The Resonate Podcast with Aideen

Face Reading and Body Language with Joseph McGuire

• Aideen Ni Riada • Season 1 • Episode 74

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This week Aideen interviews Joseph McGuire, internationally renowned facial profiling and body language expert, who shares his expertise on reading people through nonverbal cues and ancient Chinese face reading techniques. He explains how understanding these signals can help us communicate authentically, recognize red flags in relationships, and make better decisions in both personal and professional contexts.

• Joseph has been fascinated by observing people since childhood, intuitively reading their intentions and emotions
• Chinese face reading views the mind and body as an inseparable unit, treating the face as a life map
• Pay attention to people's eyes - they will feel warm, neutral, or cold, giving immediate insight into someone's intentions
• Contrary to popular belief, liars often maintain eye contact to monitor your reactions
• When dating someone new, use a three-date strategy: neutral location first, then your environment, then theirs
• If someone won't introduce you to their friends, consider it a major red flag
• Trust your instincts and physical sensations when something feels wrong
• For authentic communication, use a genuine smile that reaches your eyes
• Being willing to show vulnerability creates stronger connections with audiences
• Sometimes small comments you make can have profound impacts on others

Be sure to connect with Joseph if you need guidance on making important decisions or want to learn more about reading people.

Connect with Joseph

LinkedIn: @joseph-mcguire-face-facts 

Website: www.clearsightcommunications.com

YouTube: @ClearsightJ  

Twitter: @clearsightj 

YouTube Testimonial:  Mike Harsanyi Testimonial for Joseph

Support the show

Thanks for listening! To book a free consultation with Aideen visit https://www.confidenceinsinging.com/contact/

Aideen Ni Riada:

Welcome to the Resonate podcast with Aideen. I'm Aideen Ni Riada, and my guest today is Joseph Maguire, and I'm really excited to introduce you to all to Joseph. Joseph is an internationally renowned facial profiling and body language expert who has been consulting on ancient Chinese face reading since 1985. From an early age, joseph has been fascinated by people, much like I have been fascinated by people for a long time too and by how they move, behave and reveal so much without speaking, as well as by the hidden layers behind the words they choose. He has honed his skills in negotiation, interrogation and elicitation, drawing on insights from former FBI trainers, and is a valued member of the international investment consulting firm Alpha Consult Team. Welcome, joseph, it's great to have you here.

Joseph McGuire:

Oh, absolute pleasure, Aideen. Thank you so much for the invitation.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah, I'm really happy to speak with you because we've spoken before. I bought your book as well about face reading. I think I bought about three books on Chinese face reading around that time because I got really interested in it. Um, but tell us a little bit about how you got interested in um people, because you say here in your bio that they reveal so much without speaking. Can you elaborate on how this became obvious to you and where your work has come from?

Joseph McGuire:

Yeah, well, it goes back to my earliest childhood, because I was reading people. As a small child, I just intuitively knew a lot about people like the adults around me, visiting my parents' home, et cetera. I could read, I could understand and this probably goes back to even before I had speech, but that I could understand who was being honest, who was hiding something, who lacked confidence. I probably didn't have the words for it at the time, but I could tell who was being really authentic and who wasn't. I remember my father used to bring me to soccer matches as a young child and I could tell who was going to move where, whose head was going to drop, who got a surge of confidence when things went well, I could read the play before it happened and I could just see what people were going to do or not going to do. To me it was just glaringly obvious. I didn't realize that if it was obvious to me, it wasn't obvious to other people, and I grew up with very little self-confidence. So I spent a lot of time observing people. I was the strong, silent type, as I was often described, and it took a long time for me to develop the confidence, but I realized in retrospect. This was like my apprenticeship, and it wasn't until I moved to London, when I was in my early 20s and I started to study.

Joseph McGuire:

I studied a branch of oriental medicine which introduced me to the ancient Chinese skill of reading faces, initially as a diagnostic tool, but the Chinese perspective was always that the mind and the body are one inseparable unit. So, rather than the Western medical approach of thinking of the heart as a muscle in the chest and the liver as this large organ on the right-hand side of the upper abdomen, they thought in terms of okay, okay, the heart relates to this area of these areas of emotion. This aspect of our, of our being, the liver, is associated with these parts of our mental processes, parts of our thinking, etc. Etc. So, and they also saw it as all one integrated whole. So what you were, what I was being taught was being in was, was the understanding that we are looking at a person rather than, rather than just um exclusive parts. And the understanding then developed further from that that, uh, the, the face was understood as representing a life map it really is fascinating to think that we can understand ourselves so much better by analyzing our face.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And I guess with the Chinese medicine it was for medical diagnoses and things like that. And now you've moved into negotiation and like quite serious, you know business kind of transactions. But how does an ordinary person like myself maybe use face reading or what would you? What kind of advice do you give the average person, um, in terms of like what we should be looking out for when we are trying to read people?

