How Face Reading Boosts Leadership Development

If you are in contract negotiations with a Chinese-owned business, and there are more than three people on the other side of the room, chances are one of them is a face reader, says my guest, Eric Standop, who is a facial diagnostics expert.

How the Face Reveals Truth Beyond Words

So, what is face reading?

To some degree, we all do it every day in our interactions with people.  We call it reading body language.  But it’s specifically the face that can tell us so much about what a person is thinking, feeling and wanting. We all want more information than words can tell us; and we are programmed to look at faces for social cues.

A “face reader,” someone skilled in dissecting the details of our expressions, can help decipher people’s true motivations and intentions.

In our latest episode of The Enlightened Executive, I talk with Founder of the Face Reading Academy and facial diagnostics expert Eric Standop about his skill in face reading for success in your career, relationships, health and business.

In this fascinating conversation, Eric will explain how face reading is being used around the world in negotiations, assessing leadership and helping leaders find their purpose. He’ll share stories of how he has helped business leaders in hiring decisions, M&A due diligence, as well as coaching executives to find their true motivations.

Humans have been using face reading as a communication tool for hundreds of thousands of years. In fact, before we as a species developed language, people communicated via face reading to understand others’ personalities, talents, and feelings.

An application of face reading used today is in hiring or negotiations within Asian companies. When Chinese leaders hire for their businesses, they may be less interested in a candidate’s resumé than western counterparts, and rather want to know: Is this candidate reliable? Will they be loyal? Will they have a natural talent for the role they are applying for? All of these questions can be answered with face reading.

Three Components of Face Reading: Features, Expressions, and Gestures

But how does it work, exactly? There are three fundamental aspects of the face to observe:

• Features: The eyes and the mouth are people’s most expressive features, and the most important for face reading. They are what we are wired to look at first.
• Micro-expressions: Muscle movement in the face is very expressive, because the facial muscles are directly connected to the brain via the facial nerve. So, whatever is happening in someone’s brain, you can see it in their face. They can’t hide it, even if they try it is difficult to sustain for a long time. Did you know the face is capable of showing over 20,000 micro-expressions?
• Gestures: Observe subconscious gestures — like the hand meeting the face. Body language can be faked — it’s even possible to train your body language to appear a certain way — but gestures cannot be consciously managed as they are controlled by the nervous system.

Skilled face readers are taught how to read features, micro-expressions and gestures and decipher patterns among all three.

Face Reading as a Tool for Hiring and Leadership Development

So what can Western executives gain from adopting face reading practice in their organizations?

When used effectively as a strategy for understanding people, face reading can help leaders hire great employees that will help their companies thrive.

Reading faces can also help you get the best deal in negotiations. A skilled face reader can easily see through a “poker face,” by observing subconscious micro-expressions. This can give decision-makers additional information about people they are planning to partner with.

Face readers can also help companies to identify problems in their team dynamics and find solutions to create more productive, happier and healthier teams.

Finally, face reading can also help people to understand themselves on a deeper, subconscious level, and ultimately, to find their higher purpose in life.

Are you ready to clearly see and understand yourself and your organization?

To check out more resources on the application of Face Reading in business, visit https://readtheface.com/services or pick up Eric’s book Read the Face.

If you liked this episode, you may also benefit from hearing:

• Brandon Fong on using curiosity to unlock human insight and connection in leadership.

• Stephen Travers on Havening, a technique that rewires leadership responses under stress.

• Justin Breen on how empathy and self-awareness enhance executive impact.

Want to Level Up Your Leadership Development?

Start today by discovering your unique strengths — and what holds you back as a leader — with our Leadership Superpower and Roadblock Assessment.

Then apply that knowledge with the Leadership EDGE program, which provides high-impact tools for leaders to better understand themselves and others—faster, deeper, and more effectively.

Episode Transcript

Susan Drumm: Hi, I’m Susan Drumm, and welcome to The Enlightened Executive, where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness, and feature a dream office backdrop.

