Every time a high-profile summit like the G20 happens, the same thing follows on our news channels: a panel of experts freezing a handshake, a half-smile, a hug between heads of state, and announcing what it all "secretly" means. I want to gently push back on that, because as someone who reads non-verbal behaviour for a living, I think this is one of the worst settings to read it in.

Trained people don't leak the way the rest of us do

Body language decoding works best on people who are being natural — who haven't been coached, who aren't performing, who don't know a camera is hunting for their micro-reactions. World leaders are the opposite of that. They are among the most media-prepared people on earth. Their teams have rehearsed the handshake, the warmth of the smile, the length of the eye contact, even which side to lean in for a hug. They have been briefed on exactly how to look and how to behave on a stage like this.

So when a leader walks in and greets our Indian delegation with a firm shake and an easy smile, that isn't a spontaneous emotional leak. It's a practised, deliberate signal. Reading it as if it were honest, unguarded behaviour gives you a confident-sounding answer that is very likely wrong.

Think of your own school inspection day

I find a simple comparison helps here. Remember inspection day at school. Word came that an official was visiting, and suddenly everyone was told: sit straight, wear your uniform properly, speak politely, be on your best behaviour. None of that was your true everyday self. It was a managed version of you, produced for an audience.

A summit is the diplomatic equivalent, scaled up enormously. The composure, the choreographed warmth, the carefully timed gestures — all of it is best behaviour mode. Trying to decode someone's real intentions from that is like judging a student's true personality from how they sat on inspection day.

What body language can and can't tell you

This is the honest part of my work that I never want to hide. Body language reveals patterns, not certainties — and it reveals them best in unguarded moments. A genuine micro-expression flashes for a fraction of a second before the conscious mind can mask it. A self-soothing gesture, an unplanned lip-press, a sudden break in eye contact under a difficult question — these slip out when a person isn't fully in control of the moment.

At a summit, leaders are very much in control of the moment. The cues you're being shown are the cues they want you to see. That doesn't make the analysis impossible, but it makes it far less reliable than the dramatic certainty in those TV panels suggests.

  • Coached settings — scripted handshakes, posed photos, rehearsed greetings: low value for honest reading.
  • Unguarded settings — a leaked candid moment, an unexpected question, a private aside caught on camera: where the real signals live.

What you can actually learn

If a staged summit greeting tells you little about a person's inner state, what is it good for? It tells you about messaging. The choreography of who greets whom, how warmly, in front of which flag, for how long — that is a deliberate signal about the relationship two countries want to project. So the next time you watch a G20 handshake, don't ask what it reveals about the man. Ask what story he and his team have chosen to send.

That shift — from "what is he hiding" to "what is he broadcasting" — is the more honest, more useful read. Save your decoding skills for the moments people don't know are being watched. That is where the truth tends to slip through.