Joseph McGuire:

sure, absolutely, yeah. Um, really what I'm about is communication and relationships, and life is all about really any kind of human interaction, whether it's business or social, is all about communication and relationship. So really what I'm helping people is to recognize how to communicate best with another person. That's the first thing, the best of ourselves to that, because one thing I have learned over the years I was a therapist for many years and one thing I have learned over the years is that even eminently successful people often lack fundamental confidence in themselves. So people tend very often to wear a mask and hide behind the mask. So really I'm looking to help people be themselves and communicate to best effect with whoever they're engaging with do you find people get um?

Aideen Ni Riada:

you know, you know they respond to others in a way that you know they feel like a higher or lower or you know authority figures can sometimes make us feel a little um of ourselves. What kind of dynamics do you find affect people the most in that kind of way?

Joseph McGuire:

Yeah, well, one of the areas I particularly work with I've worked with you mentioned the business side, but I've also worked with a lot of women who've had disappointments and, shall we say, particularly negative experiences in relationships. So that's an area I've particularly focused on the one of red flags, narcissists and people with, shall we say, ulterior motives. So one thing I learned a long time ago is that people who do have ulterior motives, they tend to have a radar for who to choose as their target, and they will usually choose somebody who has that lack of confidence in themselves and is looking for approval, looking for praise, looking for love, I guess in simple terms, and so how do you help someone in that situation?

Joseph McGuire:

Well, I help them recognize their own strengths, first of all, because that's fundamental. I help them because, so what I will do is I'll profile that individual and I'll show you look, this is a strength that you're underutilizing, this is a strength you're not even recognizing and help them to bring those strengths through. But then also help them to recognize their own instincts, because we all have, we talk about gut instinct, gut feeling, and we all have it. But again, we've been conditioned, trained, to ignore it or not pay attention to it. So, again, going back to that idea that the body is a transmitter and a receiver all the time.

Joseph McGuire:

So, when people get a sensation of, oh, this isn't right, something isn't right, not to overthink it, but just to pay attention. And then, if it's a situation where they have already met somebody and they have some questions, I will profile that individual for them and I will say look, this is showing up as a red flag, this is something to be very careful about, this is something to pay attention to. So and so, unfortunately, very often people come to me after the fact, but at least I would be able to show them what to look for in the future, as well as help them again, recognize their own strengths and bring them more to the surface yes, I mean, we can get into very tangled situations sometimes.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Um, I myself was involved with a personal development group for about 10 years and I know that I kind of got a little too attached to that. Like, as you said, we are all seeking belonging, love and sometimes, if we maybe have been alienated in family relationships or if we've had an argument with you know, our, you know someone that we're close to, then we look beyond to a stranger for that support and they, if we don't know them very well, can lead us down a path that we weren't expecting. Well, part of me is like why can't we all just be young and innocent and be, you know, protected and everything?

Joseph McGuire:

But there's an element of you have to have some street smarts right In order to be able to, um, navigate the world really well yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I, like I, always recommend people be open, like be be open, be trust you know, trust your best self, be you know, share the best of yourself, but at the same time, be discerning and if you get a sensation that somebody or a situation is not right, walk away.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Make no apologies, no excuses, just walk away and you don't even need to necessarily understand or like, have a reason, like, logically you might not have an actual reason, but you should still trust your instincts.

Joseph McGuire:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and at the very least make sure, if you get a feeling that somebody or something is not right and you feel that in your body it's a sense of discomfort, if you get that at least sort of close yourself down and gather information, don't reveal yourself, ask questions and keep asking questions if you need to, if you're not satisfied, and if you're still not satisfied, make an excuse, do whatever you need to do and just leave.

Aideen Ni Riada:

We've spoken about this before, because I always feel like I'm a little too innocent and you'd given me some advice where you said that if you're unsure of someone, ask a similar question like ask the same question again, but with a different words to really so that you have time to watch the person for how they say what they're saying. What kinds of things are you asking, like if we're looking at someone and we're trying to judge are they being truthful or is there something else going on? What kinds of things can we look out for?

