What’s Special

You can predictably control other people, without their knowledge, using nonverbal signals, and this can change your life.

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(If true, can you imagine how that might make a difference in YOUR life?)

Here‘s the logic behind the claim.

1. Strangers size you up in seconds. They need to know two things.  Are you important? What are your intentions?
2. Why?  To survive. Creatures need to know if other creatures are powerful or weak, friend or foe.  Wrong assessments or slow processing can get someone killed.
3. Millions of years of experiences have wired this into genes. It’s on autopilot.  This is a deep, intuitive capability controlled by stimuli and responses.  That means it works outside of awareness. These signals control almost all human interactions, unconsciously.
4. These signals are preverbal, therefore nonverbal.  Words can enhance, but never overpower your nonverbal signals.
5. These status signals determine how others feel about you and how they treat you.
6. They are unconscious, but not invisible.  Through awareness you can “see” the signals of others.
7. With a little training and practice, you can consciously choose your status signals and powerfully influence other people’s feelings and behaviors, outside of their conscious awareness.

Want some proof?

Height affect your earnings. Did you know that on average, a man or woman makes $850 more / year / inch in height?  We pay taller accountants, computer programmers, and salespeople more than short ones.  We pay tall women more than short men, in the same field.

• • If we were conscious of our response to height, then either we would agree the pay differences makes sense, or we would have anti-discrimination laws against it.  But we don’t, do we?
  • Are status signals powerful?  Pay and promotion seem important to me, how about you?

Who is taller, a graduate student or a PhD? Strange question, right?  What if they are the same person?

• • In the study, the same person gave the same lecture to two different classes.
  • The only difference was his introduction.  For one class he was called a graduate student, for the other, he was a visiting PhD.
  • In the post-lecture survey, students said the PhD was more than 3 inches taller than the graduate student.
  • So, a status symbol, as simple as a title, can change what our eyes see, without our awareness.

Does behavior changes your height?

• • In a national political campaign in Australia, one candidate was shorter and acted dominate, while the taller candidate acted submissively.
  • After a TV debate, viewers were polled
  • Even though visually the height difference was obvious, viewers stated that the more dominate candidate was taller.

These few studies are just a handful of rocks in a mountain of evidence regarding the power of status signals.

Status signals are everywhere.

Some signals are physical like height, but most are symbolic or behavioral.  When you develop “status brain”, you never see the world the same again.  The good news is that there’s plenty of opportunity to take control of how others treat you, but, it’s not as simple as always being high status.  That’s too simplistic.  Sometimes you need to act with low status to be effective.  Sometimes status interactions are rhythmic, status dances.

There are many status dances.  Here are a few:

• Conversations
• Leadership-followership
• Learning and Teaching
• Persuasion and Sales
• Parenting
• Courtship, from flirting to mating.

I am pretty darn sure you won’t find anyone else on the planet who knows more about the powerful, hidden world of status signals.

Want more proof?  Testimonials.

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