Many people think police interrogations often involve reading body language and catching “tells” of deception. Interrogation trainer Mark Anderson explains how much of what’s taught about using nonverbal behavior in high-stakes interviews is based on myth, not science—and how a faulty focus on “reading people” can actually damage interviews. We dig into why stress behaviors don’t signal guilt, how confirmation bias warps investigations, and why “reading people” is far less useful than most believe. Instead, Mark lays out what actually works: deep listening, better questioning, managing conversations, and building real rapport—even with people who’ve done serious harm. Along the way, he shares stories from his career that show how empathy and curiosity can unlock information in surprising ways. If you’re interested in psychology, communication, or the reality behind interrogations, this episode might challenge some of your basic assumptions.
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TRANSCRIPT
(transcripts are automatically generated and will contain errors)
Mark Anderson: A lot of the nonverbal stuff was very much taught in, in the classroom and took up quite a bit of time in the classroom. I really immersed myself in a lot of the research and, uh, I recognized that the stuff that I was taught, there really was no research or basis for it other than folklore.…I’ve had to come to the realization that what I did was wrong and I, uh, how many interviews I damaged as a result of that…
Zach Elwood: That was a snippet from my talk with Mark Anderson, someone with over 40 years of experience in law enforcement, investigation, and training, and someone interested in sound, science-based practices for interrogation and interviewing.
This is the People Who Read People podcast, which is aimed at better understanding the people around us: the things they do, and the things they say. You can learn more about it and sign up to get episode updates at behavior-podcast.com.
I got interested in talking to Mark based on a few posts he wrote on LinkedIn earlier this year. I’ll read from one of these posts (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7427004276175966210/):
After 50 years of research and hundreds of studies, the verdict is in: behavioral lie detection doesn’t work.
Not “needs improvement.” Not “requires better training.” Doesn’t work.
Meta-analyses show that people achieve hit rates around 54% when trying to detect lies from behavioral cues—barely better than flipping a coin (50%).
Even more damning: when researchers account for publication bias, the data suggests there may be zero human ability to detect deception from nonverbal behavior.
The problems are fundamental:
→ Both innocent AND guilty people show stress behaviors in interviews
→ Training in behavioral cues produces only “marginal effects”
→ Confirmation bias makes us see what we expect to see
→ Individual differences make baseline assessment nearly impossible
Yet we continue teaching it. We continue relying on it. We continue making consequential decisions based on watching for fidgeting, eye contact, and nervous gestures.
I wanted to talk to Mark about the question: What works and what doesn’t work in interrogations? Topics we touch on include:
- His journey from believing in and training common nonverbal-behavior myths to arriving at a more nuanced and realistic view
- Why there is so much bullshit about behavior out there – including bullshit spread by a good amount of law enforcement professionals
- The faulty emphasis on looking when we should be focusing much more on listening
- The importance of setting people at ease and gaining rapport in interrogation settings
- The importance of empathy and rapport-building in interrogation and undercover policing scenarios
- What Mark finds actually works the best for gathering information in high-stakes interviews
- Mark’s views on statement analysis
A little bit more about Mark from his website andersoninvestigative.com
A retired Special Agent with the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Mark also served with the FBI, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and as Deputy Inspector General for New York State. He directed the nationally recognized Advanced Interviewing and Interviewing for Fraud Auditors programs at the Inspector General Criminal Investigator Academy (IGCIA) at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers , and taught extensively at both of those groups’ Behavioral Science Division.
Okay here’s the talk with Mark Anderson of Anderson Investigative:
Zach Elwood: Hi, mark. Thanks for joining me.
Mark Anderson: Hey, Zachary, it’s great to be here today. Thanks for having me.
Zach Elwood: Thank you. So, um, maybe we could start with, um, the reason that I, um, wanted to talk to you was I saw some of your posts on LinkedIn talking about the, um, use of nonverbal behavior in interrogations or deception detection, and basically you were saying, uh, you know, everybody knows that these things aren’t useful, so what does really work?
So that was what got me interested in talking to you, and maybe you could start out, uh. Talking about how your views of, um, nonverbal behavior, uh, changed over time in, in the space of working on interrogations and interviews.
Mark Anderson: Yeah, that’s a long story. Uh, for anybody watching, you can see that I’m kind of old.
So I learned, uh, uh, this stuff a long time ago, uh, a long time ago when a lot of the nonverbal stuff was very much taught in, in the classroom and took up quite a bit of time in the classroom. Uh, and so I learned under that model and worked with people who clearly subscribed to that model and did it that way for a long time.
So this transition has been one of those transitions over time, uh, where I’ve had to come to the realization that what I did was wrong and I, uh, how many interviews I damaged as a result of that, you know, so as I have done investigations over a long period of time and then studied them and researched them, and now.
Teach, uh, interviewing and interrogation. Uh, I really immersed myself in a lot of the research and, uh, I recognized that the stuff that I was taught, there really was no research or basis for it other than folklore. Legacy practice stories told from one person to another. And, and that somehow was good enough.
Uh, and there is such a huge body of research out there that has debunked so much of that stuff, uh, that really, it would compromise my integrity to keep talking about, and this is an issue I struggle with all the time and people that I, I run into and, and their response to it, it’s almost like they feel, uh, they would be admitting fault if they say this stuff doesn’t work, because that’s what they’ve done.
And from my standpoint, uh. I, I couldn’t, you know, I, I can’t be faulted for not driving a car before a car is created, but once the car is created, if I’m still riding a horse and, and, uh, acting like the car doesn’t exist, that’s where my integrity is compromised. So I, I just wrestled with that for a long time and realized I was not in the right place and that things needed to change and I had to change.
I had to change first and then the rest of it, uh, would come about as a result of that.
Zach Elwood: So, I’m curious, could you get into a little, a few specifics about, you know, what it was that you used to maybe use in the non-verbal space, or, or what was commonly used and what you kind of found eventually that you, that you moved away from?
Any granular things you care to talk about there.
Mark Anderson: Yeah, sure. And, and, and there’s a, there’s a ton of them and, and I still, like, when I’m teaching classes, I have to really keep myself focused not to fall back into, and a lot of times it’s wording, uh, uh, I, I, I think the big issue is some of the words that we choose to use, uh, but it’s also a mindset issue as to how you’re approaching these things.