Joseph McGuire:

Yeah, one of the common things is eye contact, and there's two particular things I would highlight there. Number one is the feeling we get from the eyes, and there's three basic possibilities when we make eye contact with somebody. And there's three basic possibilities when we make eye contact with somebody. There's three basic possibilities. One is that the eyes feel warm, and feel is the operative word here. So the eyes either feel warm or they feel neutral or they feel cold. And if you make eye contact with somebody and their eyes feel cold, you want to close yourself off and ideally just leave, unless you absolutely have to stay there. But again, if you want to close yourself off and ideally just leave, unless you absolutely have to stay there, but again, if you have to stay, make sure you're gathering information, you're not revealing it, and then you leave as soon as you can. So that's the first thing. The second thing is there's a there's a common misconception that liars will will avoid eye contact. That's a myth. That's a complete myth.

Joseph McGuire:

The likelihood if somebody is lying to you or being deceitful, they will hold eye contact because they want to see how you're responding.

Joseph McGuire:

Are you buying what they're saying? So the fact that somebody turns their head away or turns their eyes away does not mean they are lying, like, for example, if you ask yourself a question, if I ask you a question here what was the address of the first house you lived in? Your eyes will go somewhere because you have to think about it. And it's the same. That's normal, that's normal, that's normal. So if you have to think about something, your eyes will go in some direction or other. So really, it's about paying attention to what people. This is going off in probably a slightly different direction, but paying attention to how people behave when there is absolutely nothing at stake. And then if they, if their behavior changes, that's probably going a little bit further into things. But if their behavior obviously changes or their tone of voice changes, then it may not be an absolute red flag, but it raises questions yeah, um, I've gotten really interested in this lately.

Aideen Ni Riada:

I've been, I read a book by malcolm gladwell called talking to strangers, and what he was, um, trying to draw attention to was that a lot of people's behavior is is purely situational. So one person could be, you know, great having a cup of coffee with you, but if they, you know, are confronted by I don't know someone giving them a ticket, say out on the street, then you'll see what they're really like. But they may not ever show that unless they're in that situation, unless you can observe them in that situation. And so I thought that was really interesting because I was reading a book recently.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Sheryl Sandberg's wrote a book called Leaning In about professional women in the workplace, and she was suggesting in her book that younger women don't pause their careers in anticipation of having a family, that they keep momentum going in their careers. So she gave an example of a woman who wanted to meet the ideal guy, and so she devised a test. So, on the second date, rather than going on the date, she, uh, she would cancel last minute and she would say work was the reason and she would judge whether or not his response was um respectful to her decision to work instead of going on the date, and so she did marry someone and she tested him that way, and they are still together. So I thought that was fascinating. Do you suggest that we do little tests on people like that? Yes, because sometimes these yes, okay, yeah absolutely, absolutely.

Joseph McGuire:

yeah, yes, okay, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, because, again, I've met so many women over the years who've had negative experiences in dating or in established relationships and really we have to recognize that if we're going on dates, it is a test. It is a test and so often people are looking for love and they're hungry for love and they will let that over that, that that desire, that need, override their instincts. So so there are several, there are several things I would recommend. I mean, like, if you're, if you're dating somebody, even if the first date is incredibly wonderful, you're just wow, this is the person, this is my person.

Joseph McGuire:

The first date I would always recommend being in a neutral place where it's not familiar to either of you. That's the first thing, so you get some sense of how they are in a new environment. The second date should be in a place that's familiar to you or to them, where you're meeting people familiar to you or to them, where you're meeting people familiar to you or them. And the third the third date, if there is one, should be the opposite so you're getting to see their environment and their friends and they're getting to see you and your environment and your friends. That will tell you a lot about the real person. And if, for some reason, they cannot arrange for you to meet their friends, their friends are all away. Their friends, oh, they all live elsewhere. That's a massive, massive red flag. That's a classic indication of a narcissist.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Okay.

Joseph McGuire:

So there's a lot more's.

Aideen Ni Riada:

That's a few basic tips well, I hope that this is useful to someone who's listening. I mean, I think it's always useful to be reminded that, uh, things are not always what they seem. And I started paying attention to this after seeing a podcast with Vanessa Van Edwards, who is a body language expert, and, yeah, I was really fascinated by what she was saying. She talked about micro expressions, which are very quick expressions that we don't really register consciously very often, and I would see myself as being pretty intuitive, like I can read people sometimes, but after learning about that, I noticed that I was seeing some of these micro expressions and I was in a conversation and I noticed the dad talking about his son going to college and he had a downturn on his mouth that he was maybe a little worried about his son going to college. And he had a downturn on his mouth that he was maybe a little worried about his son going.

