GCM 77 | Authenticity

 

Being authentic is so important to connect, engage, and build relationships with people at work and with your audiences when you’re speaking. Today, Rodney Flowers interviews Mark Bowden, an internationally known speaker and expert in body language, human behavior, and communication. Mark takes a good look at authenticity and discusses how our perceptions of others affect our body language and communication with them. He also shares the four categories that our instinct put other people in the moment we see them. Sit straight and listen for Mark’s insights on authenticity, empathy, lying, and so much more that helps us understand how we behave around others.

Listen to the podcast here:

Authenticity: How Our Reactions Speak More About Us With Mark Bowden

I have Mark Bowden with me. He’s been voted the number one body language professional in the world for years. We are going to be talking about your body language and how you can use your body language to communicate effectively. Mark is the Founder of the communication training company TRUTHPLANE. His clients include leading business people, politicians, presidents of Fortune 500 companies and prime ministers of G7 powers. Mark’s highly-acclaimed TED Talk has reached millions of people. I watched his TED Talk not very long ago and I was impressed with his talk. You have to check his talk out. He has written four books on body language and human behavior. One is being the bestseller Truth and Lies: What People Are Really Thinking. He’s one of the world’s foremost authorities of nonverbal communication. I am thrilled and delighted to have him. Welcome to the show, Mark.

Thanks for having me. It’s a great pleasure to be here with you.

Thank you for being here once again. We can start off with your TED Talk that I really enjoy. One of the things that I thought was most interesting about your talk was the title, especially where we talk about how being authentic is so important to connect, engage and build relationships with people at work and with your audiences when you’re speaking. Here you are, very contrary, the absolute opposite of that thought. The title of your talk is The Importance of Being Inauthentic. Let’s talk about that a little bit. What led you to create that title for your talk?

I think two things. The first would be, it’s a very contrarian view. Partly I’ve made up that view in order to trigger people to go, “Everybody’s telling me to be authentic. What else is happening over there?” The other thing is that I wasn’t quite in agreement with some of the ideas that I heard about authenticity. I think there are many ideas out there and many definitions of what authenticity may or may not be. What I was getting from a lot of people was what I would call authenticity shaming, which some people were saying things like, “They’re not being authentic with me,” or “I don’t think that you’re an authentic person.” I would think, how would you know if somebody else is being authentic? They’d go, “It’s a gut feeling that I have.” How is that anything? How is your gut feeling about somebody else’s inner workings? The idea of whether they’re fulfilling the plan of their authored life as they wish to fulfill it. How do you know that? My guess is you just don’t like them. You don’t like what they’re saying probably. Because you can’t say, “I don’t like you,” or “I don’t like what you’re saying,” you piggy it up to authenticity, which is this nebulous idea that could mean anything, something or nothing at any one moment.

What I was trying to do was unravel that in the speech a little bit and say that authenticity for me is the idea of authoring your life. You decide what you want to happen for you, how you want to show up during that. Only you know if you’re managing that well or badly or something in between. You are designing your life and showing up with the behaviors that can fulfill that life or not. Stop listening to other people’s ideas of you being authentic or not and listen to yourself. I think that also is what provoked the talk. That talk may well be about a whole bunch of other things, as well as maybe not reveal what is its meaning that I have for you. That’s where it came from.

I do want to peel it back a little bit more. There’s some truth to what you’re saying. I’m intrigued to want to learn more about your thought process and philosophy of being inauthentic because you talk about choosing. If you choose, then that may require you to behave in a certain way and it’s all part of your choosing. I want to unravel that a little bit more.

What I specifically get down to in this talk is the idea that we’re not particularly designed as human beings to find everybody on the planet as important as everybody else to us. If I meet you in my life, Rodney, it’s not like you’re my friends or family. We’re hundreds of miles away from each other at the moment. We’re connected by digital technology. The reason I’ve shown up in your life is you’ve asked me to. Once this is over, I’ll disappear from your life. It doesn’t have to be that way, but without this invitation to me and without me going, “I don’t know this guy. He’s got something going on. He’s trying to get something going with me. I’ll give some time to that.” Showing up with that optimism rather than look the reality, which might be, “It’s another show. Why am I doing this with this guy?” Why? Because I’m choosing to and therefore because I choose to, there’s a whole set of behaviors that I now need to know how to put on energy that I need to know how to bring to this so that it works. Ultimately, there’s no initial payback for me for this. I’m choosing to do something because I’ve made a choice to try and connect with as many people as I can that I think I wouldn’t normally connect with. It’s not that you are the type of person who I wouldn’t normally connect with. You’re in the same industry as me.

There are some connections there, but ultimately, you don’t live anywhere near me. How can you ever help me? You’re not my neighbor. There’s one part of me that says this is pointless and another part of me that has to make a decision to connect. If I let this part of me rule my life and be authentic, then I’m going to lose out on a great opportunity potentially with you. If I close this part of me to try better to rule my life, more opportunities show up for me. This is hard work and this is a constable. People often call comfort authenticity. They go, “I don’t feel good about making that decision. It doesn’t feel authentic to me.” I’m like, “I think you’re just uncomfortable.” You should maybe decide to do it, to test your comfort level and test whether it really is you. We are so much more than we are at the moment as we could possibly be, but we have to push our own boundaries and move into discomfort. That can feel inauthentic to us.

You probably hear it all the time. People say, “That’s not me doing those things. That’s not my authentic self. I’m not the kind of person that’s X, Y and Z.”

Even when you say that and I know you’re acting it, it saddens me and it annoys me at the same time. When I heard you’ve got such a great attitude, you’ve got such positivity around you. When somebody like you says, “That’s not me.” You say it with such vehemence. I know you’re acting it, but it disappoints me because I go, “How did you know?” It could be you and it could be very important that it’s you. Why not test it and see whether it is you? Our personalities or ourselves are made up of such a lot of different facets and different elements in our lives and things in our past. Sometimes we don’t think it’s us because it’s such a simple facet, but if we amplified that facet, we find out it is us. We’ve got such a lot of capability in us.

It’s important that we try those things on it. That’s the point to take away from this is trying different things. I want to move into your book, Truth and Lies: What People Are Really Thinking. Give us an idea of what this book is all about.

Originally, the publisher HarperCollins came to me and said, “We want a book on reading body language.” I said to them, “I didn’t want to write that book.” There are lots of books out there on reading body language. Some of them are good and some of them are bad and everything else is something in between. I don’t know what more I’ve got to offer on reading body language. All my other books have been about how to use your body language to influence and persuade, how to present your behavior to others in order to get a certain effect. When they said, “We want one on how you might be able to watch other people and tell what they’re thinking.” Initially, I said no and that lasted for about an hour, then I went, “I shouldn’t have said no because I may need to think about this a bit better.”

GCM 77 | Authenticity

Authenticity: We are not designed as humans to find everybody in the planet as important as everyone else to us.

 

Quickly I thought, “If I wrote a good book on reading body language, what would it be like?” With that, came the idea of it would be a book on critical thinking disguised as a book on reading body language. Truth and Lies: What People Are Really Thinking does have everything that you’d want in a book on reading body language. It’s got all this stuff about what things may or may not mean that you might see other people do, but it’s way bigger than that. What it has is a critical thinking model in that. A way of thinking about other people that will cause you if you use it to get closer to the truth about them, closer to what’s going on with them rather than what’s going on with you and that being projected onto them.

Usually, our reading of other people’s body language is what I might call a good Rorschach test. It’s like an inkblot essentially, as a pattern. What we think they’re thinking tells us more about what we’re thinking than what they’re thinking. When somebody reads somebody else’s body language, I’m like, “That’s interesting, not about them. It’s interesting about you that tells me so much about you and so little about them.” I wanted to create a way of almost counter-measuring your own instinct about other people’s body language so that you can get closer to the truth of what’s going on inside of them and then test that with them. That’s what that book is about.

I know that you have a lot of clients, businesses and organizations. How does this knowledge about reading body language works, benefits or provide balance in the workstation?

It’s fantastic when you’re managing people or working in teams because human interactions are really complex. What we tend to do is impose our idea on the system that’s happening. We impose our own feelings and those systems that are happening. If we’re upset, everybody else is upset. We don’t say or we don’t think, “I’m upset, I’m going to end up projecting that onto everybody.” What we tend to do is go, “They are all upset at the moment.” One of the first things it does is to help you be very self-aware and understand the thoughts, feelings, and ideas that you’re bringing and projecting onto others. The feelings are true about them, but their lives that are true or not true is something in between.

One of the first things it creates is self-awareness. The other things it creates is the idea and the understanding that they are not you. Once you’re self-aware, then you can own your awareness of how your being, then you can go, “What I see out there is probably a projection of me not how it is.” They are not me. They are something separate. They are connected within a system. They have some separation from me as well. That’s an important psychological distinction to make, to understand we’re connected, but we’re not the same. We’re not the same entity. Our empathy plays interesting tricks with us around that. We’ll be conscious of empathy. “I know that they’re upset. I’m being empathetic towards that. I’m a good person because I’m being empathetic.”