So, which is something I never learned in interviewing, in interrogation, uh, training before was the issue of, you know, where’s my mindset out? Mindset at, and it gets into a lot of what I’ve heard you speak about before, uh, Zach, with regard to the issue of cognitive biases and, you know, confirmation bias and all the rest of the stuff.
That’s all a mindset issue. So we need to address that first. But from the standpoint of some of the specifics, you know, a lot of it I was, uh, taught was it’s an issue of deception versus not deception. You know, when you see this stuff, oh, if they’re, they’re twitching and they’re looking this way and they got this closed posture, you know, the way I learned that was, that’s an indication that the person could be deceptive.
Uh, and, and, you know, you take it at face value. You know, my first interview training was with the FBI, when I went with the FBI and it, all that stuff was there. So it’s like, well, who else would do it better? So then you start using that stuff. But when you start using it. Common sense kind of, uh, uh, drops in, you know, and human relationships drop in and you say, this isn’t working right.
This isn’t the right, uh, situation. So, you know, some of the stuff would be the body movement, you know, positional type stuff, uh, eye movement stuff, uh, which is still out there. Uh, I mean, I just, I was just wrestling one last week that I saw, uh, online. Somebody was talking about the use of contractions. Uh, there was always this, uh, statement made that 60% of people who don’t use contractions are not being truthful.
And, and like that was in my, you know, nonverbal and verbal, uh, baselining and behavior type stuff. And so I really started researching it. I could not find anywhere where that statistic, where that statistic came from. And I don’t even know to this day where it came from, but how do you put an exact statistic in there on that?
And, and then I I, if you don’t have a reference for it, so I think that you’ve seen, if you’ve read some of my stuff, everything I write now, there’s now scientific references for it. So you don’t think I’m just pulling out of my ear, you know? Uh, so those are some of the type of things that I’ve wrestled with, and there’s a ton of them.
Mm-hmm. There’s a ton of them. And, and I think the thing that we have to change first is what if we’re seeing that stuff for what it is, number one, it isn’t truth or deception. Uh, I, you know, it’s a, as you’ve talked about before, and it’s absolutely true, it’s a stress response and, and we see stress responses in all sorts of, uh, situations, you know, high, you know, high impact type situations.
I see stress from the innocent. I see stress from the guilty. I see stress from everyone because it’s a high impact situation. That’s how our life operates. So, you know, why do we assign something different to it? So, kind of long answer to a short question. Sorry about that.
Zach Elwood: No, it’s, I mean, this is great. We could, like you said, before we started, we could talk about this for hours and really only scratch the surface on some of these things.
I mean, one, I’ve been, I’ve been really delving into what’s out there in the, you know, deception detection and interrogation, uh, help space. You know, like people doing writing books and doing consulting on this. And for example, I was watching, uh, Susan Carneros. A couple of her presentations on YouTube.
She’s the co-author of Spy the Lie, a, a pretty well selling book there. And for her and other people that I’ve seen give presentations or, or write about this, it can often seem like there’s just a pressure for them to talk about the nonverbal stuff. It’s almost like, I mean, a lot of the stuff they say makes sense because when, when they talk, when they’re talking about the content of what people say, it makes a lot of logical sense.
Like, are they answering the question, you know, logical deductions about the things people say, but then they get into the nonverbal stuff and I’m like, that is like the weakest part of what you’ve said. It, it it, and she, you know, for example, like she was saying, you know, one of her presentations, she’s like, in the first five seconds you’re looking for various responses, including these nonverbal things of like shifting your legs or like, you know, touching your face.
And I was like. That is just such a bad advice to me. Like I don’t, you know, but, but compared to all the logical things about content deduction, it’s just kind of surprising to me that there’s so much of this nonverbal stuff mixed along. With the more logical, you know, content deduction. So I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that, but do you, do you get the feeling that’s, there’s almost like this pressure for people to be like, well, Joe Navarro and other people talk about nonverbal stuff, so we have to throw some stuff in there to give people something on that front or something.
I don’t know. I,
Mark Anderson: I think I, I absolutely, I I think you’re hitting on a good point. I, I have a theory on that just from, uh, training and been in, being in lots of training classes, people like that stuff because it’s fun to look at.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Mark Anderson: Uh, but yeah, something, I mean, so’s aro, uh, you know, a, a good comedy on tv, but it’s not gonna help me in the interview room.
So I’m not sure, uh, it’s real useful, but talking about. Verbal content is not as sexy and fun as looking at people on the screen.
Zach Elwood: Right.
Mark Anderson: Uh, and, and I think that’s getting worse because I think more and more we wanna be entertained and, and this business is not about entertainment. And, and I do think there’s some pressure to have some of that stuff in.
Uh, I have cut so much of that stuff out. And frankly the stuff I’m replacing it with is a little bit more ah, you know, yawny. And so I, I have to find a way to make that, you know, Hey, see how this is just as fun? You just have to, you have to apply yourself more. And, and it’s a mental application rather than a visual application of, oh look, he must be lying.
He looked up into the left. You know, you, you gotta listen, you gotta engage. You gotta create an environment where that person is willing to share with you. Uh, so now what plays into that? Well, empathy and all sorts of stuff like that, which some people I don’t think are capable of. So they just wanna look and say, oh yeah, that person’s lying.
So I do think there’s some pressure to address that stuff. And some people have made their bank roll by addressing that stuff and so they’re gonna stick to it,
Zach Elwood: right? Yeah. There is a sexiness to the behavior thing. I mean, that’s, yes, I’ll, I’ll be honest. I, I, I mentioned this in a podcast. I just did it. I mean, that’s one of the reasons my poker tells books have sold.
Well, even though I go outta my way to say this is much less important than the fundamental strategy. Like, you know, you should only be thinking about this stuff if you, uh, you know, if you are a, a quite a good practitioner of, of the strategy itself. So I do, I think pe I do believe people are really drawn to the reading people aspects.
And I think, you know, for some of these trainings I’ve watched and read, if, if these people, if we’re talking about real world scenarios, leaving aside the game scenarios, which I really distinguish between, but in these interrogation and law enforcement things, I really do think, like if you subtracted the stuff they’re talking about nonverbal, a lot of these trainings are quite good to me.
But the nonverbal and inclusion almost like greatly ruins it in a lot of these cases because you’re getting people encouraging them to focus on stuff that. Doesn’t matter. And even worse, you’re, you’re making them more likely to have confirmation bias about like, she touched her face, she moved her leg.
