With many businesses coming out in nearly the same industries, it’s difficult to stand out without embracing the trends no matter how unconventional they seem. This is where Scott Hamilton and Terry Earthwind Nichols come in.
Scott Hamilton is President & CEO of the Executive Next Practices Institute and the Managing Director of NextWORKS. In this episode, he talks about how ENPI began and what they do. He discusses the emerging trends and the three big challenges in organizations today and how to keep up with them. Scott believes that collective IQ can go a long way towards success and urges organizations to tap into that.
Terry Earthwind Nichols is the Father of Repetitive Behavior Cellular Regression™ (RBCR). As a retired US Navy Profiler, Terry figured out how to disconnect the conscious and subconscious synchronization. Here, Terry talks about how he loved to people-watch which eventually led him to form his current practice. He then introduces his book, Profiling For Profit, and discusses what it means and how it can be useful to sales, especially its applications in business.
I’m so glad you joined us because we have Scott Hamilton and Terry Earthwind Nichols. Scott is the CEO at ENP Institute and NextWORKS‘ Chair. He’s a DisruptHR specialist, keynote speaker, super connected, interesting guy. I’m looking forward to chatting with him. I’ve done some speaking and other engagements with him. Terry Earthwind Nichols is a vision strategist, author, speaker, profiling expert, and he’s the father of repetitive behavioral cellular regression. I love anything to do with behavioral treatments and understanding of how we behave. I’m very excited to talk to Terry.
Listen to the podcast here
Emerging Trends And Organizational Challenges With Scott Hamilton
I am here with Scott Hamilton, who is the President and CEO at Executive Next Practices Institute. He’s the Chair at NextWORKS, DisruptHR in Orange County as well as the renowned keynote speaker on innovation strategy and entrepreneurship. It’s so nice to have you here, Scott.
It’s great to be here, Diane. Terrific to be speaking with you.
I’m looking forward to this. In full disclosure, Scott is not related to me but we did see by each other at an event which was a family life, which was a lot of fun. We went to a Forbes event and I got to see some interesting speakers. A lot of them are speakers who speak for you sometimes. There are lots of things you do with your organizations that I mentioned. It’s going to be fascinating to get a little backstory on how you got to this level because when I first met you at SHRM, everybody there seemed to know who you were. Why don’t you tell me how you got into this ENP Institute and all the things that you’re doing?
To give you some of the histories. We’ve got two entities. One is called NextWORKS Strategy. If you think a McKinsey type firm dealing with the metal to large-cap market, we help organizations with their innovation, with their strategy and with their internal and external alignment. Out of NextWORKS Strategy, our clients started asking for us to create a venue, a forum where they could look at issues and emerging trends across all industry sectors, number one. Secondly, across all C-Suite functions. That led to the creation several years ago of the Executive Next Practice Institute known as ENP. You can also safely substitute the word entrepreneurship or enterprise to that. In other words, Enterprise Next Practices. For several years across 400 plus forums, Diane, we’ve been looking at what’s coming next. We tend to present issues that are one step ahead of the audience. We feature top thought leaders, speakers and C-Suite leaders who bring us their best to talk about what’s coming next and also engage our audience in a collaboration. That’s how it began. It came from the desires of these global CEOs to mix it up a bit.
You have some fascinating speakers at your event and thank you for inviting me to speak. I’m looking forward to sharing the stage with Steve Forbes because he and I have done a lot of things together. What’s interesting about your events that some of the talks are as short as ten minutes. I love that because I always like to get bits and pieces of content, but I don’t see a lot of that out there. What led to that interest?
Everybody loves the TEDx Talk format because it’s concise and insightful. The only spin to it is that we have migrated to 8 to 12-minute talks where the speaker gives us the best of their best. The difference is we involve the audience, over half of our meetings, our direct collaboration between the audience and the speaker to develop what we call next practices for their organization. Rather than talking heads, we get these audiences collaborating, sharing ideas across to their sectors, and coming up with things or potentially relevant and practical that they can take back with them.
You don’t do this in San Diego, where you are. You did one here in Phoenix. You have a lot of different events. You talk about the next practices and emerging trends. What are some of these emerging trends that are hearing a lot of?
In any sector, any arena, any function, something is changing. Certainly, the overarching issue and impact that are occurring is the digitization of the organization. You’ll look at virtually anything we do. We’re going digital. It’s been done faster, better, and cheaper. That’s a constant drive to get better. For that reason, we look at digital transformation. We look at aspects of cybersecurity. We look at FinTech. We look at customer-centricity. We look at Artificial Intelligence impacts on different industries. We have a Healthcare Summit coming up where we’re looking at AI and blockchain’s impact on healthcare.
