"Bad liars talk a lot. Good liars talk a little. Because the more you talk, the more you run the risk of undermining your own lie." — Andrew Bustamante
Andrew Bustamante, on the episode
Andrew Bustamante spent seven years as a covert CIA intelligence officer after nearly a decade as a US Air Force nuclear missile officer. The pop framing of the CIA spy is James Bond, a lone operative running on instinct and nerve. The actual operating system is colder and more transferable: a set of repeatable psychological processes for reading motivation, building trust in stages, and moving people from their public face to the secrets they share with almost no one. Bustamante left the CIA in 2014, spent six months unemployed in his in-laws' converted garage, and then used that same operating system to grow his company EverydaySpy by 300 percent every year for three consecutive years. This protocol pulls the core tradecraft from his conversation with Steven Bartlett: how to detect lies, how to identify and speak to anyone's real motivations, how to move through someone's three lives, and how to use time, fear, and questioning as precision tools.
Tactic 01
Andrew Bustamante, The Diary of a CEO
Mirror Body Language Before Attempting Influence
The play
Match the other person's posture and hands before pushing your point further.
Andrew Bustamante says
Mirroring someone's hand position, foot position, and overall posture makes them subconsciously see themselves in you, and people trust themselves more than anyone else. Once that mirrored trust exists, you can start pushing the envelope with what you are trying to get across. This mirroring should happen before you try to advance an untruth or fabrication in conversation.
Try this
Before your next important conversation, subtly match the other person's posture, hands, and feet before making any request.
