Body Language Expert: Stop Using This, It’s Making People Dislike You, So Are These Subtle Mistakes!

your brain is 12.5 times more likely to believe my gesture over my words and that's because it is very hard to lie with our gestures for example you want to do little experiment with me sure okay I want you to say five but hold up the number three five hard right yeah I had to think about them separately this is why Liars use less gestures but no tool like that is critical if you're trying to set yourself up for success and we're going to go through all of them oh yeah Vanessa van Edwards is a behavioral investigator who science back research from body language and micro Expressions to vocal tones and first Impressions has revolutionized the way we build confidence and create more authentic relationships in every social and professional interaction I'm a recovering awkward person and I thought that Charisma was genetic and I didn't know how to have conversations I didn't even know how to have friends then I discovered that highly successful people speak a hidden language and that is the language of cu's this directly from the research they know that blueprints will talk to anyone they know that if you sit within 25 ft of a high performer your own performance improves by 15% and that there's a direct correlation between confidence and anxiety and the distance p shoulder and our ear Lo so interesting they also know that 82% of our impressions of people are based on warmth and competence so if you worry that people don't take you seriously you have trouble getting raises you feel anxious and overwhelmed I have five power cues for competence but if you have ever been told you're intimidated hard to talk to I want you to use these five warmth cues first what about how to get a partner in terms of cues and body language let's start with a study that blew my mind it's impossible to be attracted to someone who that's so crazy just such a small little thing this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribe to the show so could I ask you for a favor before we start if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the Subscribe button and my commitment to you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my power me and my team to make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to your feedback we'll find the guest that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so much [Music] much Vanessa van Edwards for someone that's just clicked on this conversation now and they're wondering why they should stay and listen to what we're going to talk about what would you say to them very highly successful people speak a hidden language and that is the language of cu's if you don't know how to read the cues people are sending to you if you don't know how to control the cues you're sending to others you are missing a crucial element of success how do you quantify that in a way that I know that it's true are there studies or stats that reinforce what you've just said 82% of our impressions of people are based on warmth and competence that means that if we can control our warmth cues and our competence cues we know we are taking care of 82% of our impression and that is critical to being more memorable to being more confident having clearer communication and taking that a bit further what areas of my life will that as impact so if I'm warm and I'm competent which you're telling me are things that I can control what are the downstream consequences of that so I think my mission is to tackle a big lie and that is that smart people will translate their book smarts into people smarts but actually you're no matter how smart you are if you do not know how to communicate with people you can't connect with people you can't have good relationships you can't have supportive friendships you get looped into difficult people or toxic people you have trouble getting raises or promotions when you are able to control your communication it helps you not be overlooked not be misunderstood and that affects your friendships your partner your career and also helps you feel more confident walking into a room and what is your research based on are you a researcher have you done sort of first-party research yourself where were you drawing from so I'm a recovering awkward person so I used to believe that you were either born with Charisma or you weren't that Charisma was genetic and in 2002 I discovered a study that changed my life which said that Charisma can be learned this is when I started to tackle to figure out okay if Charisma can be learned how do we learn it how can we learn blueprints for conversation how can we learn Frameworks for how we connect and how we socialize that's when I started doing my own research so I'm a behavioral researcher and a bestselling author on communication and I specialize and helping very brilliant very smart awkward folks not be overlooked and give me some sort of depth as to the amount of research and the quantity of research that you've done how many people you studied how many hours of footage Etc yep so I uh developed my first framework about 12 years ago and we've helped 400,000 students learn that framework Master it and Conquer awkwardness or feel more confident some of those folks had very professional goals like getting raised or promotion other folks were so socially an anxious and so awkward they couldn't make friends other people were looking for their soulmate or their partner and so 400,000 students have told me that this framework Works nobody teaches us this stuff today or actually extroverts tend to teach it so I read the quintessential How to Win Friends and Influence People back in the day and that's a wonderful book but it's a book written by an extrovert if you are not naturally extroverted I'm not naturally extroverted I'm more Amber verted it is very hard to learn how to communicate if you don't naturally gravitate towards people I was like there has to be a way to teach introverts and Everts to be able to feel confident without having to fake it till you make it without having to pretend to be extroverted or outgoing to be taken seriously or to be charismatic what's an Ambert so Amber verts get energy from the right people in the right places so for example in this interview I love one-on-one conversations I feel myself but if we were to go to a loud bar or a nightclub I would completely shut down and want to be alone Amber verts can dial up extroversion to hit their goals so if they know they have to be friendly and meet people for an interview or a position they can do it but they need lots of recharge time the reason why it's important to know if you're an Amber vert is because you should know what are the people and places that drain you there are certain people when you open your calendar and you look at it and you're like oh I have to be with that person that is someone that drains you they do not bring out your extroversion or your natural love of people there are also certain people who you feel you could talk to for hours they give you social energy they charge your social battery so the very first thing I have students do is sit and make a list who are the people who give you energy who charge you up who are the people who take from you those are people that we want to put boundaries around we want to say no to we want to limit as much as possible and then also the places where do you thrive is it conferences one-on-one business or is it friends socializing parties knowing those places helps you optimize your social battery and when you say cues which you said at the start of this conversation people think of just body language is that the sort of full extent of areas that you focus on yes so there so there cues come into four different channels there is body language that's facial expressions gestures posture but there's also vocal so vocal cues are the tone of our voice our Pace our volume our Cadence there's also the words we use obviously verbal cues the types of words that I'm choosing to use are signaling my warmth and competence to you and the last the smallest channel is our ornaments the colors we wear the jewelry we wear the way we wear our hair way we wear your facial hair those are also signaling different things or queuing people to feel a certain way about you and what about what we say mhm because I know you're writing a book about I don't know if I can leak this but here we go yeah can you're writing a book about conversation so what we say so I did not realize how powerful our words are and here's a study that really changed the way I think about this very simple study they brought people into the lab and they sold them up into two different groups in one group they said today you're going to play the community game and they played kind of a prisoners dilemma type of game the second group they came into the same room the same researcher they said good morning today you're going to play the Wall Street game the trick was the games were exactly the same there was no difference between the two games what they found was everyone who was told they were playing the Wall Street game shared an average of one-third of their profits everyone who was told they were playing the community game shared an average of two-thirds of their profits this means that that one word Community game Community made people think and feel more about community and made them act more collaboratively this means means that the words we're using in our emails our subjects our texts our LinkedIn profile headlines are queuing people for how they should treat us one really simple way to think about this is your calendar I send out calendar invites multiple times a week to clients to friends when we have meeting one-on-one call video interview I'm being queed for nothing those words are so overused they're sterile if you add cues that Prime people to feel or think a certain way you're actually setting them up for Success so 2025 wins collaborative session strategy meeting goal meeting goal overview teamwork collab session those words are actually queuing that person's brain every single time they open their calendar that when we read the a word like collaborate we are literally more likely to be collaborative so the words that we use even one single word can actually change the way people think it's funny because our entire lives are people like the difference between me being a president prime minister superb salesperson exceptional entrepreneur is probably just my understanding of other people and how I show up in my words and my cues and so when you think about it like that this could be for many people the most important subject for them to improve upon I would even go further and say if you don't have people skills you cannot succeed you cannot succeed in life you cannot succeed in love you cannot succeed in business it doesn't matter how smart you are you need people to have success so this is I think the most fundamental skill that people can invest in and how many people did you say you've taught people skills to 400,000 students and is there a particular case study that you stands out to you as being the most extreme in terms of case studying the fact that someone can go from zero to a wonderful place yes and it's my very brilliant but stoic students so I've noticed especially over the last 10 years I've been been doing this for about 17 years in the last 10 years especially my most extreme students are the students who are very very smart very talented and good at what they do but they don't know what cues to send and so they completely shut down they try to become stoic unreadable they try to have no facial expressions they literally try to poke her face all the time and as they try to make connections made a partner make friends people don't like them people don't trust them they can't get bu to their ideas and those are the students where I see the biggest transformation they don't realize that muting muting your cu's is a danger zone que if you try to be stoic and unreadable people literally cannot get a read on you and so my biggest Transformations have happened when I can say you don't need to hide your true feelings it's about amplifying them with the right cues there's a famous example of this uh Jamie simonoff founder of ring so I don't know if you ever watch Shark Tank yeah so in this episode for those who haven't seen it Jamie simoff entered the tank and pitched a billion doll idea literally a billion dollar idea because it went on to raise funding from Sha and Richard Branson but in the tank he pitches the idea and he gets so much push back and so much negotiation and he walks out of the tank without a deal in fact the Sharks did not like him what happened he had the billion billion dollar idea but he did not know how to share it this is the biggest transformation I see is people who have brilliant ideas they're good people they're hardworking people and they cannot get byy in they cannot make friends they cannot find partners how do they feel so if you had to say words that make them feel seen right now how are they feeling as they're listening to this overwhelmed getting into interaction just social overthinking not knowing what to do not knowing what to feel underestimated like people don't see you or the real potential that you have a lack of confidence and fear afraid that if you are your true self or you try any of the things we're talking about people won't like you and I want to teach you that you can be yourself and you can be liked and you can find your people and that doesn't mean everyone's going to like you but it means if you signal the right things cues tell others how to treat you if you signal the right cues you will find your people one of the things that I was sort of inferring from what you said is the importance of understanding your resting face that's like the term we use in the UK resting face which is like when you're just listening or doing nothing like how does your face look yes and you're telling me that's really really important it's real so I call it resting bothered face resting father face RBF same thing okay this is a real phenomenon which is that all of us have different faces at rest now I want you to look at my face for a second my face at rest I'm I'm going to rest it for a second my mouth angles down and sort of an upside on you so it looks like this you see how these are going down yeah are you laughing at my you a little bit okay so at rest I look a little sad yeah that is just my mouth at rest yours goes pretty straight across I just I just you have a lot of hood that's what that's called a lot of hood this is Hood yes yes so that probably makes you do people think you're angry or tired both both okay people never call me angry they call me sad you need to look in the mirror and figure out what is the default of your face if you're mouth angles down into a frown people are going to think you're sad you're going to have to be counteracting that with your cues if you have a lot of hood above your eyes or you have these two vertical lines that appear between your eyebrows you actually don't have them but if some of people at rest even had those two lines people are going to think you're angry or frustrated if you have down eyes so I don't know if you noticed but my I have cat I've added Cat makeup to my eye ah yes yes that actually makes me look less less sad because also my eyes slope a little bit down at the end which makes me look sad okay so people often are like are you okay are you tired I'm like no that's just my face so I have ways that I counteract it one I get to use makeup which is a a great thing but second I know that I need to make my face a little bit more up right so when I am in ING with someone when I'm on video when I'm interview I typically rest my face in an upward position I've activated these muscles so don't I look happier you do but you have have you got to consciously tell yourself to do that or do you just always remember no I have to consciously tell myself to do that now I only need to do that with people with a first impression or when I'm trying to make a good impression my team knows that I'm not sad right like my team they see me all the time they see without makeup they know that I'm not sad they know that's just my face so here's what's critical one you should know what is your resting default are you looking sad angry or afraid I afraid I didn't do so if you have um you actually have some I'm so sorry oh you're I'm so sorry I'm so sorry you have these lines some in the one of my team just left in the back so you have them just right here these light lines here so um when we're afraid we go and we raise our eyebrows up and our you can't see it because I have Botox on my forehead but um if you yeah there you go there you go that's no no open your eyes and go that's afraid so the more you have those lines and the whites of your eyes appear like have you ever seen someone kind of walk around like a deer in the headlights yeah they make you feel anxious like if I were to do my entire interview a little bit wide-eyed you would not only feel anxious but you wouldn't believe what I was saying so you all should see if you have this default lines or if the whites of your eyes show look at your profile pictures in your profile pictures here are the three biggest mistakes you will make one they're showing for your eyes yeah yeah so people you are signaling accidentally anxiety so try to make sure you're not showing the upper whites second mistake you will do is they make a contempt micro expression so that's one-sided mouth raise so just do a one-sided mouth raise for me does it make you kind of feel like better don't do it for too long so if you do it at home you'll there's a facial feedback hypothesis when you make these faces it actually triggers the emotion just like when you have the emotion it triggers the face there's a loop that happens so if people make the contempt expression one said in mouth rais not only do they look scornful kind of disdained they actually begin to feel better then and scornful so do not do an asymmetrical smile in your profile picture you are accidentally signaling NE negativity the third biggest mistake you will make is they uh you do an inauthentic smile in their picture the only true indicator of Happiness is when these cheek muscles are activated anyone can fake smile this is what mine looks like but you see people do it right yeah I do it yeah and people know I would rather you not no CU I I just don't have a good smile what look like what I am I going to say no it's it's horrible is do you know I don't have your smile I literally have to do this when I take facez that's my smile I can't do the te thing I try to what am I going to do well you can smile without your teeth as long as it hits your upper cheek muscle so try just try this for me put your uh pen or your finger in between your mouth like this and smile as high as you can go oh that's better that reaches all the way up into your eyes do you see oh no not that looks so much better okay if you can activate these muscles in your profile picture you don't have to walk around like that but if you can act not the fear not the fear just here just here if you can activate these muscles in your profile picture it shows authentic happiness or don't smile at all I hate the advice just smile more fake Smiles do not work Dr Barbara wild studied this she took pictures of people thinking of something they were authentically happy about took a picture of them smiling then she told them to fake smile and took a picture of them on the surface you really couldn't tell the difference between the two smiles they looked very similar but she had participants take mood tests then look at the picture look at one picture or the other group a group b people who saw the positive picture had an improved mood they caught the happiness from the photo people who looked at the fake smile had no mood change this means I would rather you have no smile at all or be neutral than fake smile but if you can smile in your picture it is so great for authentic happiness it sounds like it might be quite exhausting for some people because I think some people although they they're happy they feel good they're nice people they do have that resting bothered face I think you called it and there's other people that I know that just kind of walk through life with this like resting smile yeah like we can all think of that person that's just like always happy yeah and then there's these other people who are like objectively happy too but they just have that resting bed face so it feels like life is going to be more exhausting for those people you know I think it's about choosing your heart right it is hard it is exhausting for me to show up to a meeting when I'm in a good mood and have someone be like are you sad and tired are you okay I'm like I'm fine I find that exhausting is it also a little exhausting to make sure that in my first impression I'm being a little bit more up with my face open eyes wide and open mouth a little less exhausting than that so I think you have to choose what are the cues you're going to purposefully add there are 97 cues I've narrow down 97 that I think are the most important you get to make your own recipe you don't have to do all the cues if smiling is not your thing smiling is not essential for being charismatic when we talk about being charismatic it's about being warm and competent and you have 97 cues to choose from to make that warmth and competence recipe and so you don't have to be a bubbly extrovert to be charismatic you can be a quiet powerful introvert you can be a compassionate empathetic healer those look different and so I think it's less exhausting to find your recipe and to use those cues a lot like there are certain cues in my book that I teach that I don't use they just don't feel natural to me but there are other cues where I'm like I really like this has anyone ever done any really compelling studies on this idea of resting face or resting bothered face as you call it there is research on resting bothered face and there are certain people who when people see pictures of their face at rest they assume a mood change in other words when there are