Does this person consistently demonstrate patterns of positive behavior?
After my supervisor rejected my most recent proposal for an operation, I asked Jesse, “Do you think there’s anybody around here who believes in me?”
I didn’t know what to do, or even how to act.
I felt free to vent my disturbed state of mind around Jesse because I knew he wouldn’t get caught up in my emotion. He’d think it through and help me find a new supervisor, or a better approach to my current one. But I didn’t expect an instant answer, because he was too smart to offer any thoughts at all until he knew exactly what my situation was—stripped of its histrionics—and how I was really feeling, once I’d broken free of the debris from my pity party.
So Jesse started applying the behavioral science technique of asking nonjudgmental, rational questions, called “discovery questions,” which are intended to lead people—rather than push them—toward their own inner wisdom and bedrock reality, beneath their layers of defensiveness, conjecture, and insecurity.
All these layers are founded in fear, but have different names—including perfectionism, suspicion, or status seeking—and each offers a different form of fiction.
The only antidote for them is to return to realistic thought, but that’s not as hard as it sounds, because reality is rarely as threatening as the various scenarios we conjure in our brain’s fear center, during life’s darkest hours.
Jesse, though, thought life could be great if people would just see it as it really is. So he never settled for just telling people what they wanted to hear, and he didn’t take the lazy route of telling them what he would do in their situation. People usually tune that out, because it’s not specifically about them, and can come off as condescending.
He just listened carefully enough to get into people’s heads, and see what was best for them from their own perspective. That alone was of supreme value, because people love to be understood, even more than they love someone agreeing with them. When people calm down, he found, they can usually be trusted to do what’s in their own best interests—as they perceive them.
By the time Jesse was done, people would usually know not only how they really felt, but also what they really thought.
Those two conditions should go together, but they often don’t. Feelings are almost always attached to thoughts, but the emotions they create can be so illusory and ephemeral that rational thoughts evaporate.
In contrast, the durable product of cognitive thought—far more than feelings—is the primary predictor of what rational people will do. Because, of course, people usually do what they think is in their own best interests.
Knowing what’s good for you may sound easy, but I’ve long believed that it’s the hardest element to isolate in the often awkward intersection of thought and emotion. Unfortunately, when human beings start thinking about what’s best for them, they kid themselves a lot. We’re often too dreamy, and call it optimism, or too fearful, and call it prudence. Then we grab an option, tack it onto the problem, and abandon rational management of the situation.
Then, when Plan A doesn’t work, people often just sink deeper into distrust of not only those around them, but also themselves. That’s when we start screwing ourselves up.
The danger of pervasive doubt and alienation may seem obvious to you, but an astonishing number of people just don’t get it—and possibly never will—because distrust, like other forms of self-imposed isolation, is a self-perpetuating character flaw.
When wary people fail to find an accurate way to predict the actions of those around them, they usually don’t feel safe enough to go ahead and do what’s best for themselves. Some of them are afraid they’ll be seen as selfish, controlling, or incompetent, and others are just tired of being burned by people they once thought were allies.
Even more distressing, millions of people do know what’s in their own best interests—and by extension, the best interests of their families, friends, and colleagues—but still surrender their own precious peace of mind to unfounded fears, temptations, and pressures.
When that happens, they usually fail to act on the simple but sacred honor of doing what’s best for themselves and for those closest to them. Often as not, these people do it again and again, thinking that their sacrifices will save the world—or at least them—if only the world would come to its senses, and revolve around them.
I’m not judging this behavior, because most people make these sacrifices with a good heart. But when it doesn’t work, it can harden their hearts, kill their spirits, and exhaust their bodies and minds. At that point, they need someone to help them go back to square one and make sure they still want the goals that once seemed so important.
