“Human Hacking”: A People Formula Book Study
Background:
Chris has been a friend of mine as well as fellow board member (Innocent Lives Foundation) and collaborator since 2009. Through all our years together his passion for the behavioral sciences has been never ending as well as his commitment to excellence and his compassion for others. His latest book, “Human Hacking: Win Friends, Influence People, and Leave Them Better Off for having Met You” is his life’s work and passion for understanding the interpersonal skills we all hope to have to be successful in every aspect of our lives. His book is in essence his week-long Advanced Practical Social Engineering (APSE) Class that can now be shared by all. At first glance I thought Human Hacking was going to be a different kind of business book, so I asked Chris a question for a deeper understanding of his goal with his book; “What are you hoping to accomplish with this book and who do you hope reads it and is your primary target audience?” Here is what he said: “The last 4-5 years of my APSE class has been more than 50% filled with people NOT in tech and wanting to learn these skills to take their lives to the next level. Also, my life is so much better for having met you and people like Joe (Navarro), Ekman (Paul) etc., and having learned these things and applied them. I want others to benefit the same way. So really it is ANY person that is the target audience. Anyone who wants to learn to be better.” Chris takes every aspect of human interaction and breaks it down into understandable and repeatable processes. Along the way, he shares his funny and sometimes humbling anecdotes he experienced in learning these lessons. You will also learn about how to truly become a modern day “007” without having to join a “three letter” government agency. If you are looking for the perfect resource to understand yourself and others better so you can create great success as well as recognize nefarious people targeting you, look no further.
About the Author:
Christopher Hadnagy is a global security expert and master hacker. He is the founder and CEO of Social-Engineer, LLC, the creator of the popular Social Engineer Podcast, website, and newsletter, and designed “Advanced Practical Social Engineering,” the first hands-on social engineering training course and certification for law enforcement, military, and private sector professionals. He is also the first (adjunct) professor of social engineering for the University of Arizona, one of the NSA-designated Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations. Hadnagy is the creator of the Human Hacking Conference, an annual conference focused on training people who to hack themselves to achieve their goals. A highly sought-after writer and speaker, he has spoken at events such as RSA and Black Hat and given numerous presentations for corporate, government, and military clients. He is the bestselling author of four technical books for security professionals: Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking; Unmasking the Social Engineer: The Human Element of Security; Phishing Dark Waters: The Offensive and Defensive Sides of Malicious Emails; and Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking, which is now in its second edition. He is also the founder, executive director, and board member of the Innocent Lives Foundation, a nonprofit that fights the sexual abuse of children.
Chapter Highlights: The chapter highlights are bullets and key lessons learned from each chapter. Hopefully you will take a few new ideas away and be curious about exploring others more.
Chapter One: Know yourself so you can know others.
This chapter kicks off the book with an understanding of the DISC communication style assessment and gives an easy-to-understand explanation as well as self-assessment tools. Equally, if not more importantly, the chapter covers how to recognize the style of others so that you can adjust and build upon a theme of the chapter, empathy. Hadnagy offers that "empathy is the imaginative act of experiencing someone else's point of view." With the knowledge gleaned from this chapter "you will become more aware of your own worse impulses and adjust yourself accordingly."
Chapter Two: Become the person you need to be.
Even more accurately this chapter is about becoming the person the individual you are encountering is hoping you will be. Hadnagy describes #pretexting as understanding the “context” of how the other person engages and relates to the world around them based on all the factors that create who we are. Our ethnicity, gender, generation, social and economic status, etc. Once we understand these #traits, he offers that we adapt ourselves / offer a #pretext in order to allay the fears of those we encounter. A well-crafted pretext will help establish good initial #rapport and prepare the way for #trust. The chapter offers the acronym PREPARE to pave the way for success:
- Problem
- Result
- Emotional state
- Provocation
- Activation
- Rendering
- Evaluation
Chapter Three: Nail the approach.
This fantastic chapter is all about rapport and ensuring the first few minutes of any encounter goes well for you as well as the other person. Hadnagy gives very specific actions you can take to answer these critical initial contact concerns humans have: Who is this? What do they want? How long will this take? Are they a threat? We answer these critical questions not just by our words but also by our appearance and nonverbal behaviors. Hadnagy offers that the key to not being “creepy” is to “Not be at odds with your authentic self.” In other words, be congruent with your emotions, words and actions. Make a habit of building common ground by using these eight techniques he employees from my first book, “It’s Not All About Me”:
1. Time constraints
2. Adjust your rate of speech
3. Request assistance
4. Suspend your ego
5. Validate
6. Connect with “quid-pro-quo”
7. Give to get
8. Manage your expectations
Hadnagy ends the chapter encouraging the reader to “Build rapport and you will have done something to build community and heal our fractured world.