I worked for AstraZeneca for twenty years. Fifteen of them in healthcare. It’s fascinating to me to see how behind that the doctors in the medical field were in technology. It seems like some of them were still using DOS a couple of years ago. Why is that?
The overarching issue and impact occurring today in any sector is the digitization of the organization. Click To TweetA lot of the institutions, the doctors often you’ll see them using their phone to look up information because their existing systems don’t have the access. It’s an amazing workaround when you think about it. You think about hospital institutions and academic institutions where they’re based. They can’t move as quickly in their IT arena as, for example, private industry can. They’re falling further and further behind, plus you look at the investment required to keep up the IT infrastructure. A lot of times, they are falling 2, 3, 5 years behind.
You’re talking about IT investment is a big challenge. Is that one of the big three you mentioned? There are three big challenges for innovation. What are the biggest challenges at the enterprise level for leaders?
In general, the speed of the marketplace is always continued to be a challenge and it’s going to continue to accelerate. The idea of being able to be nimble in your marketplace is a big challenge. Secondly, how do you keep people aligned and focused in that kind of environment? Alignment has always been an issue. Now, it’s even much more critical. The third big one is innovation itself. How do you create a culture of innovation across your organization that engages people either from an incremental level to a potential breakthrough?
That ties in so much to what I researched with curiosity because it all kept coming back to curiosity when I was looking at some of the issues that they’re facing in terms of innovation, engagement, motivation, and drive. What are they doing in organizations when you’re talking to these C-Suite individuals to instill curiosity within the organizations? I’m working with Novartis, Verizon and some of the bigger names out there. They’ve all talked to me and they’re trying to make curiosity be a big part of their organization. What are you seeing other companies do?
It’s a full gamut, Diane. Anywhere from the very low-tech bag lunches where you bring in a guest speaker from outside your industry all the way to full-on web-based learning where employees are encouraged and given the time to look at external content in terms of not only what’s being innovated but how to go about innovating. It’s all across the board and it’s all effective in one way or another. It depends on the budget, appetite, and time the organization has to deliver it.
There’s so much that you can do to try and team up with other groups to try and educate people. You partnered with the Global Chamber here in Arizona. You’re partnering with Forbes School of Business in California. The more you can bring in outside perspectives and groups together, you can connect with so many leaders. How are you getting the attention of leaders to your group so that they know that you’re offering this and let them know that this isn’t a sales pitch, this is a learning experience?
This is what makes our model so unique. They are agnostic forums. We’re not pitching a particular product or idea or service. We’re creating a safe haven where a CEO can come in and not worry about being pitched on or challenged but come into a legitimate educational environment where they are talking to their peers. They’re talking to people that can potentially bring value to them via their connection. The topics could have one step ahead of the audience. We can see what’s on the internet, but what are we not seeing? What is coming up?
What’s an emerging trend that truly has traction we need to be paying attention to? Let me give you a quick example. We were looking at blockchain. We featured blockchain several years ago. Out of the audience of roughly 200 people, we had two people raise their hands that knew what blockchain was. We had a top expert that was in the blockchain. At that point, they were starting to talk about different aspects. That’s what we try to do is saying, “What is something that’s coming up in the ecosystem that we need to pay attention to that legitimately can impact us as we move forward?”
There are a lot of things that I researched that I’m thinking should be what people are talking about that seems common sense. When I talk about it, it seems like, “Now, this is a hot topic.” I remember when I wrote my dissertation on emotional intelligence many years ago thinking, “That’ll pass,” and here it is, still huge. How do you know something that’s going to be a huge thing or something that’s going to be a passing thing?
There’s a great book out called Seeing Around Corners. In it, we talk about the pivot points within the industries, when and how to recognize a pivot point. You look at the external signs. You look at the signals from the early adopters. You look at where it’s being used, what the potential uses are and see if a trend is going to take root. For example, in the early days of the Cloud, there was a lot of resistance from security experts and internal IT people. It wasn’t until you had some major players start to adopt and move it forward that you had some legitimacy and you started to see a movement. It’s the same thing with blockchain. We see the larger players embraced it over the past 2 to 3 years, making it real, making it beyond Bitcoin. Blockchain is not Bitcoin. Those are two separate topics. It’s where you start to see proving out as a viable proposition and can be escalated across not one sector but multiple sectors.