We’re unconscious of it when we’re like, “I’m upset so I’m projecting that upset on to others.” That’s part of empathy as well. It’s trying to make the world the same as us in the same way as following and mirroring the rest of the world. It helps you compartmentalize yourself from others, somehow you’re connected and because of that, it helps you make better decisions about how people are performing around you. It helps you be a better manager, a better member of a team, often by simply asking people how they’re thinking, how they’re feeling, what they want, rather than judging that or jumping to your instant conclusions around that.

Authenticity is the way of authorising your life. Click To Tweet

What are some of the common problems that you’ve seen in organizations that caused you to want to write a book like this? It’s called Truth and Lies, I’m assuming there are some lies somewhere that you are tackling in this book.

There are many reasons for the title of Truth and Lies. One of them is it’s a good title and people might pick it up. The other part of it is the truth and lies that we hear about body language. Hit the internet and try and get some help on body language and you’ll hit a whole bunch of truth and a whole bunch of lies around body language and how do you know which is which, because everything is presented as the truth. The truth is the truth, but some of the truth is a lie. It’s not necessarily on purpose to lie. It’s people who don’t know that did not think about it. Look at the adverts between the article, you’re just selling space.

We’ve got to know that. How true is this article? Are they for a good reason trying to sell me advertising space between that? There are that truth and lie. One of the important things about it is the idea that lying is one of our most important social skills, just as telling the truth. If you want to get on socially, you must be able to lie on purpose and you must be able to tell the truth on purpose. If you can’t do that, you’re going to find that it’s hard to keep friends and family around you, let alone others. Part of it was to debunk this idea of this authenticity thing. I’m being authentic, so I’m telling everybody my truth all the time. That might be annoying because you can’t lie to me and because you can’t lie to me, it means you’re finding it hard to keep social connections with people because lying to them is important.

Why is lying important?

It is important because what would happen if one of your friends or your family come up to you and they’re getting dressed for the events. They go, “How does this look?” What you do is go, “You look terrible. It’s not because of the clothing. The clothing is good. It’s your body form. Most stuff doesn’t look good on you. You could change that but you’re too lazy to do it. It’s laziness on your part. You know how to do it but you don’t have the will power.” What we’ll do is be more helpful than that because they’re going out and they need to feel good. We can tackle the truth later.

We go, “It looks good on you.” They go, “Are you sure?” You go, “Absolutely, it looks fantastic. It’s great,” because we want to go out as well. They’re going with us. I know that. I know it’s not utterly altruistic. We’re being social, which means we’re trying to get our group out there into a place that is better than where we are. By lying and going, “It looks good on you. It looks great. Don’t worry.” There’s the truth, “Don’t worry. I think you look great.” It looks great on you was the opener. “I lie, it doesn’t. The truth is that it doesn’t look good. Some other things might, I don’t really know. We’d have to try that. It’s getting late in the evening. If we don’t get out, it’s not going to happen. I think that if you went out and you get out there, you’ll get some confidence around you and you’ll feel okay.” Through that, the other person would be going, “I don’t want to go out looking terrible.” You’d have to go, “That’s how it’s going to be.”

GCM 77 | Authenticity

Authenticity: Your authenticity, your instinct, your gut feelings are designed to be indifferent to everybody.

 

The truth is not always helpful and the truth can be very painful. We have to be able to lie. Being lied to is an important social skill. If you can’t accept the lie, then you start to question the lie and you’re very difficult to be around. You’ve got a friend who’s going, “I know it didn’t quite happen like that, but I’m trying to tell a story.” She’s trying to tell her, “I’m trying to story tell you socially and you keep stopping me and going, ‘It wasn’t a red car. I think it had some blue trim down the side. I don’t think it’s probably going that fast.’ No, you didn’t say that exactly. You said this.” “I’m just trying to tell a story.”

You talk about in terms of human behavior and categorizing the people that we meet, whether we put them in a friend category, enemy category and a partner category. I want you to provide your expertise on that behavior.

There were four categories that our instinct gets to put other people into the moment we see them. One is the friend category, which is essentially the benefit. We look at somebody and our mind is able to take it a number of elements and make a prediction. Do I believe there’s profit in that person for me? Will I come out with more than I went in with if I’m around them? There is a high benefit, low risk around being with them. The second category is the enemy category, predator category. If I spend time with them, will I come out with less than I went in? Is it high risk, low benefits? The third category is mate category, which isn’t really a partner for life, it’s just a mate now. It’s the idea of passing on genetic code. That’s all.

