I had a delightful conversation with Henrik Fexeus, author of the acclaimed book,The Art of Reading Minds, which is now available in English.
I confess to some trepidation prior to the interview -- this guy sounded like the real world equivalent of Patrick Jane. But I had the Atlantic Ocean as a buffer zone, so it seemed safe enough. And we had a great conversation for about 50 minutes, which has been edited down in the video below.
I was interested in the book in the first place because it has a lot of information on building rapport and on understanding the body language of others. These are skills that are useful to anyone, but critical in the work of the qualitative researcher or facilitator -- if I can't build rapport, and pretty quickly, the research will be seriously compromised.
A few of the things Henrik told me about, and where to find them on the video:
:50 Why he became interested in this area, and I think the answer will surprise you, but make sense, as it did for me.
2:18 How our beliefs about the separation of mind and body (the concept of duality that originated with Descartes) have held us back from a better understanding of how we really communicate.
4:45 Henrik says he is not naturally gifted in this area, and had to learn this ability as well.
6:50 The secret not in the book.
8:20 The topic that readers give him the most positive feedback on. (Which gave me hope for humanity, actually).
10:10 Leakage. The emotional kind.
13:50 Anchoring. The emotional kind.
16:50 Now that you know what anchoring is, a good way to use it in day to day life.
17:45 Why he wrote the book.
19:00 People that are naturally good at this, and the professionals that they migrate to. (Can you guess?)
I've been way too busy for months, but have a bit more free time these days, and lots to talk about. Upcoming soon: a report on the fantastic speakers at Innovation Day at CPSI 2012, and what happened at Dell's Customer ThinkTank.