It’s interesting to look at blockchain and I’ve had some experts on the show. I was talking to several people about this because it’s a way to keep track of things even in education space, transferring what you’ve learned here to what you’ve learned there and kept track. It’s fascinating to get into all the technology aspects. Susan Sly spoke at your last event and she’s talked about a lot of things that are high tech things, but they deal with a lot of the edge in terms of the Cloud computing type of things. Do you get that high tech or is it lower level fringe stuff?
For example, when we’re looking at AI and blockchain implications for healthcare, we’re doing a deep dive with some of the top experts. Dr. Anthony Chang at the CHOC Hospitals in Orange County, California, who is an expert in the impacts there, both from a provider standpoint as well as from a patient standpoint. We attempt to do a deep dive and also, we look at these issues from a 360 perspective. It’s not just one angle but all the potential implications to it. What other facets of this I want to mention? When we talk about how do you know a pivot point is, how do you know you’re at an inflection point? We take people through an exercise a lot of times about what the implications are first order and second order of change. Going back several years ago, you had Joel Barker and his Implications Wheel. We do something similar to that where we’re saying, “This is happening in the marketplace. What are the implications for your industry and take that out several steps so that you see is it going to have traction or what are the potential other value propositions that are falling out?”
That’s tough because I’ve taught a lot of foresight courses where you teach students to be proactive. To think too far ahead, you don’t know what’s going to be invented yet. When you’re in education space and you’re preparing people and the job not even exist yet, that’s very challenging. Do you find a lot of frustration from leaders in that respect?
You have to allow them to look at multiple options and then tapping the collective intelligence of their leadership team and the rest of the organization says, “Which of these paths are most likely to happen?” You may start to go down the wrong path but also this is the other place where the ability to pivot comes into play. You may get down halfway down to a particular path and discovery. You’ve got to make a change. You either got to go a different direction or slightly change your direction. I use the case of the Instagram application. When it was incubated, they were three months into it and the team realized that they were going the wrong direction. They pivoted and that led to their success and ultimate sale. It’s having that ability to take the risk but also make the tough decision and move and change when you need to.
It’s very tough for people sometimes to realize that they’re doing status quo thinking too. It’s easy to imitate the competition. Everybody else has done it this way. You think within your cubicle, within your group, within your silo, but to get outside of your industry can be huge. You’re getting people in all kinds of industries here.
By design, we want them to come from different industries because your next competitor may not come from your existing industry. They haven’t been locked in by your domain thinking. They’re looking at it from a whole fresh perspective. This collision of different perspectives often leads to a better idea. There’s a great book out, where you combine those two completely different, sometimes polar opposite ideas to come up with something new. That’s what we’re trying to do.
You’re looking at collective IQ too. I’m curious about that. What is it and how do you uncover it?
Collective IQ exists in every organization, whether it’s two people or 200,000. It’s the ability to tap it. We use a number that comes from a lot of different sources, but the aggregate number is this. In most organizations, only about 6% of their collective intelligence has been being tapped. That means that’s 94% opportunity organizations have. What do I mean by that? The collective IQ says that if you give people the right framework, guidelines, vision, and inspiration, they can come up with ideas far better than any known expert. It’s been proven time and again. The trick is being able to give people a shared vision and purpose number one. Give them the tools and techniques to come up with ideas, how they ideate that an idea is important. It’s what and how they get there. Once you do that, then you’ve got your organization all aligned around how we can look at new things whether they’d be an incremental idea all the way up to a breakthrough idea.
If you give people the right framework, guidelines, vision, and inspiration, they can come up with ideas far better than any known expert. Click To TweetWhen you talk about IDA, would you give an example?
The famous one by accident was the 3M sticky. There were two accidents. Accident one was the sticky on the sticky itself was not a good adhesive. The second accident was they thought they would apply that to an entire board and have people put the paper on the board and then they reversed it. They put the adhesive on the paper. Two mistakes led to success. The idea here is that if you give people some of the techniques of how to look at the world and how they might come up with new ideas, then you’re more likely to get the ideation that you’re looking for across the organization. In other words, give them the context to your organization. What’s your purpose as an organization? Give them clear direction there and then some of the tools and techniques for how they look at the world and come up with new ideas. Typically, that’s giving them free rein to come up with the wildest ideas they can and then start to cool down to something practical and usable.
When you said the wildest idea, it makes me think of the research out there that leaders think that they’re letting people give great ideas that they’re encouraging curiosity. Less than half of the people out there say they’re leaders do. People are afraid to give ideas. Are you finding that that’s problematic?