We’re looking for some specific elements there that tell us the person is healthy, the person is available, the person comes from a land where there’s high nutrition in that food source. We’re able to smell their immune profile. We’re able to smell from them if they would have an immune profile, which would complement our immune profile. It causes the offspring to be even more immune. There’s another category which is if we don’t hit one of those three, which is indifference that most people on the planet we don’t notice.

This happens in a matter of seconds. As soon as you meet someone or you come in contact with someone, this goes on.

As little as a fifth of a second. Imagine you’re walking down the street in a city and it’s rush hour. You’re passing by hundreds of people within a few minutes. How many people does your brain remember? How many people do you react to? My guess is it’s not reacting to anybody. It’s trying to get to where it needs to go. Therefore, it’s only on alert for friend, enemy or mate. It’s not looking for any gradation other than that. Most people, you’re going to have to be different from them. This is an important thing for authenticity because I would say, your authenticity, your instinct, your gut feeling is designed to be indifferent to everybody unless they trigger you with friend, enemy or mate, and then you get interested in them. You’re missing out on hundreds and hundreds of people that your authentic self. That’s most people on the planet.

Truths and lies that people are thinking is everything that you need in a body language book. Click To Tweet

What do we do?

You suspend judgment. You use your neocortex. You critically think people, which is hard work. You should do it more than you’re doing it most days. You’ll meet people who ultimately we could say you were never meant to meet, you were never meant to connect with because they weren’t connected to your instinct. They didn’t have the patterning around them that says, “This person is one of my group, one of my people. I’m going to be safe with them.” We’re looking for comfort and safety. We’re not looking for risk. When we see other people hanging out with risky people, we go, “That’s risky.” Not for them, they’re comfortable. They’re in their comfort zone.

The thing is let’s talk about you and me. You are in a different part of North America. You look like you’re quite a sporting person. I’m not at all. I don’t get why people move past around. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. Fill your boots and go for it. The moment I see signals like that, my authentic self goes, “Nothing’s there. The guy is going to want to go watch sports and do sports.” Here we are and you’re interested in the things that I’m interested in. We seem to be having a good conversation, but if I went off of those signals, I would discount you. I could be indifferent to you. You’re not part of my group. There’s a strong skin color difference. Instinctually, I’ve got to work against that bias. I’m going to make that what many people would call it unconscious bias. They make it totally conscious and go, “That’s going to happen.”

Not only do I go, “This guy wears a tee shirt under his shirt. I don’t do that. I don’t wear a tee shirt under my shirt. What’s that all about? Put a shirt on. Why does he get a tee shirt under his shirt? Why is he doing that?” There are not only those group indicators, but there’s a major one there that says to my instinct, “You come from a very different land from me. The sun shines in a very different way on you and your genetic line than it does on me in my genetic line.” We know that that’s not true. We live in the same hemisphere. We’re getting pretty much the same sunlight, but my instinct doesn’t know that. I’ve got to question that all the time and go when I see you, for us to make a connection, I’m fighting and I need to fight that authenticity that says, “This is going to go nowhere, being different to this guy. I’ll find someone else.”

This happens everywhere, especially in the workplace. There are many people that we come into contact with that we never talked to or engage with because of what you’re explaining.

Although this could be changing as information technology moves across businesses. The classic one that’s always been there is the IT crowd. Where do we keep them? They are generally in the basement of the building away from everybody else because they talk a language that we don’t seem to talk about. They have quite a lot of power. We don’t quite like that. They wield power and abilities with powerful instruments. They speak a different language from us. Because we’ve annexed them, there’s animosity. Do we want to call them up and go, “My terminal isn’t working,” when we know that they’re going to say, “Did you switch it off and switch it on again?” That’s a stark example of how we’ll easily annex. Often in businesses, they’re called silos of business as marketing, the numbers and the CFO versus marketing. There are social media, “What are they doing? I don’t understand that.” We find that we get into our little groups. In business culture, that’s often called tribes. Some people don’t like that language. Some people are okay about it. I use that from the Roman word, “Tribus,” the three isolated groups that made up Rome essentially. The whole Roman word to say a very different group. It happens in the workplace all the time, we tribalize. It’s really good.

GCM 77 | Authenticity

Authenticity: Our biases exist so we may make quick decisions.

