Cold Reading Summary (C15): Pacing and Leading

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You may think you make a decision and then act on it. 

But the truth is, the vast majority of your actions are instinctive. Your conscious mind is almost always a split second behind your actions.

First there’s a stimulus. Then you start to act. Finally, your conscious mind makes up a plausible reason for your action. 

This is where pacing and leading comes in.

Pacing is when you say something about your target (the person you’re cold reading) that is irrefutably true. 

For example, if you are at a coffee shop you might say something like:

• You are sitting there.

• You can feel the chair.

• You can hear people talking.

• The cup of coffee is warm in your hand.

• You can smell the coffee beans.

Leading statements are things you want to be true but aren’t true yet. Things you would like them to think or do. 

Unlike pacing statements, which are quite easy and obvious since they are based on physical observation, leading statements need to be chosen very carefully.

If you try to lead a thought that is too far removed from what they are doing, it will backfire. 

Here’s a good example of a pacing and leading statement:

You’re sitting there watching the crowd and maybe you’re starting to feel like taking a sip of your coffee.

Here’s a bad example:

You’re sitting there watching the crowd and you’re starting to think about giving me all your money.

Notice how in the “good example” the pace and lead are closely aligned. It’s a very plausible situation. It also uses the word maybe to indicate the leading statement is only a possibility.

Once you pace and lead someone effectively, the lead becomes the next pace. You say what they are doing, “predict” what they are doing next, they start doing it. Now you just move onto the next thought. 

As long as your leading statements are close enough to each other (like in the good example above) they will remember the situation as if they were their own thoughts. 

When you get very good at this, you can lead someone for a very long time, making gradual steps towards something that might be far removed, such as getting them thinking about taking a vacation or buying a new car.

The best way to practice pacing and leading is to watch people and journal.

As you watch people, write down 20 or so pacing statements about the people you see around you. 

Next to each pacing statement, write down a plausible leading statement. Remember to use the words “and maybe”, or some variation of it (and you might, and perhaps, etc.) before each leading statement. 

Your eventual goal is to be able to look at someone and quickly come up with a string of pacing and leading statements on the fly.

When doing this on live people, they will probably start talking. That’s good. Everytime they say something, it’s just another thing to pace.

Once you start this with real people, afterwards your encounter, journal what happened. Write down the pacing and leading statements you used and what they said up until you got stuck. Think about how you could have taken what they said and used it as the next pacing statement.

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