certain people at rest where you look at them they look neutral but there are certain a certain percent of the population when you look at them they look angry sad or afraid so it's real people you look at and they look happy and make you happy very few people have happy resting face though you either look neutral or bothered so you said you were a recovering awkward person yes take me into what you were like oh and what do you mean when you say awkward person I really wanted to go it alone I was really overwhelmed by people and interactions I didn't know what to do with my hands I didn't know what to say I felt like I missed a memo that everyone got on conversation I always felt like I was saying the wrong things I had all these awkward silences and then what would happen is I would try to overcompensate by sharing a ridiculous story or talking too much or completely shutting down and I kind of like wavered between completely shutting down and being overwhelmed and talking too much and saying too much and just verbal vomiting all over everyone and so I shut down and in college especially I just felt so left out I just felt so lonely and I don't know if anyone watching is feeling lonely I thought it was all my fault I was like I miss the memo I don't know how to have conversations I don't even know how to have friends that's what it felt like that I desperately wanted to make connections but I had no idea how to level up a new person to a friendship I had no idea how that path happened I had no idea how to have a conversation with someone share something real and then have a real interaction back and so it was really lonely and overwhelming and what was the cist for you to go on this journey I was in college and there was a group paper assigned and you had like five people and everyone had to do five pages and I went to the professor and I said I will write double the amount of pages if I can work by myself and he was like Vanessa the point of the paper is not the paper it's working with the people and I was like and I started to cry in his office I was like that student I was like I I don't know how and he was like Vanessa you're very good at science you're very good at breaking things down what if you studied for people like you study for chemistry that was like an aam for me he said why don't you study good conversation why don't you study the popular kids why don't you look at what are they doing in conversation that's working study it like it's a science hence my brand was called science of people that's when I realized okay it didn't come naturally to me but maybe there's research on actual things I can do with my body things I can do I can say verbally questions that work that will help me learn this the other way turning soft skills into hard skills that's when I started creating my first conversational blueprints that's when I started creating my conversation formula it and it started to work IED started to try out these kind of tiny experiments and I actually started to feel like myself make more friends it was tools I had to use tools to be able to connect because it did not come naturally to me was it fixed from day one no so it was a journey it was a real journey yeah I think that's important because often people think you know read the book get the tips and tricks and you're you're changed and you're fixed you talk about I think later in your life where you enter a dinner party and your husband uh was there with you and you went home and told him that you thought everyone was angry at you yeah when was that that was probably maybe four or five years later okay so I started mostly with conversation that was sort of my my first tool I needed was questions I wanted to ask first impressions and how to close conversation very practically I also realized about five years later my I married my college sweetheart so I've been with my husband for a long time and he said to me you always think everyone's angry at you I was like isn't everyone angry at me and I realized there are certain people who misinterpret neutral facial expressions as negative I have this problem so I will see a neutral expression on someone and assume they are angry or afraid or stressed or don't like me and that was creating this really bad Loop because when you think someone doesn't like you you shut down and become more unlikable there was a study I discovered right around this time um this is done by uh Dr Van Sloan he wanted to know what makes popular kids popular very clever study he studied thousands of high school students across a variety of high schools looking for patterns why is it that some kids across these grades and ages are really popular he had all the kids ranked across all these schools he had them looked at traits and then he guessed what made the popular kids popular were they more athletic were they more attractive were they funnier were they smarter what was it can you guess what it was uh I'm so I'm just basing this on the kids that were popular in my school um they were funnier they were self-deprecating to some degree they were good at they were remotely good at some sports maybe um they were funny happy I don't know what so he found that the most popular kids AC the one single variable that was hold held true across all the different students was the most popular kids had the longest list of people they liked so when he asked one of the the questions of the survey was who do you like they had the longest lists and when he looked at their day-to-day they had micro moments of liking they would go down the hallway and be like hey Chad hey Chelsea hey Sarah they liked so many people and that in turn made them more likable this showed me that being likable isn't AR control being likable means you have to be first Liker if you set out to like more people you become more likable and that was a really big shift for me because for so long I thought it was all about me it's a very selfish way to be right I was like I better be impressive I better be funny but actually what makes us likable is just liking as many people as possible I was laughing as you're speaking because I was just playing out all the different sort of personas of people listening right now yeah and I just had this one Persona of the person sat at home who just like slumped over because they realized they hate everybody when you said that they were like I hate everybody look I get it I get it I get it and I also think that if you hate everyone if that's you let me try to convince you for a second it could be because you're asking the wrong questions okay I think I fell into that camp I don't need people I don't like people I was very much in that camp for the first couple of years why because I had terrible interactions and terrible conversations and it was awkward of course I didn't like people but I was also asking the wrong questions and I was telling the wrong stories I was trying to be impressive the best way to be impressive to be likable is to help people impress you is to make them feel so liked that they begin to like you back it's aggressively liking so that means that when you're with someone you should be constantly giving them verbal and non-verbal assurances of how much you want to like them watch them change watch your relationships transform so I make it a policy of aggressively liking people so I have um three phrase Magic phrases for like ability can I teach them to you please okay so I want you to use these as many times as you can three magic phrases for like ability one I was just thinking of you okay so here's how you use this authentically right you think of a lot of people in your life all the time yeah if you are thinking of someone and you can text them text them I was just thinking of you how are you I was just thinking of you how'd that project go I was just thinking of you it has been a while since we talked or and better you see a movie you see a documentary you see a Macha latte you see a mug you see a ceramic candle and you're like oh this made me think of you so my text messages my convers are full of actual moments where I was triggered to think of that person actually that this thing made me think of you or I was just thinking of you I wanted to ask you about if you don't think of someone they're not a person you need to have in your life okay so that's number one that's number I want to pause on number one because I've got some sort of questions to ask here yes it sounds exhausting it sounds like it's going to cost me a lot of time that I don't necessarily have and this is just my like my Surface level reaction was oh God another job you know what I mean I just I like if I've got to set aside an hour to like text everyone I know and go I'm just thinking of you it's gonna be exhausting I've got like six friends and I've got my my partner I got my family and my team it's a lot it's a lot then just them and also it doesn't take an hour when you're like oh stainless steel mug this made me think of you right like you're only doing it when it's actually naturally occurring to you I don't want you to sit at your desk and be like I'm due for some I was just thinking of yous no this happens in the wild okay you're watching a documentary you're at a restaurant you're on the bus you're like oh that reminds me of this person quick text that is less work than missing an old friend and not knowing what to say it is less work to see something in real life or have a thought of like I wonder how Sarah is and reaching out to them then I Miss Sarah but I'm not going to reach out to her it's also less work when you see someone and you haven't seen them in a while or they're a friend of a friend or they're that casual coworker relationship and you're like what do I say I think it's a lot of work to go up to that person and be like how was your weekend I think that's a lot of work I think boring small talk is a lot of work if you actually thought of them to say you know I know you love Dolphins I saw this dolphin documentary on Netflix have you seen it I was just thinking of you made me think of you I got another concern so if I if I start firing out these WhatsApp messages telling people when I'm thinking of them it's just going to be it's going to be opening up loads of conversations that I then have to deal with do you know what I mean like it's going to be like hey I was just thinking of you and then they reply they go oh how how are you and I go I'm good thanks and then they go I go how are you they go I'm good thanks and then do you know what I mean and then they ask me I don't believe in asking how are you that's a whole another thing this is a good test if you are worried that they're going to start a conversation that's going to bore you and feel like work they're not a close friend so don't text them okay it's a very good test if there's someone where you're like I don't really want to hear how they are yeah them okay this is for the people who you want to level up with there are three levels of intim people who you kind of know you know their personal you know their General traits where they work where they live what they do that's it you don't want to go any different with them level two people are people where they know your personal concerns you know their goals their motivations their personality traits their worries those are people who you want to invest in then there's a last level which is the most deep level which is called self-narrative which is the story We Tell ourselves about ourselves if you categorize your relationships another activity I love for my students to do is make those three levels on a piece of paper write down the 20 people you can think of the top 20 people you spend the most time with where they fall so we have acquaintances we have acquaintances who just kind of know where you're from what do you do the B people yeah right and by the way some of the people who you're close with might you might not be deep with yeah true right level two personal concerns could they tell you what is your Steven biggest goal right now okay and then the middle layer I didn't understand that's the middle layer that that's the miday so it's General traits personal concerns self-narrative what's self-narrative so this is what my my next book is about I'm doing research on it right now self-narrative is story you tell yourself about yourself so is this a group of people it's the levels of intimacy you are with someone so would your partner okay know the story you tell yourself about yourself I'll give you an example 100% she would I think so so I think that there are basically three main types of narratives and you should know what these are for the closest people in your life maybe only two or three and you should also know what it is for yourself the best one is a hero narrative this is I've worked really hard I've had some challenges and mistakes but I've overcome with hard work and smarts and now I am where I am every version of their story their career their life their relationships is that same narrative over and over again then there's what I think is called the Healer narrative again I'm doing research on this from an next book the Healer narrative their story is all about helping others they typically are in careers of service of helping others physical therapists nurses Healthcare their story is how can I be more helpful they tend to have a problem though if you're in a relationship with a with a Healer is they always put other people's needs before them themselves they're do they have some kind of historic trauma they can and a lot of the times they were put in a position of caretaking too early like they were told that you're of value if you can caretake you're of value if you put your needs last so they tend to be people Pleasers they tend to say yes to everything you have to be careful if you work with a Healer because they're great to work with they help help help but they say yes to too much so uh healer is the middle one the last one is victim narrative victim narrative no matter what personal professional love life taxes they have the same narrative I experienced challenges and mistakes and I didn't overcome no matter how hard I work no matter how smart I am the world is against me so question I ask people to begin to uncover their self- narrative is do you feel lucky do you feel lucky I feel very lucky I also feel very lucky people who have a resounding yes to I feel lucky are more likely heroes or or healers people who say I don't feel lucky I feel very unlucky are typically victims Dr Richard wisman did a study he asked people to perceive their own luck how lucky do you feel then he gave them a challenge he gave them a newspaper and he said I want you to count the amount of images in this newspaper they sat with the newspaper and they counted all the images but there was a trick there's always a trick in these studies on the second page of the newspaper in big print it said stop counting there are 42 Imes in this newspaper almost all of the people who perceived themselves as lucky saw the ad closed the paper and gave it back so there are 42 images almost none of the Unlucky people did The Unlucky people missed the ad and kept counting spent a lot of time and made more mistakes this means that if you think of yourself as lucky you literally see more opportunities if you think of yourself as unlucky you miss them is it possible to change how you see yourself I do believe in a growth mindset so I do believe that if you if this is resonating with you and like you're like uh oh I feel unlucky I might have this victim self-narrative I do believe it's possible to change your perception of yourself and that's starting with small moments of heroism I think that changing your people skills saying I don't like people and saying I'm going to find a way to like people saying I'm bad at conversation I'm going to find a way to be good at conversation to say I'm an awkward person no I'm a recovering awkward person if we can begin to take those tiny experiments and change them one by one we begin to have small moments of heroism and that's how we change our self narrative as Employer I think about this a lot these sort of verbal and non-verbal cues I actually I had an interview some time ago and I think I came out of the interview and I think objectively the person might have been qualified but there was something about their energy or cues or something that signaled something else to me that they were an unhappy person or they were tired or they didn't really want to be here or something like that are there any studies that confirm that our hidden communication is driving our success in the working environment yes so this study blew my mind it's 58,000 working hours over 11 different companies so a huge am amount of data they wanted to know if low performers infect the people around them and if High performers infect people around them what they found was if you sit within 25 F feet of a high performer your own performance improves by 15% here's the kicker if you sit within 25 ft of a low performer your own performance decreases by 30% this means that our negative emotions are more contagious that if you're around people who are low performers whatever that means to you who have negative cues who are feeling anxious or tired or low confident you could catch those cues and that affects your own performance this is why it is incredibly critical to invest in the five people who you spend the most time with you want to make sure those five people are the cues you want to catch do you like the cues they're sending do they give you the right motivation feelings do they make you feel like do they make you a better version of yourself there's there's just one more chemical aspect of this which we have to do more research on this is a very gross study but it's one of my favorites it's a little gross you ready okay so they brought people into their lab they so them up into two different groups and they made the first group wear a sweat suit where they catch your sweat and run on the treadmill so they sweat a lot on the treadmill the second group they wore sweatsuits and they took them skydiving for the first time both groups sweat a lot treadmill sweat and skydiving sweat they took these sweat samples and they had unsuspecting participants go into fmri machines and scan their brains then they gave them both sweat samples to smell poor these poor people did not didn't know what they were smelling they went it everyone who smelled the skydiving sweat had an activation in their own amydala their own fear response triggered another words when they smelled fear sweat they didn't know why they began to feel afraid everyone who smelled the treadmill sweat had no change at all this means that yes we can talk about facial expressions and body language and vocal cues and words but there's also something chemically happening with the people around us that we can literally smell fear and we catch it and that is also why it's really important to follow our gut oh dear I was going to say well then we're all screwed aren't we we can't we can't do anything because there's if we're giving off these chemicals which are impacting those around us it doesn't matter if I smile and do the whole like no because I think intention is the back door into confidence it's very hard to fake confidence I don't believe in fake it till you make it I don't really but if I say I have a conversational tool for you that's going to make your conversations better you become less nervous you become more excited you ask a better question they give you a really good answer you feel super charismatic they feel really liked you feel real likable oh we have a good little cycle so I think that intention going in with really purposeful cues helps you feel more confident and triggers these beautiful Cycles the cycle is this the cycle you're talking about the Q cycle the Q cycle yes I'll put it on the screen and in the description for anyone that wants to see it but when I saw this the reason I printed this off is because it really hit close to home because I'm someone that meets a lot of people and um when I meet people people there on the very rare occasion something about someone will just kind of throw my energy and it throws my energy to the point that I realize I'm then acting a little bit in terms of my interaction with them and it's almost like I can't control it like something about the person has unnerved me or just made and it's nothing that I could consciously tell you like say it was the way they shook my hand just something about them yeah throws me into this different state yeah um and when I saw this I I I almost figured out why because the first step in this Q you you explain it I mean it's your Q cycle yes okay so we often mistakenly think that we send a signal to someone else they send a signal back to us and that's it we don't realize as there's a cycle happening within us which is that if you send me a negative q i internalize it and that changes the cues I'm sending back to you here's a very simple experiment that showed this they put a participant in a room and they had an actor in the room flashed them a fe a social rejection cue that could be an eye roll a scoff a distancing and blocking Behavior so the participants in the room and this person across from them they don't know as an actor sends them a social rejection cue what they found was the moment that participant saw the social rejection queue their own pupils dilated and their field of vision increased this means that somebody saw uhoh that person doesn't like me and their body reacted to fight ORF flight do does anyone else feel this way about me are there any Escape Routes for me and that then changed what cues they sent back to that person they were more anxious they were more nervous if you walk into a room with someone and you're feeling bad you probably caught a queue here's the good news you can stop the Q cycle from being negative there's also positive cues right we can catch positive cues that can be good for us but we can stop the negative cycle if we label the queue we see Dr Matthew liberman at UCLA studied this very clearly he put people in fmri machines and he flashed them a fear micro expression the one that you showed us