Deciding what you want most, though, is rarely as simple as doing whatever you feel like doing. Whatever you do usually affects the people around you, and if what you do hurts them, you’ll probably create an enemy, or at least get a negative reaction. Then things get really difficult. That’s why discovery questions can be so effective. These questions are general and sincere, and are not the rhetorical questions that manipulative people ask. Their purpose is to point the way to rational action. Common discovery questions that fit most problems are: What’s the worst-case scenario? Who might not like it? What will they do? What have I tried so far? Did those actions lead to an ultimate goal, or just an immediate goal? Have other people tried to help? What actions might make things worse?
Jesse asked me a discovery question embedded in a sincere compliment that was too flattering to reject: “Who around here could not trust you, Robin?”
“My supervisor. And his supervisor.”
“Why do you think that?”
“They keep rejecting my operations. Including the current one.”
“What’s their reasoning?”
“Too risky.”
After ten or twenty simple, straightforward questions, he knew my full context—which, as I’ve mentioned, consists of a rational, informed understanding of the person plus the situation.
“You’ve already done the best possible thing,” Jesse said.
“I haven’t done anything.”
“Right! That might feel passive to you, but it’s a real aggressive way to outsmart your emotions—especially when you’re pissed off or scared. That emotional nonsense is like the fog of war. You’ve gotta let it lift before you do something. Then you make your move. It takes discipline to wait. But Rule Number One is: Don’t f**k yourself up. Leave that to other people. They’re not as good at it as you are. You’re your own best enemy.”
“It’s good to be the best at something,” I said.
He laughed. Humor comes easily when you can see the big picture.
He was lost in thought for a couple of minutes.
Then he said, “You need a new supervisor. And I already know the guy. You do, too. Jack! Jack Johnson. We can create a new operation and invite Jack and your current supervisor to be in it, and you’ll get the best of both worlds.”
Jack, as you may remember, was the supervisor who’d wrangled the bureaucracy into approving my first operation with Annan, which Jesse sometimes referred to as “preventing World War III,” occasionally quite seriously.
“Jack’s a good guy,” I said, “but he wouldn’t let me work the Annan operation unless I did it with you. Why do you think he’d have faith in me now?”
“First of all, because he did give you the operation,” Jesse said. “Never overlook the obvious. And the only reason he had me tag along wasn’t because he didn’t trust you. It was because he didn’t trust his own supervisor. He was working for a low-risk/no-risk guy at HQ and knew he’d have to attach a senior agent to get the Yes. But he’s perfect for you, because his motto is Feed the Beast: Keep supplying headquarters with operations, even when they’re risky. He’s running his own ops now, and he’s still mission-first, not career-first. He rocks the boat and doesn’t look for scapegoats. But the supervisors trust him, because he sticks to his core values, and that makes him very predictable: a known commodity. Which makes them look brilliant.”
“So he’ll be cool with this new thing?”
He nodded. “Jack makes it look easy to feed the beast. He gets a read on people from what they say; then he cross-checks it with open sources, preferably with numbers. By then he’s a mind reader. He does it with his supervisors, and he’ll do it with you.”
“Okay,” I said, somewhat tentatively.
“Oh, plus—he’s hit lotto eighteen times.”
Sold!
Within a week, Jack had reengineered my operation, softening the risks that management had seen, but still keeping me as the lead agent—a brilliant bureaucratic feat that kept everyone happy, including me. He remembered me well from the prior operation, and knowing my past patterns of behavior played a critical role in his willingness to trust me in this new role.
Actions matter. More than anything else. For good or ill, it’s your actions that define you, much more obviously and accurately than what you say or how you feel.
Troublesome words and feelings come and go, but deals die when bad things actually occur, in the real world, and in real time.
More than any other form of self-expression, actions are viable dealbreakers. They’re not just a thought. They’re what happens.
When they happen can also make a big difference. Past actions don’t always affect the present, but current actions usually do.
The operation I wanted to run would, I thought, result in major actions at the international level. Jesse liked it, I liked it, and Jack liked it. The prior rejections suddenly looked like the screwups of timid bureaucrats, so the other supervisor went along.