I am getting a sense that she’s being deceptive or whatever, you know, so it’s like, it takes, it takes training, education that could be quite good and actually makes it quite bad to me, which is an interesting thing, you know.
Mark Anderson: I think that’s a, a really interesting observation. It, it really, I guess I’ll go with the two L words here.
Uh, it, it causes us to focus more on the looking and a little bit less on the listening. And we really need to spend more time on the listening. And most of us pretty much suck at listening, but we can Sure. Run our mouths really good. Uh, so I think anything that takes us away from the listening and whether you call it active listening or discipline, listening, engaging all of our senses in the process of paying attention to the person sitting across from us takes a lot of energy, a lot of cognitive energy to do that.
Uh, I don’t need to be wasting time on the looking side if it’s not gonna reveal anything anyhow. Uh, I, I’m not saying I do my interviews with my eyes closed, but anything I see I then wanna verify via what they say. So I’m not gonna make any assessments based on what I see. I might note it that I need to address that issue and get them to say it.
Because I, I think you’ve spoken to this several times. You, you see the verbal analysis of things much more valuable than the, uh, the visual analysis. And frankly, if I can get you to tell me what you’re feeling and what you’ve done, that’s what I want out of that interview. That’s you telling me. Not me assessing or assuming.
Uh, I, I, I think it goes with the, the line that I use a lot now, which is curiosity over certainty. So when I see something that’s curious, I’m gonna ask you about it. And then when you give me the answer now I have certainty.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. And actually this reminds me of, I, I interviewed, uh, Gary Nener recently, who was the mm-hmm.
You know, lead hostage and standoff negotiator for the FBI. He was at Waco, and one thing he said was. Be they’re often, they were often in the situation of being on the telephone talking to people. Yes. Uh, and, and, and, and because of that, they were much more focused on what people said. And he said that was actually a benefit because taking away the visual element allowed you to really focus on what people say.
And I think, you know, your point about we really need to, I, I do think there is this undervaluing of what people say because what people say contains so much information, whether it’s what they’re, it’s what they’re telling you, it’s what they’re leaving out, it’s what they’re trying to avoid. You getting to know, you know, the, the, these various clues.
I mean, it’s, it’s where we get most of our, almost all of our information from leaving aside this myth that, you know, most communication is nonverbal, this very, uh, persistent
Mark Anderson: mm-hmm.
Zach Elwood: Myth, you know, but yeah, there just is so much information in, in what people say and really listening and really thinking about what they’re telling you is, is most of the game in these spots, you know?
Mark Anderson: Right. Absolutely.
Zach Elwood: Well, I think, uh, you know, one thing that makes this area kind of hard to talk about is that we do read people every day in various ways. Like we’re, we’re, we’re always, you know, say we’re at work or we’re giving a presentation, we’re we are keeping track of how people are responding to us.
Are they looking bored? Do they seem like they don’t like us? Do they seem anxious? These kinds of things. And I think that that’s kind of the response I sometimes get out. Like just the other day I had somebody email me and say, Zach, I think you’re being too negative. Like, I often use these nonverbal things in my workplace.
For example, he, he was telling me, and I think that’s a one reason it’s hard to talk about, it’s because there’s a big distinction between like general social situations, say workplace, um. General social situations, giving a presentation, there’s a big difference between those areas where people are unguarded and you can get genuine signals, and we’re, we’re actually trying to communicate with each other in some way, uh, versus the situations that we’re talking about, which are, you know, interrogations that are antagonistic.
There’s a, um, you know, an understanding of, uh, some level of threat and risk involved. So, you know, when you get in those situations, trying to make use of tells that relate to anxiety just become really non meaningful because there’s a baseline of like, well, yeah, every, there’s many reasons why even an innocent person or a truth telling person could be anxious in these spots.
So that makes an entirely separate area from these, you know, more, uh, mundane and more social elements that we’re used to seeing in our everyday life. But I think that, uh. The fuzziness of that distinction, I think is what leads to a lot of people being like, no, we’re reading people all the time. It’s gotta be of some use in these, you know, interrogation and uh, you know, high, high conflict kind of spots.
Right? But I think that’s, I think that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of, of the application.
Mark Anderson: I, I think it is. I think there is a kind of natural extension of it though. If, you know, if I’m in everyday life with you and you come into work and you’re looking tense and stressed out, uh, I’m gonna observe that.
I’m gonna probably know that a little bit because I know you from day to day, but the only way I’m gonna verify what’s going on is I’m gonna ask you about it. I’m gonna say, man, Zach, what’s going on? Are you okay? Right. Uh, I do the same thing in the interview room. Uh, yeah, I’m going to observe it, but I can’t make conclusions because of it.
’cause you could be in the work environment too, and somebody’s stressed out. It’s because their child has just got sent to the emergency room. I mean, you don’t know until you ask. Good point. And so to me, it’s the same situation in the interview room. If you’re up and I say this all the time in class and they say, you don’t really do that in the interview.
I said, yeah, I do. If somebody’s sitting, sitting across from me looking all angry at me, uh, or, or acting hostile toward me, I’m gonna ask them, what’s wrong? I’m gonna say, what’s wrong? Is it something I’ve done? Are you just upset with the situation? Are you up? Do I look like your sister’s ex-husband? I mean, what is it and can we resolve it?
Uh, because that’s the only way I’m gonna put any sort of parameters around what’s going on. Not by sitting there and looking at him and say, oh, he’s angry, he must be guilty. I mean, I, I, you could be angry for all sorts of reasons. So the only way we’re gonna get to that is then through verbal application and asking them what’s going on and getting, getting their answers and having a discussion about it.
Uh, and I think that is true for all of us if we’re good communicators across the span of our lives.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, no, that, that is a great point. I mean, yeah, the fact that, I mean, we can all think of workplace or social situations where we might get a vibe about something, but we’re hardly ever Sure. Like for example, yeah, like you say you’re talking to somebody at work and you’re like.
Are they mad at me? Are they just having a bad day or, you know, what’s really going on with them? And yeah, you have to ask them. I mean, we’re, I’m, I’m constantly in situations in life where I’m like, I, I don’t really understand why this person’s acting this way, you know? Uh, so that’s a very good point.
Yeah. I’m glad you That’s a, that’s a great response. Yeah. Uh, one response I’ve seen, you know, when we talk about the non usefulness of these things in, in interrogation and interview type settings, I think some of the more responsible people in this space, I would say people like, you know, David Matsumoto or Joe Navarro, they, they would say, uh, you know, leaving aside the, the obvious grifters in the space, let’s say, uh, like Chase Hughes and Jack Brown, people I’ve discussed on this, uh, podcast.