The larger the organization generally, the larger they get, the more risk-averse they get. The more myopic the internal culture becomes, it tends to squelch innovation, ideas and then the covert aspect to your culture becomes, “Don’t try new ideas because it would get shot down.” There’ll be a lot of stories, both public and private, within an organization of people who tried and failed. We brought up a new idea and who was shut down. That cohort aspect of your culture often will stand in a way of this idea of collective IQ. You’ve got to look for that, deal with it, and deal with it on a daily basis. That’s what we’re finding in the larger organizations. That’s why you find groups of two to three people will take off with their idea and create a start-up outside the organization. Why couldn’t it have done that within? They certainly could have done it.
I’m thinking the people who would come to your events embrace the need for innovation and curious culture. That’s why they’re there, but the people who need to be there aren’t because culture comes from above. How does a CEO recognize that they’re the one that’s causing this problem, that people aren’t feeling safe?
The CEO often or some of the members of the executive team is often the one that stands in the way. We’ve had leaders of innovation to be the ones standing away because it was their way or the highway in terms of how they did innovation. It could be any individual in that leadership suite. In attracting people to come into our environment, we’re going to have them come in. In these meetings, no one is singled out but they are learning from each other. As they hear when something remarkable happens, when they start hearing from their fellow CEOs talk about these issues, whether it be CSR, sustainability, cybersecurity, inclusion, and diversity, when they start hearing their peers talk about it then it’s done in a way that they can embrace and realize and reflect on so that they can make changes in their behavior. No one likes to be coached. No one likes to be called out for doing something wrong. We try to create an environment where they’re learning from each other but also learning techniques that are relevant and practical. It’s not theory. It’s not hypotheticals. We’re talking about real-life examples.
You mentioned cybersecurity. I’m curious, what are the biggest challenges and opportunities that everybody’s saying they’re worried about for 2020?
The privacy side and the data side both are equally an enormous issue. From a regulatory standpoint, they’re starting to deal with the privacy side. We’ve got CCPA that came into effect here in California, which is even more rigorous tests above GDPR globally. Both the data and the privacy side are of huge impacts as we move forward.
In California, they also have the Women on Boards discussion of how they want a certain percentage by 2020. Do you find there’s a lot of discussion about boards and women at this level or is that something completely on a different level?
They’re on a different trend too. We can hold two types of women summits. One is in Women’s Leadership Excellence. We have that one coming up in February with the UCI Mirage School of Business that’s February 28th in Orange County. We also partner with Betsy Credaire, who runs Women on Boards 2020 that has done a phenomenal job both at the legislative level. She was instrumental in getting SBA26 passed in California, mandating women on boards. They are working toward helping women and not just gender but ethnicity to populate boards and improve board performance. They’ve been able to show both from a standpoint of not only representation but overall board effectiveness, the fact that a more diverse board is a more effective board. This will continue to be a drive. This is what I like about working with Betsy Credaire. She put numbers to it. She can show what the results are, not only how the numbers are changing in terms of representation, but the outcome results. You’ll see that from us as well.
I hear a lot more about culture playing a role in the diversity of boards and not focusing on finance. If everybody is a finance expert, that’s great. The issues with personnel sales marketing, a lot of the other issues aren’t getting covered. Do you see more diversity in that respect as well?
The two issues have been digital directors. We’ve looked at that element as well. About 6% of boards have a “digital director.” That’s a gap. We’ve talked about cybersecurity. Less than 20% of boards have someone that’s denoted as a cyber-expert. Those are two deficiencies there that are being looked at. Calling for people that have that expertise that you come aboard. You get to see it’s a generational thing. You can see how that’s happening. As the economy becomes more digitized and moving faster, a lot of the boards are still populated by people who’ve been around for a while that haven’t been exposed to this digital technology. It’s natural that the boards would start to fall behind.
These are all important discussions and you do some great work with what you’re doing. You partner with UC Pepperdine. I’m thinking of you here with Arizona State University Research Park and the Global Chamber. The reach you have is impressive and I’m sure a lot of people want to know how they could find out more. You’ve got some events coming up. I mentioned at Steve Forbes we’ll be speaking, Rich Karlgaard, Roger Love. You’ve got some top names and they’ve all been guests on my show. I’m looking forward to these events and a lot of people might want to find out more. How can they reach you?
There’s a couple of simple ways of using technology. If you go to Google punch in the term ENP Institute or punch in Executive Next Practices, our website will turn up. You’ll see on the list there the multiple forums we have coming up, the workshops, the way to connect with us. It is something of a movement. These are national. We’ll be in New York. We’re coming back to Phoenix. We’ll be in international locations like Panama and in Paris as we are coming up in late 2020 and 2021. We’d love to have people join us. We have both a membership and they can come in on a case by case basis.
