Reading People: How to Understand People and Predict Their Behavior - Anytime, Anyplace - Hardcover

Dimitrius, Jo-Ellan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375501460 ISBN 13: 9780375501463

Publisher: Random House, 1998

Synopsis

Did you know that when you walk into a room, everything about you--from what you're wearing to the way you sit to the way you speak--says something about you? Do you realize that as you're taking stock of someone, he or she is also taking stock of you?
        For fifteen years, Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, America's best-known jury consultant--made even more famous by her work on the O. J. Simpson trial--has predicted the behavior of thousands of jurors, witnesses, lawyers, and judges. In Reading People, she applies her amazing skills to everyday life, explaining which visual and oral clues can reliably predict behavior on the job, in relationships, and at home.
        In Reading People, you'll learn

¸ how to tell a person's sincerity by the tone of his or her voice

¸ how to know if your date is interested in a serious relationship without telegraphing the answer you want

¸ how to use your intuition to determine the right preschool for your child

¸ why people who volunteer information about themselves are less credible than those who wait for you to ask questions

¸ how to stay objective when evaluating a potential boss--even if you need the job desperately

¸ how to make snap decisions that make sense

        Reading People is a remarkable book that not only tells you which clues to look for but also teaches you how to be more effective in spotting them, how to keep your objectivity when evaluating them, and how to see the emerging pattern that tells you which of a person's sometimes inconsistent qualities will dictate his or her behavior.
        In Reading People, you'll learn how to sharpen your intuition and avoid the pitfalls that lead to bad decisions. Even more important, you can become a better parent, friend, employee, or spouse by recognizing the subtle messages of those around you and being more responsive to them. Reading People will teach you skills that last a lifetime.

About this title

About the Author

Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, Ph.D., has consulted in over six hundred jury trials, including the Rodney King, Reginald Denny, John DuPont, McMartin Preschool, and O. J. Simpson cases. She has appeared on Oprah, Good Morning America, the Today show, Larry King Live, Face the Nation, and 60 Minutes, and she has consulted with many Fortune 100 companies.

Mark Mazzarella has been a practicing trial lawyer in San Diego for twenty years. He is a past chairman of the twelve-thousand-member litigation section of the California State Bar, and he writes and lectures extensively.

From the Back Cover

Can you imagine how much better your life choices would be if you knew how to "read" people, predict their behavior, and understand how they're "reading" you?
        Reading People will open your eyes to a wealth of clues that reveal the truth about those around you. Once you've learned to read people, your world will never be the same.

Can you tell a liar by his eyes?

What do a man's well-shined shoes say about the way he'll behave in your meeting?

Can you tell a dedicated employee by the way her office looks?

When can you rely on your intuition?

Which types of questions will get you the most truthful answers?

Which three character traits are most likely to predict a person's behavior?

What can a family dinner at your fiancé's house tell you about your future?

What message are you sending with your hairstyle?

How can you tell how others are reading you?

Reviews

Now famous for her role in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, Dimitrius shares the people-reading techniques she developed over 15 years as a jury consultant. In so doing, she provides a wealth of tips and strategies for ferreting out people's real viewpoints, motives and character traits. Claiming that "reading people is neither a science nor an innate gift," Dimitrius advocates sharpening and fine-tuning powers of observation and deduction. Gathering enough information to establish an overall pattern is the key to her method. Differentiating between "elective and nonelective" traits; setting aside assumptions, prejudices and stereotypes; recognizing body language; and identifying meanings behind personal choices of dress and behaviorAall converge to reveal personality, attitude and life experience. Dimitrius rates people on scales of "hardness" or compassion, socioeconomic background and "satisfaction with life"Athe three most "consistently reliable" predictors of behavior, according to her. Whether interviewing a baby-sitter, meeting a new date or selecting a jury, this thorough, detailed guide of what to look for could probably improve anyone's ability at seeing and being seen. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Forget the inflated claims that follow from ``predict in the subtitle; this is a leading jury consultant's often valuable guide on how to understand people from the host of nonverbal signs they present. With the help of lawyer Mazzarella, Dimitrius, who for more than 14 years has helped legal teams pick juries in such trials as that of O.J. Simpson and the McMartin Preschool case, tells readers ``what to look and listen for, having the curiosity and patience to garner the necessary information, and understanding how to recognize the patterns of a person's appearance, body language, voice and conduct.'' The key word here is ``patterns''; Dimitrius isnt interested in ``Eureka!'' revelations coming from a single sign or behavioral mode. Rather, she demonstrates how one can learn a great deal about people from a combination of their facial expressions and body language, grooming and dress, home and workplace ``props'' (e.g. what kind of photos or art they have in their offices, and in what kind of frames), among other indications of their character. And she insists on a due regard for intuition and context. Concerning the latter, in a ``sometimes a cigar is just a cigar'' approach, she wisely advises readers not to overinterpret, recalling a Rodney King trial juror who impelled Dimitrius into speculative overdrive by wearing black gloves into court each day. ``Was she making a racial statement? Were the gloves a political commentary? Did they have some other unknown significance?'' Finally asked by Dimitrius about the gloves after the trial ended, the juror responded, ``It was so cold inside that courtroom!'' While quite comprehensive, Dimitrius does scant a few nonverbal forms of communication, such as posture, and is occasionally guilty of simplistic writing and bad grammar. But these flaws are overwhelmed the amount of practical good advice for discerningly ``reading'' others and becoming more aware of the myriad nonverbal messages one conveys. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