Chapter Four: Make them want to help you.
This chapter continues to build upon the interpersonal skills covered and focusses entirely on the principles of influence. Hadnagy does a good job of both describing as well as sharing interesting and entertaining anecdotes surrounding the following influence techniques:
- Reciprocity
- Concession
- Scarcity
- Consistency
- Authority
- Liking
Ultimately, he shares how understanding these techniques will help you recognize malicious actors and enable you to help keep your loved ones healthy and thriving.
Chapter Five: Make them want to tell you.
This chapter is all about the most powerful of all communication skills if executed well, elicitation. Elicitation is the technique of inducing others to share information without asking specific questions or arousing suspicion. This is also potentially the most dangerous chapter. Individuals who can elicit compromising information with malicious intent can do great harm. Luckily, knowing these skills can equally protect yourself from evil doers. Hadnagy offers that once you have established rapport there are seven steps to planning your elicitation strategy:
- Frame the intended goal
- Observe the person of interest and adjust
- Frame the invitational question and exit strategy
- Drive the conversation forward with open ended questions
- Use active listening
- Remembering the details
- Leave them feeling better
Hadnagy reminds the reader to be patient with the technique and that “the greedier we are the more prone to overreaching we are.” Hadnagy shares the five most powerful elicitation techniques he and I utilized when teaching together years ago:
- Intentional misstatements
- Bracketing
- Primacy / transfer of trust
- Feigned incredulity
- Quote reported facts
When an individual plans the strategy with the seven steps, utilizes at least one of the elicitation techniques and ultimately communicates matching rhythm, speed, volume and pitch (RSVP) the results are truly remarkable.
Chapter Six: Stop deviousness in its tracks.
The theme of this chapter is how to protect yourself against would-be manipulators by understanding and recognizing their tricks. Defining, recognizing and avoiding the pitfalls of manipulation plays center stage in this chapter. Hadnagy discusses the four pathways to susceptibility and how to recognize and guard against them:
- Environmental control
- Forced reevaluation of your beliefs and context
- Increased powerlessness
- Punishment
Leave them better off for having met you is the North Star by which to guide you sway from manipulation tactics.
Chapter Seven: Let your body do the talking.
This is a straightforward chapter summarizing the importance and impact of nonverbal behavior on our communication in furtherance of not only our objectives but understanding the emotions and intentions of others. The chapter emphasizes the differences between stress and comfort nonverbals as well as the difference between macro and micro nonverbals. Hadnagy discusses and demonstrates with illustrative and fun photos of his daughter, Amaya, the Big Seven emotions:
- Anger
- Fear
- Surprise
- Disgust
- Contempt
- Sadness
- Happiness
Hadnagy goes on to offer that observing and interpreting nonverbal behavior can tell you the emotional state of someone, not why they have them. He cautions against assumptions and encourages utilizing “baseline” behaviors for more accurate interpretation.
Chapter Eight: Polish your presentation:
In chapter eight we focus on how we present ourselves authentically in order to maximize the social interaction. In order to accomplish this Hadnagy offers that being a skillful storyteller is a critical skill for success. Additionally, you need to attend to the details of the social interaction in both your prep work as well as during the engagement. According to Hadnagy, here are the five big authenticity fails to avoid:
- You are too direct and overexplaining your pretext
- You “negate the frame” and highlight who you are not and thereby drawing undo attention
- You are so perfect that you are not believable
- You are tone death to your own use of inappropriate language
- You attempt to go beyond your goals thereby sabotaging your gains
Finally, Hadnagy says that it is important to know as much as you can about the person you are going to encounter but cautions readers to not obsess. Authenticity is the key to successful encounters and authentic people are imperfect.
Chapter Nine: Putting it all together:
The chapter is exactly what it states, putting all the skills gleaned throughout the book together for the best encounter possible. Ace your critical conversations by planning them in advance by creating a conversation outline. Hadnagy offers these ten steps for success:
- Map the terrain, i.e., understand the people and personalities involved
- Define your goal
- Decide on your pretext
- Imagine your rapport building
- Identify potential influence building or elicitation techniques
- Run a quick manipulation check.
- Pump up the non verbals
- Conduct an authenticity check
- Prepare for likely contingencies
- Solidify your gains
Hadnagy concludes by reminding readers to keep flexible with new data as the encounter unfolds “real time” and my personal favorite, “Empathy Rocks!”
Purchase the book here:
Human Hacking Book Resources: http://humanhackingbook.com
People Formula related training:
