A Review of "It's Not All About Me" by Robin Dreeke

Robin Dreeke is currently the head of the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit, a former Marine Corps Officer and his book, “It’s Not All About Me” is one that I highly recommend.  The book outlines techniques to establish rapport with people and after years of using the techniques in the field to recruit sources for the FBI, he is absolutely an authority on the subject.

The first reason why I recommend “It’s Not All About Me” is because of the causes that drove Robin Dreeke to improve his understanding of human behavior.  He opens up the book by stating that he was not a natural when it came to considering the comfort of the people around him and that there were a series of events in his life that led him to become more aware.  This is something I look for in people that I want to learn from.  Dreeke had to put in a lot of time and effort into learning how establish rapport and in the process picked up on the subtleties and intricacies of rapport building.  This mindful effort allows him to pass these lessons on throughout his book.  Through the process of seeing what works and what doesn’t work while establishing rapport, he was able to continuously refine the techniques that he has made available to the world.

Being able to establish rapport is an essential skill during the “contact-phase” of a behavioral analysis approach to threat recognition because once we identify the anomaly, we still need to confirm our observations, which will often be done through conversation.  Establishing rapport allows for those conversations to become conditions-based, as the first step in the conversation process is to get the person to no longer see you as a potential threat.  Once you have established rapport and see the person shift into the comfortable cluster, you know they are ready to move on with the original purpose of the conversation.

Throughout his book “It’s Not All About Me,” Dreeke outlines ten techniques to improve how you establish rapport with those you are speaking with.  These techniques are designed to lower the risk that a person feels when a stranger approaches them and tries to start a conversation.  Because no conversation is going to be exactly the same as the one before it, these techniques become tools that enable you to determine the best way forward.  Instead of learning a single “one-size-fits-all” approach that has limited real life application, Dreeke’s book outlines multiple ways to view conversations that let you adapt to each unique setting you are in.

Dreeke’s “It’s Not All About Me” fits well with the concepts taught in the Tactical Analysis program because he embraces the idea that you can’t try to change another person’s behavior to get what you want.  What you can do is modify your own actions to set the conditions for success, and his book provides tangible steps to do just that.  You can pick “It’s Not All About Me” up through Amazon.