Episode 115: How Facial Profiling Leads to Better Relationships, with Alan Stevens
In Episode 115 of The Business Habitat podcast, Alan Stevens returns to the show once again, this time to talk with Sam on the topic of facial profiling and how learning to read a person’s face can give you an instant insight into their personality.
Following on from episode 109 where Alan and Sam discussed The Campfire Project and how first understanding the self is the fundamental foundation for leadership training, today’s conversation focuses in on Alan’s skill as an International Profiling and Communications Specialist.
Described as the Mentalist meets Dr Phil, Alan explains how he first became interested in profiling as a result of wanting to improve his relationships. With a couple of divorces behind him as well as business partnerships that went sour, Alan became determined to learn more about people by being able to recognize what their facial traits were giving away.
After working for a while with Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and body language, Alan recognized the significance of micro-expressions and went on to study facial profiles as a way of recognizing someone’s personality with just a glance. In this conversation Alan explains that this skill enables him to understand how people prefer to be spoken to and thereby build rapport and strong relationships quickly.
In a work scenario, Sam and Alan discuss how being able to recognise a person’s traits from their presentation alone, negates the need for long questionnaires and becomes particularly important in this age of Zoom calls and digital communication.
Tune in to explore this fascinating topic, as Alan and Sam dive into the old adage that “opposites attract” and consider how once again, the clearest path to understanding another person’s traits is in first understanding our own.
Listen to an excerpt
Quotes
“The real solid foundation is in being able to recognise somebody's personality at a glance without asking a single question so instead of putting them through a questionnaire or walking up and having a conversation for a while, if I can see their face, their facial features will tell me their personality immediately before I even talk to them” - Alan
“You're going to build ridges and crevices in your face so there's a history of how you like to think and process that’s your personality, not your character but your personality - it's not what you're thinking and what your processing but how you’re thinking and processing” - Alan
“As they say beauty is skin deep but that particular beauty goes all the way to the bone, you don't have those lines unless you’ve smiled a lot and if your mouth is turned up it means you also smile a lot” - Alan
“To have an open mind is the first thing, always believe that the most important thing you'll ever learn is the next thing you'll learn after you think you know everything” - Alan
“In personal relationships I guarantee that the person that you've been attracted to, it'll be the difference in their traits that have been the high attraction to you” - Alan
“I hadn’t approached it that way. I wanted to learn this facial profiling so I can read other peoples’ faces - I can learn even more about myself and then how you use it.” - Sam
“Knowing more about myself and look at myself first and knowing whether it's my trait that's causing it puts me in control, it gives me dominion over the traits that used to control me so the more I understand those the less they affect me” - Alan