But I think some people who would, would say. Well, we’re not saying that you can, you know, detect deception with these things. Clearly the research doesn’t show that. But what we are saying is that you can get clues as to people’s, uh, mood and, and vibes and such, and what they’re thinking, various clues, even if it’s not deception detection.
But I, you know, I’ve thought about this a lot though, especially in the last year and I think, I think it’s pretty much a cop out to me. Like it’s, you know, ’cause it, it’s avoiding the question of like, well, what use is, is this stuff really? Like, if you’re saying you can get vibes as to what people are feeling, you know, like what, what is the practical application?
And, and when it comes down to, I just, you know, I’m, I’ve been reading, like I said, I’ve been reading a lot of things in the past few months about this. And when you look at the writings and trainings these people give. Even the more responsible people. What you’re really lacking is like actual real world examples of like, how would you apply this?
And I think there’s a, a real, you know, the, the, the, there’s a real reason why you can’t find those examples is because you’d be hard pressed to find an example where you could, you know, justify basing some, uh, EE even a minor decision. But I mean, I, I could, I could see, I’ve often said you, it’s easy to imagine basing like minor question shifts based on, oh, they look uncomfortable.
Maybe I’ll ask them a few more questions, but it’s, you’d be hard pressed to find many real world examples of like, oh, this made a big, you know, this made a big impact in my, in, in how I approached it in an investigation or interrogation. But correct me if I’m wrong there, where if maybe you see things differently.
Mark Anderson: No, that’s the, it it’s a, it’s a very good point. I, I understand exactly where, uh, you’re coming from, uh, on that issue. Uh, I see it. I don’t see it as a, a huge shift. I’m paying attention to that stuff. From a conversation management standpoint, uh, there’s a couple things at play here. Number one, the stress level.
The person sitting across from me, I do not want them stressed at. Certain times of the, uh, the, you know, in the conversation that we’re having. And so I’m going to address that. There’s so many benefits to doing that. Number one, it shows that I’m listening and I’m paying attention. I don’t know about you, but I wish more people in my life listened and pay attention.
They didn’t just run over me, you know, so, uh, listening and paying attention that builds trust. And that trust builds respect. And again, what I said to you is we kinda have to earn the right to be told the information that person has. And that becomes where rapport is very ipor important in, in, uh, generating and developing rapport with the person.
Well. And so conversation management would say, if this stress level is going up at this point in time, why is it going up? And do I need to address this? Is it me? Is it the situation? So let’s talk about that fear or that stress that’s going on at this point in time and deal with that before we deal with the intricacies of what I’m asking about in, in this, uh, interview.
So it kind of has a multifaceted approach to developing relationship so that I earned the right to learn more information. Uh, is it a ca I gotcha moment. It, it sure shouldn’t be. Because remember, part of the science-based interviewing is we move from a confession model where I’m focused on getting a confession to an information gathering model.
That doesn’t mean I’m not gonna get a confession, but that changes the confirmation and cognitive bias in my mind where I have a different emphasis and focus. So if it’s an information focus I need to manage and, and address these issues in the conversation to keep stress level down so that I can get information.
Because we know that when stress goes up, fear goes up, information gathering goes down both the quality and the quantity of that information. So I’m paying attention to that stuff to manage the conversation. Nothing more than that, does it? Does that make sense at all?
Zach Elwood: Yeah. And I think it’s good to, um, yeah, it’s a good, it’s good to dig in, dig into the nuance because I think a lot of people.
Would be, would be thinking that we’re saying there’s no use whatsoever to keeping track of nonverbal behavior. But I think what you and I are on the same page about is no, you can, you can use those things to get a sense, just like we do in, in day-to-day life. You get a sense of how people are reacting, but the idea that you’re gonna get some major information is, is where the, the bad thinking happens.
Right. And would you say that’s where we’re on the same page there?
Mark Anderson: Yeah. I would say that I absolutely, by managing that, then I have a chance of getting that good information, uh, not by the action itself paying attention to it. I then put that per posi person in a position where they now can share quality information with me, which is what my goal is.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it’s, it can be hard to talk about these things because as soon as you start to criticize a section, people are like, oh, you think the entire thing is, is bs? There’s nothing of interest there at all. But I, you know, I think digging into the. The nuance is good. Um, so I wanted to ask you about a specific thing that I was curious about.
I, I wanted to get your take on it. Um, years ago I had interviewed, uh, David Zuki, who’s part of, uh, uh, Wilander. Zuki. Yep. They’re a WZ. They’re a, um, you know, a, a firm that specializes in consulting for interviewing and, and interrogation. And, um, that was actually one of my first interviews for the podcast.
And, uh, thought he had some, you know, really great insights. I, I read, uh, their book they put out. But, uh, then years later I was doing an episode on, um, eye movements. You know, there’s this persistent thing, this belief, which is spread by a lot of people that you can get clues as to, uh, what people are thinking and maybe.
Their level of deception based on the eye direction thing. And kind of the older, the, the less sophisticated version of that myth was like, based on NLP and neurolinguistic programming where mm-hmm. Looking in certain directions was tied to, uh, you know, recall or, uh, you know, so actual memory or looking in another direction was called to, to correlate it with more creation.
So more lie related, but then a later, a more sophisticated version of that, because most people recognize the research didn’t bear that out. But I think a more sophisticated version of that argument, which was in this, um, which I found on, uh, WIC Alkis website, talking about eye movement misconceptions.
They were defending the, the version of the idea that, oh, you just, you just need to figure out if there’s a correlation for specific people. Like some people might look. Up into the right and some, for some things it might look up into the left for another. And they gave an example of, you know, using that in interrogation where they thought, oh, they noticed that this person who they were questioning looked up into the right, or whichever it was when, for, when they were recalling something, but then they did something else on another line of question.
And I, I have to say, like I, I respect a lot of the stuff they’ve put out, but that, to me, I just don’t think that that’s a valuable source of information. Like the, especially even, I mean, I can imagine theoretically somebody having a very person specific tell in that regard, but the idea that you’re gonna get meaningful information from that within a fir, you know, even, even hours of interviews seems like a stretch that you would be able to deduce.