Scott, thank you so much for being my guest. This was so much fun.
Same here, Diane. Great talking with you.
Understanding The Art Of Observation With Terry Earthwind Nichols
I am here with Terry Earthwind Nichols who is the author of Profiling For Profit: What Crossed Arms Don’t Tell You…: Mastering the Art of Observation. Terry is the Chairman of Evolutionary Healer, a global transformational performance improvement company. When he’s not training sales teams on the art of observation, he can be found doing in training interviews, planning his next vacation or having dinners in his favorite restaurants in a suit that he designed himself. It’s so nice to have you heard, Terry.
Collision of different perspectives often leads to a better idea. Click To TweetThank you, Diane. I’m glad to be here. This is exciting.
You have quite an interesting background. I wanted to get a little bit more about that before I go into your book and what you’re doing. Can you give me the highlights?
I grew up in the Rocky Mountains, and little or no opportunity to move forward after college, if I graduated from high school, which I did. That was a very special thing for me. I always wanted to be a sailor. Guess what I did? I joined the Navy and I stayed there for twenty years. I saw two-thirds of the world and enjoyed it to the maximum. I walked out and started looking at who is Terry? Where is he and what is he going to do? I was a vagabond for another 25 years doing different kinds of jobs and career fields trying to find myself. I have been a lifelong people watcher. I love doing that. When I was in Europe, sidewalk cafes are the thing. I would get off my ship and go on Liberty and take in every tour I could.
When I had some downtime, I’d be at a sidewalk cafe watching people. I love my cappuccinos. I didn’t know at that time that the interest was served me very well later on in life. About several years ago, I created a question and answer sequence that when used online in a specific way, helps people find a lost memory in early childhood that causes them to have repeat behaviors in life as adults. It was an amazing discovery over the last several years. It’s on five continents in thirteen countries, 26 US States and in seven languages. We’re wide operation although we’re not too tall. My gig is talking about it and training people. I’m loving that. In that journey, we do everything online. Zoom and Skype is a big deal for us.
Watching how they move their head and they did different things when they were talking about something that was emotional and intent to their body, it was an emotional response but they were completely calm and out of emotion. I started watching that in a little more detail and found that that was an excellent way for us to find this lost memory because the body would help us do that. About several years ago, I started putting pen to paper and jot down my notes to teach my new people what I had observed. A few months ago, my book coach, business partner, and wife said, “It’s time for the book. Get the book out.” I said, “Let’s do this.” Profiling for Profit: What Crossed Arms Don’t tell You was born. Let me tell you a little bit about the title itself, Profiling for Profit. It’s a business tool. It’s about using it in the sales conversation initially. What I have found sending it out to get reviews, it had across the business application. How to read a boardroom as you’re presenting them, those things.
Like your code work, I found that we’re conditioned to do different things and when we cross our arms, we learned that from our parents being mad at us. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re not ready to buy something. It simply means that the crossed arms helped us think about it. There are other reasons for the crossed arms. In my book, for instance, I sold my first $2,000 clothing sales for a new suit to a guy who was standing in front of me. I had a great story about it in the book who had his arms crossed. That’s how that all evolved and came about. I still have ties to Hong Kong and Singapore. I still have those tailors make my shirts and suits.
I designed my suits. I’ve never been somebody who acknowledges a box inside or outside. There is no box. That’s a limiter. As a matter of fact, in Asheville, North Carolina is the famous Biltmore Estate. That’s a favorite place for my wife and I to go and hang out. The Inn on Biltmore is exceptional and so as the food. We’d go there and eat quite a lot. We went out there and shot a photoshoot. We also had a few photos of me taken on my last trip, which also happened to have my suit on. We’re going to be doing some promos about the book around that since that came up.
Everything you said was fascinating to my work because I deal with behaviors so much. It’s been fortunate to interview Paul Ekman about our expressions and things that we could read from your face who was behind the TV show Lie to Me and his research is what they use for that. What you talk about is very interesting to a lot of people. You talked about examples of lost memories. I’m interested in that. What kind of lost memories are you in?