 

We live in a world where having a tribe or a niche, you can’t serve everyone. Focus on the people that you can serve. What is your target market? Deliberately, you put blinders on to everyone that doesn’t fit in that niche, in that target, in that demographic. Now that we’re talking about the awareness of doing that and how that could probably cause some disruption in your business and cause some lack of engagement and connections in the business. What is your philosophy to fix this?

I don’t disagree with the business idea that is sometimes finding a niche is important because possibly outside of your niche, they don’t have the money to support your business. There might be some financial things that go outside of that niche that will kill your business. That’s fair. What I would say is do you want to test that every now and again? Do you want to stay open to this? We know how quickly things can change and we know that within change, adaptability is key. If you can make sure that you have in your calendar the idea of testing again, let’s go to an area where we do think they were customers for us and let’s test the waters on that.

Not expensive tests, but can we always keep a little bit open, keep focused? I think that’s the way it fits in with the business. Business is not how we are social. Social is closed down. I don’t know how close you live to where you were born. I’m a real outlier, I live thousands of miles from where I was born. Both of us are outliers because most people live within 7 kilometers of where they were born. That means most people are still with their friends and family, friends of friends, and friends of the family.

For example, they’re not getting international experience when somebody comes into their life where they go, “I don’t know how you function, what you do, what your traditions are and how it works for you.” I was working in Japan. It’s totally alien to me. Nobody wanted to speak English to me. Nobody wanted to help me. It was such hard work. It was exhausting and suddenly you go, “This is what it feels like to be an alien, to be the person that nobody will talk to in their language or help.” I look different from most of the people there. They must have a look at me and go, “There’s the guy that needs some help, let’s not.” My understanding became that it was because if they help me, that’s embarrassing for me. They’re trying to save my face by not helping me. It’s not like the Japanese are unhelpful. It’s just their culture that says my dignity is the most important thing. In order to get that dignity, I’m going to have to suffer somewhat. People will help me by not helping me to keep my dignity around that. That was weird.

We are programmed to have this indifference to each other and we have to work against that in order to meet and engage with no people. Not all the time, we’ve got to do little elements of it in our social world and also when we’re networking. My guess is just like me, you and your audience network. Who do we gravitate towards? The people who feel most comfortable for us. The people who are comfortable with us are probably in our industry. We’re on the standing ground, we’re all in the same industry. We’re not networking with potential customers for us. We need to find the person in the room going, “That is the last person I think I should talk to.” I walk over to them and go, “Who are you?” Guess who I am?

How do we do that? I think people have a hard time interacting and engaging with people that they feel uncomfortable with.

What we think people are thinking tells us more about what we're thinking than what they're thinking. Click To Tweet

First of all, we cut the amount of time that we engage for. We know it’s going to be hard work. Instead of going, “I am going to go to the network meeting for three hours. I’m going to meet as many people as I can.” That never happened. You end up talking to the same two people for 2.5 hours and then going. I ended up talking to the two people I knew who were in my industry. That was a waste of time. It was very comfortable and we had a very authentic conversation with each other. Instead, you go, “I’m going to do 40 minutes and then I’m out of there.” It’s going to be an uncomfortable 40 minutes. You set that goal and you go, “I’m going to speak to people who I don’t know and the ones that it feels instinctual that I shouldn’t be talking to because they looked like the wrong people.” They’ve got a tee shirt underneath that shirt, carrying a football helmet. How would I ever speak their language? I know that it’s unlikely that you’re going to have a football, but I see that person. I go, “I’m going over to that one.” I think if you do it like that, you will do it purposely. You do not think it’s going to be your instinct for this, you do it on purpose. What you might find is that suddenly you’re going, “This is quite good. This is a good connection.”

Do you have any tips for breaking down that personal bias that we carry within ourselves? I’m not sure there’s an answer to that. Everyone has that, but I wanted to raise that question.

The first thing is to do what you did there, which is to go and look. Personal bias is always there. You’ve got it, I’ve got it, they’ve got it. Without bias, we would not be able to get on in life. We wouldn’t be able to make quick decisions. Our biases are so we can make quick decisions. I know some of the decisions those biases cause us to make are unhelpful, bad, ugly, everything on a spectrum. It’s useful and doesn’t affect anybody else. There’s a whole spectrum that these biases and I’m not going to get rid of the bias. We’ve got to know the biases there. We’ve got to counter-measure the bias. My best way of counter-measuring the bias is number one, to recognize you have it. Number two is to add the word, maybe when you hear that little voice in your head, having the bias.