The mission was to recruit a Russian target who was a former Soviet general, with the help of an American CHS who’d been a prominent marine colonel. They were both public figures, and the patterns of their past and current behaviors were largely open-source information. I’d only talked to the colonel briefly, and had never spoken to the Russian, but I already felt as if I knew both of them well.
Not incidentally, the target was now a major player in Russian-American diplomacy. Recruiting him, at a time when Vladimir Putin was beginning to look like a modern-day czar, would be like hitting Powerball lotto.
Best of all, the general and the colonel were old friends. Now, you tell me: How could a setup like that ever get rejected?
What people do—including what they’ve done consistently in the past—greatly heightens their predictability, because it reveals the rock-hard core of their character, consisting of their primary principles and values.
Because many different principles and values compose character, most people consider some elements of character to be more important than others, and they hold those qualities closest. For example, some people might be more concerned about being honest than being humble, or more dedicated to being kind than being authentic.
I always try to get a read on the values that people hold dear to their hearts—their core values—because they’re a window into someone’s inner self, and are the traits most likely to influence people, and to remain steadfast even when circumstances change.
Quite often, a person’s character is forged by the philosophical and moral codes that they adopted many years earlier, often in adolescence or early adulthood, as they created their own unique codes of character.
In a sense, therefore, what people will do has already been determined by choices they made long ago. As the preeminent Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “It is your own convictions that compel you: that is, choice compels choice.” That’s why it’s important to evaluate people by the entirety of their lives, in addition to how they’ve behaved in the more recent past. To a large extent, we become what we have long intended to become.
Placing importance on character is very consistent with the concept that emotionally healthy people usually do what they believe is in their own best interests, because someone’s best interests almost always include adhering to their own codes of conduct. When they violate them, they usually feel guilty and regretful, and fear that their violations will not only stunt their personal growth and self-esteem, but also their acceptance by others. This attachment to character makes people much easier to predict, and therefore easier to trust with your own fate.
Codes of morality also often come from various religions and philosophies, and most of them include some qualities of good character that are virtually universal. These include honesty, loyalty, kindness, humility, respect, and integrity.
The nobility of these qualities is practically inarguable. Therefore, they are the primary and sometimes sole factors that people consider when they assess trust. Some people simplify the process by trusting someone based only upon their particular religion—especially if they share it—but that’s risky, because merely belonging to a particular faith does not automatically grant good character. Even so, looking for these bedrock qualities in other people is one of those fundamental, basic acts that allow us to accurately evaluate them, and assign a realistic reputation to them. Despite all its shortcomings, it’s one of the valid metrics for assessing trust and predicting what people will do.
As always, though, in the soft science of behaviorism, this rule is rife with exceptions and contradictions. Human behavior always comes back to two hard truths: 1) we’re only human, and 2) nobody is perfect. Rules, therefore, are only as perfect as the people who apply them, and character can be surprisingly malleable, especially when it’s not in the category of a core character.
Behavioral studies indicate that people with impeccable behavior in the past often fall short of their prior good behavior. Even though people don’t change their core personality very often, they certainly behave differently from time to time, in ways that seem almost random, unless you pay close attention to them. If you do, you often find that they think their environment has changed and that they need to adjust. That can happen often, and quickly, because most environments are in a constant state of flux.
The changes that affect character most, as I’ve mentioned, are threats and temptations, which sometimes occur simultaneously.
Past patterns of honesty and fairness have also been shown to crumble when people believe that they can indulge in their actions anonymously, or remain free from consequences.
We see that happen repeatedly in two of the professions that are magnets for power: politics and business management. This common phenomenon is often called the “power paradox.”
Conversely, people who know that they will be held responsible for their actions are those who are most likely to adhere to their past patterns of positive behavior. But if the situation changes, they might, too. That phenomenon seems to be somewhat common among the trusted people who become embezzlers, or among attorneys who know how to skirt the law.
Another frequently cited element of good character is loyalty, but this is one more moral positive that may simply be a matter of expedience.
