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Vanessa Van Edwards: The cues that decide if you're liked

Body language researcher on warmth versus competence at work: gestures, voice tone, and profile photo tweaks that turn awkward people into charisma.

Vanessa Van EdwardsguestSteven Bartletthost
Dec 9, 20242h 43mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:13

    Intro

    1. VE

      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 wanna do an experiment with me?

    2. SB

      Sure.

    3. VE

      Okay, I want you to say five, but hold up the number three.

    4. SB

      Five.

    5. VE

      Hard, right?

    6. SB

      Yeah. I had to think about them separately.

    7. VE

      This is why liars use less gestures. But knowing tools like that is critical if you're trying to set yourself up for success.

    8. SB

      And we're gonna go through all of them?

    9. VE

      Oh, yeah.

    10. SB

      Vanessa Van Edwards is a behavioral investigator whose science-backed research from body language and microexpressions to vocal tones and first impressions has revolutionized the way we build confidence and create more authentic relationships in every social and professional interaction.

    11. VE

      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. But then I discovered that highly successful people speak a hidden language, and that is the language of cues. This is directly from the research. They know the blueprints to talk to anyone. They know that if you sit within 25 feet of a high performer, your own performance improves by 15%, and that there's a direct correlation between confidence and anxiety and the distance between our shoulder and our earlobe.

    12. SB

      So interesting.

    13. VE

      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 intimidating, hard to talk to, I want you to use these five warmth cues first.

    14. SB

      What about how to get a partner in terms of cues and body language?

    15. VE

      Let's start with a study that blew my mind. It's impossible to be attracted to someone who ******.

    16. SB

      That's so crazy. Just such a small-

    17. VE

      That one little thing.

    18. SB

      This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed 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 wanna 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 guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much. Vanessa Van Edwards.

    19. VE

      Hmm.

    20. SB

      For someone that's just clicked on this conversation now, and they're wondering why they should stay and listen to what we're gonna talk about, what would

  2. 2:13 – 3:45

    The Crucial Role of Cues for Success

    1. SB

      you say to them?

    2. VE

      Very highly successful people speak a hidden language, and that is the language of cues. 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.

    3. SB

      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?

    4. VE

      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, to having clearer communication.

    5. SB

      And t- 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?

    6. VE

      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 it also helps you feel more confident walking into a room.

  3. 3:45 – 5:36

    I'm a Recovered Awkward Person

    1. VE

    2. SB

      And what is your research based on? Are you a researcher? Have you done sort of first-party research yourself? W- w- where were you drawing from?

    3. VE

      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 in helping very brilliant, very smart awkward folks not be overlooked.

    4. SB

      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've studied, how many hours of footage, et cetera.

    5. VE

      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 a raise or promotion. Other folks were, uh, 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.

    6. SB

      Nobody teaches this, this stuff, do they?

    7. VE

      Mm-mm. 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 am not naturally extroverted, I'm more ambiverted, 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 ambiverts 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."

    8. SB

      What's an ambivert?

  4. 5:36 – 7:28

    What's an Ambivert

    1. SB

    2. VE

      Uh. (laughs) So ambiverts 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 wanna be alone. Ambiverts can dial up extraversion 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 ambivert 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, "Ugh, 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 wanna put boundaries around, we wanna say no to, we wanna 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.

    3. SB

      And when you say cues, which you said at the start of this conversation, people think of just body language.

    4. VE

      Mm-hmm.

    5. SB

      Is that the sort of full extent of areas that you focus on?

    6. VE

      Yes, so they're, so they're... 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, the way we wear your facial hair. Those are also signaling different things or cuing people to feel a certain way about you.

  5. 7:28 – 9:39

    One Word Can Change the Way People Think

    1. SB

      And what about what we say?

    2. VE

      Mm-hmm.

    3. SB

      Because I know you're writing a book about... I don't know if I can leak this, but-

    4. VE

      You can.

    5. SB

      ... here we go.

    6. VE

      Yeah, you can. (laughs)

    7. SB

      Um, you're writing a book about conversation.

    8. VE

      Mm-hmm.

    9. SB

      So what we say.

    10. VE

      Mm-hmm. 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 split them up into two different groups. In one group, they said, "Today, you're gonna play the community game." And they played kind of a prisoner's dilemma type of game. The second group, they came into the same room, the same researcher, and they said, "Good morning. Today you're gonna 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. It made them act more collaboratively.

    11. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    12. VE

      This means that the words we're using in our emails, our subjects, our texts, our LinkedIn profile headlines, are cuing 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 cued 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 cuing 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.