I see the sports paraphernalia that you’ve got around you. My bias goes, “You’re a sporting guy, we’re not going to connect, maybe.” The use of maybe launches me forward into you. It gives me more option and all I need to do is accepting my bias, then I’m putting on the end on purpose the word, “maybe,” then seeing what happens. With that maybe as well, my body language opens out. It does it naturally. The moment I go, “Maybe,” my whole head comes forward and my body opens out. There’s an instinctual reaction to that word, “maybe.” It’s a great word. A simple takeaway is to start using the word, “maybe,” a lot more. You hear that little voice in your head telling you how the world is.

What is TRUTHPLANE?

TRUTHPLANE is my training company. We work with the world training all kinds of people, be it new entrepreneurs to even Fortune 500 CEOs, presidents and prime ministers of G7, a huge range of people. We’re helping them to stand out, win the trust and gain credibility every time they’re speaking. We do that through training, keynote speaks features, books, and videos. Not only is it a company, but TRUTHPLANE is one of the techniques that I teach. To know about that technique, what all your readers need to do is go to Bit.ly/winningkeynote. There’s a twenty-minute training on that and other stuff that your audience can go and get for free. To give you a quick idea of what TRUTHPLANE is, essentially it’s open palm gestures at exactly navel height. It’s when our body makes these gestures. That open hand gesture at navel height signals your instinct that I can be trusted because that gesture suggests to your instinct that I am low risk and a high benefit.

GCM 77 | Authenticity

Winning Body Language: Control the Conversation, Command Attention, and Convey the Right Message without Saying a Word

If people wanted to learn more about you, work with you or contact you to speak, how can they connect with you?

They will find me on TruthPlane.com. They will find me on LinkedIn, Mark Bowden. They will find me on YouTube. I’m all over the internet via the word TRUTHPLANE and Mark Bowden.

It’s been a pleasure to have you on the show. There’s so much value that you’ve given. I like the work that you’re doing. I’m intrigued by it. I’m going to be diving into some more of your work immediately to learn more for myself. This idea of inauthentic is something that’s not been said. It’s different than what we hear in the space. Authenticity is a buzzword. This is quite crunchier to that. I know it’s a catchy title. I get all of that, but there are some truths and some importance to it.

It is meant to cause a bit of consonance and dismay, but there’s a good nugget of truth in there that I think if you apply yourself to, there are some huge benefits to it. Thank you very much for that conversation. It’s been fantastic. I do hope to see you around.

What is the Game Changer Mentality message you would like to leave?

You can choose your behaviors. Your behaviors don’t need to be a comfortable result of everything that’s happening around you. Good behaviors can be an uncomfortable result of you deciding what to do given what you see is happening around you and given what you want out of your life. Author your behaviors to be authentic.

Mark, thank you for coming on the show. This has been amazing. I wish you the best in all that you’re doing. If you haven’t gotten his book, go get Truth and Lies: What People Are Really Thinking. Check out TRUTHPLANE. If you want to learn how to present, speak and communicate more effectively, you want to do it with the TRUTHPLANE strategy involved. Go and check that out. If you can give us that handle again so they can go get it.

That’s Bit.ly/winningkeynote. Put that into your browser. It will take you to a page. Go and watch the video.

There you have it. Another successful episode of the Game Changer Mentality. Thank you and remember whatever your personal biases are, add “maybe,” to it.

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About Mark Bowden

GCM 77 | AuthenticityA world-renowned body-language thought-leader and founder of TRUTHPLANE® communication training company, Mark’s cutting-edge system of nonverbal communication techniques helps audiences become more confident, collaborative, and credible in their communication.

Voted Global Gurus #1 Body Language Professional, Mark trains individuals, teams, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and Prime Ministers of G7 powers. Mark is on faculty for The Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA, and President of the National Communication Coach Association of Canada.

Mark’s TEDx talk reaches millions, he is a go-to body-language commentator for CTV, CBC, Global, and regularly quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and GQ.

Bestselling books are Winning Body Language, Winning Body Language for Sales Professionals; Tame the Primitive Brain, and TRUTH & LIES: What People are Really Thinking.

Are you ready to shed your past, rise above your present, and go confidently in the direction of your dreams? The first step? Decide. Choose right here and now to make a move. Set your intention. Then simply ask Rodney for help. https://rodneyflowers.com/mentoring/ 

Want an inspirational story and a magnetic personality plus interactive actionable strategies to transform your audience? Book Rodney for your next event. https://rodneyflowers.com/speaking/

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