ONE

Reading Readiness

Preparing for the Challenge of
Reading People

“I can’t believe I didn’t see the signs. They were right there 
in front of me! How could I have been so blind?”

We’ve all said something very much like this, probably more times than we care to admit. After we’ve misjudged our boss’s intentions, a friend’s loyalty, or a babysitter’s common sense, we carefully replay the past—and usually see the mistakes we made with 20/20 hindsight. Why, then, after living and reliving our mistakes, don’t we learn more from them? If reading people were like driving a car or hitting a tennis ball, we’d be able to recognize our weak points and improve our performance with every try. That rarely happens with relationships. Instead, we interact with our friends, colleagues, and spouses in the same old ways, doggedly hoping for the best.

In theory, thanks to the people-reading skills I acquired over the years, it should have been easy for me to make better decisions in my personal life—whom to let into it and what to expect from them once I did. Yet for many years I failed to apply my courtroom abilities to my off-duty life. Perhaps I had to reach a saturation point of pain and disappointment in some of my personal relationships before I was willing to analyze my mistakes and put my professional experience to work for me.

When I finally resolved to bring that focus and clarity to my personal life, it made sense to start by comparing the courthouse with the world outside. I was determined to figure out what I was doing in the courtroom that enabled me to read people in that setting with such consistent accuracy. I thought I should be able to distill that information into a set of people-reading basics that would work anywhere.

When I told my colleagues about the great difference between my people-reading successes on and off the job, I found I wasn’t alone. Many of the best attorneys I knew confessed that, while they enjoyed great success reading people in court, the rest of the time they didn’t do much better than anyone else. Why?

The conclusions I eventually reached led me to the keys of “reading readiness”—the foundation of understanding people and predicting their behavior. The first thing I discovered was that attitude is critical. In a courtroom, I was ready to focus fully on the people I encountered, to listen to them closely, to observe the way they looked and acted, and to carefully think about what I was hearing and seeing. I had a very different attitude in my private life. I rarely did any of those things. The fact is, you have to be ready to read people, or all the clues in the world won’t do you any good.

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to bring a courtroom state of mind—clear-eyed, observant, careful, and objective—into the emotional, subjective drama that is everyday life. Master the following skills, and you’ll be ready to read people.

1.Spend more time with people. That’s the best way to learn to understand them.
2.Stop, look, and listen. There’s no substitute for patience and attentiveness.
3.Learn to reveal something of yourself. To get others to open up, you must first open up to them.
4.Know what you’re looking for. Unless you know what you want in another person, there’s a good chance you’ll be disappointed.
5.Train yourself to be objective. Objectivity is essential to reading people, but it’s the hardest of these seven skills for most of us to master.
6.Start from scratch, without biases and prejudices.
7.Make a decision, then act on it.


Discovering the Lost Art of Reading People

Unless you’ve been stranded on a desert island for the past fifty years, you’ve noticed that the world has changed. Understanding people has always been one of life’s biggest challenges, but the social changes and technological explosion of recent decades have made it even more difficult. Today, many of us don’t enjoy close bonds or daily contact even with the most important people in our lives. We’re out of touch and out of practice.