Like the person’s tells and be able to sort out all the factors involved and what they might be thinking. But in their example, they were just talking about like a few questions into the interview they had deducted that they had some eye movement. Uh, tell but I’m, I’m, I was curious. One thing, one reason I wanted to ask you is because I do respect a lot of the work they’ve done, so I was curious, do you think they’re just off base on that and they’re, you know, going down a confirmation bias, uh, rabbit hole on that topic and they’re wrong?
Mark Anderson: I, I used to teach it. I, it was part of the federal lesson plan when I was teaching for the, uh, the federal government in interviewing interrogation section on I accessing cues. Uh, is there something to the movement? Yes, but we’re back to the same situation. Well, number one, I don’t use it a whole lot. I’m a holistic interviewer.
I wanna see the whole body and just be watching the whole body. If I’m focusing on your eyes, that’s just a weird interview because you’re sitting there saying, what the heck is he looking at? Just kidding. You’re stress, stress almost going up because I’m staring at you and it’s just obnoxious. So I, I’m not a big eye guy anyhow, and there’s been so much bad information out there.
I’ve seen stuff in the last year on, uh, YouTube of this guy that was, you know, interviewing guru, uh, who said, you know, it was basing on lies versus truth, you know, deception versus honesty. And there there’s absolutely nothing associated with that. Uh, because if you think about it, there is a, uh, a situation with regard to the recall and create, but the percentages doesn’t make it real valuable.
You really have to establish a baseline, like we you’ve talked about before on many of your shows, and that baseline happens over time. You. I raised some kids, and over the years, I, I, they would do some nonverbal behavior and I’d know exactly what it meant, but that’s because I was with them for years. If you’re in the interview for room for 10 minutes, how valuable is that baseline?
You know? So that, that’s kind of silly to begin with. But the whole issue of, you know, possibly recall and create, and I, I do an example sometimes in the class where I, I, I debunking some of these myths, but getting that eye movement, like if I said to you, and, and I always do this with the class and face the other way, because if I look at them, the whole class is sitting there staring at me and their eyes don’t move.
Uh, but if I said to you, like, if you went back to the first house you ever lived in, how many windows are in that house? Well, generally you feel some eye movement when I ask that question. Most people do, some people don’t because of the percentage breakdown. Uh, for me, I go up left. Uh, so that’s a, that’s called, that’s a visual re uh, cre or visual recall.
I’m recalling something that exists. So, you know, you go up left. I don’t know what that tells you necessarily, because in most cases, when you get in the interview room with me, if you happen to be somebody who chooses to deceive me for whatever reason, you’ve already recited the lie before. Which means when you come in the room to answer the questions, where are you gonna look for that lie?
You’re gonna look to recall, you’re recalling the lie that you’ve already told yourself or told somebody else. So what does that tell me? It doesn’t tell me a whole lot. It, it’s not like you’re gonna create it when you come in the room with me. So, you know, is there something to eye movement? Yes. I would think if you look at WZ Materials now.
I would be surprised if that that stuff is still in it. I’ve seen a lot of transition with WZ over the last, you know, 10 years, and I would assume they may address it from the standpoint similar to what I do, uh, but they’re not gonna be putting those statistics on it that you heard from, um, if it was David Zaki or who, if you talked to him.
Uh, yeah, you know, 10, 10 years ago.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, that, that I kind of suspected that because that piece on their site was from like 2012 and I kind of suspected that if you asked ’em now, they would, uh, kind of move away from some of the stuff they said in that old paper. Uh, but yeah, people interested in that topic.
I have a whole episode about the eye movements going into nuance about the older kind of. P associated ideas moving into, I would say, more sophisticated arguments, even if they’re, you know, controversial still. Uh, so yeah. And I, I wanted to ask you too about, um, I’m a, I’m a fan of, uh, statement analysis like Mark Ish’s.
Work I found, I actually based my book, verbal Poker tells he, I was inspired by his work. Uh, I know you are lying. The the statement analysis.
Mark Anderson: Yep.
Zach Elwood: I was moved to spend a lot of time. I actually spent eight months studying a bunch of footage and taking notes when I was playing about people’s various patterns about how they phrase things when they were playing poker.
Um, so I do find that, you know, that getting into the, you know, going back to the finding verbal actual content much more interesting and meaningful than, than nonverbal. Um, that is true for that I think, because a lot of that stuff I think makes sense at a psychological level. But I think even, you know, even for that though, if we’re talking these small verbal.
Turns a phrase, you know, I, I can find it interesting and I can reach deductions and opinions about what people say. Like we all do every day about the things people say. But even for that stuff, it’s like, well, what is the actual, you know, where does it get into the actual, uh, practical applications of using it?
’cause you know, we can, we can believe people are guilty all day long, but how, how does that help us? Right. In the, you know, so I think it gets to this fundamental. Question, which is something I’ve been thinking about is when, when are the situations when having a hunch or having a strong suspicion or even a confident feeling that someone did something that someone is guilty or lying.
When, when are the actual situations when that is useful? And, and the fact is, I think it’s very rarely useful because, you know, you could be cert as an investigator, you could be certain somebody did something, but it doesn’t, doesn’t do you much good, right? In the practical sense, unless, you know, I guess the, some areas where it can play a role is you might be more pointed or more, more in, more direct in your questions or go down a specific line of questioning the more certain you are.
Or you might, uh, even change a bit of the scope of the investigation if you’re certain, but you know that those are all things you would do if you didn’t have the evidence to go on, right? It’s, it’s pretty rare you’re lacking, uh, evidence but have the strong hunch, right? Uh, it’s pretty rare that you have the hunch just based on the.
A verbal, uh, clue, but you don’t have the, the evidence. Right. But I’m curious, you know, do even, I’m curious what you think of the statement analysis, and then I’m curious what you think of even there, the applicability of it.
Mark Anderson: Yeah, I, I, I absolutely, uh, agree with you. The verbal is far more useful than the nonverbal.
Uh, I, I was, I, listen, I know that you’ve referred to it as body language before. Uh, my issue with using the term language is language is generally something that’s understood by both parties involved, you know, and body language is, it’s,
Zach Elwood: yeah. There
Mark Anderson: is no body. It depends on, there
Zach Elwood: is no
Mark Anderson: language, no.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, yeah.
Mark Anderson: No, there’s no language associated with it. So I would much rather have language. Uh, so in the case of the, the verbal or the, you know, the written analysis, I think there’s certainly some value to that. But the same caution applies if we’re hypothetically determining this. The only way I’m gonna truly get the quality information is to ask the person about it.