A history of honesty is usually considered one of the most valuable indicators of strong character and trustworthiness, but honesty sounds far simpler than it is. Many professional people become adept at telling the truth, but rarely the whole truth.
Honesty can also be used as a weapon, especially when someone delivers an insult prefaced by the phrase, “I’m just being honest.”
The same factors that complicate honesty also obscure integrity. Integrity is a fine quality, but it, too, can become twisted to the point that it becomes destructive. People often wield the tool of integrity to attack people they oppose.
Authenticity, too, is a precious quality, but negative aspects of one’s character can be quite authentic, and still be inappropriate or even indefensible.
Another gray area of authenticity occurs when people take out their anger on others by saying that they’re just “being themselves” or “calling it like they see it.”
Despite all these incursions on character, though, most people try extremely hard to adhere to their core, central values.
The takeaway: Patterns of behavior, especially over a long period of time, define people’s character, and character counts—even as an imperfect measure. That’s why action is one of only six signs of sizing people up.
So be generous to people who may have been coerced or otherwise dragged into questionable behavior. But be careful. And be just as careful of people who have sterling reputations.
Doveryai no Proveryai!
TEN NEGATIVE TELLS FOR PATTERNS OF ACTIONS
1. People are not fully transparent about their pasts. Many people have a “secret spot”: an event or act that they try to hide, by ignoring part of their work history, or by skating past certain questions in their initial job interviews, or in general conversations.
The degree of gaps in time and information generally indicates the importance of the secret spot, and people with significant secrets just aren’t predictable enough to be trustworthy.
If they’re open about it, though, that’s different. Transparency solves innumerable problems of prediction.
2. People treat those with power better than those without it.
There is only one “real” side to this kind of person: the rude one. Bad behavior is almost always controllable, if the person wants to control it. So sucking up to the boss doesn’t count.
Be careful of these people, because sycophants are dangerous to everyone they work with. Their behavior is frequently used to become the boss’s pet, and they’ll throw you to the wolves, and never think twice about it.
3. People have gaps or exaggerations on their résumés. It sounds like a dealbreaker, but sometimes it’s not.
Business culture, for good or ill, now often tolerates a modest degree of gold-plating, so some applicants feel that their mild misstatements amount to little more than putting their best foot forward.
Two things control the fib: the degree of misinformation, and how the person responds to being questioned about their misstatement. If they’re okay on one or both, give them a break. But keep your eye on them.
4. People regard their competitors as enemies, and attack them whenever possible. Dealbreaker. This pattern of behavior appeals to a specific type of gung-ho, take-no-prisoners operator. It can be seductive, because there is a hard edge to business that must be faced. But it’s juvenile behavior that they should have outgrown. Competition does not demand anger.
The same people might soon be taking out their anger on you. For innately hostile people, it’s all about control.
Find people who have friends throughout the industry.
5. People have a history of irregular behavior patterns in their personal lives. This could include multiple divorces, family feuds, minor legal or ethical matters, or numerous failed friendships. These are the kinds of nonwork issues, once hidden from employers, that are now on full display on social media.
Everybody has problems, but usually just troublemakers have lots of them. That’s often an indicator of wholesale unpredictability. Take a pass.
6. You feel like you don’t know someone, even after close, prolonged contact. It may not reflect their core personal qualities at all—but it still leaves you with a lack of information. And information—not intuition, and not affection—is the foundation of all predictability.
Ask them specific questions that are neither prying nor accusatory. If you can’t get straight answers, you’ll never really know what makes them tick.
It’s a dangerous situation—and could bring unwanted surprises.
7. People are tight-lipped about past colleagues. What are they hiding? Whatever it is, it’s keeping you from really knowing them—and that’s a dealbreaker.
Predicting people is all about knowing them.
If they don’t want you to know what other people think about them, you’ll never know what to expect.
Maybe they don’t want to talk about their former colleagues because they don’t trust them. But that’s your call, not theirs.
8. People are critical about their colleagues’ personal lives. It’s usually irrelevant. And it’s creepy. It’s especially creepy when they criticize people who’ve left the company.
