Reading Tells
The Poker Skill that will Elevate Your Social IQ and Your Value to an Organization
Written by Marty Seldman, Ph.D.
“Show me your eyes and you may as well show me your cards”
- Doyle “Dolly” Brunson, Two Time World Poker Champ
“People will TELL you how to Sell Them”
- Tom Hopkins, Elite Sales Trainer
The Golden Rule, “Treat people the way you want to be treated.”
The Platinum Rule, “Treat people how they want to be treated.”
Poker can be viewed as a game of information played by people who are trying to not give away information and/or to disguise their intentions. If you know the odds, the value of position and have a reasonable amount of discipline you can be a small winner in most nonprofessional poker games. To excel at a higher level you would need to master “reading tells.”
A “tell” is any non-verbal behavior, choice of words, vocal cues, patterns, or deviation from a pattern that conveys useful information. In a typical two-hour poker session a pro will get up to 5-10 times as much information as an average player sitting at the same table. Over time this is an unsurmountable advantage.
I know some people probably take poker-business analogies too far but in my experience this ability to notice and interpret “tells” translates directly to your organizational effectiveness and career progression in two key ways.
1. Valuable Knowledge
People with a high social IQ are accurately “reading the room”. Participating in the same meeting with less attentive peers they will pick up 2 to 3 times as much information. Here are some of the things they will notice about the other participants and in particular, the leaders of a meeting.
- Interest Levels (what is boring people, what is exciting them?)
- Impatience
- Nervousness or Confidence
- Surprise/Hearing Something Unexpected
- Buying Signals
- Anger/Irritation
- Relative Power
- Personal/Hidden Agendas
- Wanting to Speak
- Political Behavior
- Taboos
- Tracking (are people with you? Are they confused?)
- Level of Commitment (“Lip Service” or genuinely “on board”)
There are probably some areas I’m leaving out but I hope it’s clear just from this list how picking up these signs and signals can serve you. High Social IQ helps:
- Collaboration/Relationship Building
- The Impact of Your Presentations
- Facilitating Participative Meetings
- Selling Your Ideas
- Navigating Power and Politics
- Achieving Change Management Goals
2. Avoiding “Career Limiting” Mistakes
In my coaching career I have encountered many examples of fairly high-level leaders who have hurt their careers because they missed “tells” that were obvious to others. Here are just a few common scenarios that in some cases cost someone a promotion and in instances cost them their job:
- Continuing to talk to an audience or a leader who is bored or impatient. The combination of falling in love with your presentation and low social IQ is costly. Because this person doesn’t notice their mistake they “prolong the agony” and may even do it again. This would cement a negative “buzz.”
- Not calibrating a message correctly. I remember a meeting with a very senior entertainment leader, her head of HR, and one of her division leaders. She delivered a very strong message to the division leader about moving in a certain direction. The HR leader and I actually had never seen her be this forceful, direct, and angry. But when we followed up with the division leader he felt she was only giving him a suggestion. He decided not to take the “suggestion”, went in a different direction and was fired 3 months later.
- Overestimating commitment. Many people in a public meeting will be polite, give “lip service” agreement to commit to a project but have no intention of taking any action. Although this was clear to others at the meeting, I have sometimes observed project leaders leaving the session saying, “I’m so glad everyone is on board.” Of course, later on they are confused when the project stalls or is blocked by “pocket vetoes.”
Raising Your Social IQ
Of course you are already reacting to “tells” in your personal and professional life. And YES, some people seem to already have excellent antennae for these cues and clues but we can all improve, because Reading “Tells” is a learnable skill. Here are some next steps. The types of information mentioned in the “Valuable Knowledge” section is what I would start focusing on and gathering.
Where to look for the “Tells”. (this is a condensed list for you to begin with. For a much deeper dive, go to “Customer Tells” an entire book devoted to this subject, by Marty Seldman, Optimum Press).
The Eyes: The eyes are so revealing that some professional poker players wear sunglasses at the table. If these trained pros are concerned about their eyes giving away information you can be assured that the average participant in your organization’s meetings is unaware of what their eyes are revealing. Some “tells”: Pupils get larger and smaller, eyes “glaze” over, people stare or avert your gaze, eyes show surprise.