So what, what did you mean? I mean, I have people in interviews tell me a story and I just look at ’em and say, okay. So what are you really saying? You know, because sometimes our e simplest response is the best response, which basically means whatever you just said is a little bit clouded. Clear it up for me.
Or, you know, I don’t know if I’m a little slow here, but I don’t really get what you’re really saying. Tell me more about it and then just let the person speak. Because in there is where we get the information. So with the written analysis, if I’m looking at something and I don’t like the way it’s phrased, or we see tenses being used incorrectly or however it’s set up.
The only way I’m gonna move that from a hunch to, to certainty is by asking the person about it. So I think the same caution applies there. And, and I see that, you know, people hook their, you know, their, their horse to star and they just wanna ride that thing. I think we just have to be really honest about that.
That that’s fine. But we really have to communicate. We need that rapport, we need that conversation management. We need that trust development in order to get the best information.
Zach Elwood: I should mention in the statement analysis space, just like in the, in the nonverbal space, there is this range of just complete junk, uh, science of, uh, there’s this system called Scan se.
Yep. Which is like taking the, you know, I said that I find these small verbal clues interesting, but the scan system is basically taking it to, like, you can definitely tell based on these small statement analysis, whether someones are guil guilty or not. You know, it’s basically in the same way that people act as if you can read some nonverbal, uh, behavior and be highly confident that someone’s lying or guilty.
So just to say in these spaces, there’s this spectrum from like, Hey, that’s interesting and something to think about and maybe even just to yourself to find interesting versus like people saying, you can definitely use this stuff to, you know, unlock powerful certainty about, uh, all these things. And yeah, it’s worth pointing out that there’s for, for a lot of these ideas, whether nonverbal or, or, or, or verbal analysis, there’s this, this range of people, uh, promoting, uh.
Anything from more responsible, you know, uh, defensible uses to more extreme and clearly, uh, bad, uh, applications. Yeah.
Mark Anderson: And then there always seems to be money involved in that as well.
Zach Elwood: The more you can convince people, you have amazing powers that you can teach them, the more you can charge them. Right?
Theoretically,
Mark Anderson: what makes us think that human interaction is that simple. I mean, are they not living life? You just have to live life for a few years and you understand that’s not the way it works. So there isn’t gonna be this magical catchall. You’re gonna have to invest, you’re gonna have to, uh, uh, work hard at that stuff.
And you asked too about the uh, uh, written statements and the concept of walking in with a hunch and everything like that, back to that kind of mindset and the science space interviewing side. I don’t go into an interview anymore without several hypotheses of what could have happened. I may have an idea what happened, but if I walk in with that idea, my confirmation bias is gonna kick in.
So in my planning, before I walk into an interview, I’m gonna come up with alternative hypotheses of what could have happened instead. Then I’m gonna ask questions about those. And again, it’s the person sitting across from me that’s gonna tell me the story, not me tell the story. So I need to get that information from ’em.
So I think it’s very important to not, and believe me, uh, you know, hand up, uh, I’ve done it wrong, you know, early in my career. You walk in with your hunch and you know, I’m sure in hell gonna prove this hunch to be true because, you know, I’m the professional here. I think we have to be very careful. We have to be real careful and come up with some alternative ways to keep those biases in check.
We’re not gonna get rid of ’em, but we can keep them in check so they don’t color the information that we’re getting out of the interview.
Zach Elwood: Right, right. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, people are always gonna have their hunches based on an assortment of things, whether it’s, uh, you know, no matter what you.
No matter what they read about these spaces, everyone’s gonna have their hunches, uh, when they’re doing their investigations or interrogations. I think it’s more about embracing some humility about, Hey, could you be wrong here? No matter how wrong, strong your hun is, you have to keep in mind that your hunch could be wrong because it, we’ve all had strong hunches that turned out to be wrong before.
Uh, yeah. So the humility is big, I think. So let’s pivot to what do you think works, you know, what are, when it comes to getting information, reading people in interrogation type settings, what are the biggest strategies that you rely on that, that you focus on?
Mark Anderson: I think there, you know, I’ve mentioned mindset several times.
That’s something that was never addressed early on. It’s something I address in every class. Now. We cannot be good listeners. We cannot process information accurately if we have, uh, those same stressors and issues going on in our lives that prevent us from being present in the moment. So we need to a assess where we’re at before we walk into that room.
So we’re gonna use tools to assess where we’re at. We’re gonna come up with these alternative hypotheses. We’re gonna be of clear mind when we walk in so that we can engage and we can hear at a level that we need to. So I talk about that, which I never talked about before. Uh, I think this conversation management and the issue of rapport becomes very important.
I think the issue of being able to extend strategic empathy, I’m not saying you agree with the person, but put yourself in that position. And I think over time, maybe it’s an aging thing. You know, when I got into this business, I saw this as black hats and white hats, and you know, I’m. Bing, Bata, boom. And over time I realized that one step this way to the left versus one step to the right, and I could be in the same situation this person is in.
So stopping number one, our job is not judgment anyhow, that’s up to the courts or up to the administrative people that are making decisions. My job as a mediator of the truth. So all I’m there is to get the truth and I need to understand that that’s what my job is. So then what do we do to, uh, compensate for this stuff?
Well, uh, I think there’s a lot of things we can do, which we talk about this and I just wrote. Uh, two articles on this over the last two weeks that it came out. And this is based on, uh, work by, uh, Dr. Christian Meisner, who’s a kind of leading researcher in this, uh, this arena of science-based interviewing.
Uh, wonderful guy’s. Uh, I think he’s at the University of Iowa. And, uh, one of the things that we talk about this nonverbal and verbal and, you know, guess and all the rest, and I say, well, we need to ask questions about it. He talks about this issue of, uh, when we’re asking questions, we should be assessing two things.
Number one, access. And knowledgeability does this. Was this person in a position that they could have seen what they saw, heard what they heard, and all the rest? And now knowledge. Knowledgeability is, did they have an understanding of the situation well enough that they can process that information and relay that?
And you say, well, that seems very specific and you know, you know, how would you get at all that stuff? But think about what it does. It opens up a whole line of questioning, which is not accusatory. It’s, it’s just assessing the situation. It’s much more neutral in how you ask the questions, and then the quality of that information that you get generates more questions and, and gets you to the whole big picture.
