How to Read Anyone Like a Book

The most successful people in life know how to read the people they are dealing with like a book. They know their fears and motivations; their natural predispositions and biases. They know the truth-tellers from the liars and the disingenuous. They can read the doers and authentic as well as the pretenders and BS artists. 

This ability gives “people-readers” the upper hand in negotiations and saves them an inordinate amount of wasted time, money and effort. 

Whether you like it or not, smart and insightful people are always sizing you up. They are measuring you as an ally or adversary. They are testing your knowledge, integrity, and professionalism. They are reading you like a book. Knowing you are being read gives you an opportunity to be a best seller. More on that later. Let’s first explore how you can become a better reader of people. 

People-reading is both a gift and a learned skill. Women, in general, are naturally better at it than are most men. This ability is often characterized as “women’s intuition,” but intuition can be wrong and lead to faulty conclusions. Some people are also natural empaths. They have a sixth sense that enables them to read people’s mental and emotional states, but they are not so good at reading people’s intent or likely actions. Whether you are naturally gifted or not, the best people-readers among us have developed this ability into a refined skill. 

So much about one can be faked, at least in the short-term, but there are always certain “tells” which giveaway people for who they really are. I am going to explore those tells over a series of posts. I will share some of my methods and I invite you to comment and share your methods for reading people. To be clear, this is not a series about “body language.” Reading people accurately -- and in a way that helps you ascertain their true motives and likely actions -- goes much deeper than body language.

First of all, you should literally read a person like a book. Too many people jump to conclusions about others, which is like jumping to the back of a book to see how it ends, without first understanding the characters, the plot, and the full story. To truly appreciate the “ending” and get an accurate picture of someone, it behooves you to understand them on multiple levels, or chapters, if you will. This takes a bit of time and patience, but like reading itself, the more you read people in a methodical manner, the faster you get and the better your comprehension. 

Like books, some people can be read quickly and others can take days or weeks. It depends upon how many years of experience they have (pages) and how sophisticated their life experience (their personal and professional story). To start, take a look at their public profiles, their recommendations and endorsements, their educational background and whom they associate with. Of course, you’ll need to validate these are not faked or overly embellished, which we will also cover in more detail later. 

When reading people, start with the “table of contents” to get a high-level snapshot of them. Also, read the recommendations (reviews) posted by others. It’s quite easy to distinguish a staged or superficial review from a real and thoughtful one. I’ll provide some tips on doing this in this series as well. Like reading a good book, you can’t just rely on the cliff notes and reviews that are available on the people you are dealing with. You must get up close and personal. You have to go chapter-by-chapter, from front to back. Reading people in person is the skill I will focus on the most in this series. 

If you think this process is hard, it is not. You simply have not trained yourself to read people proficiently. All the data points you need are there if you know how to organize them and interpret them. Some neuroscientists have suggested the human brain can process information at about 80 megabytes per second (Mbps). No one knows for sure, but if that number is anywhere near accurate, it’s more than 1,300 pages of information. Wouldn’t it be great to read that fast? Well, reading people is not like reading words. There is so much more to it than that – so many more inputs to consider. 

In this series, we will peel the opinion of people like reading each chapter of a book. The chapters we will cover in this series include people’s appearance, knowledge, associations, awareness, behaviors, motivations and true purpose. You will get so good at it, you will know how every person’s story is likely to end before getting half way through the book. That’s an obtuse way of saying you’ll be able to read most people in just a few meetings with them. Here ends the people-as-books metaphor (yes, I know, it’s getting tiresome). 

Next up: how to read people by their appearance.

About the Author

Michael O’Donnell is a serial entrepreneur, author, and M&A Professional. His latest book, A True Professional, details the qualities and behaviors necessary to rise to the top of any profession.