earlier with your eyes really wide when people saw the fear micro expression they caught the fear they began to feel afraid and their amdal it up but when he taught them say fear or think fear he taught them the micro expression it stopped activating their amydala meaning if you know how to read the 97 cues and you see contempt or social rejection or a mouth shrug or a lip purse all not great cues you can in your head say lip purse I'm good or clocked noted that Intel is actually empowering so that back door into confidence is also you can label it name it tame it and you're in control of it that is a much better way to interact and also can help you like people for all my people who don't like people okay so in those moments I should in my head just say what lab clocked yeah that's what I say to myself or like red flag or noted you're in you're particularly famous for a TED Talk that you did yeah which did very very well um it was called you are contagious and it really opened my eyes to the importance of hand gestures yes which I didn't really think were that important before but it's funny because going through this election cycle obviously Trump has now been elected as the next president of the United States He is someone in particular that uses a lot of hand gestures and in your Ted Talk you make the case that hand gestures matter oh so much I think the hands of the windows into the soul I think what we underestimate is the power of our gestures love it just love it just those jazz just jazz hands so here's I want to do a little experiment with you so I'm going to put my hands in my lap I've been very careful to leave my hands on the table for the entire interview that's on purpose now something funny happens in your brain when you can't see my hands and the longer my hands are underneath the table the more your amydala will begin to Fire and the more distracted you become with where are her hands why are her hands under the table and the moment I bring my hands back out again your brain goes and that is because hands show intention and this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective so if we go back to caveman days if we were approached by a stranger caveman and they went friend friend friend friend friend friend we saw they weren't carrying a rock or a spear and they were probably a friend in fact when we go so nice to meet you we can see someone's hand we know that they're literally not going to harm us so our brain still keeps this mechanism that if we're on video and we can't see someone's hands or they walk into an office with their hands in their pockets or behind their back we feel a little bit uneasy so there's two things for this first is the moment someone first sees you you want to be friend friend friend good to see see you oh so nice to meet you what put your hand up for people that can't see the moment I walk into a room hey nice to see you even before I handshake even an old friend I'll be like oh my gosh so good to see you on Zoom morning for people for people that can't see she's basically putting her hand in the air which like a little wave W Little Wave we love a palm as humans we love seeing someone's Palm there's something about it that makes us feel like ah they are literally open palmed so that's the first in the first few seconds of someone seeing you in person on video try to flash your palm very very simply second we understand competence in two ways very highly competent people know their content so well they can speak to you on two tracks they can speak to you verbally but they also can speak to you with their hands this is why we loved picture books as kids and so when someone is speaking we're listening to their words but second we're looking are their hands outlining their words so for example all the best TED Talks start the same way and this is what got me my TED Talk is we studied all the TED talks from 2010 looking for patterns and my team and I coded every Ted Talk we can find looking for differences between the most viral TED talks and the least viral viral TED Talks we found the most viral Ted speakers used an average an average of 465 hand gestures in 18 minutes whereas the least popular Ted talkers use an average of 271 gestures so not quite half meaning if someone walks on stage here's a a really good Ted Talk they all start this way you ready today I want to talk to you about a big idea we're going to share three different things that are going to change your life so for people listening I was outlining with my hands along with my words if I were to get on stage and say today I have a really big idea it's huge and hold up my hands in a really small way your brain is 12.5 times more likely to believe my gesture over my words and so what we can do as speakers as very highly charismatic speakers is think about how can I outline very basically not modern dance what I'm saying or how can I emphasize things with my gestures if something is Big Show me is it beach ball big is it what is this big donkey big is this a donkey I don't even know yeah big a goat a goat this is a goat Pig if you have something that's really small and no big deal doing this actually helps you think that it's not a big deal I'm making a little kind of dismissive gesture with my hand this also works with emphasizing points you want people to remember if you have three ideas tell someone you have three ideas it is very hard to lie with our gestures for example you want to do experiment with me sure okay I want you to say five but hold up the number three five hard right yeah so it's really hard I have to think about them separately yeah it's really hard our brain is not meant to lie with gesture which is why humans pay so close attention to gestures because we're looking to see are they congruent it is so hard to be in congruent with gestures Liars typically use less gestures so we're also drawn to people who are using gestures who are congruent with their gestures because it makes us feel like oh they know their stuff and they're being honest so it made me reflect it how do we establish causation here in terms of these hand gestures could it be the case that the more confident Ted speakers are doing more gestures because they're less nervous so is it about nerves um and the less um confident more nervous Ted speakers are doing less gestes just because they self soothing a lot and they're they're kind of closing off their body is confidence the thing here is it nerves I don't think so I think it's about engagement so I think most Ted speakers I watch these TED Talks they're all good all of them are good and some of them are experts in their field the difference is do I want to watch their good it is hard for me as a viewer to pay attention for 18 minutes with someone who didn't use enough gestures it was like physically hard for my brain to pay attention I think those speakers what good or not had over rehearsed and rehearsed out their hand gestures or were holding a Podium or we're holding a clicker too hard so I actually think that it's less to do with the speaker's nerves or confidence and it's more to do with are they going to let themselves use their hands to explain their points and that becomes more engaging one of the things I've noticed on this podcast is people who are using their hands are more expressive and if they're more expressive there's likely to be more sort of intonations in their voice and if there's more intonations it's more engaging and if it's more engaging then it's more retentive for the algorithm if it's more retentive the algorithm it's suggested more if it's suggested more there's more views so I would like to tell my guests all the past particularly future guests that if you're if you have more expression in what you're saying and more intonations in your voice then our show will grow okay let's talk about two things here one is we did a test on my YouTube channel and found that if we used a thumbnail of me doing any hand gesture it didn't even matter what it was it could be this it could be this any hand gesture that got more clicks people even in the thumbnail like to see the hand gesture even more than my crazy facial expressions we tried both so yes we are because if you see a thumbnail of me you know holding up two you're like what two things is she talking about what is it so it's we we like it it shows competence and the second thing is that vocal variety is an incredibly important aspect of Charisma we're talking about gestures but there is a feedback loop here that the more like if you if I were try if I were G going to sit on my hands for this interview you would notice my facial expression would get less charismatic my vocal tone would be less charismatic it's really hard to be charismatic without movement vocal variety is a critical aspect of both warmth and competence that is because when we hear someone who's able to for example give us the Ted Talk voice so I'm going give you the Ted Talk voice you ready this point is going to change the way that we think about the world and if we don't analyze this point we will be in huge trouble like that is a voice that is telling you o this is important you also hear that really good speakers will use like a numbers voice so a numbers voice sounds like this did you know that 43% of humans all believe in the same thing 43% like there's and if you're telling a story it changes again so a story tone would go like this you're never going to believe what happened to me so last week I'm walking down the street and I saw this guy it's a totally different vocal variety that is a gift to your listener that makes you more engaging because they're able to clock H we're doing a number now oh we have a story now oh this is an important point I better write it down really good Ted speakers are outlining their talk for you in me in many different ways and that's the best speakers I see on stage it's so interesting because in this podcast we um had quite a long conversation a couple of months ago about arms on the chair the chair that you're in now and it was just this observation we had when we first flew out here to New York the chairs that we ordered were pretty similar to this but they just happen to have arms on them and what I noticed was that guests would lean oh and and it would take out their arms yes so it took out their arms and they became less expressive and the conversations were less interesting yes so we removed the arms again okay so let's talk about this just very briefly yeah I actually do recommend chairs with arms not in this setup because look at the difference so actually right before this interview you asked me to scoot my chair in right your amazing team ask me to good my turn thank you for that because it makes it so that I want to put my hands up if I were to be sitting farther back I'm just going to lean back for a second I would be tempted to put my hands in my lap yes so the critical piece of this is you're having me scoot up to the table it would be really hard if I had arms because then I would want to go like this and it would make me look like a duck yes right so you want to use a chair with arms to be broader it actually does broaden your arms out unless you're really close to the table then you can put your hands on the table but I I it's amazing how the physical environment can change how we are perceived and how we move but even that we're very intentional about the sort of mirroring our body language and just making sure that we're head on because this conversation is entirely different if we're side on very much it's not going to be the same very much and there's not going to be the same level of intimacy we also thought a lot about the how big the table was this is quite a big table what's the distance uh I'm going to say it's about Just sh two Mets wait can you hold your arm out okay so this perfect distence the perfect distance between two people having a good conversation is that we could shake hands if we wanted to okay and that is because there are four different proxemic zones so the fancy word for space is proxemics I don't know if you have the beautiful graphic I print out this oh yes that's it yes so there are four different space zones and these are really good to know if you're trying to set yourself up for Success the public zone is about 5 to eight feet away I don't know uh not feet but 5 to8 feet away then you have the social Zone which is where we like to socialize with people that is depending on who you ask three to 5 feet away then there's the personal Zone that's our favorite Zone that is about uh arms distance apart right so we could shake hands if we wanted to that's where our best conversations happen and then there's the in inate Zone a big mistake people make is they Place their video camera too close to their face which means they are accidentally signaling intimacy cues with their colleagues and their co-workers have you ever been on a zoom with someone where their FA is the entire camera yeah I was on one earlier on and you're like please back up and that is because your brain is going too close even though they're across a camera so what I would really recommend measure the distance between your nose and your camera it should be one arm length so it should be the tip of your nose to the tip of your fingers or a foot and a half to three feet away that is the ideal zone for having good conversation over Zoom that's really interesting as well because I was thinking about the conversation I had actually on the way here in the car with a colleague of mine and they had called me on FaceTime now the thing with FaceTime is it's going to be close it's going to be close and it it did feel a little bit intimate it does um because they call me on FaceTime yes and obviously if I was on my laptop they would call me on Zoom or something else and you there would be a so I think that that's why we can sometimes at least introverts feel like don't FaceTime me it's way too personal it's because there's a setup there that it's actually accidentally tricking you into being in the intimate Zone with someone this is also why uh loud bars and nightclubs work so well for facilitating romantic relationships what happens in a loud bar or a loud nightclub is you can't hear someone so you go what and then you get a little bit closer and all of a sudden you're accidentally standing in someone's intimate Zone which then that Q cycle begins to kick in where you're like well if I'm standing within a foot and a half from this person maybe I should feel intimate with them which then makes you lean more makes you want to touch more that is why people go to bars and nightclubs to facilitate these romantic relationships it's accidentally going into the intimate Zone when I was younger I've said this a few times on the podcast before but it's feels very relevant my brother my older brother Jason he ordered this book called The Game uh by Neil Strauss yes and it um he ordered it to University but he accidentally put the wrong address and so it came to home this sounds like an elaborate story for me like buying a pickup artist book but it came to home and I read the book and it was my first time understanding that body language was a important but even some you could learn and and you know when I say body language I mean everything um and it's it's interesting because now after reading your work I actually think maybe what I should have been aiming at was how to be more charismatic and you talk about these five science-based habits for being more charismatic yeah I guess the first question is what is charisma yes and then what are these five science-based habits that can make me more charismatic as a person like how do I know if I'm charismatic you are charismatic but you lean higher on competence so so let's break it down okay so this is not my work this is the work of Dr Susan Fisk this is a instrumental study it's been repeated many times back in 2002 that found that to be charismatic you have to be both highly warm and highly competent or more importantly if to Signal High warmth and high competence and that this is makes up 82% of impressions of people warmth trust likeability friendliness competence power reliability capability so very highly charismatic people you meet them you see them and they are signaling you can trust me you like me and boy am I reliable and competent at the very same time so when I say you are charismatic but you lean very high in competence which means that people can see you as cold or stoic if you're not showing enough warmth cues have you been told that intimidating indirectly people are do scared to say it me I'm joking but no I do get that I do I do I think I have like some degree of self as to how I come across and I think how you described it is exactly how I come across and that's not a bad thing right like you get to pick your own recipe like I lean a little higher on the warm side I'm also female there are differences between men and women so typically not always men default to higher incompetence women are defaulted to hire in warmth typically not always this isn't a bad thing but you should know that if you are trying to come across as warmer on your team you're trying to inspire more collaboration you're trying to make more friends you want to dial up your warmth cues if you're someone who's interrupted a lot not taken seriously people forget meeting you you need to dial up confidence this is like a thermostat you can dial up warmth cues and dial up competence cues and this changes the way people treat you so I have five power cues for competence and I have five warm cues for warmth we're going to go through all of those I saw this wonderful graph which kind of explains it which I'll put on the screen for anyone that's watching um and this was really really interesting there's a danger zone the danger zone I'm guess is when you're low warmth and low competence that's it that those are those folks that are stoic if you don't send enough warmth cues if you don't send enough competence cues people cannot trust you they have trouble working with you they have trouble talking to you this is the curse of very smart people very smart people think my ideas will stand alone my book smarts are great I don't need to communicate these cues my ideas are enough that's what happened to Jamie Simmon off in the tank he did not show enough warmth or comp cues he relied solely on his ideas and his numbers and he could not get a deal so people who want to be taken seriously you have to show warmth and competence the other problem with highly competent folks and you lean higher in competence so this is for you too which is it's directly from the research too much competence without enough warmth leaves people feeling suspicious so no matter how competent you are no matter how good your ideas are if you are not showcasing that with warmth people are skeptical of you and this is what happens with a lot of my students is they're like people don't trust me they don't believe my ideas they're skeptical I get push back or they I do sales trainings they can't close you'll push back on their numbers and that is because some part of them is saying I hear your competence but you're not giving me enough warmth can you be too warm you can be absolutely too warm you can be too warm and too competent too warm you know what that looks like yes that's too warm okay okay too warm is so we'll talk about the five warmth cues too much of any Q is dangerous right so too much nodding too much laughing too much uh vocalizations those are all too warm and they make us think this person is a bimbo or a dits or not competent that's what happens we have too much warmth it takes away from our competence where should we start let's start with the power Keys okay the power keys so this is competence yes power keys let me get some my power cues M okay so we talked about the importance of hand gestures there is a very good competent hand gesture which everyone should know if you want to be perceived as higher in competence it's called the steeple oh this the oh yes it's on the cover of my book if you want to see it yes this looks when your hands look like a little steeple they're kind of relaxed open it's a triangle for anyone that com kind of like a triangle y a triangle it's a power pose for the hands why if you are doing this pose you're showing I'm not hiding anything from you you can still see my Palms but I am very relaxed and poised enough so that I'm keeping my hands together now be careful don't drum this is evil fingers yeah this is Mr Burns those of you who know right so it's a nice still steeple uh they have found they raided hand gestures in a study and they found that this was the single most the highest rated hand gesture that leaders made was when they made this gesture now personally I don't use this a lot in my interpersonal interactions because it doesn't feel Supernatural to me it's funny because we took one picture for my cover tit cover photos and my all every single picture of me from my cover photos I was smiling and my wonderful photographer Maggie Kirkland said Vanessa can we just do one of you serious and I was like but I'm not serious she's like just just one just do your most powerful power que and this is the only picture and that was the one that we chose for it so it's just funny because it's a very high competence cue so you can try the steeple just be careful not to do evil finger evil fingers with it that's a high confidence CU that picture of you on the front what is that signaling so it's a it's a perfect balance right so one I have the steeple Q competence gesture two I'm angled towards you my body is angled towards you which is a warmth you that's fronting my toes are angled towards you which is warmth I also have a smoldering eye contact look which is high competence which we can talk about and I have an up face right I'm not in my resting bothered face so that's a slight warmth queue that is actually how it makes me feel there's a there's an element of power but it's not an intimidating level of power because I balanced it with that warmth yeah it's like a welcoming woo we did it now I got to do it with the next one Ste okay SE SE yeah second this is a weird one the most important measurement on your entire