So I think we have to be more, much more creative in how we ask questions. And questioning is a huge issue that, you know, I don’t know how many leaders I’ve dealt with over the last. 20 years in the training en environment, they’re like, Hey, we don’t need interview training. Our people can talk to people.
They’re all set. Well, that’s not what interviewing is. You do need the training. And I spent 30 years in the field with no interviewing classes. So I learned by screwing ’em up, you know, because I, I, I didn’t have that training. I think we really have to train people because the knowledgeability and accessibility, uh, thing I never would’ve gotten in the field.
But now that I’ve learned it, I can see the applicability in the field. So there’s just a ton of stuff like that. And if you think about it, the type of questions that would, we have to ask better questions, and we don’t do that. So that’s another one. Uh. You know, we could go on for hours. Cognitive load, the issue of cognitive load, the issue of cognitive interviewing.
You know, how we ask questions better to get it to full. Uh, it, it, uh, uh, substance of what took place. Uh, strategic use of evidence, which is a technique that was, uh, researched around 2014, how we deploy evidence in order to elicit truthful information. There’s just, there’s a ton. And I’m big on this, you know, so many people say, well, you’re taking all these tools off the, you know, off the shelf here.
Well, yeah, if they don’t work, get ’em off the shelf. But I’m not gonna take anything away if I don’t give you something else. So I, I, I would give you, for every three I took away, I’d give you five to use, because there are that many that have been researched and, and really have a difference in how we get information.
But most of those are based on what Zach, they’re based on conversation and words, not on what you look like.
Zach Elwood: Right. Right. Yeah. Do, can, uh, do any, uh, examples, I know people listening, uh, to these shows, these podcasts. I like to hear granular examples. Do you have any, uh, e examples of, um, real world cases where, uh, using some of these better, you know, um, statement or, uh, listen, listening to people’s stories kind, kind of, uh, methods came into play.
Anything that that comes to mind? You care, sir.
Mark Anderson: Yeah, I got, I, I got one that’s, uh, pretty, uh, somewhat unusual. I was, uh, working for Department of Justice for a period of time. I had cases, uh, work cases in federal prisons, uh, looking at, you know, wrongful conduct by correctional officers. So I had a, a case involving a correctional officer that was bringing stuff into the prison.
Uh, there was some possible relationship issues. There was a bunch of stuff on, on the plate. There was also some indication of possible child pornography involved. So, uh, I, I worked in an area where I was the only guy there, so I had a good relationship with the FBI and I told the FBI about this case and they were like, well, you know, we’ll go with you because of the child porn aspect of it.
And, uh, I’d done a lot of planning is another issue. Part of the reason interviews don’t go as well as they, uh, should is because we don’t plan enough. One in 10 interviews have adequate planning. We get in a room, we don’t get the results, and we say, well, they, you know, it’s their fault. No, it’s my fault. I didn’t plan for it.
So in this case, I’ve talked to probably 50 people about this guy and they just kept getting, getting the same answer. Oh yeah, yeah. He different. Well, doesn’t help do interview with him. His house, uh, which I’m not afraid to go to somebody’s house, especially, I delivered a package to the house. Well, the postal service did that I knew was there and I wanted it, and he’s not gonna bring it to the interview with him.
So we went to his house and sat down with him. And had a discussion first two hours of that interview, I just rapport with the guy because I knew I needed to understand who he was before I attacked the issue of what he might have done. So we talked about all sorts of things and the question is, are you ready to go on that trip with that person where you can extend that empathy, you can address them where they’re at and, and, and, you know, get to understand this person before you put the stuff on the table.
So two hours, over two hours we just chatted so that I could understand him before I start asking him about stuff. And then I asked him about stuff in a way that’s non accusatory conversational. I wanna keep the interview as conversational as. Eventually he admitted to the stuff, uh, allowed us to take all sorts of stuff out of his house.
Uh, and, and I think the thing that’s most revealing about this is when he was sentenced on the, his way, walking out of court, he looked at me and said, mark, thank you for helping me get my life straightened out. And I’m thinking, man, you are going to jail. That’s not when I would be saying that. So what happened during that time?
I addressed stuff that nobody had ever addressed with him in his life. And, and, and can we have that empathy? I mean, he pretty screwed up guy. Uh, but can we have that empathy where we try to understand how did you get to where you are? Can we have that curiosity to understand? How did you get to where you are?
So I, I mean, I got tons of examples like that. Yeah. Where it wasn’t based on the training I received, it was based on being a human being, interacting with another human being without judgment.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. The, uh, I mean, I, I, I, I watch a lot of interrogations because I’m interested in psychology and I’ve gone down recently, I went down a rabbit hole of reading.
Uh, I’m on my third book about undercover agents stories, real undercover agents. I started out with Donny Broski and read a couple more books. Um, so, and, and one of the recurring themes in the undercover. Asian books is talking about, you know, you really have to see people as people and you really have to have an empathy for people.
Like, you’re never gonna be a successful undercover cop if you have extremely high judgment of people, because that’s just gonna get in your way of rep rapport building and getting along with people. So that was a frequent theme in the Undercover books, people talking about the ability to get over that.
And some people just can’t do that. If they’re too judgemental, they’ll never interact normally in, in relaxed ways with people because that is just gonna be a, a huge blocker for them. And in the same way in the interrogation setting, it’s like if you have all this really high judgment, you can’t even, you know, relax yourself enough to have a normal human conversation with someone that’s gonna be a huge blocker to you.
Yes. Absorbing or, you know, inducing them to share information to you. And some of the most, you know, the examples that have stood out in the interrogation footage, uh, YouTube videos I’ve watched is where people are just. Being very genuine and the person surprisingly dumps all this information on them.
And even I saw one recently where some, uh, child molester guy was, ended up hugging the detectives who were in there with him and just wanted some, you know, wanted some comforting, basically. And it’s like, yeah, that’s what happens. You know, you, when you treat people like, uh, you know, fellow, fellow humans, you get a surprising reaction sometimes.
Mark Anderson: Yeah. Because they don’t expect that either. You know, because they watch the same TV footage that you and I watch, and they don’t expect to be treated that way. And I don’t know how many times people have said to me, I, I’ve never been treated like this before. I said, well, I’m sorry. Sorry. You haven’t been, you deserve to be right.
Sexual abusers of children, stuff like that. He, I have a harder time with that one. You know, we need to know where our limitations are as well, you know, so maybe that’s not what I’m cut out for, but I, I’m, I mean, there’s other areas. I, I worked international terrorism for a while and it was amazing. We have to find commonality with the person that we’re sitting with, you know, that we’re dealing with.
