If you are a business executive, CFOs and Controllers included, you cannot avoid the necessity of being able to grasp people's motivations based on external behavioral indicators. Every person we encounter has his own hidden agendas and incentives, which we must decipher in order to be successful. I previously talked about the effect people's priorities have on their attitudes (see Priorities and Attitudes). It is a proven fact that humans' motivations can be read from the way they move, talk, look at you, even from the poses they strike.
Filmmakers frequently speak about the subtext. One of the basic rules of screenwriting is "show, don't explain." Some theorists attribute the importance of this aspect to the visual nature of cinematic art. But the truth is exactly opposite: the ability to read subtext is natural. This is what makes a movie believable and real to the audience: people watch an actor perform (especially, if he is a good actor) and pick up on the little clues of the character's inner-workings, because this is what we do in real life too.
Subconsciously, we are all capable of recognizing particular body movements and voice intonations as expressions of motivations and intents. The trick is to find this innate ability in yourself, isolate it, bring it into the prefrontal cortex, perfect it and use it to your advantage. Start by observing people's communication styles – the fastest way to identify their intentions, to read into their primary concerns.
When people speak in a staccato style and quickly move from one subject on to the next one, what can we tell about their intentions? Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that they are determined to minimize the time consumption of every task they undertake or direct, that they driven by desire of accomplishment?
On the other hand, someone who apologizes for expressing his opinion three times within the same sentence and asks to be corrected if he makes mistakes, obviously is striving for amicability. The ones who wait for your cues or keep quiet all the time are obviously unsure of themselves and don't want to be noticed. Yet, if someone doesn't say anything, but flares his nostrils and drums his fingers on the desk, don't mistake him for anything else but the passive-aggressive about to explode. And so on, and so forth.
So, let's go back to the movie-making. Of course, I had a good reason to bring it up. Films provide us with an enormous cache of visual references familiar to millions of people. I have chosen a trailer for Mike Nichols's "Regarding Henry" to illustrate this topic because the 24-year-old screenwriter J. J. Abrams (yes, that very same J. J. Abrams who screwed us out of a satisfying "Lost" ending) used a dramatic turn in the plot that fundamentally affects the protagonist (played by the great Harrison Ford). His life, attitude, tastes communication style- everything changes within the same movie. It's a stark example of how a person's inner life affects his behavioral traits.
The Frustrated CFO 