You can’t help but wonder what they’ll say about you someday.
You need to align yourself with people who stick to facts—not feelings, not hearsay—and who know what matters and what doesn’t.
Even if what they’re saying is interesting, don’t feed into it. Anybody can tell a good story, but sometimes that’s all it is: a story. Don’t be a sucker for it.
9. A person’s behavior is often inconsistent. Another dealbreaker. This is bad-news behavior, since consistency creates predictability, and predictability creates trust and effectiveness.
Inconsistency, and the drama it creates, sometimes has a certain romantic, devil-may-care panache to it, but it’s the worst possible trait at crunch time. In a crisis, it can be the kiss of death.
10. It’s hard for someone to accept responsibility, especially for major mistakes. This is so common—and so sad—because it almost never works. When was the last time you saw somebody actually beat the rap by stonewalling?
This behavior is founded in insecurity, though, so it can be addressed, and often reversed, by assuring people of their security and cultivating a blame-free culture around them.
But when people cling to their defensiveness after you do your best to make them feel safe and appreciated, be careful. They don’t trust you, so you can’t trust them.
When Jack gave me the go-ahead on my diplomatic operation, I started surveillance of the Russian general, looking for patterns of behavior that would add to our understanding of his character and his past. It would give us an update on his current priorities, reveal the optimal environment in which to approach him, and provide us with a good conversation starter.
I was hoping that he realized that his own future, and that of his family, was now aligned more with the United States, and the West in general, than with Putin and his oligarchs. I thought he’d see it that way—but, as always, what I thought came from my own context, and his was quite different. We wouldn’t know how he felt until we launched the operation—or, as we put it, bought our lotto ticket. You can’t win if you don’t play.
In all honesty, the operation wasn’t likely to succeed. Most of our operations didn’t hit lotto. In that regard, we were similar to so many industries that revolve around ideas, research, intellectual assets, and other intangible products and services. So we had to perceive success as just putting together a great operation. If we thought we had to hit lotto every time, we’d never do anything.
The only option we ever have in counterintelligence is to buy the ticket, take the ride, roll the dice, and see what happens. That’s a reasonable stance, but only if we made rational decisions and took reasonable actions.
Despite that, this would probably be the last time, for the foreseeable future, that I’d have the opportunity to buy my lotto ticket.
If I failed to recruit the general, but he stayed quiet about it, I’d probably survive the blowback. But if the general carried our incursion to the top of Russia’s grievance list, my reputation—and Jack’s—would take a terrible and possibly terminal hit. In counterespionage, your reputation is your brand. The same is true in most professions.
I was just hoping that the bond between the general and the American colonel superseded the demands of politics. But Russia had its own beast to feed—and, God knows, it loved trouble.
I enlisted the help of several sharp agents, and a CHS who had been working Russia with me for some time. They were all comfortable with my aggressive tempo, and we moved fast.
The more we learned about the general, the more optimistic I became. He was definitely a member of the Russian military intelligence, the GRU, but he wasn’t a typical one, because he was also a gifted diplomat and general line officer.
Although movies don’t portray the bureaucratic aspect of international espionage, the standard GRU officer is very similar to any big-business careerist, wherever they may be. They tend to be very risk-averse, focusing on mere survival until they reach positions so lofty that they’re protected by scapegoats, money, and institutional rules. Then they become even more risk-averse, because they don’t want to lose the good thing they’ve got.
They’re also generally micromanagers, because they don’t trust the people working under them to be as cautious as they are.
Another trait of me-first bureaucrats—in the government and out—is being clock-watchers who are more interested in getting through the day than in cranking out achievements.
Careerists are also savants at sucking up to people above them for protection and advancement, and being hard on people beneath them, so they can offer them up as pre-certified sacrificial lambs when the occasion demands.
They’re also name-droppers, and are adept at scooping up credit and shifting blame.
