Welcome to the Mind Hush Group

Navigating emotions, truth and lies.

We are educators using behavioural science to provide training in emotional intelligence, deception detection and other advanced communication skills to busy professionals and organisations across the public and private sector.

We break down the science to provide practical skills, tools and strategies to help business leaders, entrepreneurs, CEO's, managers and other professionals communicate more effectively with impact and have the information to make better decisions in order to get to the truth when it really matters!

Deception doesn't discriminate

The hard facts

People lie, people spread misinformation, people deceive and mislead others.

Deceptive practices and dishonest communications by others can have varying impacts on our lives. At the higher stake spectrum, deception and dishonesty can be very costly with financial, emotional and psychological ramifications putting individuals and businesses at risk.

Deception doesn’t discriminate and unfortunately it is likely to affect all of us at some point, either directly or indirectly.

Societies around the world are impacted by the deceptive behaviour of others. Learning how to better detect deception is becoming increasingly important in the battle to protect ourselves, our family and friends, our colleagues, our jobs, our businesses, our reputations, our finances and our assets.

The truth matters

We demystify psychology and unravel human behaviour to provide a range of training options for individuals and organisations seeking to uncover a person’s true emotional state and to get to truthful information.

We work with CEO’s, business leaders, managers, entrepreneurs and other professionals who deal in the currency of people, educating them in the science of deception detection and emotional intelligence so they can communicate more effectively to achieve better outcomes.

We are on a mission to provide people with the skills and techniques to help them to uncover concealed emotions and how people are really feeling, elicit information more effectively from others and ask the right questions, especially when critical decisions are required when there is something important at stake.

Think of us as your ‘behaviour lounge’, a comfortable place for learning advanced people skills. We constantly keep abreast of the latest and most relevant empirical research and developments from the scientific community, industry and academia.

We bring together our experience of over 27 years in corporate communications across multiple sectors and international markets, blended with what we know the validated science tells us, providing you with the skills, knowledge, tools and strategies to communicate at a much more advanced level in order to assess the emotional states and underlying motives of other people.

Understanding human behaviour and the dynamics of how people behave and interact is fundamental and whilst it's considered a 'soft skill', it's among one of the most important life skills you can have.

Having technical and formal qualifications and experience is no longer enough to give you an advantage on the global stage! The research is increasingly showing that your level of emotional intelligence (EI) and how you communicate will have a major impact on how successful you are because of the complex world of emotions and deceptive behaviour we grapple with every day.

Most of the time when we lie, it's through our spoken words, however speech is only one aspect of the message we communicate.

When it comes to deception, ‘non-verbal’ behaviour reveals a treasure trove of signals and behavioural clues which are really useful.

When we are speaking, and even when we aren’t speaking, our facial expressions, body language, gestures and posture are conveying and leaking our intentions, thoughts and feelings – in other words, ‘our bodies are telling a story’.

Whether you’re dealing with someone in person or in a virtual capacity, by learning how to observe and analyse non-verbal and verbal behaviour to identify useful behavioural clues, this will:

Empower you with more impactful communication you can use to improve the business and personal relationships with the people you encounter and interact with;
Enable you to make better decisions that are in your, and/or your company’s best interests when you have credible information to work with;
Allow you to better protect yourself from the potential emotional, psychological and financial consequences associated with deception in high stake situations where there is much to lose;
Help you to develop and steer relationships on a path of greater trust, honesty and integrity in an era of challenging times which can require difficult conversations and decisions.

Imagine how much more comforting and and reassuring life would be if you could find out whether someone was being truthful in common scenarios such as:

Business meetings
Business negotiations
Job interviews
Financial transactions
Shareholder and corporate earnings meetings
Sales meetings
Business evaluations and past performance announcements
Legal proceedings
Purchasing goods or services
Insurance claims
Investigations and audits
Political campaigns and election promises

Don’t get left behind! Regardless of who we are, what we do and what stage of life we are at, EI (emotional intelligence) is an essential soft skill, a powerful vehicle for behavioural change.

Thanks to science and the incredible research that’s been undertaken over the years, this provides us with the knowledge to allow us to help tame the ‘trouble maker’ that is your emotions. Level up your EI to improve control of your own emotions and general well-being as well as having the ability to better understand and influence the emotions of other people you interact with in your life.

Behaviour analysis and ‘deception detection’ is a trainable skill and learning the basics of the science takes surprisingly less time than what you might envisage.

Training will take you from being a passive observer of behaviour to having the scientific and strategic skills and techniques that have long been used with success by various intelligence, law enforcement and security organisations, to help you get to the truth. We can say with confidence that you’ll be truly will be surprised at the things you’ll see and hear in other people that you may not have noticed before.

Human behaviour

To better understand human behaviour it’s necessary to learn and understand the science and various underlying forces that drive it.

From the research by Dr Paul Ekman and others, we know that there are seven universal emotions that as a human species, we all have in common and express regardless of gender, race, colour, where we were born and the environment where we were brought up.

The 7 universal emotions are: happiness, sadness, contempt, anger, fear, surprise and disgust.

Whilst people can display these universal emotions as a full or ‘macro’ expression, they can also take the form of a ‘micro expression’ – where they flash across the face in as quickly as 1/25th of a second. People may or may not be aware they have displayed this fleeting facial expression and they cannot be prevented from occurring (Paul Ekman).