What we have found is a young child has either witnessed or been involved in some manner and an event vamped is of high emotional value. They have no language skills. They can’t go tell, “Mom, I saw this or this happened to me.” As you know, amnesia is a protection device. If they’re struggling with this over a matter of time, a few days, the amnesia response takes over so that the person can stop thinking about it. Later on in life, as they age 47 years old, we start to mature enough to where we can make decisions to stop repetitive thoughts and those things. What happens if something else is controlling that ability? Two things immediately happen. You don’t know that you can turn them off and you don’t know where the on-off switch is. Later on, when they witness other emotional events. I’ve had a client come to me with complex PTSD that started around witnessing a dog getting run over by a car. It can be anything. It can be personal attacks as well. What happens is this deflection device that works with the amnesia starts getting us to think about that other thing over and over again. We don’t have that ability to turn it off.
It’s like Christmas tree lights. They’re beautiful and you want to turn them off, but you can’t find where they’re plugged in. You keep looking because it’s hidden. We help them find that lost memory using the five senses as descriptors as opposed to talking about the story of memories. When that happens, they’re suddenly in a memory that happened to them in early childhood. It is as vivid as if it happened two minutes ago. The key to this is the fact that the person can see the person responsible for the event and can then do an out loud verbalization to that person about anything they want to say to that person to get rid of all of that anger, stress, and being afraid all those years and anything else that’s associated with it. The Christmas tree lights unplugged. They turn off. You can still turn them on whenever you want, but you can also turn them off whenever you want. That’s the key.
Have you done this in court?
No.
It seems like a logical step if somebody is having repressed memories. Maybe somebody reading will ask you that.
Do you know Dr. Mark Goulston?
Yes, I do hear him.
He’s a psychologist. His biggie was the famous OJ Simpson trial. He interviewed me and we talked about how I started on this path. He also said that there are some applications to that. I have clients from all over, in very diverse backgrounds and careers. One of them called me and she consults with companies and their leadership. She said, “There are 3 or 4 people on this board here that I’m talking to that in one manner or another have shown or talked about triggering like flight anxiety and those things. Can you help us out?” I said, “If we work with it from a behavior approach instead of a disorder or a disease, then yes, we can. Here’s the key though. They have to be 100% on doing this because we take them through this question and answer sequence for three hours. They do a unique email type journaling for one week.”
We talk about the journal and then fifteen days after, somewhere in there, the mind and the body starting to think, Diane, you’ve been having fun. We’re really glad for you, but that’s not normal for you. You vibrate a little bit differently all your life. Let’s create a new event in your memory where you can get back to these old feelings. If the person is staying present with that, and when those types of thoughts return, they can turn them off. We teach them how to do that with a self-repatterning tool. It takes 21 to 30 days to set a new pattern in the brain. That’s why the process takes 30 days.
Mark is an amazing guy and deals with listening and his book Get Out of Your Own Way was such a huge thing. I do want to give him props because he is an amazing guy. I loved his TED Talk too. As you’re talking about this, I’m thinking of your book and some of the stuff that you’ve discovered. I was fascinated with the left side of the body and what it represents. Can you talk a little bit about that?
No one likes to be coached or to be called out for doing something wrong. Click To TweetHere’s a great example. The baby is crying. Mom picks up the baby. Where did she put that baby? On her left side over her heart. If my daughter was crying, I do the same thing. If I pick up a baby unless there’s a reason for some way that I would put the head on the right side, I wouldn’t. It would be on the left. What I have found over time and there are people watching. If you take a centerline down the mid vertical of the body, the left side is all about love, trust, and family. All of those types of things are associated with left-side movement. The right side of the body, in my book, is a great example, back in when you were recruited into the Roman legions if you were left-handed, too bad.
You became right-handed because all of the legions had to have their weapons in the right hand and their shields in the left. There was a reason for that. They didn’t want somebody cutting up a fellow soldier when they’re attacking. Here’s the key to that. Natural deflection or fight-flight has the left raising their arm and moving away from somebody to the right side. That’s distrust, dishonesty, fear, all of that is associated with that right side of the body and it’s consistent. The person in the book that I told you I had to crossed arms, I sold them a $2,000 suit. It was funny. I was in the middle of a presentation to him.
We’d already figured out that the cloth, if he wanted to buy it, I stopped for a second and didn’t anything. I looked at him and said, “How do you want to pay for that?” He says, “Credit card.” I said, “Sit down, let’s take your deposit and let’s get that started.” A couple of minutes later, the guy goes, “I had my arms crossed. I am a very accomplished salesman. I make multi-million dollar sales all over the United States. How did you know with me standing there and my arms crossed I was ready by this suit?” I said, “It was very easy. Your head was left and both of your feet were turned parallel to me. You were fully open and present with me. When you tilted your head to the left, you started trusting me, you were ready to buy.”