Today we are focusing on face reading for success in your career, relationships, health, and its application to business. So with me today, I am delighted to introduce Eric Standop. He is a face reader, an author, a speaker and advisor, and conducts lectures for relaxation methods at a German university.

He advises individuals and companies all over the world. He’s the author of 15 books in nine languages. He’s given TED Talks. He’s been a speaker at the World Government Summit in Dubai. He’s the founder of the Face Reading Academy, and he’s also the host of a TV show in Germany. So welcome, Eric.

Eric Standop: Susan, thank you for having me.

Susan Drumm: So I’m sure people want to know, what is face reading? What is this? Tell me more.

Eric Standop: Funny enough, it’s what everybody does. Everyone is a face reader. We look into faces, and why do we do that? Well, we want to get more information than words can tell us, and so this is my work — that’s my profession. I read faces to get more information than a paper or words can give us, and I use that as a tool for advising and counseling people.

Susan Drumm: Wow. So where did this all start? I mean, how did you develop the skill to read faces, and what’s involved in that?

Eric Standop: So many good questions. Looking back in human history, 200,000 years ago the homo sapiens was on the planet. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t talk, there was no language. But for 200,000 years there was no development in it. What people did already those days was looking into each other’s face, eyes, and mouth, also to find out what’s going on — what kind of personality do I have.

A hundred thousand years ago language started, and then the whole thing started to be a little bit different. Throughout history there have been high cultures who used face reading as a tool to find out about the other side — their health, their love, their personality, their talents, anything that is of interest in someone else.

So you find face reading in almost every high culture. Everybody thinks it’s a Chinese thing, but you can find it in Egypt, in the pyramids. You find it in Greek, in the Roman culture, even in the high cultures of South America. So it’s a very, very universal thing on the planet.

Susan Drumm: Wow. So how do you use it? I mean, I’m just going to jump right into — how do you use it in business? Why should executives or entrepreneurs care about face reading?

Eric Standop: Well, first of all, it can be a big help. Why? Well, you have someone who is neutral, who is observing a situation, and gives you then a profound observation of what you, with the help of a face reader, have been able to see. For example, if you have an interview and you want to hire someone, well, you listen to this person, and this person might be pretty good by first look, but then you’re not sure, because this person can tell you a lot. And maybe with the help of the face reader you get a confirmation for what you feel. You might have a feeling like, “Yeah, this person is a good one,” or you have a feeling like, “I’m not so sure.” But to be a little bit more precise, maybe I’ll give you a small example.

So a small example from Singapore. I’ve been hired by a Singaporean CEO in finance, and this guy built up a new department. He hired around 12 people for that, and after half a year he was not really happy about the outcome. He said, “Something’s wrong with this department. I don’t know why, because I hired all the 12 and I’m really happy for each of them, but when they work together something’s wrong.”

So he hired me for two days. The first day I was there, everybody knew that I’m a face reader, but most of them have been Chinese, so for them that was not a problem — they were even more interested in who I am and what I do. So I had a reading with all of them to find out what’s their personality, and maybe it’s the interaction between them that doesn’t work.

On the second day I watched the workflow, and then on the evening of the second day, the CEO and me, we had a meeting, we had a dinner, and while we had dinner the CEO asked me, “So, Eric, what’s going on? What’s the problem with the team?” And I said, “Well, first of all, congratulations, because all the 12 are really good, they have lots of talents, and you hired well.” And he said, “Well, thank you for the flowers, but it’s not working out. We have no outcome, it’s not really what I expected.” And I said, “Well, the problem is not the team, the problem is the CEO.”

And he said, “What? I’m the problem? You just told me that I hired all those guys and I did well, but why am I the problem?” And I said, “Well, you hired guys who need a general, they need a leader, and they need a leader who is always there all the time. You are a CEO who is more like an entrepreneur. You are more a CIO — an inspirational officer. You don’t want to lead those guys all day long, you have no talent for leading. That’s what I told him, because I couldn’t see that in his face. But you have a lot of talent for people, you have people skills, and you have a lot of talent to create things, you are very creative and imaginative. But for those guys you need a strong leader, so I recommend you hire someone just to lead those guys. Don’t take one of them, because I couldn’t see that skill in one of them, but you need to lead them, and you have more time for yourself.” This is, for example, how it can work out.