body is the distance between your earlobe and your shoulder this distance right here watch if I were to do this in the interview the entire time if I were to have a very small distance between my Earl and my shoulder I would look anxious I would also have a really hard time giving you vocal power you would have a hard do you trust me no you look nervous right I look nervous there's a direct correlation between confidence and anxiety and the distance between our shoulder and our Earl and very quickly we're trying to just assess someone the first few seconds of seeing them we're trying to assess how confident are you can I catch it we don't like people who are anxious we don't want to talk to someone like this because we don't want to catch that anxiety but we do want to talk to someone who has the max distance between their earlobes and their shoulder so when you're in a first impression also in your profile pictures I want a relaxed distance shoulders down Earls out which is another reason why I like that this is how your table is set up because it pushes my shoulders down so I have a max distance that makes me look more confident but it also makes me feel more confident there's a look here so when you do the steeple and then you roll your shoulders down and back you will begin to feel more confident don't you feel good don't what if you like raise your head though like because if I'm trying to get my ears away from my shoulders I might go like this actually they're the same distance so you want to actually keep your yeah you want to keep your chin level and you if you can help it you don't want to actually look down at someone down your nose at someone it's quite a um scornful judgmental exactly so you just noticed it even when I did it so it's not this it's just this so maximizing this difference third one I love eye contact we all know good eye contact is important but here's what you might not know about good eye contacts eye contact is a power move when you look at someone at the end of your sentence so we're very used to if someone's thinking about something and they're processing something in their head and I'm telling you that there are 465 gestures in a TED Talk that is the most important way that I want to showcase something to you that we like it when someone is actually accessing different memories or areas of their brain but then when I end my sentence looking right at you you're like so highly competent people make eye contact specifically at the end of their sentences to drill a point and ideally when the other person is saying something important okay interesting I just did it then but I do that when I'm when I'm doing interviews because I kind of like look off into the distance to think a little bit and then I come back to ask the worst advice I hear people give body language experts give make more eye contact make 100% eye contact actually in Western culture as they've studied this the ideal amount of eye contact is between 60 and 70% of the conversation if you make over 70% eye contact it's actually considered a territorial gesture so if I were be making 100% eye contact with you it feel very invasive very awkward we like it when someone is processing or gathering information from around like if I'm processing something or I'm thinking about something or I'm accessing all that matters is at the end of my point I'm looking right at you and that feels so much more powerful Okay so that's number three yeah that's number three yeah okay fourth one one of my favorites it's called a lower lid Flex lower lid Flex is one of the least utilized but one of my favorite cues so biologically speaking when we are trying to see something far away we Harden our lower Lids like I'm trying to read the titles on your bookshelf I Harden my lower Lids that is because when our eye is trying to see far it Squints to block out the light so you'll see more details in my face when you harden your lower lid at me so Harden your lower lid if you look at People's sexiest men alive almost every man in that magazine is it's Zoolander right blue steel blue steel is actually just a lower lid Flex that is because when someone is trying to really focus on something and really understand something their lower lid is flexed as as you're doing right now and boy oh boy do we like it when someone is lower lid flexing at us because it means you are really trying to understand and see me so a lower lid Flex is a great power Q to use in moderation right nothing too much that when someone is saying something on a date or in a meeting or a colleague is saying something really important and you want to show them I am really listening that lower lid Flex shows them I am super focused and intense on you that is why women find men who do the lower lid Flex very sexy because they feel like he's really focusing on me now there's a little side note the lower lid Flex lower lid Flex is not it's inherently in a POS postive Q it's a CU of Focus right if you are in a presentation or a meeting and you say something and someone suddenly Li flexes at you you might have just said something in there like really yeah so for me this was a game-changing moment as I was giving a presentation to a bunch of Executives and I said something about oxytocin which is the the hormone of um love and cuddle and connection and he goes I saw him lower lid Flex at me but he's also turned his head though I don't know if he I don't remember if he turned his head but all I noticed is that distinctly he went from mhm mhm to ah yes and I went does that make sense any questions so if you see a lower lid flex your best choice is to try to gather more information that make sense all good any questions for me how we feel about this so I said any questions for me and he goes and I looked right at him I said any questions for me he said you know I think they gave my wife oxytocin and labor is that the same thing and it's true that they give a form of oxytocin to induce women in labor That's How Strong oxytocin is it in high doses it will put women into labor it's a form it's called pcin I said you're absolutely right in medical settings they can give synthetic forms of oxytocin to push women into labor that was a moment for me because one is I realized I was able to stop the skepticism and the confusion right there before we moved on to anyone else anything else and now when I teach oxytocin I say in Social settings oxytocin means this because in medical settings that means something different so noticing that lower lid Flex is incredibly important for you to understand where you might have a hint of skepticism or a hint of confusion if you're in a sales meeting or a presentation you want to make sure you have addressed whatever that person is flexing about before you move on super interesting in that example you give there as well had you not investigated that lower lid Flex you might have also thought something you said was wrong and lost your confidence and that can spiral into you know closing off and becoming a worse presenter this is why I thought people hated me and I hated people so for my folks that are listening who are like I hate people and I get it I was misreading cu's as skeptical or negative of me when it could have been neutral or curiosity or trying to understand something better if you can give these a try it will help you more deeply understand people which might help you like them more ready for the fifth one I'm ready for the fifth okay the fifth one this is a vocal cue so we talked a lot about body language cues but vocal cues are incredibly important vocal cues tell someone how you are feeling about them and how you feel about yourself one of the biggest ones is an accidental question inflection a question inflection is when we go up at the end of our sentence so it sounds like we're asking a question even if we're actually using a statement the brain research has actually looked at what the brain does when it here is an accidental question reflection if we are listening to someone and we hear them accidentally use the question reflection our brain goes from listening to scrutinizing why our brain wonders why did you ask me that Liars typically accidentally use the question in flection if I say to my daughter did you take the cookie from the cookie jar and she goes no I Liars are asking do you believe this so we have noticed we did a massive experiment in our lab where we had people play two truths and a lie with us so share two truths about themselves and a lie and we found overwhelmingly one of the biggest patterns there's a couple of different patterns one of the biggest ones was that Liars asked their lie statement so like it would sound like this here you can play with me and I'll I'll add the question reflection to one I love dogs I live in Austin Texas and I love cilantro oh yeah you don't like cilant no it's like a crime against humanity like why do people cantro on anything so notice people ask the lie because they were asking do you believe this so our brain is very Adept at this if we hear The Accidental question reflection used we go wait a minute is someone lying to me the biggest mistake that salespeople make is they get through their entire pitch and they ask their number so sounds like this hi we'd love to do business with you we'd love to have your project and the cost of this service is $5,000 if you ask your number you are begging people to negotiate with you if you are asking for a raise or you are asking for a certain salary and you ask it you are signaling to the other person I don't really believe this number and you shouldn't either so the power CU number five power CU is using the downward inflection highly competent people they do not mistakenly use the question reflection they actually go down at the end of their sentences President Obama was very good at is very good at slinging down his words which makes you want to listen so it sounds like this I'm going to say nothing so you can hear it the problem in this country is that we don't take seriously enough the issues of our people and if we don't take those issues seriously we will be in grave trouble so he tends to go down at the end of his sentences he also has a lot of space in the bottom of his mouth that makes us gives us him more resonance but it also makes us think oh he really believes his word because it's the opposite of the question reflection if you have a boundary if you're setting a limit if you're telling something someone something really important about you say it don't ask ask it that is the biggest thing you can do to get people to take you seriously interesting and don't ask your name most often I hear people ask their own name and it destroys their vocal Charisma so that would be my name is Vanessa van Edwards that my name is Vanessa van Edwards your perceptions of my confidence in those two introductions are radically different there's a study that looked at this and they looked at the vocal statements of Surgeons they had surgeons come into their lab and record 10-second voice tone Clips the clips that are most important when they're meeting patients their name their specialty and where they worked sounded like this hi my name is Dr Edwards I specialize in oncology and I work at Children's Presbyterian hospital they took these clips and they warbled the words so you could hear the volume the pace the Cadence but not the actual words being said so sounded like this I worked very hard on practicing that by the way that's amazing because it has testes sound like me but nothing they took these clips and they had people rate these surgeons on warmth and competence the two things that we know are most important for Charisma the doctors who had the lowest ratings of warmth and competence had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits in other words we don't Sue doctors based on their skills we Sue doctors based on our perception of their skills and that happens within the first few seconds of hearing them so if you give the question reflection on your name on your specialty on what you do people begin to doubt you so the bad doctors sounded like this hi my name is Dr Edwards I specialize in oncology and I work at Children's petarian Hospital those doctors got raided as low in both warmth and competence because their brains were going why are they asking are they not sure I'm not sure either so it's really signaling conviction in who you are yeah what you're about and what you do interesting so practice your name your price my name is Steven no that was up that was a little hi my name is Steven that's it okay yeah okay I literally asked that like a question didn't I the first one I was like hello my name is Stephen I was I was actually asking I was trying to ask you if it was a good pronunciation that's so funny that was the upward inflection and didn't it feel different totally different the second one was me uh so the first one was like seeking validation and you use a lot of downward inflection except when you're asking questions which we like okay right that's why you lean higher in comp competence is you use already a lot of downward inflection it's so interesting because as you were speaking something came to mind which I was reading about in your work um which is you're really good at what you do you're like very good as a guest on a podcast and just as a professional generally and as I was thinking this I was saying to myself I'm sure she knows and I'm sure she can tell from my face that I think she's good but it's funny because in your work you say that we're actually we over assume people can read us yes so like when I was thinking oh she's so good and in your work it says like it says that I'm I was doing it I was assuming you knew how I felt about you but in your work you also make the case that I've actually I should say it yes yes we there's an effect where we think that people know how we feel specifically it's called signal amplification bias there's a name for this study which is that we think our signals are obvious that if we like someone or if we're having a good time we think oh they for sure know it they don't oh the three magic phrases we never finish them that's why you say I was just thinking of you that's a way of assuring someone I do think of you only if it's true the second one is you're always so so if you're with someone and you're impressed by them or they're interesting or they're funny saying you always make me laugh you're always so interesting you're always so great to interview you're always so great at interviews giving them a label that is a positive label is the best gift you can give someone because it's fighting that signal amplification bias and the last one is last time we talked you mentioned yeah we are so honored when we get brain space that you remembered and you're going to bring it up and you specifically bring up something that they lit up with so they were like ah it was great it was exciting it was wonderful those are my three magic phrases and it's because they are fighting that signal implication bias I have no idea if you like this interview I have no idea if you like my work I have no idea and the more that you can broadcast those symbols those signals that more people actually like you m so what do you what advice would you give me then as an interview I guess I'm an interview host of the show what is cuz people come here sometimes they're nervous you know we have people come and they they um some people come in their nervous a little bit and I always try I always want to make them feel comfortable but I you know as you said I probably don't rank that high on warmth so it doesn't come that natural to me I'm not the kind of person that comes out and it's like hi welcome and like hey and that would be off brand you yeah and it wouldn't be authentic no no would it would be off brand for you right it's too much okay so five warmth cues so for those of you who are listening the five power cues I just shared those are if you think you are really high in warmth but you worry that people don't take you seriously you're worried that people ignore you you get interrupted in meetings I want you to use those five power cues if that's you now I'm going to teach you five warmth cues if you have ever been told you're intimidating hard to talk to cold if you often feel like people are holding back or not opening up to you I want you to use these five warmth cues this ISS dialing up your thermostat okay these are for you you too mhm first we love a triple nod research has found that if we do a slow triple nod the other person speaks 67% longer so as an interview this is a great cue watch so here's my my triple not is we love it it's like a non-verbal dot dot dot it's like tell me more tell me more now be careful don't bobblehead so you don't want to do it too much right that's too high and warm and second you don't want to do it too fast too fast of a triple nod is impatience it means shut up yeah so if you want someone to wrap if you want someone to wrap a question yeah that that yeah that's that's exactly right so here's for everyone watching here's good here's please hurry up yeah that shut the up I've seen that before and it works it's a really nice way of saying Please rap please end so I love a warm triple nod you have to be careful with it okay so that's cue number one second a head tilt so universally if we're trying to hear something we tilt our head up and we expose our ear right we're we're as if we're like What was that like dogs do this when they're like you know they expose their ear humans also do this across cultures because it's a it's kind of a way that we're like oh I I'm listening to this research has found that if you deliver bad news with a head tilt you are more likable so people take the news better if you deliver bad news with a SL head tilt because it literally makes you look more warm it literally makes you look like like you're listening no I only want you to do this when you're actually listening but a head tilt is also a way that you can slightly add warmth to your conversation or to your interview or to your date not too okay so we're going to go back to so we don't want to go too far that looks weird a little weird right not too much and um I also like to teach a head tilt to my highly warm folks who are Bobble headers so if anyone if you're like oh I do this a lot yeah I I'm a bobble header I'm a recovering Bobble header because I like to people like me right so I'll I'll nod too much if you are a bobble header you can train yourself to replace it with the head tilt because it's physically impossible to head tilt while you nod so if you're a bobble header just head tilt okay head tilt there's something about the head tilt which makes me it signals they care yeah and they they're empathetic yeah there's some I don't know what it is about someone's head head tilt that cuz if someone was firing me and they were doing it like this I feel like they don't care there's something Bress but if they do it like this it's like you really care about me that's so crazy just such a small that one little thing you know that you mentioned the book The Game yes I know a lot about that world and there's a there's a funny trick they teach which I'll teach you it's not part of my warmth cues but I'm going to teach it to you because I think it's interesting don't let don't let anyone use this on you okay and nobody at home used this on anyone else don't use this on anyone else but so there's this thing that NLP people will do or uh pickup artists will do where they move their hand like this and it Begins the other person will begin to nod because our typically when we do this with our hand the other person starts to nod which makes you think I agree I agree I agree what are you doing for anyone that it's I'm moving my hand up and down in a nodding yes motion and so what what I've noticed very manipulative people will do is they'll be doing this as they speak like don't you understand what I'm saying do you get this and the other person will start to nod and I've seen audiences entire audience will start nodding and then you think to yourself well I'm nodding so I must agree with this person it's a secret way to get someone to secretly agree with you so just be careful make sure no one uses that on you and you're doing it in a bit of a circular motion it looks like it's not straight up and down you're just kind of like anyone that can't see she's like we're rolling something forward and then you're like I want to it's really hard to not Nodge your head when someone's doing this which then makes you feel like you agree with them that's so crazy it's like you you've got like a string on my head a string on your it's very weird so don't let anyone do that to you and don't use it don't use it on anyone I don't teach it in my books because it's like I'm worried that you it's too powerful it's too powerful okay triple nod head tilt one and two okay third we already talked about this one a authentic smile right a smile that reaches all the way up into your eyes highly warm people typically do do that authentic smile more now I don't like a fake smile so I only want you to do it when you're authentic about that was my authentic you laughed this is why I don't smile this is why people think I'm intimidating because people laugh at my spet that's good that was better that was better I can tell you're lying Mrs body language I can tell you're lying that was better that was better than the first one better than the first one that does mean it's good I'm looking for good anyway number four is uh so authentic smells number three authentic smells number three number four we love a lean oh we love a lean when in the proxic zones right we're in those four zones if someone's leaning into you it shows they're literally trying to cross into that zone very very subtly and so you'll notice very highly charismatic people who you want to be friends with they'll be like tell me more tell me everything and they lean in really close to you and that makes you also feel closer so if you want to be seen as high and warmth you can do this as a speaker so you can lean in as you bold an important Point like when I'm making an important point for you I lean into it I'm like listen to