He said, “I’ll be darn.” That’s a good example of it. It’s in the book and it’s a great read. That’s how the left and the right works and fight, flight and freeze. One of the two feet will move slightly back from the other. That’s the takeoff foot if they were to run. You pay attention to that. If the feet are parallel when you’re talking to them, then there’s trust. They’re not in any reason to move or go anywhere as opposed to if one of them slides slightly forward. They’re thinking of a way to get away from you or stop the conversation.
Is this based on what you’ve learned from what you were doing online and all that or is there a resource that you’re tying into?
Not per se research. I learned this from watching people. When I would see two people arguing and both standing, both of their feet would shuffle into fight-flight. It was the right foot would move back if they were to assault, they would use the right hand. On occasion, I’ve seen people assault each other being a saver on the docks you see such things. I would watch somebody slide their right foot back and put it in a flat position and then all of a sudden, they would pull the swing and make the punch. I equated that from those observations.
Is it different based on cultures at all?
Not that I have observed.
I find people watching fascinating. A lot of people are not for sales or boardrooms and other applications. What other applications that people are contacting you that says, “This is great. I’ve used it for this or that.”
When I’m on stage and when I give a speech or a keynote, I watch the audience to watch their response. Is everybody paying more attention to their iPhones than they are to me? Are they looking around? Are they focused on me? Their faces show anxiety. Is that good anxiety or bad anxiety? Are they smiling? Are their heads tilted or turn to the left as they listened to me? I also look for people who show fear on their faces. If I’m getting too close to them in my speech, I’ll adjust my presentation to calm them down. I don’t want anybody afraid in the audience, but I want them fully aware that there is something back that’s causing you that fear. What I do stops that, we find it and stop it.
It’s so interesting to look at what people are doing. Sometimes you look at the iPhones and you think, “They’re texting or doing something else.” A lot of them are taking videos of you. It’s hard to tell what people are doing. Some of them are taking notes. They could be completely engaged. How do you know? Sometimes it’s tough, isn’t it?
Yes. You can’t know everything that they’re doing, but if you watch their facial expressions. One of the people who read the book is Naomi Tickle. She’s a personology. She reads faces. My conversations with her and her interview for one of my wife’s summits was very interesting about how people can give you the poker face. If you watch that poker face, the eyes will show fear, a person at the lips. There are different things that they can show that they’re afraid or there’s fear present. In my presentations, I don’t want to make anybody afraid, but you can watch their eyes widen up when I hit key points that resonate with them. First, you have to be a client. You have to go through the process because there’s no better textbook in the world for you to be a practitioner than your own story.
When they go through the process, they want to learn it. A very few come to me saying, “I want to be one of these practitioners.” “That’s great. Be a client first because there is a process.” When we’re teaching this, they can equate back and put in their mind’s eye what they were present with when they were going through the process. A lot of times, you’ll see their face like, “That is cool.” Once in a while, I have five of them so far and look to have a lot more, people who are not only good practitioners but they show teaching skills or they have experience in teaching. I will take them to the next level and make them a master. That way, I have more people out there who can teach people to become practitioners.
I do a similar thing with the curiosity training that I do. You can’t be everywhere and we want to make sure everybody could go around to share the skills you know. How long does it take to go through your training?
The training is one and a half-hour online. We do them in Zoom. It works well for us. When I reach out to a prospect or somebody on LinkedIn, I want to connect with like you. That’s how I reached out with the opportunity for a Zoom call because it’s more personal. We can talk personally and being a profiler, I can watch them. When somebody is on Zoom and they’re physically removed from the practitioner, it’s easier for them to remain present. Close your eyes, so they don’t look around the room and think, “I forgot to put that away before you start doing the stories.” If you keep somebody with their eyes closed and when you take them to memory, you have them freeze-frame that memory into a photograph. Here’s the key. No emotion equals no emotion. I can keep somebody in full suicide ideation, completely calm for three and a half to four hours and find what’s driving that and stop it.
The same thing holds well with the fact of being geographically physically separated, even if it’s in another room. When we first started out working with these several years ago full-time, we found that we had to do the CR process more than one time. I couldn’t figure out why because we got to think. All of a sudden, we had to go get another one. It dawned on me when a person from Germany, she lives in the United States. In Germany, she wants to go through the process. Physical is not happening. In those days we use Skype. We got on Skype and went through the process and it was a success. I noticed that the person was able to stay physically. You could see that she was focused on everything that I said as opposed to the person who was sitting across from me in the room.
You can see all this to some extent through Zoom and Skype and different formats, but you can’t see their feet. How much are you missing virtually?