Susan Drumm: Wow, interesting. And I imagine people asking, how do you know that? I’ve heard you say something before about micro expressions. Tell me more, exactly how.

Eric Standop: So when you read a face, you have to look at three basic things. First are features — features like eyes and mouth. Eyes and mouth are the most important features in a human face. We fall in love with eyes and mouth, and that’s what we look at when we look at someone’s face first.

Then you look at micro expressions. This is the movement of the muscle in the face. Movement of the muscle in the face is very expressive because they’re connected by the facial nerve with the brain, so anything that’s happening in your brain can be shown on your face outside, even if you try to control it. You can’t do that for a long time — you might do that for a minute or two, but if I have a conversation with you for more than 20 minutes, in a reading, for example, I get to know how you think and what you think. Not exactly to the last point, but I’ll find out the personality behind all of that. So you can also find out about lies and expectations and emotions, of course, but that’s not what I usually look for, except when I work for investigators.

And the third thing is gestures — gestures, especially those when the hand meets the face. Other gestures, like body language, can be easily faked. I even teach politicians the right body language when they’re on stage or when they meet another politician or when they have an interview — I already know what they have to do. I even teach poker players in that.

But the gestures just to the face — this is something that a lot of people cannot control. It’s stimulated by your nervous system, and wherever you do that in your face, it means something different. So if you know those three things and you can put them together, you have a good idea of the situation.

What a lot of American companies do not know, when you deal with someone from Asia, especially Chinese companies, and you have more than two or three people sitting in front of you, you have to understand that at minimum one is trained in face reading, while the Westerners read CVs.

Susan Drumm: And then we get the usual thing, like, “Yes, studied here, and married with kids, and a lab as a doctor.”

Eric Standop: Right, exactly. They want to know totally different things — are you reliable, are you loyal, do you have weaknesses, do you have a talent for what you do here, and so on and so on — and they find out by studying your face while they interact with you.

Susan Drumm: So we in the US are not using this gift enough, it sounds like, from your experience going all over the world.

Eric Standop: Yes and no. There’s one good thing in the US that beats, for example, Europeans — it’s curiosity. A lot of Americans, especially the ones in the new economy, are extremely curious, and because this curiosity already stimulates the hypothalamus in your brain, then you stimulate your face-reading muscles that you already have. So it gives you a little bit of a second look, it helps you out a little bit. But of course, when you deal with Chinese companies, for example, you’re dealing with professionals in that, so it’s more than curiosity. At the moment we have a disadvantage when it comes to things like this, and that’s why companies hire me — also when it comes to contract talks, especially Asian companies hire me, because sometimes I don’t even understand the language. So for them I’m a secret keeper sitting in the same room and have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. But that’s not what they want to know from me. They want to know, “Hey, the guy sitting second to the left of the CEO, what’s his issue, what’s the problem with him, and is this CEO reliable?” This is what they want to know.

Susan Drumm: Now, I know you’ve worked at some of the highest levels in various corporations doing this work. Could you share maybe a couple of other stories around how you’ve helped — you mentioned contract negotiations — you know, what are the sort of corporate types of services that you can provide, or any face reader could provide?

Eric Standop: That’s good. Well, I have to be a little bit careful, because maybe someone is listening to his own story.

Susan Drumm: Keeping confidentiality, of course.

Eric Standop: Okay, well, let’s take, talking about a smaller company — a very small one in Hong Kong, a dentist. And I say company because this dentist has around eight or nine other dentists working for him. He is extremely successful, his wife and his kids are beautiful, and he loves them and they love him. So there’s a lot of reason why he should be very happy, but he wasn’t.

