

Knew this was going to be great. I had no idea it was going to be this great, my friend. This was fantastic. Thank you. This was just fun. I really appreciate it.

Allan Pease

Yeah my pleasure.

Dr. Cooper

How fun was that? Oh, so many insights. Thanks again, to Allan Pease, for his willingness to dig in, his concepts with us at frankly, a very critical time in the world. I hope you were able to garner some, some insights that will help you in what you’re doing. Thank you for tuning into the number one podcast for health and wellness coaching. Next week’s episode is a special crossover event with project HR. As we dig into critical aspects to a successful organizational wellness program and the role of coaching in that setting. Whether you’re looking for ways to optimize your organization’s approach to health and wellness, or you’re a coach, curious about how does this all work? I’m positive, you’ll find it valuable. We also have some additional resources over at the new YouTube coaching channel, which you can literally find at youtube.com/coaching channel. Some of the recent features there include the four cornerstones of wellness or the things that we’re distracting ourselves with that aren’t within those four, real-world motivation and a critical review of how face-to-face telephonic and digital coaching compare to one another and where some of those fit in certain circumstances, and maybe not in others. Now it’s time to put things into practice. Mr. Pease provided us with some valuable nuggets today when it comes to body language, I’m already trying to put these into play and I hope you’re planning to join me. This is Dr. Bradford Cooper signing off, make it a great rest of your week. And I’ll speak with you soon on the next episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance Coaching podcast, or maybe over on the new YouTube coaching channel.