You might remember Elizabeth Holmes, the CEO of Theranos, a smoke and mirrors startup that
was supposed to revolutionize blood testing.
She managed to con a lot of investors to the tune of a nine billion dollar valuation.
In cases like this, when the house of cards comes crumbling down, the question that everyone
asks is, how could this happen?
And the fact is that besides being a con artist, Holmes also displayed psychopathic behavior
signals to force an authority image on everyone around her.
Signals such as...
- Her unsettling stare - The fake voice all the time, and
- One narcissistic red flag
The good news is that the skills that you're going to develop in the next nine minutes
are going to help you spot these kind of people at your workplace, so you can act accordingly.
Welcome back, my Body Language Buddies! my name is Jesús Enrique Rosas, I'm the Body
Language Guy, and it would be great if you join us... by just liking this video, subscribing
and hitting that bell.
Let's get down to it!
Number one is: Her unsettling stare
Many have talked about the way Holmes has this supposedly psychopathic stare, and just
to be clear, there is no such thing as a psychopathic stare.
There are people who have certain limitations in regards of how they process facial emotions
and clues and maybe they'll stare at your face without blinking for more than usual
and make you feel uncomfortable.
That does not mean they're psychopaths or anything.
It IS true that psychopaths blink less, usually hold their gaze for more time than most people
and have less reactions to stimuli, for example if someone raises their hand quickly being
next to them, maybe they won't even have any reaction.
The problem is that all these traits are not exclusive to them.
But anyway, I ran some tests in the way Holmes used her gaze and noticed that there are both
moments of almost no blinking and moments of natural blinking pattern.
Like we were looking at different people.
- Centrifuging them, leaving them on counters, and that's when 93 percent of the error and
variability is introduced, so - Something new.
There should be questions.
And to me, that's a sign you've actually done something that is transformative.
That's going to be important later on.
What was strange is that she supposedly came up with the idea of Theranos because she had
this fear of needles, and in fact, when she speaks about them, her blinking rate shoots
through the roof.
- Part of that is because the fear of needles.
People don't like needles stuck into their arm.
Part of it...
- You're one of those people, right?
- Deeply so, yes
Now, psychopaths can feel fear or have certain phobias, but they express the anxiety that
comes with that fear in a different way than most people.
Holmes' reaction when she talks about needles looked really natural; and even if it could
have been practiced, there's another thing that makes me doubt that she's an 'authentic
psychopath'.
I already mentioned that she had mixed displays with her gaze.
Sometimes she fixed her eyes to the point of piercing the other person and sometimes
she blinked like any human being.
This lead me to think that possibly, she was using this eye-piercing technique to project
confidence or authority.
And yes, staring long enough without blinking is something that everyone finds unsettling.
Like the person means business.
It's sort of a predatory stare.
But I noticed that in those moments that Holmes was like 20 seconds without blinking, she
got bloodshot eyes.
Like, her eyes became irritated.
And that's a signal that the person is trying to force that non-blinking.
That she's trying to do something that does not come natural to her.
And it seems that she was trying to portray this image of being a shark, and it makes
sense since she was trying to pull off one of the greatest scams in history.
But being natural or not, you must be aware of the blinking pattern of the people around
you, for how long do they look at your eyes and the eyes of others, and that way you'll
notice if they are trying to be intimidating with their gaze.
But blinking rate was not the only thing that Holmes tried to manipulate.
Number Two is her fake voice
Holmes' obviously fake voice is my greatest concern.
Many people talked about this but noone dared to call her off on that.
- I started this company because I believed that nothing matters more than what people
go through today when...
That's not her natural tone and one of the ways you can spot that someone is trying to
pull a baritone on you is that the muscles of their neck are always tense and they never
raise their chin above a horizontal line.
You can make the test yourself.
Try to talk with your face pointing upwards and then with your chin stuck to your chest.
In the second scenario, your voice WILL sound deeper.
So, if you want to fake a deep voice, it would be much easier if you keep your chin down
all the time.
But, why fake her voice?
why make everyone think that she had a lower pitch?
And it's because she knew that deep voices are more auTHORitative.
And that trick is pulled by CEOs, politicians, social media influencers, only that it's much
more common in men that want to sound more masculine, more powerful.
How to know when someone is faking it? well, the easiest way is to pay attention at the
start and end of sentences.
Especially if someone is doing an interview and they are being asked questions that require
real-time cognitive load.
- It is at the heart of everything that we do every single day
- Can be a tool for delivering a decentralized care delivery infrastructure
- Everything that we do every single day - Can be a tool
What happens is that faking a deeper voice is a conscious effort that you have to do
all the time.
If they are using brain power to make their voice sound deep, then they will be compromising
the amount of brain power to answer the question.
And that is like a muscle.
As their answer progresses, it would be more difficult for them to keep their idea organized,
and their voice pitch is going to be progressively higher.
The other option is answering total nonsense:
- What... what the innovations are with Theranos? because the technology itself?
how can you do, you know, run all of these tests with such a small amount of blood and
why hasn't anybody done it before?
- Our belief fundamentally is the answer to our challenges in healthcare lies in engaging
and empowering the individual.
If we can connect with people so that they can begin to understand that they have this
basic human right...
Learning to spot when a man or a woman want to fake a deeper voice is very useful because
that gives you a signal about their self confidence.
That tells you that they don't feel comfortable with their actual voice, maybe they even feel
ashamed of it so they resort to the worst solution possible that is faking it.
Spotting those clues requires practice, and the best way to start is downloading my 100+
Body Language tips right in the description of this video.
Number three is One narcissistic red flag
We all need role models.
It's ok if we look up to figures of history, be motivated by their struggles, by their
achievements and find inspiration in what they did.
But one red flag is when you notice that beyond inspiration, someone tries a bit too hard
to mimic that role model.
In this case, it didn't take long until the media began to compare Elizabeth Holmes to
Steve Jobs, especially and precisely for their common abuse of the black turtleneck.
And, In fact, anyone should have the right to dress in any way they want, what they think
is more comfortable to them or more convenient.
That's great.
But in this case, part of Holmes' way of dressing, and even her demeanor was openly driving attention
to herself, to her persona, more than the mission of her company.
For any sane individual who's actually trying to drive a revolution in health, you will
know that these headlines would drive attention away from your message.
So, not only Holmes did nothing to alleviate this, but she even doubled down in the comparison
and kept nurturing those headlines.
Always wearing black and sometimes looking like the Pope and Darth Vader entered a Brundlepod.
And another reason that it was a red flag is that she was copying a successful person
but in a totally different field.
Apple's mission had nothing to do with Theranos' mission.
So again, the comparison still falls inside a personal dimension.
If she was comfortable with that misleading branding, if she was ok with driving attention
away from her 'revolution' and into herself, that's a classic narcissistic trait.
And I agree that in the corporate world there is a double standard.
The media pays way more attention to how women dress and their appearance than how men dress.
But the fact is that whenever you stumble upon someone that is trying to drive attention
to their persona instead of their mission, and a good example are so many autotune abusing
so-called musicians that are famous just for the controversy they spark and not their talent,
then you can pretty much have the idea that they might just be full of hot air.
Bringing it down to our level, you surely have worked with these people, wether coworkers
or bosses that are always implying that everything went well thanks to them.
Their ideas, their presence, their words are what keep everything going.
And by the way, if your boss' role model is a jerk like Steve Jobs, then most probably
they find it inspiring being a jerk with you.
I've got more videos that you can check now to keep improving your body language skills
to detect hidden intentions.
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Take care, my Body Language Buddies!