And it sometimes we have to seek and look a little bit to find that commonality and where you find it can be very unique.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, it can be a challenge. I was reading, uh, Bob Hammer’s, uh, book. Uh, he’s an undercover, he was an undercover agent and he, he had infiltrated, uh, Nala, you know, the, uh. NA National, uh, or whatever it’s called, the Man boy Love Association.
And he was talking about, yeah, it’s a big challenge to, uh, reduce your contempt and disgust, but he was talking about his methods for doing that and how it was important to try to do it. Like if he was gonna succeed at the mission, he had to, you know, get, try to find, uh, you know, the humanity in these people he was interacting with, which I thought was a, that was an especially interesting example of, uh, yes, trying to get over that in order to build rapport.
Yeah. Uh, so, uh, yeah, I’d be curious to a ask, you know, the, the people who were interested in, in reading behavior, getting nonverbal clues, um, they might, uh, uh, well, I think in general, people are interested in, in shortcuts like shortcut deductions we can make. And I think when people, that’s why when people ask me about.
Because they’ll often ask me, because I have worked on poker, tells I’ve, I do this podcast that they’re like, Zach, well you’re skeptical about all this nonverbal stuff and real world scenarios. You know, what do you recommend? What are good behavior resources? And I tend to say, well, I wouldn’t recommend focusing on nonverbal behavior.
I would recommend focusing on, you know, if you’re really interested in, in shortcut deductions, I would recommend statement analysis, because that’s much more, you know, and we’re talking about the, like, small patterns in people’s speeches. We’re not talking about the meta-level stories that are told. We’re talking about these kind of small, uh, turns of phrase and how people phrase things.
And I think that’s much more a much, A, it’s much more useful. And then b. It’s giving people who want these shortcut deductions a little bit in that space, but it’s a more defensible and, and logical iteration of shortcut deductions. But you know, even even with that, obviously you, you, you should not reach, uh, firm conclusions about people based on a few small turns of phrase and such.
But that’s what I tend to tell people because I think that helps, you know, wet their whistle for these kind of shortcut uh, deductions. But I’m curious, do you have, uh, are there things you would recommend in, in that space as far as resources for people that are interested in these psychological, uh, kind of reads of people quick reads?
Mark Anderson: Yeah. Uh, I probably, I probably wouldn’t, uh, I wouldn’t give them, I would, number one, argue with the fact that there’s any quick way to do that. And yeah, uh, I would ask them to examine their life and see the people that quick read them, how accurate were they at really understanding where they’re at and if you wanna be understood, do you not wanna understand others?
So what I would say to them is, learn how to listen better, because I think. Primarily, that’s a huge problem. We suck at listening. There’s a book out there, there’s lots of listening books. There’s a, a book, uh, discipline listening by a guy named Michael Redington, who, uh, it comes out of this interviewing space.
I think he worked for WZ for a period of time. Uh, but he does, he’s in executive leadership and stuff like that now. But an excellent book, it causing you to stand in the mirror and say, gee, really, how good am a listener? Am I, am I listening or am I thinking about the next thing I’m gonna say in order to convince you of what a freaking expert I am at whatever I’m not an expert at.
Uh, so I, I would say spend more time in that arena of listening and being curious. Uh, there’s so many people dying for connection, you know, like you said with the child molester, that you just wanted a hug, just wanted to be understood. Not that I’m saying what you did is right. But just wanting to be understood.
And there’s just people dying for that out there, and people aren’t given it. Uh, so if we can learn how to do that better, then we can ask those questions better to help that person under, you know, to, to gain understanding of that person. And then we know exactly why they’re doing what they’re doing. Uh, we have to invest more.
And, and there just isn’t a quick read on that. I might get a quick read if I walk in Walmart and, uh, you know, the greeter doesn’t look happy. I might say, Hey, man, are you okay? You know that, but I can walk away from that if I’m wrong. You know what I’m saying? But if, if this is something valuable and important and the person is valuable and important, let’s invest a little bit more.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. Do you, uh, do you have anything else you wanna share before we go? Anything that stands out as, as something you’d like to add or, um, story you’d like to tell?
Mark Anderson: We’ve covered a lot and there’s so much to cover on this stuff. It’s like, you know, talking to you for an an hour, I’m, I got about 10,000 things on my mind now that I have to, you know, research and, and write a little bit more on, and be a little bit more, uh, specific about.
I, I think we have to get out of this realm of, you know, this and it’s really tough, right? Because attention spans have really gone down with, you know, uh, media the way it is. You know, the, you know, you, you can’t. Talk for too long. Sermons get long, shorter and shorter in church because people can’t sit and listen.
Uh, so we’re fighting a tough battle here because what we’re saying is we’re taking these quick fixes off the table because they aren’t fixes and people don’t wanna invest the time. So it’s kind of an uphill battle on this thing. Uh, and and I spend time every day trying to figure out how do I make a difference in that regard to get people to understand that.
And, and I, I think where I’ve gone with that on that side and. I, I’m, uh, putting together a, a book on investigative interviewing on science-based interviewing and doing it more as a workbook type thing. And I was telling one of my accountability people. I think that’s the other thing, we should have people around us who keep us in check so that my arrogance doesn’t let me sell.
Some of this crap out there as you talk about with some of the people that you are not happy with, that are, uh, promoting crap, is I want people around me that are gonna say, Hey, hey, you need to reign that back in. And one of these accountability people, I said, I was doing this book. And he said, yeah, but you’re talking about the importance of wellbeing and that people have to be in a good place too, because you know, we aren’t taking care of our people that well anymore.
How can you tell them to do interviews better and you’re not addressing the other side? So now all of a sudden, I have to write two books and the other one’s gonna be on wellbeing and resilience. Uh, because what are we doing to take care of our people, to put them in a position where they can then interview better?
So what does that all say? It says that we need to start being a little bit more concerned with the people around us. And do you wanna do it cheaply? Is that how you wanna be dealt with? Or do you wanna invest the time and do it appropriately? Uh, so. Take the time with those people that are important in your life to see where they’re at and then ask them about that.
So you now know where they’re, that’s so important.
That was a talk with Mark Anderson; you can learn more about him at andersoninvestigative.com
This has been the People Who Read People podcast with me, Zach Elwood. You can learn more about this podcast and sign up for updates at behavior-podcast.com