Aideen Ni Riada:

And previously I would have thought, oh, yeah, I can feel that he's feeling something. But this time I realized I'm observing something. So in a way, it's improving my, my communication skills, because not only am I kind of seeing oh, I'm feeling something but I'm also going. Oh, there's evidence, I can actually see a physical change in his face. So I should trust my intuition. Um, because it's not just intuition. Would you say that that a lot of the time, our intuition is something that we're seeing rather than just feeling from the gut.

Joseph McGuire:

Both, both. In my classes, I will often use the Chinese symbol for listening, and the Chinese symbol for listening contains reference to the ears, the eyes, the heart and the mind, and all of them working together. So you're never just seeing, you're never just hearing.

Aideen Ni Riada:

It's using the whole body again, as the whole body has an antenna. Wow, I love that, and I often say to people that singing is the whole body like a tuning fork, because we're transmitting energy. But it's not just our voice that they're hearing, they're also you. When we transmit and we speak and are we, um, we are actually revealing a lot about who we are, like our I would. I love the idea of listening to an audiobook by the author if they've got a good voice, because I feel like you get so much from listening to someone and their voice transmits more than just what the words transmit. So I really that's interesting with the chinese symbol for listening that it's everything your mind, your heart, your ears. You said a few other things that I didn't catch. You know, it's funny how our brains catch only a certain amount, like logically. We can't process all the information that we're given. That can be a good thing and a bad thing, right.

Joseph McGuire:

Yeah, but you have to recognize that you're filtering, and it's practice, it's practice, practice, practice to filter out what's extraneous and what's irrelevant, and so much of it is.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a skill in the way as well. So I'm interested to um, to ask you about this idea of maybe presenting yourself, because one of the things that I help people with is, you know, to present themselves well, to maybe brand themselves, to talk about themselves in a way that shows their, their, perhaps their expertise. What kinds of tips do you have that would help someone to change how they're being perceived by others, so that they're not just being seen as someone who's Maybe what can happen is people see us in a certain way, maybe as friendly, but may not see us as also being credible or an expert.

Joseph McGuire:

Yeah, context is everything. Context is very important, but if somebody is asking me that question, why is it important to you? That's the first thing I want to know about somebody's motivation. Do you just want to be seen as the expert, the influencer, the star, whatever it might be, or do you want to share something with people? Do you want to connect with people in some kind of meaningful way? And if you do, then you need to show up as yourself. So you need to take the mask off. You need to trust yourself to take the mask off, because, by and large, what's happening now in the for want of a better term the public arena is people want to see real people, they want to feel a connection rather than just hear somebody purporting to be or being presented as, an expert. So are you willing to show up as yourself? Let your guard down. Are you willing to like?

Joseph McGuire:

The first thing I always recommend to people is to smile the genuine, the full Duchenne smile, where your face and your eyes light up when you smile, because that registers so powerfully with people If you greet them with a smile, that actually triggers a mirror neuron response in the in your audience, whether that's an audience of one or many. So if you can smile and it's, and it's that genuine, that radiant smile, that's the first part of communication, that's the first thing. There are so many, there's so many technical aspects to presentation and what you do with your hands, how you stand, etc. And what you and, like you're, you've got particular expertise in the voice. How does your voice transmit?

Joseph McGuire:

Are you, are you speaking from somewhere in your, in your chest, where you're kind of strangulated, or are you, are you showing who you are through your voice is? Are you just talking in a monotone where it's very technical and it's very dry? That tells you so much about where somebody is at. So there are multiple variations, but the first thing is to just learn. First thing really is to just learn to relax, which most of us have to do. We have to learn to relax and then know why you're there. What are you contributing to your audience? What do you want to share with them?

Aideen Ni Riada:

absolutely, and I think that there are phases to this as well. It's being able to be relaxed in a one-to-one situation with someone, then it's being able to be relaxed in front of a room of people that you're facilitating, maybe being relaxed in front of camera, being relaxed on a larger stage and you build your um, your muscle basically of you know being able to communicate by strategically and kind of incrementally and putting yourself into slightly less comfortable situations. You know, they say that a lot of growth happens right at the edge of the comfort zone.

Joseph McGuire:

Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah. And that's when, when you, when you allow yourself to, particularly in a public, you know, in a public presentation, a public speaking sort of scenario, when you allow yourself to go there, to that place where it's a little uncomfortable for you, people respond to it Because everybody has some element of vulnerability in them and that speaks to them. When you're willing to show up and recognize that guys I'm metaphorically speaking, naked here it's a real person.

Aideen Ni Riada:

It's a real person. But I know myself. I mean I've gone through phases where I've felt a little maybe lacking in direction or a little more self-doubt than usual. Do you recommend that idea of fake it till you make it? Because on one hand, you're saying you have to be really authentic, but sometimes when you're putting your best foot forward, it feels, you know, like you're putting forward maybe a version of yourself. You're not putting forward the same part person that you maybe are with your spouse, you're putting forward a different variety of you yeah, it varies according to the audience there is.