this this is good but if I'm listening to you and you say something good I'll be like what really MH so you can do it as a speaker and as a listener and it immediately adds more warmth it's funny okay this might be a little bit of a tangent but it just came to mind as you were speaking there are like the odd person in my life who I've known for many many years but whenever I'm around them it kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier my body is just off and like I just don't know what it is like I'm thinking of one particular person I sh name where I could be in a room full of people and I'm relaxed I'm calm whatever and this person who I've known for many many years the minute they arrived in the room I wouldn't be able to be the same person and I don't know what it is like my I'd suddenly start think overthinking my body language and I'd start start thinking it's how as my legs and it's my body and I'd start covering blocking a little bit what is what is that trying to tell me do I need to cut this person out my life is there is there like Words unspoken what is it I would say it means do more research I I think that gut feelings are incredibly important because you know the best queue reading machine we have is our subconscious right our our subconscious or unconscious picking up on lots of cues that we can't consciously know we can't consciously know that we're smelling adrenaline but we are smelling it so I think that's a very important thing to pay attention to it doesn't mean you should cut them out but I think it's time to do more research are they truly happy for you are they truly rooting for you are they secretly angry or jealous maybe I'm doing it to them it's possible that you're in a loop with them right like you're expecting that bad thing and that expectation becomes reality like they've studied this that the pigan effect is real if you expect not to like someone you send off more unlikable cues they feel unliked and so they don't like you either and so it could be that you're in a loop with this person that maybe you make them feel the same way what do I have to do then when next time I see them cuz I want to dial up I don't know some warmth with this person or something or break that cycle okay if I were you they're they're important to you yeah they're important to me okay so I would recommend asking questions that will level you up with them to level two so my guess is you might be stuck in level one with them because you're obviously uncomfortable with them research shows that the more commonalities we have someone the more that we understand them the more compassion we have with them the more that we like someone so I wonder if we could level up your Rel relationship with them so you get to know them better which means you'll like them more and if you you make it through these six or seven questions and you still don't like them then maybe they're not your person okay okay can I give you some questions for them please okay please so here my favorite um I call these level one level two level three questions in the framework that I'm researching right now it's not done yet I have four questions for each level and I'm working through these questions but here are the questions that I think are the the shortcut to connection okay that if you ask these questions with your partner your friend colleagues you're going to level up with them okay first are you working on anything exciting recently so stop asking what do you do stop asking how are you stop asking how's it going that's why you hate people if you're asking those questions of course you're going to hate people those are the most boring questions anyone's ever asked can I give you a challenge a challenge here's one Challenge from this podcast stop asking what do you do for 30 days I want you to go on a what do you do diet asking what do you do is telling the person's brain stay on autopilot d i a last night no no more we're on a diet okay also asking someone what do you do is asking what are you worth and if someone's not defined by what they do it's actually a rude question do you know what you're so right I it's so funny you say this because yesterday I went to this thing in New York right and I was introducing myself to some people and there was one particular person who I went over to and we were having a conversation and halfway through the conversation I went so what' you do and do you know what they replied they went this and I just I went home thinking about it like I was like I was like of course we're at work like I bet what I've done there is I've just belittled what we're doing right now as if it couldn't possibly have been what they do right and I just I I honestly I got in bed last night thinking about I thought oh God I do you know what it was I think I was so impressed by them that I was a bit awkward yeah and then that just came out mid sentence what you do yeah God okay so we're going on a diet everyone from the next 30 days we're going on a diet no more what do you do you're going to replace it with working on anything exciting these days or working on anything exciting recent this is permission connection you ask someone that question you are giving them permission if they want to tell you about what they do oh they will M if they are not Define about what they do they'll tell you something better and that also gives you really good nuggets for the next time you see them when you can say hey how was that thing you were working on that was really exciting going so start with working on anything exciting these days working on anything exciting right now second what's your biggest goal right now so if you can especially as we go into the new year or in the new year right being part of year I love I ask this question in December January and February I ask everyone what's your biggest goal right now what's your big goal for 2025 when you ask this question you're going to get one of two responses one someone shuts you down I don't believe in goals not my person not my person I'm a growth-minded person if someone says that I'm like cool peace we're not going to get along very well because I have a lot of goals or they're going to be like oh let me tell you and they're going to tell you all about goals that's also a great thing you can follow up on because then when you see see them a month later or a week later or a year later you can be like hey how did that how did that go it's a great interview question it's a great I was just thinking that I should ask people that in the interview because Trad yeah because you're right someone that can't articulate some kind of goal is probably not my kind of person those kind of people that go this actually those kind of people don't listen to this podcast anyway they just leave comments and up like yeah exactly so like it's a very um I call those allergy questions interesting it's a way to see are we going to have an allergic reaction each other it creates an allergy like I know there's a type of person it susses them out really quickly and that's not my kind of person okay so working anything exciting what's your goal right now and then this is harder this is a self-narrative question do we want to go deeper for a self-narrative question of course we want to go that so if we're getting into self- narrative and you're trying to figure out yourself or someone else's narrative you want to ask the question it sounds innocuous but it's not what book movie or TV character is most like you and why it's kind of a silly like dinner party question it's like sort of sounds casual but the answer to this question is so incredibly important and here's an example how someone relates to characters their values or personality is how they see themselves and people's answers will shock you I'll give you one example I was friends with someone for six years one of my closest friends saw them all the time weekends we went on ad together we went on weekend trips together I thought I knew her so well I was like I know her I asked her this question and I hypothesize this is all my research for my next book I was like I hypothesize she's a mom of three super funny super Savvy I was like she's going to pick a great like TV mom character you know that that that's super Savvy and funny asked her she thinks about it for maybe one second and goes catniss everines from the from the Hunger Games I was like the one who's like fighting for her life she's like yeah that's how I feel every day and we for the first time in six years had a conversation about how she feels about her day that was totally different than anything I had ever known that she feels scared and lonely and that she is fighting for survival and it was the first time that I truly connected with her I cannot tell you how many times the answer to this question has changed for people in my life and I'm like careful which examples to use because I'm worried that they're going to be watching but has changed my relationship with people in my life based on how they see themselves not how I see them but how they see themselves it's really interesting because there's so many people listening right now that now doing that and they're discovering maybe for the first time even how they see themselves because it's funny because when you said that obviously I did it in my head and I was like well now I want to know what it is you like stereotypically no I'll tell you now I was thinking it's funny cuz the first person I thought of was Will Smith because people say I look like him sometimes right like people you have to correct someone if someone says who they look like you say no no look like Valu personality but then when I thought about TV characters I actually thought about Will Smith in the P of happiness and if you think about his journey he was broke and he was fighting really hard to get out of that situation and he got out of that situation so it goes back to the personality type you described at the beginning where like you hero of your own Journey like where you've overcome something and you that's kind of yeah and do you feel you found it found um found it happiness are you at the end of the movie I'm at the end of the movie um I don't know if you can ever get to the end of the movie that's the struggling with that question because there's like I think I found it but I've always I don't know like not the end of your movie it's not the end of your life movie but like in that example we could have a long discussion about like what what is have you made it so the reason why I think I'm hesitating is because I think I think to myself if if I say I've made it or I'm at the end of the movie then I'm like it kind of robs me of the future in a weird way in my head it's like robbing me of like doing anything else with my future no because what I mean yeah yes yes if you feel like the end of the movie I'm like oh God like yes no that's true you're never at the end of the movie but like if you feel that you've made it it means you have freedom to pursue things and do work for meaning as opposed to hitting it yeah of course yeah like I used to work in call centers at nighttime selling hotel rooms and car insurance and artificial grass and now I get to sit here and have conversations with people like you and like people tune in and stuff it's like if I don't realize at this moment how much um how much privilege I have I think I'd be I'd be pretty up so yeah I do feel like disproportion like unbelievably fortunate in a way that I actually don't think I can understand I think maybe I dreamed of this but to to be here feels um feels suspicious suspicious yeah there a strange word that came to mind yes it feels suspicious because it I don't know you just think you just think sometimes you think are you worri it's maybe it is worri but it's also just like surely not like it's so so interesting because I had the dream of like being successful in business but I didn't have a dream of or ever imagine that my life would be like this where like people know who you are I never had that dream never imagined it being possible that was other people for sure and so also I I that's a very accurate like that's how I think of Will Smith in the pursuit of happiness a little bit is like you never really see him truly happy in that movie no he's always just yeah running like that's something that I that's why I asked like did you get it you know you've pursued it you're here of course I'm so chasing off to something on that's what I think I can H I don't know what I'm chasing I wonder what you're chasing after I don't know actually don't know but I think that you're interviewing for something like when I watch your interviews which are amazing I'm like he's trying to find the answer to something what is it always like with every person is a different thing and actually most of the answers I'm looking for my own answers and my general belief is that if I like authentically go in search of my own answers which requires some level of like being open and willing to be uh open even though there's a lot of people watching then there'll be lots of other people out there that are struggling with the same things or searching for the same answers as well yes this interesting I do ask myself a lot what am I like what's the point like what am I like what am I but is it not the this is a bit of a tangent obviously is it not the case that we should all be searching forever like we should all be p in pursuit of something forever I do love a quest and I love pursuing and I think humans are built to pursue things but I also think I hope I'm not here yet I'm getting there that there's a point in our life where we can stop the grind like I think I'm grinding a little bit in my career I don't know if you feel like that like I've made it I feel like I've made it i' luckier than I ever I can't believe I get paid to do what I do but I'm still pursuing uing I hope there's a point in my life where I can just be sharing wisdom where I'm not pursuing anything it's not a number or a list or it's just like all I'm doing is sharing wi wisdom and giving out public education like I think that I'm hopeful there's a stage of our life where it's just that it's number five on the one did Lean which was number four number five is actually I have to pause on lean because I wanted to ask you about something I read in a book um about peacocking yes so I read read in this pickup artist book that I read when I was 18 and some of the videos that I watched thereafter and some of the other books that I read thereafter and some of the other videos I watched thereafter um about this concept of peacocking where you can if you're like on a date or you're interested in a girl or a guy in a bar if you lean in too much you signaling low value and like overin and ever since I learned that I've I've seen it everywhere and I've seen it in my friends me and my friends went to like Mar or somewhere I can't remember it was many many years ago and there was this beautiful girl there and we were all pursuing her yes like that like a labrador yeah um and I was saying to my boys there's actually a photo of it on my phone there me dman and my friend Ash sat there and we're looking over our some of our other friends and we're saying they're peacocking they got no chance and that's how the story transpired and then when this beautiful girl came over to my other friend he was aware of this peacocking thing he kept his his neck back he kept his chest back all these kinds of things he didn't lean in even though it was loud and closed closed okay here's why too much of a lean is bad thing it's called a bow right if you lean too far over you get very quickly into bowing or submissive Behavior we don't like people who are submissive to us we want equals and so you're absolutely right what it's what triggers in the brain if you're leaning too much is literally I am subservient to you and that makes someone who does not want to be in control or in an unequal relationship feel very uneasy so that is why too much of a lean always with these non-verbal accusers too much of a a good thing you lean too much it's a considerer a bow you also don't want to lean the entire time CU then you look like a hunchback right I'm laring my value by leaning in too much and it's distracting like I want to lean in as a bold or a highlight if I were to be reading a book and highlight the entire page the Highlight means nothing MH if you lean in when someone's like what really and then I lean back then it's powerful every single one of these cues we are using as a bold or an emphasis or a highlight just enough of a good thing okay not too much leaning just use it as a party trick like a no no I mean no I mean just use it like as a highlighter as a highlighter you're highlighting yes yes yes number five okay five non-verbal Bridge so this is a concept that I learned um on the road so I I saw this in action in a lot of our experiments we did a big big speed networking experiment in our lab where we had 500 speed networkers try out different conversation starters we've recorded them we coded their conversations and we looked for patterns of good and bad conversations and we found there were certain questions that worked better than others and there were certain questions did terribly and one thing we found is that when people rated a conversation on a five scale like five amazing best conversation I had we're going to connect on LinkedIn I think I like them the best ones they used a lot of non-verbal Bridges non-verbal bridges are when someone is trying to bridge the distance between you so that could be a lean lean is one of them but it also could be a reach out we noticed that in the good conversations people people were trying to physically close the distance between them with hand gestures with leans with nods with foot movement with drinks and when they were close enough they would often do very light touches on the arms on the shoulder so have you seen this like on a really good date have you ever been in a restaurant like my husband and I like to play this game where we look and we try to guess if a couple is very like new couple old couple how they're doing in a very good day they are looking for as many opportunities to touch as they possibly can that's non-verbal Bridge even if I were to be like oh let me tell you something like that slight Reach Out tap of the knuckles to of the arm that's a quick saying I'm going to reach into your intimate Zone but I'm not going into your intimate Zone and really good relationships really warm people are those they are bridging all the time they walk by you they touch your shoulder they say how's it going hey I want to thinking about you like they're constantly doing these very small Bridges and that couldn't might not be actual a physical touch it could even be the the look of a touch like one thing that I teach my students who are uncomfortable with touch is you can even touch without touching that sounds really weird but like put your arm closer to me so I can demo it for you so like pretend that we're a dinner I could be like oh my gosh really okay so you didn't touch me my hand but it did the same thing yeah not quite oxy did yeah but kind you like I get it yeah she's trying to close the intimacy of the distance so non-verbal Bridges trying to reach out reach into someone's space very briefly and come back trying to lean into someone's face very briefly this is why giving people things or serving people is such a warm thing you hand someone a drink like you come to my office I offer you hot hot chocolate I offer you tacos I want to break the social scripts I want to give you something different and I'm looking for reasons to serve you you give people tacos at your office yeah I'm in Austin Texas strange you would like it you would like it if you were hungry you'd be like give me that taco give me that taco it's what I don't know if that's office food but each to their own um so hugging and stuff like that you know there's this thing that people talk a lot about which is awkward hugging and sometimes you hug someone and you just feel like oh they didn't like that I didn't like that that was bad for both of us yeah horrible can we address the hug issue please okay you need to Signal what kind of greeting you want from the moment someone first sees you you can stop awkward greetings from happening with simple non-verbal cues here's what they are you want a handshake so good to see you I want you to be doing this from 10 feet away so good to see you I'll come in with it yeah you're literally signaling to someone up so good to see you right this immediately signals their brain don't try to give me an awkward hug don't side hug me don't hug me we're hand shaking it is a very clear way to be like it's called blading so we angle our body a little bit forward and we put one hand out you know I'm coming in for a handshake if you want a hug and you're a hugger it's so good to see you it's so good to see you okay arms out arms out and that's also going to prevent the awkward side hug the worst thing you can do is like this which is a kind of but what but one arm up people are like do I shake it do I side hug are we going to are we going to hug are we going to high five are we going to fist bump if you want a fist bump you're coming in with a fist bump from very hugger cuz I don't always it context dependent I do not like hugging people when I first meet meet them I was pitching a TV show about recovering awkward people at a very big Network and I walk into the pitch room and at that point I was a hugger or I was I thought I should hug because that was one of thing it's in la la people are Huggers and cheat kissers a lot and so I was like I walk into say oh it's so nice to meet you I'm a hugger oh yeah and then Z goes I'm not oh just cringe oh God just I died inside I died inside and you know what that pitch went terribly do I have a TV show called recovering awkward person no I don't that's cuz I think I hugged him and I went forward with it too much warmth too much warmth not enough competence and so I will never do that again so now I never ever say I'm a hugger and I always offer my hand now if someone says to me oh but I'm a hugger and they wave my hand away no problem no problem