They’re even good at acting confident, especially when they feel insecure—which is most of the time—so they tend to adorn their offices with a Wall of Ego, comprised of photos of them with major players, and certificates of merit.
In meetings, the company guys usually remain quiet while others voice controversial ideas, but are gung-ho as soon as the boss gives the Go.
All in all, they’re usually not the kind of people with whom you can develop predictable, positive relationships. These people climb with sickening regularity to the top of the pyramid, where they blight the lives of those beneath them with their insecurity, inaction, secrets, and infighting.
As our information about the general piled up, I wasn’t seeing any of these tells.
The traits were also absent from the character of our guy, the colonel.
I could see how they might become friends.
The American colonel was a hard-core patriot, and from my multiple contacts and multiple meetings, I got the impression that he had a certain nostalgia for the bad old days of armed conflict and heroic action, and was itching to do something important—even if it carried the danger that always accompanies counterespionage activities against Russia.
The colonel’s military record showed that even though he was as mission-oriented as a marine rifleman, he was also schooled in the manners of diplomacy, having spent the last years of his service as a military diplomat at a European embassy. He was there at the same time that the Russian general was working at his country’s embassy. So they’d met at a number of international social events, and had become friendly rivals, each more vested in the achievement of personal honor and world stability than in political gain.
That quality of character is relatively common among career military people. Officers from nations all across the world gather together in these foreign posts and ride out invasions, trade wars, treaties, coalitions forming and fading, and presidents coming and going—but throughout the ebb and flow of history, they toast the same toasts, drink the same drinks, and talk the same talk, forming allegiances that often blur strict adherence to their own country’s policies.
If this particular American colonel couldn’t get me a meeting with the Russian general, nobody could.
After about a month of surveillance, we found out that the general would soon be soon traveling to Las Vegas with his wife on a junket that was more play than work. I wanted Vegas to be our ground zero for the meet-up.
Our narrative was that the colonel happened to be in Vegas at the same time as the Russian general: small world! But not so small that the general wouldn’t suspect something. That was fine. We wanted him to think about his options before he even knew he had them, and let his optimism inflate them.
Near the end of their short mutual stay, the colonel would schedule a couple of events, like drinks in the late afternoon, then dinner with the wives. After dinner, the colonel would say that he had a friend in special services who had great access to New York’s Thanksgiving Day parade. The friend—me, as you’ve probably guessed—had invited the colonel to come and told him to bring a couple of guests.
The general would be smart enough to decode the rest.
I took every step of the op to Jack, and to the whole team. The team was functioning flawlessly, and everybody was great. Smart questions, but not too many. Excitement. Eagerness. Total transparency about Jack’s approval process.
At this stage of his career, Jack’s approvals had to come from national headquarters, at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C. That made things harder, because Washington has a way of turning character upside down, and making people greedy for the glamour and power of the place. But Jack never mentioned the pressure he was under, and he was oblivious to glamour.
On an almost daily basis, Jack was giving me a tell of trust—similar to the following ones—and my morale was soaring. He could see my satisfaction, and he fed off it. So did our team. I was still working closely with Jesse, along with a crew of people who were so good that I called them the Magnificent Seven. With Jack leading this operation, it felt like I was finally where I belonged.
The patterns of behavior from all the people involved were coalescing into a finely crafted mosaic.
I could smell my first lotto.
TEN POSITIVE TELLS FOR PATTERNS OF ACTIONS
1. People remain loyal to you when others are irrationally critical of you. It’s easy to be loyal to people at the top of the food chain, but that’s not really loyalty—it’s just survival. When someone chooses to suffer from being on your side, you know that instinct comes from deep within, and is probably a core element of their character.
One of the best things they can offer you is an objective appraisal of why you’re being unjustly criticized. A realistic fact of life is that when somebody has a problem with you, they usually have a fairly good reason. That’s a hard truth, but if you accept it, you’ll be astounded at how it can streamline your conflicts.
There are people in the world who are simply and solely destructive, but you probably don’t work with one. Find the truth in a criticism, and you’ll grow in the eyes of everyone.