    13. SB

      It's funny because our entire lives are people.

    14. VE

      Mm-hmm.

    15. SB

      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.

  6. 9:39 – 12:41

    The Most Fundamental Skill to Invest In

    1. SB

    2. VE

      Mm-hmm.

    3. SB

      And so when you think about it like that, this could be, for many people, the most important subject for them to improve upon.

    4. VE

      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.

    5. SB

      And how many people did you say you've taught people skills to?

    6. VE

      400,000 students.

    7. SB

      And is there a particular case study that stands out to you as being the most extreme in terms of case studying the fact that someone can go from zero to-

    8. VE

      Mm-hmm.

    9. SB

      ... a wonderful place?

    10. VE

      Yes, and it's my very brilliant but stoic students. So I've noticed, especially over the last 10 years, 'cause I've 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 poker face all the time. And as they try to make connections, meet a partner, make friends, people don't like them, people don't trust them, they can't get buy-in to their ideas. And those are the students where I see the biggest transformation. They don't realize that muting, muting your cues is a danger zone cue. 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 Siminoff, founder of Ring. So I don't know if you ever watch Shark Tank.

    11. SB

      Yeah.

    12. VE

      So in this episode, for those who haven't seen it, Jamie Siminoff entered the tank and he pitched a billion-dollar idea, literally a billion-dollar idea, because it went on to raise funding from Shaq and Richard Branson. But in the tank, he pitches the idea and he gets so much pushback 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, the 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 buy-in. They cannot make friends. They cannot find partners.

    13. SB

      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?

    14. VE

      Mm...... 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 gonna 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.

  7. 12:41 – 16:01

    The Resting B*tch Face Effect

    1. VE

    2. SB

      One of the things that I was sort of inferring from what you said is the importance of understanding your rest- resting bitch face.

    3. VE

      (laughs)

    4. SB

      That's, like, the term we use in the UK, resting bitch face, which is, like, when you're just listening or doing nothing, like, how does your face look?

    5. VE

      Yes.

    6. SB

      And you're telling me that's really, really important.

    7. VE

      It's real. So I call it resting bothered face 'cause, like, I have to be a little

    8. SB

      Okay. I probably shouldn't use that word.

    9. VE

      P-H-D. Resting bothered face, RBF, same thing.

    10. SB

      Okay.

    11. VE

      Okay, this is a real phenomenon, which is that all of us have different faces at rest.

    12. SB

      Yeah.

    13. VE

      Now, I want you to look at my face for a second. My face at rest, I'm, I'm gonna rest it for a second, my mouth angles down in sort of an upside-down U, so it looks like this. You see how these are going down?

    14. SB

      Yeah. (laughs)

    15. VE

      Are you laughing at my U?

    16. SB

      A little bit. (laughs)

    17. VE

      Okay. So at rest, I look a little sad.

    18. SB

      Yeah.

    19. VE

      That is just my mouth at rest. Yours goes pretty straight across.

    20. SB

      I just, I just...

    21. VE

      You have a lot of hood, that's what that's called.

    22. SB

      I have a lot of hood?

    23. VE

      A lot of hood.

    24. SB

      Yes.

    25. VE

      This is hood, yes.

    26. SB

      Yes.

    27. VE

      Yes, so that probably makes you... Do people think you're angry or tired?

    28. SB

      Both.

    29. VE

      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 your mouth angles down into a frown, people are gonna think you're sad. You're gonna have to be counteracting that with your cues. If you have a lot of hood above your eyes-

    30. SB

      Mm-hmm.

  8. 16:01 – 18:29

    Do Not Fake Smile!

    1. VE

      me. Does it make you kind of feel like, "Mm, better than."

    2. SB

      Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    3. VE

      Don't do it for too long.

    4. SB

      Yeah, yeah.

    5. VE

      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.

    6. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    7. VE

      So if people make the contempt expression, one-sided mouth raise-

    8. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    9. VE

      ... not only do they look scornful, kind of disdained, they actually begin to feel better-than and scornful. So do not do an asymmetrical smile in your profile picture. You are accidentally signaling negativity. The third biggest mistake people make is they, uh, u- 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.

    10. SB

      (laughs)

    11. VE

      (laughs) But you've seen people do it, right?

    12. SB

      Yeah, I do it.

    13. VE

      Yeah, and people know.

    14. SB

      Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    15. VE

      I would rather you not.

    16. SB

      No, 'cause I, I just don't have a good smile.

    17. VE

      What?