Nothing. I’m glad you asked. When the CR session begins, we have them sit upright in a chair, not an office chair. We don’t want them twisting, turning or rocking. Even on a couch but comfortable. We have them put the camera on the floor in front of them. When we do that, we have them barefoot with their feet on the floor. We don’t tell them how to put their feet on the floor just have them on the floor because all of it we’re observing. We have them close their eyes and tell us about something that is upsetting to them. That is not associated with anything they’re dealing with like the treatment of animals, anything like that where they show emotion.
There's no better textbook in the world for you to be a practitioner than your own story. Click To TweetWhen we’re children, we’re babies, everything our toes are doing, and our fingers are doing. When we put shoes on that, there’s some separation there but the ambiguity remains. Here’s what we found. When a person’s feet are down, they’re disconnected because they’re not watching. When they’re upset or talking about something that has emotion involved, their toes do certain things, the feet twist, they go into fight-flight. They roll to the left or right, all of that means something. Some of the physiologists that I’ve talked to over the years think this is fascinating. What I’ve found in it and it’s been true for 35 or 36 straight CR sessions.
If I was to look at the person’s toes from a perspective of myself as a father, looking at my daughter’s toes when she was a kid, how old would those toes be if I were looking at them? Here’s what I discovered. One time I had a client who’s 47 years old, fully developed, full-grown woman and she had baby toes. They were straight and like a little baby. I made a mental note that like, “Those are baby toes. That’s interesting.” When we found the block, I noticed the toes were to be about 4 to 6 months old on my daughter, if I was looking at my kid. That’s where we found the block. I go, “That’s interesting. I’ll put that in the back of my mind and see where it goes.”
I did it again. I estimated when I was watching the lower body’s stressors. After we’re done talking for a couple of minutes observing, we put the camera up so that we can see approximately waist to the top of the hip. We make notes on the development of the toes because the block or this amnesiac event has something to do with the development of those toes or coincides. Ever since then forever, every time that I estimate or even my practitioners, the first couple of times they did it and they were amazed as well, approximate the age of the person according to where the development of their toes is. We’re finding the block within three or four months of that proximation.
You cover a lot of this in the book so people could find out more about what the basics are before they go through training to know what you do as far as profiling in Profiling for Profit. If people want to find out more from you or maybe get your book or anything else. How they can reach you, Terry?
They can go to www.EvolutionaryHealer.com. I’m Chickamauga Cherokee and Earthwind is my tribal name. There are tens of thousands of Terry Nichols out there, but there’s only one Terry Earthwind Nichols. Google me and you’ll find my websites. You’ll find out everything about me. The YouTube channel has got 150 to 200 videos on it, which everything that you want to know. That’s the easiest thing to remember.
Terry, thank you so much. This has been so much fun.
Thank you, Diane. What a joy this has been to spend some time with you.
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I’d like to thank both Scott and Terry for being my guest. We get so many great guests on this show. If you’ve missed any past episodes, please go to DrDianeHamilton.com. I hope you enjoy this episode and I hope you join us for the next episode of Take The Lead Radio.
Important Links:
- ENP Institute
- NextWORKS
- DisruptHR
- Terry Earthwind Nichols
- Seeing Around Corners
- Implications Wheel
- Women on Boards 2020
- Profiling For Profit: What Crossed Arms Don’t Tell You…: Mastering the Art of Observation
- Evolutionary Healer
- Paul Ekman – past episode
- Dr. Mark Goulston
- Get Out of Your Own Way
- Naomi Tickle
- YouTube – Terry Earthwind Nichols
About Scott Hamilton
Scott Hamilton is the President and CEO at Executive Next Practices Institute and Chair at NextWORKS Disrupt HR in Orange County, as well as a renown Keynote Speaker on Innovation, Strategy, and Intrapreneurship. The ENP Institute, based at the University of California Irvine, UCI Beall Applied Innovation, is comprised of several thousand middle to large market enterprise C-suite leaders, top thought influencers and investors who meet to review emerging trends, transformative strategies, and innovation methods.
The ENP Forums (over 370 since 2008) are held in exclusive corporate and academic venues with 150 to 1000 pre-qualified C-suite and top functional area attendees per event.
About Terry Earthwind Nichols
Terry Earthwind Nichols is the author of “PROFILING FOR PROFIT What crossed arms don’t tell you…Mastering the Art of Observation.” Terry is the Chairman of Evolutionary Healer, a global transformational performance improvement company.
When he’s not training sales teams on the ‘art’ of observation, Terry can be found doing intriguing interviews, planning his next vacation, or having dinner at his favorite restaurant in a suit he designed himself.
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