Joseph McGuire:

There are scenarios where it's not about yeah, sometimes maybe you need to go in and wear a mask, like if it's a formal business meeting you, you don't want to be seen to screw up or to be somebody who's you know again, metaphorically, sort of weeping and letting all their troubles show. But if it's a relatively informal scenario, trust yourself. Trust yourself to be real, but, again, know who your audience is. What is it you want to share with the audience? Because, again and I know I'm saying the same thing, I'm repeating the same thing but people want to meet real people. They want to feel they have something in common with you. Certainly they want to be entertained or they want to listen, to watch somebody they admire, they respect, but they want to feel they have something in common with you. They want to be touched, their lives to be touched in some way by whatever it is you contribute and by your presence. So trust in that.

Aideen Ni Riada:

I love that because I feel like sometimes we certainly with clients and students that I've had, and even with myself sometimes we underestimate how needed we are, how needed our perspective might be.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Like it's great to have like a big expert that we might see on YouTube or that we might read their book, but actually the advice that I have learned through my own everyday life, my own ups and downs, and saying that to a friend or supporting them through something similar as a friend, is hugely important. Like we cannot underestimate our value in our relationships because you're the one that's there and if you're there, you're the most important person to them in that moment. So, yeah, I think all of us have gone through so much and we have had so many different experiences and you might think, well, you're one of many that maybe someone else has been through what you've been through, and in different ways. But no one gets to be you and no one can replace you. No one walks in your shoes, and so in the moment when you are can be yourself, when you can be honest and when you can support someone with a story or an anecdote or support, I feel like it's it's.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Some of these situations are life or death situations. It's like you know. They need to hear from us. Life isn't worth living if we keep holding back and if we keep hiding yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Joseph McGuire:

and you don't know in advance what something that to you is a throwaway remark might be so, so impactful for somebody like I've had that. So now I've had that situation on numerous occasions where something I've said that to me was totally inconsequential. Somebody afterwards said, wow, I so needed to hear that today. And I have no idea what it was. I even said so, you know. Again, it's really just showing up.

Joseph McGuire:

And the other thing is, it's okay to feel nervous, it's perfectly okay to feel nervous. I mean, there are so many stories of famous actors, actresses, sports stars who are hugely successful and they literally throw up before they appear on stage or before they appear in whatever their sport is, and this goes on almost every time for some people. That's pretty extreme to me, but it happens, so it's normal. And there's an old Jerry Seinfeld line about public speaking where he said that the two biggest fears people report are fear of death and fear of public speaking, and for many people, fear of public speaking is actually the number one. So he said that the person giving the eulogy at a funeral is often in a worse place than the person in the coffin.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Oh, my Lord, Is there anything that you'd like to say to our listeners, like any words of wisdom that you think maybe people need to be reminded about?

Joseph McGuire:

um, yeah, again, I go back to the eyes. When you, when you meet somebody for the first time, whether it's in the social context, the business context, pay attention to the eyes and what's the feeling you're getting from the eyes? This to me like obviously a few years ago, we were all going around wearing masks, so all you could see was the eyes and the eyebrows and the eyes. This to me like obviously a few years ago, we were all going around wearing masks, so all you could see was the eyes and the eyebrows, and the eyes are the most important thing. If you're paying attention to the eyes again, are you getting a feeling of warmth? Is it neutral or is it cold? They're the three basic possibilities.

Joseph McGuire:

And if it's neutral, again, just tread carefully, don't reveal too much of yourself, just you know. Gather the information, see whether this person is okay, and it may be just that you're meeting them for some kind of transactional engagement, that's, you know it's a one-off or a couple of times and that's it and you've no particular significance for each other. But if it's and if it's warm, by all means open up more. But if it's cold, close yourself off, gather information and leave ASAP.

Aideen Ni Riada:

Yeah, if you get that much, if you get that much, that's huge. Thank you so much, joseph. It's a pleasure to speak to you again and I always love talking with you. I think it's absolutely fascinating the work that you do to you again and I always love talking with you. I think it's absolutely fascinating the work that you do and I know from seeing some of your testimonials that you really help people at a very high level to make, you know, very big decisions, and so if, if you or if you know someone who's making a big decision and that they may need some reassurance or some guidance, I would highly recommend connecting in with Joseph and I'll put his contact details with the show notes. Thanks again, everyone, for listening. We appreciate you being here. Take care until next time. Bye-bye.