    18. SB

      Look. Like, what am I gonna-

    19. VE

      What am I gonna say? No, it's wh- it's horrible? Is it... (laughs)

    20. SB

      Do you know, I don't have a good smile.

    21. VE

      That's not your real smile.

    22. SB

      So I, I literally have to do this when I tick face.

    23. VE

      (laughs)

    24. SB

      'Cause that's my smile. I can't do the teeth thing.

    25. VE

      But that's not a real smile.

    26. SB

      I try to... What am I gonna do?

    27. VE

      Well, you can smile without your teeth as long as it hits your upper cheek muscle. So tr- 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?

    28. SB

      Oh, much better.

    29. VE

      That looks so much better.

    30. SB

      Okay.

  9. 18:29 – 21:44

    The 97 Cues to Be Warm & Competent

    1. SB

      they do have that resting bothered face-

    2. VE

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    3. SB

      ... I think you called it. And there's other people that I know that just kinda walk through life with this, like, resting smile.

    4. VE

      Yeah.

    5. SB

      Like, we can all think of that person that's just, like, always happy.

    6. VE

      Yeah.

    7. SB

      And then there's these other people who are, like, objectively happy too, but they just have that resting bothered face, so it feels like life is gonna be more exhausting for those people.

    8. VE

      You know, I think it's about choosing your hard, 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?" And 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? Little less exhausting than that.

    9. SB

      Hmm.

    10. VE

      So I think you have to choose, what are the cues you're going to purposefully add? There are 97 cues. I've narrowed it down to 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.

    11. SB

      Hmm.

    12. VE

      When we talk about being charismatic, it's about being warm and competent.

    13. SB

      Hmm.

    14. VE

      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, "Ooh, I really like this."

    15. SB

      Has anyone ever done any really compelling studies on this idea of resting bitch face or resting bothered face, as you call it?

    16. VE

      The- there is research on resting bothered face, and there are certain people who h- when people see pictures of their face at rest, they assume a mood change. In other words, when there's certain people at rest, where you look at them and 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.

    17. SB

      And there's certain people you look at-

    18. VE

      And they say real thing all around.

    19. SB

      ... and they look happy, and make you happy.

    20. VE

      Very few people have happy resting face, though. You either look neutral or bothered.

    21. SB

      So you said you were a recovering awkward person.

    22. VE

      Yes.

    23. SB

      Take me into what you were like.

    24. VE

      Oh, goodness.

    25. SB

      And what, what do you mean when you say awkward person?

    26. VE

      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.

    27. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    28. VE

      And so I shut down. And in college especially, I just felt so left out. Like, I just felt so lonely. And I don't know if anyone watching is feeling lonely. I thought it was all my fault. It was like, "I missed 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.

    29. SB

      And

  10. 21:44 – 24:37

    The Formula to a Perfect Conversation

    1. SB

      what was the catalyst for you to go on this journey?

    2. VE

      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 a-ha moment 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. It's- it's 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. I started to try out these kinda 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 'cause it just did not come naturally to me.

    3. SB

      Was it fixed from day one? Hmm?

    4. VE

      No. Mm-mm.

    5. SB

      So it was a journey.

    6. VE

      It was a real journey. Yeah.

    7. SB

      'Cause I think that's important, 'cause 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 went to 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.

    8. VE

      Yeah. (laughs)

    9. SB

      When was that?

    10. VE

      That was-

    11. SB

      In this journey.

    12. VE

      ... probably maybe four or five years later.

    13. SB

      Okay.

    14. VE

      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 the conversation very practically. I also realized about five years later at 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. And 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

  11. 24:37 – 28:34

    Science Reveals Why Some People Are Extremely Popular

    1. VE

      and ages are really popular? He had all the kids ranked across all these schools, he had them look 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?

    2. SB

      Hmm. Uh, I'm, so I'm just basing this on the kids that were popular in my school.

    3. VE

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      Um, they were funnier, they were self-deprecating to some degree.

    5. VE

      Mm-hmm.

    6. SB

      They were good at, they were remotely good at some sports, maybe? Um, they were funny, happy? I don't know. What is it?

    7. VE

      Okay, 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 questions on 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 is in our 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.

    8. SB

      I was laughing as you were speaking, 'cause I was just playing out all the different sort of personas of people listening right now.

    9. VE

      Yeah.

    10. SB

      And I just had this one persona of a person sat at home who just, like, slumped over 'cause they realized they hate everybody.

    11. VE

      (laughs)

    12. SB

      When you said that there, I was like, "Fuck, I hate everybody." (laughs)

    13. VE

      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.

    14. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    15. VE

      It could be because you're asking the wrong questions.

