Reading handshakes is easy enough – but what if you find yourself in a situation that you would need to shake hands yourself? What would you do? Body language mastery requires not only fervent practice through regular observation but also practical application of what you’ve learned so far. So if you can now tell a […]
Influence Academy Blog
Handshaking 101
Contrary to what you may think, handshakes are not a modern invention. Tribes of olden times used it. The Romans used it. The Greeks used it. We use it today. Simply put: the handshake has been there for as long as the human race remembers. Since this gesture is not going away any time soon, […]
Palm Power: How To Reduce Resistance From Others With Your Hands
The open palm is a powerful expressive tool that can be used to communicate effectively to individuals and groups. Just observe individuals who are under public scrutiny. Most of these individuals would have their hands hidden in their pant pockets or coat pockets. That single gesture alone means that the individual does not want to […]
Dealing With Dissonance
The mind’s ability to detect dissonance or incongruence may be our best tool when dealing with people of all sorts. When we communicate with other people, we always want to watch out for our own interests and the easiest way to do that is to avoid trickery or lies. Of course, no one would tell […]
Influencing The Leader
Influencing the leader will be the most challenging of all decision makers. In reality, you can't even influence them. You can only influence them to influence themselves. The only two things that you can use to do so are time and fear. You need time, because leaders work at their own pace and will not […]
Influencing The Skeptic
You may think that influencing skeptics would be extremely difficult, because they don't value any sort of opinions or information that are not congruent to their outlook on life. But the good thing about influencing the skeptic is that there is little left to the imagination and not very much guesswork involved. You don't have […]
Exploring Stereotypes
According to social scientists, people cannot help but learn about stereotypes because these prototypes are in the very culture of every country. Every country has its own set of simple and complex stereotypes and gradually, these stereotypes are passed on to the next generation through institutions like the press and the family. Social exposure is […]
The Availability Heuristic
While the representative heuristic is used to analyze people’s behavior, the availability heuristic is more frequently used to determine whether or not an event is likely to happen based on available information about similar events. The availability heuristic is intimately associated with informational accessibility or the degree at which a person can easily recall a […]
The Mind Channel
Is there a ‘secret’ to reading body language? There is: whenever you have to read the body language of another person, pay attention to how he moves and gesticulates but at the same time, you need to tie that up with what he is actually saying. Obviously, no real communication can take place if you […]
Leveraging The Peripheral Route
To people like marketers and advertisers, there is a hidden wish for people to just stick to their “gut feel” (or peripheral route). The reason for this is quite simple. With the peripheral route, a person is more likely to respond to cues or signals. These signals can be given out or expressed in such […]