that's interesting if we take that back to the Charisma framework of warmth and competence it is signaling a little bit too much a lot of warmth it's a lot of warmth and I know a lot about a person when they tell me I'm a hugger what you know go high warm High warmth probably a people pleaser overeager really want to connect probably feel lonely a little bit afraid and I want to make them feel as liked as possible gosh that's a lot just from that one sentence I've hugged a lot of people no it is also I you know I have amazing students you know we have millions of views on our YouTube channel and they feel like they know me and so if they want to hug me I'm totally okay with it because I've been in their bed I've been in their living room I've been in their kitchen TV on their phone I've shared my stories with them and I understand why they want to hug me because we feel like friends and that actually is a compliment and you like it I do like it like when a student says oh my gosh I love you I love Captivate I'm like come here it feels like a friend so on the hugging point then as well is there like is there a great way to hug someone I mean yeah how how is that have you been told you're a good hugger because then you might not be I've tried to work on it so I think I think I am now okay I actually have been told I am okay but it's it's part of the reason why is because I've learned a lot from doing this podcast and someone told me don't tap on the back don't tap on the back and they told me to like we don't like being tapped on the head we don't like being tapped on the back it's a submissive cue right it's like you you'll notice um Power Players in politics Will sometimes deme someone by going hey bud yeah yeah yeah it's so we yeah definitely don't hug um so you're going to want to approach equally you don't want any kind of asymmetry in your hug right so that's why you want to approach someone like this like no asymmetry none of this straight on um you so this is hard if you are taller than the person you typically want to go up like you want to avoid like the who's going up right so the taller person should always try to go up and you want to like literally angle up the lower person is going to angle down and you're going to try to go torso to torso okay and I like a two second hug by the way there is research on the length of handshakes I haven't seen research on the length of hugs but a handshake should be between one and three pumps and one and three or one and three seconds so for example we're saying at one two three that's good and typically they found that if we do a 3se second Shake it's with a new person so our first Shake was about 3 seconds because we didn't know each other but if I were to see you again like oh it's so good to see you okay you do okay so typically if you already know someone you're just like doing a quick reading it's a 1 second and if you don't know someone it's a 3 second what if I your face as I got to four seconds you're like offended you're like not my person you like you like cussed me out of your eyes yeah was like horrible that's how I feel getting my arm back you also want to make sure that when you're doing a handshake you're offering um thumb up thumb up is really important um you'll notice certain political power players will um hear if yeah that so they'll flip you oh Donald Trump yes you and he like really pulls and he'll pull you he'll pull you off I never shaking hands with him so I don't know but um I've watched many many a video and he'll shake your hand turn you up this is a very vulnerable place to be we don't like it as humans to have this these arteries up so we'll he'll flip so he'll he'll flip and he'll pull you off there it doesn't feel good does it but what does that signal does that signal competence and strength no I don't think it's either I actually think it's a danger C okay CU it's purposely I don't none of the cues I teach are manipulative in that way like that is purposely trying to get someone off balance like to give them dis equilibrium I like relationships to be equal that's why I want you to offer thumb up I want I also don't want you to open you know offer your hand like you know up where you're saying I'm going to be submissive to you we don't like that right so thumb up I think I can't remember where I learned it but I learned that if you cut then it's signaling warmth so abely I was going to cup earlier on but I was holding some stuff I remember thinking I sat there and on cup why did I get my cup because I was holding all your books so I I was holding your books I was like I can't imagine if I TR to cup with your books I was just thr so strange no so cupping is really warm it's double the warmth it's double the oxytocin it's like a hand hug so it's super high in warmth it's also called the politician's handshake so you only want to do it if you are truly and genuinely trying to show warmth otherwise it can come across as forced okay I also speaking of like weird signals I've heard this about men that men to men have two different kinds of nods tell me if you think this is true so if you walk down the hallway and you see a man you know you go hey nod up if you see a man you don't know you go morning and you no down oh that's interesting and supposedly it's because a person you know you're willing to expose this part of your neck but if you don't know someone you want to keep your chin down and your but you're still acknowledging them is that true well do you know what's funny is um the way that I think about it is if I see a black guy guy okay out and about okay pretty much anywhere and they they know me whatever they'll typically do that up there's something about I don't I don't know if I'm just making this up but there's something about like being part of they I can see them from across the room have no idea who they are and in group it's like a I see you me and you are and I trust you it's a way of being like I'm willing to expose this I trust you oh okay so interesting interesting so I've noticed that women don't do that okay so that's oh yes KN down is I see you stranger okay morning so interesting got noted so interesting so so interesting I'm a a CEO um I do speaking on stage you you speak on stage as well you're very very good at it is there anything that I should know if I'm a leader in a business or I'm a public speaker that I should be thinking most about when I'm up on stage to signal I don't know whatever I want to signal to get whatever I want yes purposeful movement a big mistake I see CEOs make on stage is they either don't have purposeful movement so they Pace the stage back and forth or they're stuck in one point and they don't move from that point and it makes them look very stiff I believe you should block your speeches just very subtly so for example I always when I deliver I start in the middle of the stage always always so when I'm being introduced right your first few seconds on stage is the most important for your entire talk so as you're being introduced you walk on stage pick a point and walk purposefully to it don't Meander on the stage you're walking right to the middle of the stage or the left of the stage however you pick and you're delivering your first opening lines opening story in that Middle Point that's where I like it and that intention walking on stage is going to make you look so much more confident and not disorganized or um ambiguous then if you can this is for the advanced speaker and this is you I think you want to help your audience with your stage movement so in my presentations when I'm sharing science or fact or research I'm on the left hand side of the stage when I'm moving to personal story gifts anecdotes or a funny video I'm on the right side of the stage that is a way I'm helping my audience organize and categorize my talks I've also noticed in the audience there are highly warm people and there are highly competent people I've noticed if I train them that way I'm doing a 60-minute keynote they they begin to subconsciously recognize it my highly competent folks perk right up I get to the left side of stage oh this is for me and my highly warm folks are like ha my turn and it really helps them know when to pay the most attention so you should think about for your talks you also can do this chronologically so some of my students are like Ted speakers and they're telling more of a chronological story as opposed to like making points I will often teach them to start like we like to you know in in Western cultures we read from left to right I like them to actually start on the left hand side of the stage or the audience's left because the beginning of their story starts here and they share their childhood there's pictur of their childhood on the slide and they slowly begin to move over to the middle when the middle part of their Journey happens and they finally get to their Arc their knowledge their ah they finally they made it over to the far side of the stage the far right side of the stage and in terms of what I'm saying we talked a little bit about the actual content of what I'm saying because this applies not just to when I'm on stage but also to emails and whatsapps and I think most of our communication these days is on a screen so if I'm trying to be a master of structuring a sentence on a screen to set people up for Success okay what what like what is what have I got to be thinking about what emotion do you want your person to feel when they see your name in their inbox on stage in LinkedIn MH that is the emotion that you want to label yourself so for example in your talks like for example in my talks I am trying to acknowledge the pain of awkwardness I don't want people to feel like they are unseen so when I say you're overlooked you're misunderstood you're underestimated you feel awkward and out of control and anxious and overwhelmed I hear you you're not alone I've been there and then the solution to that feeling the where it gets better is confidence and presence and memorability and the mechanism is Blueprints and formula and hard skills that helps me gift to the audience a solution emotion so for you I would say what are the pain points you want your audience to resonate with so they feel heard by you seen by you understood by you what's the goal emotion that you want to give them from your talk from your podcast from the email that they're subscribing to and then what's your mechanism what's your way that you do that imperfection so imperfection I was I was watching a video of yours I think from 10 years ago where you were sat with two lovely people talking about Charisma and one of the things you said earlier in the video is that I think it was like TV shop or something like that where like a lady made a mistake she like spilled a milkshake or something and she did more sales because she spilled a milkshake yes that's it explain this to me yes another study by Dr Richard wisman who wanted to know do you have to be perfect which for many years I wanted to be perfect and then I realized oh there is no such thing as perfect and I don't want to be that way very simple he had a model selling a blender in a mall and in one version she had the perfect pitch and now take your strawberries and your bananas and just the button and here you have perfect smoothies and the second one she he had same smoothie same pitch same verbal but she spills the Smoothie on the table as she's pouring it people bought more of the blender when she spilled the Smoothie now does this mean I want you to perfectely spill your smoothies no I did have a piece of kale in my teeth earlier and I really considered coming in with it just to see what would happen I did I did I did think about it but I didn't do it but I do think there's like stop trying to be perfect own your authentic vulnerabilities don't purposely smell a smoothie don't purposely smell your coffee by the way that that experiment was repeated with coffee and job interviews if I remember correctly they had an audio clip um and hirers were raing job candidates on performance and in one of the audio clips they had him spill his coffee oh whoops o oops oops sorry about that spill my coffee let's get that and then go back to the interview and they raided that candidate as a better candidate even though he spilled his coffee why it's called the other shoe effect we know that every no one's perfect we know this it's impossible and so when we're interacting with someone even on a commercial even interview we're like what's wrong with you what is your imperfection and it kind of distracts us that this research the other shoe effect found the longer the interview goes on without something dropped like without the other shoe to drop the more the interviewer is like H what's going on here and the more they'll try to ask questions to try to find it you are better off in an interviewer on a date dropping your shoe so sharing whatever that vulnerability or imperfection is closer to the start of the interview or the date because it helps the other person a get to know you better but also not be so worried that they're not seeing your true imperfection Captivate when I first wrote it my intro was really really boring and my publisher I love her Nikki my editor wrote back and she's like Vanessa your intro doesn't sound like you it sounds like you're trying to be something you're not and she was right I was trying to sound like an academic researcher I'm not an academic researcher I'm a behavior researcher I'm a pop scientist I'm a recovering awkward person she's like start with that so the opening line of captivate is hi I'm Vanessa I'm a recovering awkward person that is why that book hit the bestseller list I dropped the shoe yes I teach Charisma yes I teach body language I am still in recovery I am still constantly worried that people hate me I have a small and wonderful group of friends but otherwise people make me still nervous I know how to deal with it I how to make convers but I want you to know there's still awkwardness here no matter how many of these you learn you're probably still going to face awkwardness and overwhelm but at least it will be a little bit easier so I think it's really important that we plan to share our Perfections and not try to hide it weal branding uhuh is a big thing now because we have social media we have LinkedIn it's a big part of what gets you a job and gets you opportunities and gets you speaking appointments and book deals Etc so everybody is uh well most people are playing the game of personal branding to some degree yeah so as you were saying about um being perfect and showing imperfections again it feels like there's a there's like a uh like a is gradient the right word like a spectrum that's a nice word for sure you can go too far with imperfection oh yeah me and my friends call this deficiency promotion what and then on the other end of the spectrum you've got ideas promotion which is like when you're all about like look how smart I am and these are my ideas and deficiency promotion is look how traumatized broken sick ill I am and you build a whole brand around that yeah and you can like you know so you're probably still going to get speaking appointments either side because you know they're going to want people to speak about this stuff but also this stuff but I think you have to be quite intentional about how you show up on this spectrum well first of all what's true right like the very first question is like don't purposely s spill the Smoothie but you know what's interesting is when you build a brand it becomes self-reinforcing so I see people on both sides of the spectrum maybe they started in the middle and then they got likes and followers that are like get go further like what else is wrong with you that's why we love you you're so Bren toally totally I think that there are people who are locked into being broken and being messy and people don't want to see them Triumph however I think it is important to show people if you are very broken and in a bad point in a bad stage in your life like show it and then show them how you're a hero out of it that can Inspire other Heroes I agree but is there such a thing as spending too long in either Camp do you know what I mean cuz we like a little bit of oh you had a bad day great but you have a bad life is Different Strokes for different folks I think there are people who would stay all over there forever yeah but if you're there for 10 years where you're just every day you're showing up like another day for me for 10 years think they would still get likes I think would they would course they would Conant I mean it would be Mis miserable for you as a person but if that's your brand that's your brand I guess I guess you said that the most important thing which is like who are you yeah like if that's the truth if you're you're having a decade of then be honest you got a decade of you got a decade of it it's interesting with social media that I think social media started in a place where it was you know the marger on the beach and that that was in such high Supply that something else became in Greater Supply which was being a bit more honest and stretch marks on the beach yeah exactly stretch marks on the beach that's exactly what happened and those are people who' have gone viral from those kind of posts I would I do want to say something about personal branding I think about it a little bit differently um so in the very last section of cues I talk about visual um we have to remember that the cues in our brand the colors we wear what's behind you in your background the props you're holding in your picture what's back behind you in your videos they are triggering neural networks so for example they've research this if I say free associate to fire Tru you might say red engine dog and you might start to associate different words there are really common neural networks so what you want to think about is what what neural networks are you triggering in your personal brand so for example I like you to create strong neural networks all my single students my students who are dating I say your profile picture should be triggering all kinds of neural networks that you like so if you love skiing you should be on a slope holding skis because for some people that will trigger a fierce fear neural network right like I'm not a skier I see skis I'm like cold scared alone right like knees hurting like that's what I think when I see skis I would not be a good partner for them but someone else is going to be like Adventure family fun vacations that's your person every picture on your profile should be creating allergies and attractors should be activating neural networks for your person you want them to have similar neural networks to you my husband and I I think if you were to show us both pictures of the same things we would have very similar neural networks for different vacations different props different foods different activities and that's because we have similar ways of thinking we are very different but we activate the same similar neural networks for pain and pleasure okay I had a conversation with a really good friend of mine about this okay um they are looking for a partner okay and they are approaching their 40s and they were asking me about their Instagram and the first thing I noticed about their Instagram is I would say 80% of pictures they're holding a cocktail or a drink of alcohol now as I looked at the Instagram I go oh party go I don't think like settle down and let's have a family absolutely does she want to have a family yes okay wrong pictures okay she is activating the wrong neural networks for men she's dating men yeah she's dating the wrong you're men are going to look at that and be like party girl fun out not the mother of my children so those are creating allergies for the ideal man so what does she need to change she needs okay so what kind of husband and father does she want does she want an outdoor lover a good one that can she she said to me I want a good one that that can help me with some of these overheads overheads bills she doesn't want him to pay all the bills she just wants some help with the bills okay so okay so a hard worker she ears a lot of money okay so that's pictures of her you know working hard at a conference what kind of way does she spend to her weekend she's hiking or she's biking or she's running across the Brooklyn Bridge or she's running a marathon or she's loves with dogs or she loves cats or she's eating big waffles and pancakes like she should be taking pictures of what she wants to do with her partner so that they look at that and they're like I want to join her for that and you also want to create allergies you don't want to appeal to everyone cuz you're going to go on bad dates the other thing I know about this person is is something you said about earlier it's just their their body language as I think about it is just so it's like trying to take up less space is any way I can describe it contracted exactly like that right so so when we talk about distance between like so ear ear ear L and shoulder distance number one second distance is important between your arm and your torso in a good conversation we have distance that's fluctuating a lot like right I'm talking my arms are going out you're seeing distance between my torso and my arm people who are very anxious yeah like in like just like a pencil or like penguin I call it penguin where they like don't ever release their arms from their torso and they're very contracted they have very minimal hand gestures and they'll often clutch something to their chest now if I were to give the entire interview like this you would think oh man she is nervous or she's um you know afraid or she's anxious because I don't have that space the moment I release that space it makes me look more confident so that's the other distance you can play with hand gestures really help with that handes help with space with vocal variety with comprehension that's why I like them so much so if I'm trying to get her a husband I'd like to we've been friends for a long time almost a decade and I have sat in the passenger seat of her life and tried to be a supportive friend in any way but if I tried to give her advice in terms of cues and body language and sentences on how to get a partner where do we start okay so one let's get her some pictures that are going to attract the right person and create allergies for the wrong person okay two her main profile pictures should be showing warm and competent body language yeah authentic smile maybe a head tilt maybe you have a hand gesture maybe that's too much warmth I want to see a lot of space between your earlobe and your shoulder make sure it's a symmetrical smile make sure we're not contempt make sure we're not accidentally fear smiling right so the profile picture is number one most important yes okay you're laugh it's a lot okay oh we we it's going to be hard we got to find her her husband we haven't got much time yet that okay we got we got to find her husband the interpersonal body language is really hard as a friend to correct on someone may I ask you does she use vocal fry what's that does she ever talk like this where it's kind of like a frying pan where she's not using her full voice typically people who use contracted small body language often have that kind of a vocal power and so they go into a pattern like this and then and like oh like I mean I just like watered the plants this weekend and like also the inton the um the end of this sentence goes up right so that's the first thing I would actually try to help her with is um making sure that she does not accidentally use vocal fry it's usually an accident here's the fastest way to get vocal fry rid of vocal fry if you are using it you hear yourself using it or someone else is using it just speak louder vocal fry happens from a lack of breath what actually is happening is you're speaking in your vocal cords are rattling it's a terrible noise but that's it's my vocal cords rattling together and the moment that I speak louder it goes away it goes away so often times when we're lacking confidence or we have tight body we have less breath and we create vocal fry so just ask her to speak up a little bit okay it's hard to get someone to stand more broadly because if they're uncomfortable with it they don't like it so what I would recommend is she should do activity dates when you're at dinner with someone or at brunch or at coffee at a bar you're like this so what do you do and you're like shriveled and you're like clutching your drink and you're in your patterns you're in those patterns go on Hikes go play pickle ball go learn pickle ball go play ping pong like do something physical because then it's much easier to be broad interesting okay that makes a lot of sense actually yeah because you're going to if it's in a context you're super familiar with you the old patterns are going to be triggered in you yes and I've tried to get people to stand more broadly just by telling them and it can it helps the awareness helps but it's much easier when you're actually in a context that helps you be that way I read a study um from your work that said in a study to see how men and women look at body language differently they put people in an MRI machine and had them try and read body language um from just pictures alone what happened what did they find out so I believe women activated 14 to 16 areas of their brain activated while trying to read those body language pictures and Men I believe it was half of that in other words when women were looking at pictures of body language lots of connections were happening they were making predictions they were thinking about personality they were thinking about emotions they were looking at their clothes they were looking at their facial structure women were taking a much broader picture of the body language whereas men were I think much more Q focused ah broad shoulders feet apart hands visible neither of these are right or wrong actually in fact men can sometimes be easier to teach like my students are 50 men and women but sometimes men can they can focus in on the cue that I'm trying to teach them they can understand it they can comprehend it got it it's decoded women tend to create a whole narrative so I play game sometimes with my students where I say okay tell me about someone he has a mohawk and men will often say I don't let them hear the women first men will often be like he has a mohawk he's a man he's not bald women will be like okay he's a bad boy and he probably has has earrings and I bet you he drives a motorcycle and I bet he'd be really fun on a date but probably a drinker and they will just go interesting so this is it's good and bad right like that also can hinder women and by the way I'm making a big generalizations on this this is not the the generalization part we have to make sure we're careful on women tend to globalize a queue like they'll see a queue and be like oh that means he's bad or that means he's dangerous I'm never he's toxic never gonna talk to him yeah um whereas men will sometimes you know oh it's probably a bad day or I'll I'll give her or him a second chance so we just have to be a little bit aware of our own interpr our own lenses we'll say is there anything else that I should say to my friend in in order to help them because sometimes I wonder you know there's tips tricks tactics they can lean they can do this whatever but is there something deeper that is easier and you know why I say this that book the game I went off to University I lasted for one lecture but while I was there I met this guy called Joe my friend I won't say his second name cuz will identify him but I met my friend Joe and I said to Joe listen my friend I said this book The Game really useful Tau me a lot about like you know interpersonal um Dynamics you should read it gave the book to him he read it we went out to the club that day he it up like he went out there he he started negging people insulting people whatever and I just thought God you know you just can't teach it that's what I thought I thought there's so many and actually when I reflect on the people in my life this guy called Dan I'll say his name Dan Capon Dan Capon in school was always just so so good with the opposite sex he was just always he's one of those people he's charismatic he was funny he's like that cocky funny yeah yeah just a natural no one taught him that yeah and so I look at my friend Joe I look at my friend Dan I go you it doesn't matter if you read the book because I'm not saying your book your book's amazing everyone needs to go read your books no they really do it's a great book but I'm saying is there something deeper within us like for my friend that has the shriveled posture yeah is it just like tactics and tips I think anyone can learn it okay I I really truly believe that I have seen the most awkward uncomfortable people totally shut down slowly transform or completely transform and remember they don't who is your uncharismatic friend what was the fake first name you used he's not he's not uncharismatic he just I just gave him the book and he just like who is Joe Joe Joe doesn't need to have a complete transformation to find his soulmate Joe does not need to have a complete transformation to have friends you're his friend so even if he has a couple of tactics like stop asking what do you do it's boring M like start making eye contact especially the end of sentences for 60 70% of the time oh people suddenly feel listen to hey ask better questions to your friends you'll get to know them better those tactics will get him friendships hopefully a girlfriend hopefully a job so I think that everyone can make small or big changes I don't think there's anyone who's unteachable do you think there's a relationship between these tactics and tips and your actual confidence I.E does it become like a self-reinforcing yes so much so like that is the only way I found confidence the only way that I was able to conquer my awkwardness and actually begin to go out and try to make friends and be less lonely I mean I was so lonely was that I was like okay I have a goal I'm going to ask someone one what have you been doing that's been exciting recently I'm going to ask that question that gave me just enough confidence to get out the door and to get to that party and then when I got a good answer someone's like oh yeah you know I am working on something exciting I was like oh and then they felt excited I felt excited and so like that one tool gave me enough confidence to go out so these tools give you confidence to try something new and to break your pattern if you feel stuck and this is for anyone if you feel stuck then you have to try something different if you keep doing the same thing you're going to keep getting the same thing so that means you have to ask different kinds of questions you have to use different kind of body language cues and if you're willing to try just something different something will change for you is are these cues this body language more important for one gender typically than the other not that I've seen not the research has not found that good for both and what's in terms of Attraction is what is do you think the most important thing is it competent is it strong is it okay so this is not this is research so I believe it was Monica Moore who did this research she found that the people who got approached the most at clubs the people who got approached the most were just had the biggest signal of availability so they weren't the most attractive men and women she did this for both men and women they were not the most attractive men and women in fact the most attractive women in the in the room if they had closed body language closed off Body Language they were not approach they did not get dates they did not get out their number it was the men and women who signaled I'm available how' you signal one available okay so uh this is really important for dating in the sense of wanting to be approach dating one to one is a little bit different right you don't need to Signal this if you're one to one but if you're in a big room or you're speed networking one is open body no blocking I never want anything in front of your torso I don't want this I don't so I don't want arms crossed I don't want Cup in front of you I don't want you clutching your computer or your iPad or your phone I want you to make sure that your torso is open and angled out towards the room I like croissant feet you know parallel feet are like what we're doing right now in a dating situation I want you to have croissant feet which is your your feet are angled toward the biggest part of the room saying I'm open come and approach me okay that signals to both men and women oh maybe that person is literally physically open to someone coming in and breaking this conversation it also means small darting glances to everyone around the room everyone everyone you want to approach you oh everyone you want to approach you yeah how many times do someone got to do a glance to get someone to come over so mon Moore actually studied this I believe it took eight glances to get someone to approach don't quote me on that it was it was way higher than I thought like I was like two maybe three I think it was something insane like eight could you imagine being in a bar and looking at someone eight times that's how many times it took to get that person to come over and these are quick glances not like you know cat like it's a it's a side glance it's a side glance and a smile it's a flip of the hair and a look over right those are the kind of glances that we're talking about and there it takes eight sometimes so croissant feet open body quick short glances I would also try one of my secret tricks for daters is um generally gesturing in their Direction so like let's see like like there's a hot guy right over there that I can see i' I've been married for 18 years just to be okay yeah um if you want you okay drop something you called him hot you called him hot he's freaking out okay so there's a hot guy right over there that I want to see and I'm talking to you I might make some quick glances over but I also might like when I'm gesturing I'm sort of gesturing towards them so I'm on their line of gesturing so like if I'm gesturing out I'm I'm making a gesture for them to literally come over like I'm like gesturing and then I'm like I want them to like literally come over I'm sort of gesturing but I'm talking but I'm open gesturing ah interes it work if they are attracted to you at all they will come over if they don't come over they're probably not attracted do you try someone else what about men how do men signal in this oh sorry same same so like a man can the same thing now women are less likely to approach men in a crowded environment culturally that's not as accepted so it's going to be harder to for a man to get a woman to come over but it does work very well for men to warm a woman up that you she is about to be approached with those things quick glances open gestures croissant feet towards her that way when you do approach she knows that your attention has been on her and look at her responses to your gestures and your glances if she meets your glance great if she turns away from you turns her feet away from you she's not probably very receptive to your approach so it's a good way to kind of test the waters before you actually approach it's difficult in this day and age isn't it to know if you can roll up on someone because there's a lot of like you know too cool for school that's what I see and also there's like a big culture now of inappropriate advances yes but I'm going to be optimistic and say look I'm not single so I I know that's different but I think people are lonely and I think people so want to meet their person so if you are actually in person and you were interested in someone it is such a gift to go up to someone and be like hey I like you I saw you across the room J I think I said this on one or two podcasts before but I didn't really get a answer from anybody I had this kid at this event that I spoke at okay and he was in the front R it just it really moved me because it made me realize that there's so many people out there especially in the world we live in now in 2024 for 2025 or whatever who want friends you just said loneliness right they want to make her friend and it's so weird this kid stood up bless him in this talk I was doing and he put his hands up in the air and there's a thousand people um around him it was this talk I did in Canary wolf in London which is like it's like New York of London it's like really really busy they're all wearing suits these kids because they work in the city and he stood up and he went my question is how do I make friends oh and you can imagine the guts it takes to say that in front of a room of a thousand people he went how do I make friends what' you say do you have any friends do I have any friends I have a couple not many but it's funny because what I actually said it took me off took me off guard but what I ended up saying was what you just did is how you make friends you know what I'm saying so like that that willingness to be vulnerable in that way because I said I know what's going to happen after I finish on stage here and walk off people are going to come up to you yeah yeah okay so I have a framework for how to make friends as adults okay I think it's really important I think it's somehow acceptable in our society to approach friendship like dating but that's how we should think about it is meeting two or three amazing people is so important for your health for your happiness for your success it is so important to date your friends like that is incredibly important one of my best friends is Cody Sanchez because she is incredibly inspiring incredibly smart incredibly funny but I dated a lot of people in Austin a lot of girls in Austin to find her I know she did too it was my bachelorette for friends era where I was looking for girlfriends and we just like hit it off and like we've been able to grow our businesses together so one is you should change your mindset finding friends is like dating you are looking for your friend soulmate and then you should approach those friends just like you would a potential partner you want someone with similar values you want Sim someone who activates the same neural networks as you they like the same activities and you want someone who you test it out you would never move in with a friend or never move with someone who just started dating same thing with a friend you don't want to get too close too fast so I highly recommend go on friendship dates and you want them to be different every time take them to places that you love and try to make them a little bit allergic so for example there's a place this is going to sound crazy but it works so there's a place in Austin called uh Casa Delo if anyone's been there in Austin and it's a vegan hippie spot it's been there forever and you go in and it's one meal You Can't customize it and they plop it down on your tray and you eat it like a cafeteria food and I love it and I love taking really high maintenance women there just to see what they're going to do because the the women who are like can I please get a not a I'm like we're not going to be friends we cannot be friends you don't like those people nope that modified them that's why I left La mm I mean you can modify a little bit but like there's a way that you kind do it and here you can't you literally cannot modify and so it's interesting to see how people deal with that circumstance and I found my best closest friends are like cool let's go with it like that's a way that that I see very into their personality that's like a very weird story people are going to be like she's so weird no wonder she doesn't have any friends true I don't have a lot of friends but the friends I have I love we go to C all the time so you should think about activities or places with your friends where you're going to be able to test out a value or something that you really appreciate in friends what if you don't have friends I'm thinking about this kid like and especially if you're a man because men just struggle more it's it's it's it actually feels awkward sometimes when I make dates for my hband I I have to get make dates friend dates for my husband as well no I totally get I see it um activities so like where's the place you like to hang out what's the thing that you do is it you know axe throwing is it going to soccer games is it crazy mileage runs is it hiking group is it pickle ball like find the activity you love and then just slowly just like we're talking about dating slowly hit them up work on anything exciting these days what's your big goal for 2025 like those are the questions the reason I have these questions is they're dating questions but they're also friendship questions if you live in that activity for long enough you'll find your people what are you seeing in terms of interpersonal relationship shifts in the sort of 15 years has it been since you've been 18 years you you must have seen societal level shifts in our interpersonal skills our friendships Etc what are you saying airpods are killing friendship airpods are going to ruin our interpersonal interactions and here's the difference I've seen that biggest difference the last 18 years 18 years ago you could maybe wear a Walkman around campus or around the city or on a subway but really your ears were open and so what would happen is you get on the subway or you'd walk across campus or you'd walk down the hallway and someone would be like Hey Stephen how's it going you know pretty good crazy week oh really what you working on like it was so much easier to have those tiny micro moments of connection that van Sloan study was done before airpods and I wonder if you were to redo it now it would happen which one that the the one where he found the most likable kids had the longest list of people they liked and in the study the most likable kids when he observed them they were walking down the hallway saying hello chatting next to someone for 5 seconds at a locker saying after class and sort of talking sitting with a lunch table leaning over someone asking about that so much micro connection very small conversations our friendships don't often happen in these big deep conversations they happen in these micro moments airpods destroy it and I see this especially with younger folks because they always have their airpods in when they're commuting when they're walking when they're jogging when they're at the gym I don't know about when I was single for 5 seconds when I was like you know 17 the gym was like the place like at the gym no one really was listening to anything at the gym at least I can remember like the rare person would have their Walkman in but everyone was airpod free and so there was a lot of micro moments of connection happening it was so much easier to talk to people now if someone's working out with their out their airpods they they're insane I'm like what are they doing they should go home it's weird it's weird or they're with a friend working out together and that's intimidating so I'm worried about this because we need weak ties week ties are in the research these very casual connections of someone you see at the gym once a week and you kind of know them oh yeah you know Stephen nice to see you you recognize their face that when you were if you were to see them at a restaurant later in the week You' be like hey don't you go to that gym oh yeah yeah we do so what are you doing this weekend like those week ties are incredibly important for our happiness that's how we build big friends that's how we can find a soulmate that's how we can make good business contacts and I'm seeing less and less of that because of airpods and because of hybrid work so we're just not in the office that much so we're having less of those little micro moments in a hallway that five minutes before a meeting starts the five minutes before a meeting start is really critical to your Career Success how you talk to your boss the small talk you make are you asking boring questions it's telling your colleagues and your boss a lot about who you are and it's proven likable people make more money likable people get more promotions likable people have more friends and more friends at work and so when we have less moments to show how likable we are it's really hard to get those things at my company flight Studio which is part of my bigger company flight group we're constantly looking for ways to build deeper connections with our audiences whether that's a new show a product or a project it's why I launched the conversation cards I've relied on Shopify before who's a sponsor of today's podcast and I'll be using them again for the next big launch which we'll hear about soon and I use them because of how easy it is to set up an online store that reaches all of you no matter where you are in the world with Shopify the usual pain points of launching products online Disappear Completely no matter the size of your business Shopify has everything you need to make your business go to the next level and better with your customers all over the world to say thank you to all of you for listening to my show we're giving you a trial which is just $1 a month you can sign up by going to shopify.com Bartlet that's shopify.com Bartlet or find the link in the description below if you're an entrepreneur you're probably going to want to listen to this it's a message from one of our sponsors on this podcast which is LinkedIn if you've listened to me on this podcast for a while now you'll know that I've been on a bit of an evolution as a business owner and entrepreneur and one of those Evolutions that has become clearer and clearer as I've matured is that the single most important thing in building a business in building a company is hiring the definition of the word company is actually group of people and that is the first responsibility and job that any entrepreneur has and should focus on but surprisingly most don't about 80% of my team have been hired from LinkedIn and I think there's very few platforms if any in the world that could give you that diversity of candidate with that much information and data on their profiles it usually costs money but for the entrepreneurs that are listening to me I've got you a free job ad post for your company on LinkedIn just go to linkedin.com doac to post your free job ad today that's linkedin.com doac terms and conditions apply what about lying this is one of the most um things people are most interested in is how to everyone wants to spot a liar it's funny cuz like the the rest of our conversation one could infer that as how to like be a liar I'm joking on no but it is it's like how to show up in a certain way to get success in a certain context whether it's dating or work whatever yeah but then we want to figure out if someone's playing us is there is it possible to spot a liar most people can only spot a lie with 54% accuracy they've actually studied the average person is very bad better you're better off tossing a coin 54% accuracy we are very bad at spotting lers and this is important to know about yourself is we should not overestimate our ability to spot Lies We are usually not good at it so it is very important to give someone the benefit of the doubt because you don't know it's very hard to spot it is possible there are certain statistical cues to deceit there are cues that over and over again research find Liars typically do but not always like there's no Pinocchio's nose there's no one cue that means someone is lying but there are a couple cues that come up over and over again one we already talked about the question inflection it's very suspicious if someone someone is speaking and all of a sudden they ask a question if they're not actually asking a question right like if all of a sudden you hear the question inflection use on a statement or a number or a boundary or a timeline that's when I'm like let's double click on that for a second and talk about that budget so you mentioned the number was 500,000 where does that number come from let's talk about more and I want to hear if I'm going to hear it again interesting so that's a double click for me that's like let's make sure that I heard that right let's make sure that you feel confident about it let where does that come from so that's just a little red flag that says dive deeper nothing is a sign of lying it's just a sign that you should dig deeper so uh question reflection a volume drop is another vocal cue of deception so when we're anxious or nervous we will lose volume and we lose breath so if you hear someone who's speaking I I hear this a lot in sales calls so someone will um I always know what part of a sales presentation makes my entrepreneurs the most nervous because they lose volume during that part of their presentation so it sounds like this so let's move on to our team so our founding partners are um me myself uh Joe Jimmy and we all met at NYU and we're going to now talk about like I'm obvious I'm making it obvious for you but if you're listening for it you'll hear where someone is like they literally lost fuel they literally lost breath so a sudden drop in volume it's a very interesting CU to like double click like what just happened there how do you feel about your co- under how long have you known each other anything we should know about that how's the relationship how do you fight how do you communicate right like that's when I would that's where I would aim most of my investor questions if I was hearing that volume drop on that specific area the other the now that's fcal non-verbal so non-verbal what you're looking for is in congruencies where the verbal does not match the body the biggest and most obvious one is when someone says yes but shakes their head no or says no but shakes their head yes so I might say to my daughter did you clean your room um yeah I did she's shaking her head no in Western cultur so the there's a cultural exception to this one India Bulgaria and Pakistan they knot a little bit differently the research actually shows that but in countries outside of India Bulgaria and Pakistan when we agree with someone say yes or telling the truth we typically agree with ourselves and Shake our heads yes when we don't agree or don't like something we often Shake our heads no we can sometimes also do this in disbelief like wow I cannot believe that just happened so I'm always looking for in congruent nods this happens a lot if you ask someone do you like the new girl yeah you know she's um great right you see that 100% yeah all the time and people they don't realize they're doing it but they're shaking their head no they do not like that person you'll also see this with mismatched facial expressions and the biggest one for liars the research finds is disgust so disgust is a expression that people make without even realizing it and this is across cultures when we don't like something or we smell something bad we crinkle our nose up and we Flash the upper whites of our teeth and we go uh that so I you'll notice that Liars typically feel dirty when they lie so oftentimes they'll show disgust with themselves for lying so you'll ask someone so what do you think of the proposal yeah um it's really good and they might even sniff really yeah what's a sniff um what do it signal oh it's it's a it's a it's a disgust activator like when we are disgusted our nasal cavities want to close because we want to take in less of it and so even though it's not about food it's about a preference Liars will often show a little bit of disgust when they are lying because they are like a little bit disgusted with themselves and so you'll see this activation here by the way no one does that naturally like right this is a very unnatural to hold my face but we do it when we feel disgusted it's a the nasal cavities when we we nasal dilate our nasal Wings dilate that's what it's called like these nasal Wings dilate and we begin to scrunch them up it's like we're don't like what we're seeing smelling hearing so what I will do is I will share a proposal to someone I will talk about something and I watch for any disgust so I'll say you know here's the plan for 2025 here's what we're going to do and if I see [Music] a I know that that team member or that person is like not that into it and that's why I double click any questions how do you feel Stephen do you like this idea yeah I love it yeah no horrible horrible you look like you're about to throw up by the way I heard you I heard you say that the most toxic relationships are the ambivalent relationships the word ambivalent means to what does it mean okay so ambivalent is actually not toxic so toxic is like we know it's bad we don't want it we're creating boundaries around it ambivalent means we're not sure ambivalent relationships are the relationships in your life that are the most damaging they're the relationships where you wonder does she like me do I like her g i I wish she would cancel this dinner we have am I tired after that I'm dreading it do I have to go gosh I wish I was home those are ambivalent relationships where you're not sure and they are so energetically draining because a toxic person you know they're toxic you're like I don't like that person they're not serving me I'm not going out dinner I'm going home no thanks not going to text you not going to tell you I'm thinking about you where an ambivalent person you're like I should check in with that person I really should go to the dinner oh it's been five months since I've gone din with oh man do I even know what they're up to these days do I even care and then most importantly do they like me do they support me that's why I asked about that friend that you were like unsure about I was like are they jealous do they have a problem with you because you might be picking up on they are ambivalent towards you and that is you're picking up on that there's a research study that was done with police officers and they wanted to know what makes for a thriving workplace so they asked police officers to rank the people in their Precinct and they found that the police officers who had the most ambivalent ties were more unhappy in their job had less work life balance had more workplace dress more than the people who had toxic relationships in other words the police officers who said all 10 of those people are toxic we're happier at work and the police officer who said I don't know if I like that person and that person I don't know if that person likes me I don't know if I want to go out to lunch with that person again I kind of would rather be alone because it is so mentally draining to have ambivalent relationships so it's really important if you're making that list of people going back to the very beginning you know the people you're really close not very close with kind of close with really close with if you're not sure put them at the bottom and in the next 30 days try to ask them the questions that we shared working on anything exciting what's your biggest goal right now and see if you like their answers it's important to either move them up or move them out don't let them be ambivalent one of the things that is highly searched on Google I was looking at Google to figure out um what the most search questions are there's some tools that I use to to figure out what those what people want to know and one of them was just Fally how do I start a conversation so what my next book is about out so I'm happy to hear that okay one is don't overthink your opener starting a conversation is like hey I'm Vanessa like literally your opener can just be that my sister my youngest sister I was she was like the best advice I ever gave her ever and I was like what is it she was like is you just told me to say hello to people and that is it your opener is just hey I'm Vanessa hey nice to meet you so don't overthink the opener because that opener your body is actually doing a lot of things your brain and body are like competence warmth facial expression voice Tone If you're like what's your biggest goal in life it's it's way too much and so one is your opener should actually be basic so the other person's brain is like gives them a chance to like safe okay friend we're friend hey how are you doing right I I my friend Q I held up my hand so don't overthink your opener hey nice to meet you hey I'm Vanessa your first question is where things get more interesting okay so if you don't know their name you want to say like oh what's your name great I'm Vanessa then you have a choice and I like to take the better route you can say so what do you do but I really don't like that path it's autopilot so what I like to do instead is ask a version of the excitement question do anything fun and exciting this past weekend if it's a Monday so Mondays I always ask you do anything fun this past weekend Fridays I always ask have any exciting plans coming up this weekend and then Tuesday Wednesday Thursday I don't talk to anyone what is the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about for the person side at home the typical question most prolific question that you get there's one story that I love that I try to keep front of mind which is about Harry S Truman former US president most people don't know about him is that he was actually severely introverted and when most people think about US presidents they do not think about introverts in fact most presidents have to be kind of a booming extrovert personality and he was very introverted and he did something very interesting at the Democratic National Convention back in I believe 1944 um he knew he was not a good public speaker which also is very rare for US president to become president without being a good public speaker he knew he could not cut it on stage with the very charismatic people and he was not he was behind in the polls he was not the preferred candidate so he was like I'm not going to compete on stage I'm not going to try to outspeak them I'm not going to try to go work the floor and shake hands it's not my way what I am going to do is try to find a way to do what I'm best at which is one-on-one conversations where I can win people over with an argument so in the Democratic National Convention it was really hot in Chicago in the middle of summer he rented the one air conditioned room in the bottom in the basement of the convention center and one by one his team would invite person by person down into that air condition room and he would tell them his story he would tell them his points and vote by vote and as the votes were being tallied he would win over every single person that went to that room one it was air conditioned so they wanted to stay there as long as possible two he would hear what are your concerns why do you not want to vote for me and he would explain to them why they should vote for him and vote by vote he ended up winning the National Convention without having to speak on stage barely at all I share this because stop competing on stages where you can't be your best start creating rooms where you can think about what are your social strengths you have one what is it is it storytelling is it being funny is it listening is it being empathetic is it being a decoder is it being persuasive what is your social strength create spaces and rooms where you can exercise that strength because no one wants you to pretend to be an extrovert or pretend to be something that you're good at that you're not it's much better to be do what you're actually good at and attract the right people and your social strength might not be in person might not be and that's okay like there are some people who are great at texting there are some people who are great at sending voice notes there are some people who make their friends by broadcasting and then picking out a couple people that's how you met your girlfriend is you broadcasted she resonated with something that you said and you gave her the way to find you she did and then you met so maybe it's broadcasting I think we have to think outside the box it's not only in person there's so many ways you can have social strengths I've heard it all now yeah I get it I believe it I'm into it yeah what is step one I'm going to buy your books there's two of them here so I'm going to buy both of these books both of them will be linked below what else can I do to start on my journey of becoming you you were a recovering awkward person you before now you're not yes what's step one okay step number one is begin to break autopilot so make a commitment for the next 30 days you are not going to trigger autopilot in your conversation no more what do you do no more how are you no more where are you from no more okay right ask better questions okay what's your biggest goal we can anything exciting you're disgusting me no I'm thinking I'm just I was tell you look good okay so that's challenge number one Challenge number two find out where you fall in the warmth and competence scale are you highly warmed do you need to dial up competence to be taken more seriously are you highly confident you need dial up warm to be seen as more like a and friendly and trustworthy do that email audit so take the quiz then do the email audit and then if you can here's the bonus challenge send the Charisma quiz to someone who knows you well someone at work maybe a partner ask them to take it as you and screenshot their results sometimes how we perceive our warmth and competence is not how others perceive our warmth and competence so if you take it and you say I'm perfect I'm a I'm a five of five but they take it and they see you as really high on the warmth scale that is going to be critical feedback for you we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for and the question that's been left for you I always love these when in your life did you try to outrun your pain and what was the consequence when in your life did you turn and face your pain and what was the consequence there was a really weird moment in my career where everything was taking off I had a lot of years of not of a lot of hard struggle and being a writer I had a a published book traditionally published book that completely failed 2011 we won't name it put it out there thought my world would change and it did terribly I got terrible reviews it didn't sell and I was literally told you'll never write a book again and I was just devastated devastated and my husband was like you got to you got to keep writing you're a writer you got to keep writing and so I went back to it I started science of people that was officially when I started like the actual website science people kept writing and then it started taking off I had video videos that went viral we started having millions of visitors on the website and I wanted to prove myself very badly and I wanted to erase that painful memory and so when I got approached to write Captivate I was like no I can't write books I'm I'm a YouTuber and a blogger but I can't write books and she was like this will be a different kind of book this will be a book about really what you want to say to people not the book you think you should write and I was like no I was like I cannot do it it's too painful I will not survive if that fails I will not survive if that fails and it took Nikki months of telling me this will be different this will be a different kind of book you can write the real book that you really want to write and so I said yes I started writing it and that was when I think I I don't know how end the question was but decided it would be worth the pain if that failed it would be worth the pain of at least saying that I tried that was a very hard Choice thank goodness it did not fail he did really well um and I'm eternally grateful for that when everyone when anyone buys a copy I'm like one click further from that failure horrible failure Vanessa thank you thank you so much um what you write about and what you educate people on is a subject that's probably more important now than ever and I say that because of the sort of macro climate of society where we're more lonely than ever we're struggling with connection it's not coming naturally to us as it once probably did or at least more natural than it than it does now and so many the it's crazy I've only been a podcaster really I think for about four years like I think I started in 2017 but really it's been four years since I've been uploading and it's crazy just in that time alone how many more of the questions I'm getting are about all the things you write about they're about like how to make a friend and how to show up in a certain way and all these kinds of things so what the work you're doing is so unbelievably important there's so much more that needs to be done as well but but the contribution you've had to the 400,000 people that you've taught and the millions of people that have bought these books and consumed your videos and everything is a really really important one than so thank you it's so funny because even me like like people I people see me on camera and stuff but I learned so much so much from your work so much thank you so much so many things as well that that I that I think a lot about and you know things you can take or Leave You got to say like who do I want to be and like who am I you know truly to then apply these things because there's no point like I just have no interest in building a facade or anything but there's things about me which I H I didn't even know I was doing that you know yeah and like what kind of friend do I want to be what kind of partner do I want to be what kind of way do I want to be in conversation like you get to choose Thank you Vanessa thanks for having me when it comes to food I trust my gut and I trust Zoe a business I'm an investor in and today's sponsor of this podcast all the nutritionists I've spoken to have highlighted just how misleading information is out there when it comes to food take healthy Halos the claims you see on packaging that say things like low sugar and nothing artificial are often a sign of foods to avoid have you ever noticed a health claim on fresh fruit you probably get my point understandably there's loads of distrust out there who should you turn to for accurate information I U Zoey which is backed by one of the world's largest microbiome databases and most scientifically Advanced atome gut health tests Zoe gives you proven science whenever you need it as a Zoe member you'll get an atome test kit and personalized nutrition program to help you make smarter food choices that support your gut to sign up visit zoe.com and use my code stepen 10 for 10% off your membership that's zoe.com code Steven 10 trust your gut trust Zoe a [Music]