This doesn’t make you a pushover. It makes you somebody who’s wedded to rational thought: a hallmark trait of positive, effective people.
2. When you ask someone for details or documentation about a problem, they provide it immediately. Many people stall, and try to present something that lets them off the hook. They comb their records for the documents that show them in a good light. Or they look for excuses. If there’s a delay, you’ll never really know.
And when you don’t know, you can’t predict. When you can’t predict, you’ve got an even bigger problem.
3. When someone repeats a story about themselves or one of their actions, it never varies. But when somebody changes major components, they’re probably not very honest. Law enforcement and national security officials commonly depend on this phenomenon in determining the truth.
Consistency means predictability, and predictability lies at the heart of trust.
4. People opt out of conversations when they degenerate into gossip. Helpful, dependable people don’t find amusement in other people’s problems.
Insecure people, on the other hand, need that vicarious thrill, because of their own self-doubt. They have a deep-seated fear that they are not good enough, or don’t have enough, and actually enjoy hearing about the foibles of others.
The only thing that good allies want from those around them is healthy, happy relationships. It’s not very titillating—but it makes friends, and makes money.
5. People are never critical about their family members, even when it would be justified. A common behavior I’ve never understood is how a husband (or wife—it goes either way) thinks he can build himself up by putting his wife down. All it makes me think is: You’re the one who married her, so what does that make you?
Being critical is one of the cruelest ways of being judgmental, and judgmentalism is poison for a positive situation. It makes almost everybody wonder what they’re being judged about, and scares them away.
If you’re willing to judge your own spouse, everybody must be fair game.
6. People avoid hot-button issues, such as politics or religion, with people they don’t know well. This is one manifestation of a tremendously important principle of positive behavior that I’ve mentioned: seeking context.
We all have our own complex, multifaceted context, and when someone understands it, they usually understand us. When they don’t, understanding evaporates, judgment begins, and allegiance is lost.
That’s why effective people tread lightly around sensitive issues when they’re with someone they don’t know well. Their goal is to have healthy relationships, and that starts with making people feel accepted and comfortable.
7. People display consistent personalities in their professional and personal lives. Like other self-evident truths, this one is so obvious that it often gets overlooked. In matters of core values, there can be no dichotomies. Self is self.
Consistency = Predictability = Trust = Success.
8. People sometimes cite moral or philosophical obligations, including honesty and fairness, in business situations. You can usually trust people who aren’t afraid to admit that there are more important things than making money.
These people tend to be successful, partly because people trust them. Some people think that’s ironic. I don’t.
9. Someone’s social media postings reflect the same personality that you see in their professional life. This is the e-version of personal and professional consistency. And thank God for the e-version: It’s accessible, it’s durable, and its ubiquitous.
Social media is the lie detector of the new millennium.
10. After you hire someone, they actually have the skills they said they did during the hiring process. Or, after you get hired, your bosses do exactly what they said they would.
Nothing is a better tell of trust than patterns of honest behavior.
No boss likes to hear: “I guess I didn’t know as much about this as I thought—but I’m a fast learner!”
No new employee likes to hear: “We need to restructure your hours and responsibilities.”
These statements are especially frustrating when they come very shortly after hiring, because it implies that somebody was lying all along. By then, it’s usually too late to do anything.
Nothing is more gratifying than seeing someone do exactly what they said they would. It gives you faith in them—and faith in yourself, too, for making them an ally.
Now ask yourself: Have you recognized any of the tells of trust-based behavior among the people you work for, and those who work for you? Does one person stand out?
In hindsight, the Vegas op was too good to be true—but only by the measure of its outcome. Outcome is huge, of course. But the more I learn about human behavior, the more I see that outcomes can be measured not just by money, or hitting a political target, but also by coalescing with the right people. Putting together my team ultimately brought me far more tangible gain than hitting lotto would have. I kept most of the core players with me, and we hit some major targets that I’ll tell you about later. Some of them even followed me to the Behavioral Analysis Program. There’s no way I would have traded that for hitting lotto.
