175: Sizing People Up with Former FBI Agent Robin Dreeke

(Recorded March 4) How do you know when to trust your intuition? What is it about certain people that prickles your spidey senses? I’m delighted to bring you this conversation with former FBI Agent Robin Dreeke on how to read behavior signals for who we can trust — and who we can’t.

Robin and I also discuss one of the lowest points of his career, six months after 9/11. As he writes in his book, Sizing People Up, “The destruction of my dreams left me with nothing to lose, and my mindset shifted, as if on its own, and settled in a place that said it was acceptable to help one person at a time. It felt like neither capitulation nor epiphany.”

Although this was recorded just on the cusp of things getting quite serious around the pandemic here in the U.S., that advice is more true now than ever.

Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/175

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Robin Dreeke has studied interpersonal relations and behavior for the past 30+ years, both within the US Government and with private sector organizations. He is a certified practitioner in the use of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®), Emotional Intelligence (EQ-I 2.0), and the Personal Discernment Instrument (PDI).

He is the founder and president of People Formula LLC, an organization that offers Advanced Rapport Building Training and Consultation. Additionally, Robin routinely conducts workshops and seminars for government, military, and private-sector organizations across the country.

Topics Covered

• Importance of language

• Behavior Analysis Program (BAP) - specialized in why things were happening, rather than the issue of who, what, when, or where. (had to parse my own perceptions practically every day) 

• “It’s mentally and emotionally impossible to be in a state of fear and a state of love at the same time. Love, therefore, is life’s only reliable, eternal, and universal antidote to fear.”

• We’re all insecure about something

• January 2002 - low point in career, “The destruction of my dreams left me with nothing to lose, and my mindset shifted, as if on its own, and settled in a place that said it was acceptable to help one person at a time. It felt like neither capitulation nor epiphany.”

• Robin’s experience of being downtown when September 11 happened

• Stempathy 

• Safe beta testers

• Six signs for behavior prediction: Vesting, longevity, reliability, actions, language, stability

Resources Mentioned

• Robin on the web: Robin Dreeke

• Twitter: @rdreeke

• Sizing People Up: A Veteran FBI Agent's User Manual for Behavior Prediction

• Jenny’s Momentum Community

• Myers Briggs

• Books:

  • It’s Not All About Me

  • The Code of Trust: An American Counterintelligence Expert's Five Rules to Lead and Succeed

  • The Confidence Game

• Related Pivot Podcasts:

  • 59: Captivate: Secrets from Viral TED Talks with Vanessa Van Edwards

  • 67: What Does Your Soul Know? Flow and Transparency with Penney Peirce

  • 74: Soul Groups: Transparency in Relationships with Penney Peirce

  • 84: Former CIA Agent Michele Assad Returns: On Transforming Insecurities Into Intuition and Faith

  • 71: Finding Faith, Courage and Confidence as a Secret Agent—Michele Rigby Assad's Pivot from CIA to Author

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