The Face: People have devoted their entire lives to studying and recording facial expressions. So I can’t cover all the variations here. Go as deep as you want into learning about expressions, but at a minimum just start paying attention to the face. In particular, notice congruence or the lack of it; does the facial expression match the words?
Hands: Many poker players actually study hand movements and gestures more than the eyes and face. They reason that people may be disciplined enough to be “poker faced” but rarely pay attention to guarding their hand “tells.” You may observe: making a fist, picking at nails, drumming fingers, no movement, rubbing the jaw, fingers pointing throwing their hands up, talking with their hands.
Body Movement: Posture, distance, turning towards/away, jerking head or body, guarded vs open-facing, being “antsy” or still are some of the many body language “tells.”
The Voice: Unless you are dealing with experienced actors or trained intelligence officers, someone’s voice “tells” are very hard to disguise. Emotional changes immediately show up in our voice. The volume, the pace, the tone, fluid vs. hesitant can shift if we are nervous, uncomfortable, angry or excited about an idea.
Choice of Words: Of course we need to pay attention to the straightforward meaning of words used but also the “throwaways”, side comments and jokes. Freud pointed out that these expressions are actually more revealing about what people think or feel.
“I won’t hold my breath”
“Flavor of the month”
“Are you going to “charm school”?
“Of course we all know you have never been wrong”
Patterns and Changes from the Norm
If you do want to follow the Platinum Rule for some people in your life, noticing their patterns will guide you to how they want to be treated. For anyone important in your network it’s useful to observe what is normal behavior for them because deviations from that norm are often significant.
What do you do after you spot a “Tell”?
3 Options:
- Say What You See
- Quickly Adapt
- Learn for the Future
Say What You See: You are giving a presentation and you notice a “surprise” tell (a key person’s head jerks up, eyes look startled). So you now know they weren’t expecting this data or message, but you don’t know what was unexpected. It makes no sense at all to continue. It is useful to say, “Let me stop and check in with you. It looks like this might be different than what you were expecting. If so, let’s discuss.” This could also apply to something as simple as, “Looking at the body language, most of you could use a break now” or “Robin, it looked like you wanted to make a comment.”
Quickly Adapt: Sometimes it’s useful to use “tells” as a guidance mechanism and simply pivot without pointing out the “tells”. An example might be adjusting the pace (Speeding up or slowing down) of your presentation based on a variety of signals. If you notice that people are confused or not following you, you might say something like, “It’s pretty clear I have a lot of passion about this subject and given it a lot of thought. Most of you are hearing about it for the first time. I’m going to stop here to open it up to any questions or comments.”
Learn for the Future: About 20 years ago I got a phone call from Bill, an HR leader at my biggest client. He introduced himself, told me he was taking over from the previous HR VP (Mike) that I partnered with on coaching engagements. He said he had a new assignment for me. So we discussed the usual process and at the end I mentioned that Mike often welcomed me to talk to the coachee about future roles. Bill bristled, he raised his voice, and said, “No, that’s my job, not yours.” Definitely a loud “tell” but what were my options:
Say What You See – I don’t think it would have helped if I said, “OK Bill, it sounds like I really just ticked you off.”
Quickly Adapt – I couldn’t pivot or recover because the call was over. So here is a case for an opportunity to learn for the future. This is what I did and that 10 second Tell turned out to be one of the most valuable in my career. Bill revealed, and I later confirmed, that he had a strong sense of boundaries and preferred strict role definitions, with people “staying in their lane.” He went on to become the head of HR for this company. I managed work with him for many years and avoided additional mistakes. I even coached many people on his team who were grateful for the “heads up” about his expectations.
Skill Acquisition Tips
- “You are in the meeting anyway”- Most of you spend more than half your life in meetings, one on ones, and on phone calls, all good opportunities to practice reading tells.
- TV/Movies – Actors convey meaning and emotion through “tells.” Notice how they do it.
- A “Tells” buddy or mentor – See if you can find someone you trust who participates in some of the same meetings. After meetings set aside some time to compare notes and give each other feedback. A “tells” mentor who explains what they observe is even better.
- Reading – In addition to Customer Tells, there are many books with research on body language, reading people, etc.
The one place I am not going to recommend that you use to practice this skill is in a high-stakes poker game. One, it’s probably going to be too costly, and two, you never get accurate feedback in a poker game because the other players don’t want you to improve!