Here’s how it went down, short version: The colonel made the parade pitch and the general said he would think about it overnight. The next day, he told the colonel that he had “seen enough parades in my life”—a response that had nothing to do with parades and everything to do with his loyalty to Russia. They shook hands and parted.
I waited several weeks for the storm to hit.
It never did. The general’s loyalty to his country was apparently tempered by his loyalty to his friend, whom he did not rat out (Positive Tell #1). So I won the consolation prize. We’d run a tight op with a solid fail-safe mechanism—and in the Bureau, that’s considered a successful mission.
I worked on many more operations with Jack over the next few years, then had an opportunity to move to the FBI’s Norfolk Field Office, where the Chesapeake Bay hits the Atlantic. For me, it was a dream destination. My treacherous commute from the suburbs to Manhattan had been killing my family time, and I had two young children who loved living near the beach, with Dad home most of the time. I knew Jack would approve of my move, because he had kids of his own, and applied the same dedication and nurturing to them that he’d shown everyone at work (Positive Tell #7).
Despite his best efforts at home, though, Jack had pressures similar to mine, and two of his kids were acting out their frustration. One of them caused a serious problem, but Jack refused to judge his child. Instead, he got a transfer to FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., which was far more conducive to a good family life (Positive Tell #5).
And a few years later, he found an opening for me on his new team. I couldn’t resist working at the epicenter of American law enforcement. We moved to D.C. That was when my troubles started.
I came up with a hot op. It had lotto written all over it. One of Russia’s richest oligarchs, who had a line straight to Putin, was having visa problems. I wanted to help him “solve” them.
But Jack didn’t seem impressed. He was clearly different in D.C.—less opinionated, more conservative, less flexible. He was still pleasant with me, but distant. We shared some very enjoyable lunches, but not much real contact. Mostly, there was way less of it. He was cocooning socially, so at least he was consistent (Positive Tell #9).
It was like night and day, and I didn’t know why.
Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to Russia with a gimmicky red “reset” button that symbolized State’s desire for a new, improved relationship between the two countries.
That same day, Jack sent me a detailed memo explaining why my operation was contrary to the red-button détente, which he’d known about for weeks (Positive Tell #2).
I appreciated the information. But it wasn’t great news for our Russia team.
I went to his office the next day, where he reiterated the whole story, exactly as he’d laid it out in the memo, clearly relieved that he no longer had to keep the secret of the red button (Positive Tell #3). He said the worst part of his new job was having to keep things confidential from virtually everyone he worked with on a daily basis, which was different from keeping secrets within your own team. He equated it to lying (Positive Tell #8). There was truth in that, but I assured him that I understood the necessity for secrecy.
He said that the only thing he liked about working at headquarters was that people were scrupulously careful about offending others—which some might call political correctness—and that, contrary to the movies, there was a dearth of gossip, at least in the Hoover building (Positive Tells #6 and #4).
I told him I was grateful for his honesty and that I’d been as uncomfortable with the deceitful element of the deep-dive subterfuge as he’d been (Positive Tell #10). That may sound like an odd conversation between two career spies, but in the final analysis, espionage and counterespionage in the twenty-first century is just another business. (Also there’s now almost as much spycraft in private industry as there is in government.)
I realized that Jack’s core values were intact, and that he hadn’t really changed. He was just dealing with a new context that consisted of a much broader picture, consisting of not just the FBI, but the State Department and the White House.
Now he was protecting the people under him by protecting himself. And he was also protecting us from ourselves, and our sometimes dangerous dreams of glory.
Once again, I’d learned the stark limitations of judging human behavior with such binary qualities as good and bad.
It was clear, though, that after all my years of working Russia, my career had just hit a speed bump—about three feet tall. Jack mentioned that there was a major opening in the Behavioral Analysis Program.
It was for the position of director.
“Think you might be interested in that?” he asked.