Reading people is the art and science of learning about people from the verbal and non-verbal cues they give, as well as from the impressions that they make upon the questioner. Many of these impressions are beyond the verbal level; they’re immediate, "whole person" impressions, constructed from a variety of verbal and non-verbal factors. The verbal factors may include communication style (speech patterns, cadence, accent, pitch, rhythm) and speech content (logic, language, subject, complexity, degree of technicality, relationship to the listener, etc). The nonverbal factors include (but are not limited to) analysis of emotional life through reading the particular features and musculature of the face and body; patterns of weight, movement and body posture; social factors such as clothing, hair style, and other attributes that also telegraph information about who the individual actually is and how he might behave. Learn more

Think of personality as the “business end” of ourselves, or that part of us that meets the world, and has an effect on other people. It's different from the inner world of our feelings, problems, thoughts, motivations, and so forth, which are our business and ours alone. Personality is a social matter, as when we say, “ I don't like his personality.” If we understand the basics of someone's personality, we can often predict very quickly how he or she will operate, both generally and in terms of a specific situation. Therefore, an accurate understanding of an individual's personality alone can sometimes quickly answer your questions about whether to engage or disengage. Learn more

In the context of making smart relationship decisions, data gathering refers to the craft of finding objective (hard data) or subjective information (soft data) about an individual in your personal or business life. In some cases you may need objective data to know what someone has been doing, where they've been, or how they've lived their lives. Online sources, free and paid, can provide invaluable information. So can some basic "sleuthing" at local government records bureaus. More often, though, it's the soft data that yields the answers you're seeking.. What does the evidence tell us about this person is really like? Does his track record show he or she is trustworthy? How does the person handle relationships? Such questions usually can't be answered by database searches, or even trips to town hall. The information must come from people who know the person you need to understand, such as his or her friends and acquaintances, colleagues, business associates, and family members. You need a strategy for dealing with these people. Learn more

Even if you apply the preceding three tools with skill, failure to understand your own blind spots will very likely doom your attempts to make good people decisions. Blind spots are distorted ways of thinking or perceiving the world. They substitute inner needs and fears for reality, and leave us open to errors in judgment; sometimes, ruinous ones. Worse, the errors are usually repetitive. How many times did we make the same mistake in choosing a lover? How many times did we make the same mistake with a boss, a job choice, or in dealing with financial matters. Only by knowing our own blind sports can we apply the output from the other smart relationship tools and arrive at good people decisions. Learn more