An FBI Agent Shares 9 Secrets to Reading People

The ability to read others will greatly affect how you deal with them. When you understand how another person is feeling, you can adapt your message and communication style to make sure it is received in the best way possible.

But what should you be listening for? And what other signs can tip you off to what someone is thinking or feeling?

If you follow my column, you're familiar with LaRae Quy. LaRae, who spent 23 years as a counterintelligence agent for the FBI, now spends her time writing, speaking, and teaching others tips that she learned while working for the Bureau. Those tips provide valuable lessons for entrepreneurs, business owners, and everyone else.

As LaRae put it well:

"You don't need to be a top-notch interrogator to figure out what is going on in someone's head. The signals are always there--all you need to do is know what to look for."

Here are her 9 tips for reading others:

1. Create a baseline
2. Look for deviations
3. Notice clusters of gestures
4. Compare and contrast
5. Look into the mirror
6. Identify the strong voice
7. Observe how they walk
8. Pinpoint action words
9. Look for personality clues

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The secret to staying young? Scientists boost lifespan of mice by deleting defective cells

The ageing population is one of the greatest challenges facing society. More people are surviving to old age than ever before, but we currently lack the means to keep them healthy and independent. If a treatment existed to reduce sickness and death from ageing by 20% then between now and 2050, the US alone would save US$4 trillion on healthcare costs – enough money to give everyone on Earth clean drinking water for the next three decades.

However a landmark new study, published in Nature, raises hopes that such a treatment will be possible. The researchers managed to increase the lifespan of mice by an impressive 25% by deleting “senescent” cells, dysfunctional cells which build up as we age and cause damage to tissue. Crucially, the mice lived longer because they were healthier.

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10 secrets of Silicon Valley that every entrepreneur should know

Fifth edition of TechSparks, India’s largest entrepreneurship event culminated yesterday, at The Leela Palace, Bangalore. The grand finale event had all the elements in it to be thought of as the ’Oscars of startups’. Likes of Nandan Nilekani, Ellen Petry Leanse, Ramesh Srivats, Ravi Venkatesan, Arunabh Kumar and other visionaries shared their success secrets with the young entrepreneurs. The heroes of the show, Tech30 companies received massive appreciation and recognition for their promising future.

The stage was perfectly set for the guest of honor, Ellen Petry Leanse, to share some of the secrets of Silicon Valley with the fullhouse buzzing with Indian entrepreneurs. Here’s everything you would like to know about ‘What makes Silicon Valley, what it is today’?

n their book ‘What makes Silicon Valley tick?’, Tapan Munroe and Mark Westwind explained,

“Silicon Valley has been an ecology of innovation, where research universities, entrepreneurs, investors, a talented workforce, social and professional networks, a vibrant business environment, and the quality of life; help transform ideas into new products and services.”

Vivek Wadhwa, the well known Indian-American technology entrepreneur and academic, once mentioned,

An open-minded and diverse population that readily shares information, encourages experimentation, accepts failure and dispenses with formality and hierarchy is what makes Silicon Valley the successful.

Things you should know about Silicon Valley

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The Secrets of Bezos: How Amazon Became the Everything Store

Amazon.com rivals Wal-Mart as a store, Apple as a device maker, and IBM as a data services provider. It will rake in about $75 billion this year. For his book, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Brad Stone spoke to hundreds of current and former friends of founder Jeff Bezos. In the process, he discovered the poignant story of how Amazon became the Everything Store.

Within Amazon.com (AMZN) there’s a certain type of e-mail that elicits waves of panic. It usually originates with an annoyed customer who complains to the company’s founder and chief executive officer. Jeff Bezos has a public e-mail address, jeff@amazon.com. Not only does he read many customer complaints, he forwards them to the relevant Amazon employees, with a one-character addition: a question mark.

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