About TEDx Talks: I will teach you how to communicate with confidence.

What if you could tell someone was lying — or hiding fear — before they said a single word? Janine Driver spent years training the CIA, FBI, and Scotland Yard to do exactly that, and in this 28-minute talk she hands you the same playbook.

Quick Value

  • Learn how to spot eye blocking — the micro-signal that means someone is mentally locking you out
  • Discover why anger is almost never the real emotion, and what it’s actually hiding
  • Master shoulder shrug detection to catch uncertainty in real-time negotiations
  • Learn how to use lip-locking cues to sense when someone is holding back critical information
  • Discover how these skills apply at home, in business, and in high-stakes conversations

Why This Matters

We spend most of our lives reading words and missing everything else. Studies consistently show that the majority of emotional communication is nonverbal — yet almost no one is trained to notice it. Whether you’re in a job interview, a sales pitch, or a difficult family conversation, the person across from you is broadcasting signals you’re probably ignoring.

Driver calls this ESL: Everyone’s Second Language. It’s the hidden layer of communication running beneath every interaction. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it — and that changes everything from how you negotiate to how you parent.

Eye Blocking: The Body’s Privacy Screen

When someone’s eyes close a fraction too long — not a blink, but a brief disappearance — that’s eye blocking. Driver describes it as the body’s version of a phone screen saver kicking in to protect private information. It’s an involuntary reflex that fires when the brain wants to shut out something uncomfortable.

In the Chris Watts case (August 2018), Driver analyzed his media interviews after his pregnant wife and two daughters went missing. The missing emotions were as telling as the present ones: no visible fear or sadness, but clear signs of anger, disgust, and — most damning — happiness. Eye blocking appeared repeatedly alongside these mismatched emotions.

Shoulder Shrugs and Lip-Locking in Business

A shoulder shrug is the body’s way of saying I’m not sure this is true — even when the mouth is asserting the opposite with total confidence. Driver shares a real business case: a client noticed a potential vendor shrugging mid-sentence while making a guarantee. That single signal prompted deeper questions that ultimately changed the deal.

Lip-locking — when lips pull inward or seem to disappear — signals that someone doesn’t like what they’re hearing or is suppressing something they want to say. Driver spotted it in her own mother during a routine conversation, which led her to ask harder questions. Those questions uncovered a hidden throat cancer diagnosis her mother had been concealing.

These aren’t party tricks. They’re tools that compound — the more you practice reading one signal, the faster the others become visible.

Discover the full analysis by Janine Driver and learn how to apply every one of these signals in your own conversations, negotiations, and relationships.