Unless you practice the skills you’ll learn in this book, you won’t retain them. But that’s difficult today because we live in a global society. We’re in contact with people across town, across the country, or even on the other side of the world. But our contact usually isn’t personal. The same technological advances that allow us such extraordinary access to others have exacted a toll—they have made face-to-face conversation relatively rare. Why meet with a client in person if you can phone him? Why have an actual conversation with Mom if you can leave a message on her answering machine? Why phone a friend if you can send an e-mail or an instant message? As long as the message gets through, what’s the difference? Most of us have even phoned someone, hoping to leave a message, only to be disappointed when she’s actually there to answer the call. Some of us even bow out altogether, relying on our assistants, kids, spouses, or friends to do our communicating for us. Or we settle into cyberspace, meeting, doing business, sometimes even becoming engaged—all on the basis of the sterile, electronically generated word, without the benefit of seeing someone or even talking to him.

All forms of communication are not equal. If I want to ask a favor of my colleague Alan, I have several choices. I can walk down the hall and speak with him in person; in that case, I’ll be able to gauge his response accurately. Maybe he’ll gladly say yes. Then again, maybe he’ll say yes while wincing. Or perhaps he’ll say no, but will clearly show his reservations. There’s an almost infinite number of reactions I might see if I’m there in the room with him. Now, if I phone Alan instead, I’ll be able to sense some of his feelings from his voice—but I may miss the more subtle undertones and I won’t get any visual cues. If we e-mail each other, effectively squelching almost all human contact, I’ll get just the facts. And what if I simply send someone else to ask?

Making matters worse, most of us purposely avoid meaningful conversation with all but our closest friends and family. When we do get together, we may be more comfortable saying what is expected or “politically correct” than what we really believe. Self-revelation comes hard to most people; those who confess their innermost secrets on afternoon talk shows are the exception, not the rule.

The reasons we don’t like to expose ourselves could fill a book, but undoubtedly the edgy, distrustful tenor of urban life is among them. From childhood on, those of us who live in or near big cities are urged to be wary of strangers; the concept is reinforced nightly on the local news. We urbanites often return from a visit to a small town marveling at how we were treated. Instead of the averted gazes we’ve grown accustomed to, we’re met with a friendly “Hello, how are you?” from people who really seem to mean it! That level of spontaneous, trusting communication is hard to come by in the cities where most Americans live.

Most of us did not grow up in a community where our high school classmates became our dentists, our barbers, and our children’s schoolteachers. Sure, we have friends and families, but the majority of people we see each day are strangers and therefore suspect. Because we fear them, we often avoid contact, and as a result we don’t use our social skills as often as we could. Our people-reading muscles have atrophied from lack of exercise.

Making Contact
If you want to become a better people-reader, you must make a conscious effort to engage other people. Even the most entrenched Internet junkie can learn the true meaning of “chat” if the desire is there, but you have to get off the couch and make it happen. Work those atrophied muscles, even if it makes you feel inconvenienced, awkward, or vulnerable.

To practice and develop your people skills, start by becoming aware of how and when you make personal contact. For the next week, each time you have the opportunity to communicate with someone, enhance the quality of that communication by moving up at least one rung on the contact ladder:

1.Face-to-face meeting
2.Telephone call
3.Letter/fax/e-mail/answering machine
4.Delegation

Instead of asking someone else to set up an appointment for you, contact the person yourself by letter, fax, or e-mail. Instead of text messaging on your BlackBerry or e-mailing your cross-country friend, call, even if the conversation has to be brief. Instead of phoning your neighbor to discuss the school fund-raiser, knock on her door and talk to her in person. Step by step, you’ll become more comfortable with the increased contact.

Try to improve the quality of your communication, too, by making a conscious effort to reveal something of yourself. It doesn’t have to be an intimate secret—in fact, many people will be turned off if you inappropriately reveal confidences. But you can share a like or dislike, a favorite restaurant, book, or movie. And ask something about the other person—where she bought a piece of jewelry, or whether he saw the ball game last night. Warm them up, and the conversation will start rolling.

After a few weeks, you’ll become more adept at these social skills. Test yourself on the person checking your groceries, the receptionist in your doctor’s office, the mail carrier, the next customer who walks into the shop. Connecting doesn’t have to mean a ten-minute discussion. It can mean simply looking someone in the eye, smiling, and commenting on the weather. These brief sparks of contac...

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375501460
• ISBN 13: 9780375501463
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 281