Language thought-orientation
In Dune's Book I Part 16, Jessica reads someone by listening to their speech patterns:
You will study (...) by close observation of language-thought orientation of those under analysis. You will find it fairly simple to determine the root languages of your subjects (...) through voice inflection and speech pattern.
(...) hearing that Guild Bank representative, Jessica felt a chill of realization: the man was a Harkonnen agent. He had the Giedi Prime speech pattern – subtly masked, but exposed to her trained awareness as though he had announced himself.
(He) will shift the conversation next to something seemingly innocent, but with ominous overtones, she told herself. It's his pattern.
"I enjoy watching the flights of birds on Arrakis," (...) "All of our birds, of course, are carrion-eaters, and many exist without water, having become blood-drinkers."
The way you construct sentences and what you choose to say reveals something deep about you, regardless of the subject. This is an obvious point but whenever I point out examples to people, they seem surprised, which is why I am writing this.
What is your first language?
We'll start with the most mechanical example, even though it is not the most powerful, so that you see what I mean very clearly.
You can often tell where somebody is from by the words and phrases they use, even when they don't have an accent.
For example, Spanish is my first language and English my second. By now, my English accent is vague enough to be impossible to guess (nobody has ever guessed it). But if you listen to how I phrase sentences, you can easily tell I grew up speaking Spanish1. For example, I might say "my weight went up". This is a direct translation from Spanish's, "subo de peso" which is different from English's idiomatic "I gained weight".
And this also works in reverse. I've lived in the US long enough to incorporate some English grammar into my Spanish. The other day I said "En cualquier caso" which is a direct "in any case" but not idiomatic at all. Even though I have no accent in Spanish, you can still quickly tell I live abroad.
Passive vs Active voice
From Doug Leone's interview from Invest like the Best:
I just really want to understand what makes this person tick. And to me, the greatest question is why? Why, why, why? When someone says "I was recruited by", I hear, "I was lazy-ass sitting down. I got a call from a recruit. I have nothing better to do. I got suck to listen to something. I got sweet-talked, then I talked to a company that made me an offer. I wasn't too happy on my job or a little bored and I went".
A converse of that, of course, is "I was sitting on a job, I saw an opportunity in a market segment that I didn't know existed. I call 7 or 8 companies. I realize this is the leading company. I call the companies or I found a way to get a meeting. I sold my way in. I got an offer. I negotiated. I took a job and I went". Wow, what an answer. So those are little things I look for when I interview people.
The "facts" of those two stories are the same: somebody talked to companies they could work for, got offers, and changed jobs. But how they tell the story is how they relate to the story.
"They"
At the core of most entry-level conspiracy theories, there is an ominous "They". They hide things from us. They scheme. They are behind yesterday's events.
But They is not limited to conspiracy theories. It sometimes comes out in day-to-day situations:
- I wasn't promoted, they don't like me. Who? You know, the people that run the company. You mean the executives? Ehh yes. But you've never met them, how could they not like you?
- The flight was late. They are trying to save money and they don't care if we have to wait. Who? The airlines? Yes! But the airlines actually lose money when they are late.
I don't mean these examples as categorical: in both cases, there is some situation where there is an actual They behind the problem.
But as you go through life, you notice that some people fallback to They very quickly. It reflects a powerless, defeatist attitude that generalizes to how they approach life:
- Why would they try to be promoted if They have already decided against you?
- Why learn about airline logistics if the problem is Evil Executives?
Corporate politics
Once, I was telling a VP-type about a new project I was working on. Before I finished my first sentence, he asked:
What do you need of my team? Do you need any work from us?
This was before he fully understood what the project was, the stage it was in, the customers it was for, etc. Their language-thought orientation immediately revealed that this person didn't care about anything beyond their own team. "Don't give us work" was his only concern.
As you would expect from that initial stance, working with him was incredibly difficult. It took me around a month to fully see what he had already told me in that first sentence.
MLM scams
When I was 16, somebody took me to a meeting for a company that sold açai juice. You could buy the juice at the meeting and resell it to others and make a fortune. Better yet, if you convinced other people to sell, you'd get a cut of their sales. And if those people convinced yet more people, you'd get a cut over their sales too! Genius.
Later we found out that only 14% of "sellers" made a profit. Sadly, the profit mostly came from taking money from the other 86% of sellers.
After leaving that meeting, I could tell something was off but I wasn't able to articulate what. Today, it is obvious to me that is a scam. But I don't need to learn about the MLM structure to tell: I can simply watch this video for 20 seconds.
For those that didn't watch the video, I'll spell out what is wrong with it: there are more images of yachts, novelty checks, and luxury cars than of the product being sold. The video is trying to tell you "THERE IS QUICK MONEY HERE", not "We sell a good product". And thus, it is more appealing for those looking for quick money than to those interested in the product.
Recruiting
I've interviewed a few hundred people while working at a growing tech company. Most candidates have a career narrative which sounds good (I want to learn a lot, be challenged, etc).
But at the end of the interview, I would give candidates 10 minutes to ask me whatever questions they wanted. They very rarely asked me questions related to their official narrative or any aforementioned interests. Through their questions, they revealed in those 10 minutes what they were actually interested in: "is the office fun?", "is the pay good?", or even "can I use my programming language of choice?".2
It is easy for people to fake answers but it is very hard for them to fake interest.