So he had a lot of issues, mental issues, he went to therapy for years, and ended up at my place and said, “Eric, I don’t get it. There’s a lot of reason why I should be happy, it’s not working out. So what’s my issue, what’s my problem?” While talking to him, I tried to study him. I also asked him, “Do you really love your wife and your kids?” So he could tell me anything, but I would check if he’s lying to me. So he said, “No, they’re great,” and I said, “Yep, that’s true.” And then I also asked him, “Do you like your job?” And he said, “Well, I mean, yes, it’s okay. I mean, I earn a lot of money.” So that was more like a “yes” but “not so much” — that was honest as well.

That brought me to the idea to read what is he here for — what is his real life purpose, if you want to call it this way. And I found out by reading his face that he has no talent for healing — we could also say he’s not a therapist, he’s not a doctor — but he is a dentist, and he has no talent for the hands, which is being practical, but a dentist should be practical and a dentist should be a healer.

And then I said, “Well, I think the reason why you’re not happy is you don’t live your talents. Whatever you achieved, and that is a wisdom for any CEO, whatever you achieved without talent but with will — well, you get respect for that, but it’s not making you happy. It’s very important that we use our talents, because the talents are given by birth, and the reason why given by birth is they should help us to lead a happy life.”

So he said, “So what do you think I should do?” And I said, “It’s a little bit confusing to me, because I can see the talent of numbers in your face — this is a typical talent that CFOs always have, or hedge fund managers. And I can also see you have the talent of entertaining, so you’re a good entertainer. So but you became a dentist. Now I know why you’re successful as a dentist, because you know how to deal with numbers, and you’re entertaining your clients here. But I have something different to advise you. Why do you work six days a week here? Why? You’re already successful, make it a five, and then don’t work on every patient — you’re the boss here. Come in, lead the people in and out, and do that with them. Have the other dentists do the work — that’s exactly what you’re good at, which is managing the business. And then,” I said, “hey, and once a week be a host. Invite people to your place, you love to entertain, you love to get the awareness and the magnetism, and then everyone’s looking at you and you have a joke and you even sing.”

That’s what he did. His wife is a little bit upset about me now because he’s having a party every week — he’s happier. And by the way, everyone working for him too, because he’s a happy CEO, and absolutely everyone has more work to do because he said, “You do that, it’s brilliant, it’s great.” So this is another little example of how it can work.

Susan Drumm: Wow. And what about — I know some people had some questions around contract negotiations. If they’re — like, maybe just in a general form, how do you help in that capacity?

Eric Standop: Well, something that happened in the United States, maybe — I’m not going to say it was on the East Coast — I was sitting next to a CEO who wanted to buy a different company, and they had an interaction. The CEO just called me “advisor” — “this is Eric, my advisor, he’s just here for a few days.” So I did nothing, just sitting there, and they were talking to each other, and after 30 minutes they said goodbye. And the CEO asked me, “So, Eric, what was your observation?” I said, “Well, it was pretty cool, I think both of you understand very well.” And he said, “Yeah, but I want to know, did he lie?” And I said, “Well, he lied once.” And he said, “He lied once?” And I said, “Yeah.” “When was that?” And I said, “When he talked about his high school days.” And he said, “What?” And I said, “Well, he tried to play the rebel, but he wasn’t a rebel in high school days, and he wanted to be a rebel to impress you because he found out you’re a rebel yourself.” And he said, “Okay, well, I give it to him, that’s not a big problem.” And he said, “Anything else you observed?” And I said, “Well, that’s another thing that I observed — he asked you 17 times a question, which is maybe a lot in 30 minutes, but 17 times, but whenever he asked you a question he never looked into your eyes.” And he said, “Well, that can be because he’s shy.” And I said, “Good point, a face reader would agree, but you know what, a 50-year-old CEO with around 1,000 or 2,000 people working for him is shy when asking someone else questions? I don’t think so.”

So he said, “Okay, so what does that mean?” “Well, that speaks for his personality. So when you have a lawsuit, when there is any confrontation, any argument, and so on, he will never act directly, he will always have someone in the back doing this for him. So this is part of his personality, so you have to know how you deal with this. Do you want to buy a company from this guy or not? Can you work with this personality or not? But be sure you can never have a straight word with him, it’s never eye to eye, it’s never, ‘I have a problem, what do you think about it?’ It will always be from the back.” Wow, so this is the observation, and then the CEOs have to decide what they do with the observation. So it’s only delivering more information than you might know.

And, yeah, so maybe a small one — someone hired a marketing director, no, it was a CMO, and they failed three times in a row, and they said, “The fourth time we really want to be sure we choose the right one.” And so I was sitting in the interviews, four, five interviews, and then they had one in favor, and then they said, “I think we take this one.” And I said, “Oh, interesting.” And then they said, “Why?” And I said, “Because, well, he’s a climber, he will not stay for a long time in this company, this is for sure. Or, you’re looking for someone for longer? It’s obvious that he will climb as fast as he can.” “Or the second one might be good,” I said, “yep, but he has heart issues. It’s obvious that he has problems with the blood circulation, with the heart, so be sure you get a test from the doctor or whatever you can do, but this is his issue.” So I can give information, sometimes it helps, sometimes CEOs think even more about the situation, and then, well, a second consultation.

Susan Drumm: Right, right, right. So what do you say to skeptics? What concerns, maybe, do the leaders have when they hire you?

Eric Standop: Well, the biggest concern of most people is that I read all the time. So, “Eric, don’t look at me that long” — it’s like my mom, my mom is always upset when I look at her. But I’m not reading usually, because it’s energy, it’s a collection of information, it costs really a lot of energy, so usually I switch off. For me it’s really work.

Then second, you have skeptics, but skeptics usually don’t hire you, except they’re very curious — okay, then they do. But when you meet a skeptic, well, 10, 15 years ago I would have tried to encourage this person and explain how it works and so on. Nowadays I’m not really doing this anymore, because, you know, if you watch the news and you go on the internet and you type in “latest about the face,” you get all those face recognition software results, and you find out about the studies from universities like Stanford, Berkeley, but also Wisconsin, Vancouver — there’s so many studies and tests about the face and what a face can tell you right now. The only thing I would say is, well, you’re not up to date, that’s all I can say at the moment. Check the internet and you’ll find out — this technique is an old one, yes, but it’s getting more and more scientific now.

Susan Drumm: Yeah, I wonder in time if we’re going to be able to use AI to do what you do.

Eric Standop: Yeah, in Hong Kong I was already working with a robot called Sophia, to look at what her micro expressions are like — is it human?

Susan Drumm: Oh, a robot? Oh, wow, okay.

Eric Standop: And it’s really — I’m still not sure, is it scary or is it fascinating — that those robots more and more are able to show more and more human expressions in the face when it comes to emotions. Of course we can show more than 20,000 micro expressions in our face — not all of them are related to emotions, but we can. This is at the moment not what a robot can do, but maybe one day.

Susan Drumm: Yes. Oh my gosh. How did you become a face reader, Eric?

Eric Standop: My career was really bright — I was a CMO of a computer gaming company. I had a burnout, and by the way, in fact it was my second burnout. My first one was not really a hard one, I recovered in between, months. The second one was really hard, I couldn’t walk, I had skin issues everywhere, I had 15 different diseases diagnosed, but nobody told me it’s a burnout, but that was my fault, because I went to specialists and the specialists found out about the issues that I had.

And the funny thing was, a urologist in the end was the first face reader that I’ve met, because the urologist told me, “Listen, I couldn’t find anything, but there’s one thing I can tell you — if you go on like this, you will die in the next two or three years.” And I was very upset about this guy, because I wanted to know — well, he’s a specialist, he’s a urologist, I don’t want to listen to this guy telling me I look like death — but that was more or less my first kind of encounter with face reading, if you wish.

And the second burnout made me quit the job, and I just wanted to run away from everything that is career related, and I took my backpack and went to South Africa, and this is where I had a first face reading experience, in a wooden bar at the beach in Bloubergstrand, near Cape Town. And I didn’t believe in that, but I had nothing to do, I was bored, and this face reading experience made me think, “Hey, I want to learn that, and then I’ll go back to my old business and I’ll know everything about my CEO and my employees.” So this was the first idea, 15 years ago.

What I didn’t know is once you learn that, it also changes you a bit, because of course you see yourself in the mirror every day, and it’s hard to lie to yourself then. So to go to a job that you don’t like is hard, because you look into the mirror and you see yourself. So by learning this, then in Europe first of all, in Europe, later in Colombia and in China, I found out a lot more about myself. And out of the blue — it was not really a decision made out of the blue — I said, “Hey, I don’t want to go to my business, I’m going to be a face reader.” It was a little bit naive, because 15 years ago there had not been a lot of people in Europe interested in what I did.

Susan Drumm: And how did you learn this? Was it in China?

Eric Standop: Well, I learned first in Europe, with a German-Danish master, traveling with him in Europe, and then I opened an office a year and a half later in Europe, in Germany. Didn’t work out, I quit. And then, by traveling — South America, later then China — this is where my career started. It started in Hong Kong, by the way. I worked for the Mandarin Oriental, in the spa, as a visiting practitioner. Accidentally I got this job, but out of the blue I was the talk of the town — “Hey, here’s a white guy, a gweilo, a white ghost, he’s doing something that the old Chinese men can do.” And so I was more like, “Hey, let’s try to find out.” I usually tell people it would be like maybe someone from China coming to Southern California and opening a surf shop, I think people would be interested then, too.

Susan Drumm: Or in the Midwest, a Chinese person coming and opening a brewery, and then everybody would say, “What is this guy doing here?”

Eric Standop: It was a little bit like this. But then people found out, “Hey, this helps me a lot,” so I worked a lot at this place. And one day I received a phone call — that was almost a year later — I received a phone call, and the first sentence that I heard is, “What are you doing in our city?” And I could hear it’s an old Chinese man — “What are you doing in our city?” And I said, “Hello, I’m Eric, the face reader.” “No, you’re not.” And I’m like, “What?” And this guy turned out to be my face reading master in China. So I learned from him six years, and that was a real good add-on to what I already learned in Europe.

Susan Drumm: I imagine — well, I imagine this has just been so fascinating. We’ll probably have two camps of people — some who would be interested in hiring you or someone like you, so can you share how, what resource, how can they do that? And then there might also be other people like you who say, “Hey, I want to learn this.” For me, any suggestions and what you have there?

Eric Standop: Thank you. I really want to teach people these techniques, not just one, and to try to combine them. And then the old ethic of a face reader is: a counselor, an advisor, is always trying to have the point of view of the center, of the middle — we’re not going to extremes. This is what I teach my students: you are an advisor, you’re an observer, don’t go to extremes. This is the main important thing. Yes, I want to teach that.

And then the second thing, if someone wants to hire me for both, just go on my website, readtheface.com, or on ericstandop.com, and get in contact with me, and we’ll find a way even under the circumstances at the moment.

Susan Drumm: That’s under — and that’ll be in the show notes as well, for those who are listening. And you’re starting an academy for those who want to learn more, is that right?

Eric Standop: I already started the academy in Hong Kong, but I left Hong Kong a few years ago, then I taught students in Europe. And, well, for the closer future, I hope I can start the whole thing in the United States and teach as many as possible, but definitely looking for real talented people to learn the profession and help people with it.

Susan Drumm: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining today on The Enlightened Executive. It has been enlightening, that is for sure. So thank you so much.

Eric Standop: Thank you. And as face readers say — I see you.

Susan Drumm: Hope you enjoyed today’s episode, and I’d like to point you to the next important step — hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I’ll see you on the next episode of The Enlightened Executive.