These leaked micro expressions aren’t always obvious to recognise without specific training in the field and can be easily missed.

The good news is these skills can be learned and help you get to the truth of the emotion a person is actually feeling, and as Paul Ekman has stated, ‘evolution has dictated that the face is the clearest signal for emotional display’.

The facts of deception

Whilst many of the lies we encounter every day are invariably harmless and expected white lies, other lies can have dramatic emotional and financial implications at an individual and organisational level.

Deception is big business, it can empty our bank accounts, damage reputations and trust and destroy relationships, and in very high stake situations it can threaten life, our country’s security and borders and compromise our governments.

Scams and fraud facts

Australia – In 2020 scams cost consumers $176,091,805 million – up 19% from $142,895,772 million in 2019 (Source: ACCC).

United Kingdom – Over £192 million of alleged fraud against businesses involving traditional embezzlement against employers, manipulating accounts or abuse of position appeared in UK Courts in 2019 compared to £109 million in 2018 (Source: KPMG).

Globally – The 11th and latest edition of the 2020 Global Study on Occupational Fraud and Abuse reported the global cost was US$3.6 billion (Source: 2020 Report to the Nations. Copyright 2020 by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, Inc).

Why we are all liars

On any given day it is likely we’ll be lied to and receive conflicting messages from family members and loved ones, friends, superiors, colleagues, businesses, the media, politicians and governments.

We’re socialised from as soon as our language develops that we should tell the truth and to listen to verbal communication and the words we hear from others.

In reality, lying is socially required and expected. Society often encourages and even rewards deception, and whether we like to admit it or not, or are even aware of it, lying is integral to many occupations.

We are exposed to a dozen, sometimes hundreds of lies a day.

Why?

Well there are various reasons why we all lie.

See the benefits after just 1 day of training

Behaviour analysis is a learned skill. Recognsing emotions, whether concealed or otherwise, along with deception detection and getting to the truth of information of others is a trainable skill, and the ‘basics’ can be learned in as little as 1 day of specialised training. It must be noted and stressed that we wont all become human lie detectors overnight, improvements in accuracy will take continued practice, focus and learning.

The training teaches you how emotions are communicated subconsciously through various channels of communication and how to recognise when people expose the truth (i.e. revealing the real emotions they don’t want you to see that leak out whether they meant to or not).

Dishonesty and misinformation is big business and in a world lit up 24/7 with the Internet and social media, it’s woven into our daily lives.

By learning the science behind this human behaviour, you’ll have the skills and strategies to better manage how deception may impact you in your work and in your personal life, especially when the stakes are high where there are significant financial, emotional and psychological ramifications.

How science helps us

There are many misconceptions, mistruths and myths around facial expressions, body language and lie detection.

Whilst polygraphs have their place for detecting anxiety and stress levels, they are unable to detect lies. AI (Artificial Intelligence), along with other technological advances and innovations will prove useful one day as tools in lie detection, however, the scientific research has proven and continues to do so, that humans who have had training in the field currently remain the most accurate at reading the concealed emotions of others and detecting deception. People are not naturally very good at lie detection with the average around 54%. However with training this ability can be greatly approved upon.

Our training is based on behavioural science.

Assessing the credibility and truthfulness of the information from other people with more accuracy will help you determine if there are other hidden motives/potential deception at play which can be harmless or harmful depending on the context and how high stake the situation.

We are educators, our focus is sharing what we know about behavioural science and help you navigate emotions, truth and lies.

At the Mind Hush Group the focus is on YOU, and how we can help you develop yourself by improving your interpersonal communication skills to get more of what you want and less of what you don’t want from your life.

We offer specialised training through the lense of social science and based on psychology and sociology frameworks and cognitive and neuroscience. We synthesise the science into practical tools to use to improve your communication skills, emotional intelligence and increase your ability to recognise the ‘concealed emotions’ in others.

The skills will help you to read people with greater accuracy on how they are feeling and the techniques then applied in your daily life. They will also help you better understand what drives your own behaviour and emotions and how you can manage them with more control to achieve better outcomes.

Our goal is to share the existing and proven science with you, so you can use the training constructively and positively in your communications and interactions. Use the training to:

Manage your own emotions at a higher level with more control and learn how to elicit information from others to get to the truth and credibility of what is being communicated to you verbally and non-verbally.

Find out what a salesperson, boss, colleague, friend, partner, or family member is really thinking and the actual emotions and motives they may be attempting to conceal from you.

Equip you with the skills to better navigate and decipher the barrage of scams, offers and deals hurled at you.

Reduce the potential emotional, psychological and financial damage that can be inflicted upon you as a direct or indirect result from the deceptive behaviour of other people.

Recognise the micro expressions leaked by other people which reveals their true/actual emotional state, enabling you to then probe further for information from the interaction/modify your response accordingly, depending on the situation and context.

Purge your life of questionable, dishonest, insincere and toxic friends, acquaintances, businesses and clients whose values, ethics and morals do not align with yours.

The training will give you the edge over your competition, equipping you with a competitive advantage when it comes to reading the verbal and non-verbal communication of others more accurately – seeing how a person is really feeling and their potential motives.

Being able to better read the behaviour of others is your gateway to getting to the truth.

Use this knowledge to help you get more of what you want and less of what you don’t want from others!