    16. SB

      Okay.

    17. VE

      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 likability. Can I teach them to you?

    18. SB

      Please.

    19. VE

      Okay, so I want you to use these as many times as you can. Three magic phrases for likability. One, "I was just thinking of you." Okay, so here's how you use this authentically, right?

    20. SB

      Okay.

    21. VE

      You think of a lot of people in your life a- all the time.

    22. SB

      Yeah.

    23. VE

      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 matcha 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 conversations are full of actual moments where I was triggered to think of that person actually-

    24. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    25. VE

      ... 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.

    26. SB

      Okay, so that's number one.

    27. VE

      That's number one.

    28. SB

      I wanna pause on number one 'cause I've got a, some sort of questions to ask here.

    29. VE

      Yes.

    30. SB

      It sounds exhausting. It sounds like it's gonna 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." Like... (laughs)

  12. 28:34 – 33:22

    Message People Telling Them This...

    1. SB

      I've got, like, six friends and I've got my- my partner. I've got my family and my team. It's a lot, it's a lot.

    2. VE

      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.

    3. SB

      Okay.

    4. VE

      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 than, "I miss Sarah, but I'm not gonna 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's 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."

    5. SB

      I got another concern.

    6. VE

      Oh. (laughs)

    7. SB

      So, if I, if I start firing out these WhatsApp messages telling people when I'm thinking of them-

    8. VE

      Love it, love it.

    9. SB

      ... it's just gonna be, it's gonna be opening up loads of conversations that I then have to deal with. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's gonna 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, ugh, do you know what I mean? And then they might ask me-

    10. VE

      Well, I, I don't believe in asking, "How are you?"

    11. SB

      Okay.

    12. VE

      That's, that's a whole nother thing. This is a good test. If you are worried that they're gonna start a conversation that's gonna bore you and feel like work, they're not a close friend.

    13. SB

      So, don't text them.

    14. VE

      Mm-mm.

    15. SB

      Okay.

    16. VE

      It's a very good test. If they're someone where you're like, "Oh, I don't really wanna hear how they are."

    17. SB

      Yeah.Okay.

    18. VE

      This is for the people who you wanna level up with. There are three levels of intimacy. People who you kinda 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 wanna go any deeper 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 wanna invest in. And 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 do they fall?

    19. SB

      So we have acquaintances. We have-

    20. VE

      Acquaintances who just kinda know where are you from.

    21. SB

      Yeah.

    22. VE

      What do you do? The basics.

    23. SB

      Peripheral people.

    24. VE

      Mm-hmm.

    25. SB

      Yeah, right.

    26. VE

      And by the way, some of the people who you're close with, might, you might not be deep with.

    27. SB

      Yeah, true.

    28. VE

      Right? Level two, personal concerns. Could they tell you what is your, Stephen's biggest goal right now?

    29. SB

      Okay, and then the middle layer, I didn't understand.

    30. VE

      Tha- that's the middle layer. Tha- that's the middle layer. So le- so it's general traits, personal concerns, self-narrative.

  13. 33:22 – 35:05

    The Luck Experiment

    1. VE

    2. SB

      I feel very lucky.

    3. VE

      I also feel very lucky.

    4. SB

      Yeah.

    5. VE

      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 Wiseman 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 images in this newspaper." Almost all of the people who perceived themselves as lucky saw the ad, closed the paper, and gave it back, said, "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.

    6. SB

      Is it possible to change how you see yourself?

    7. VE

      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.

    8. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    9. VE

      "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 gonna find a way to like people," saying, "I'm bad at conversation. I'm gonna 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.

  14. 35:05 – 41:55

    Being Around Successful People Is Contagious

    1. VE

    2. SB

      As an employer, I think about this a lot, these sort of verbal and non-verbal cues, and I actually 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 wanna be here or something like that. Are there any studies that confirm that our hidden communication is driving our success in the working environment?

    3. VE

      Hmm. Yes. So this study blew my mind. It's 58,000 working hours over 11 different companies, so a huge amain- amount of data. They wanted to know if low performers infect the people around them and if high performers infect the people around them. What they found was if you sit within 25 feet of a high performer, your own performance improves by 15%.

    4. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    5. VE

      Here's the kicker. If you sit within 25 feet 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 wanna make sure those five people are the cues you wanna catch.

    6. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    7. VE

      Do you like the cues they're sending? Do they give you the right motivation, feelings? Do they make you feel liked? Do they make you a better version of yourself? There's, mm, there's just one more chemical aspect of this which we have to do more research on. This is a very gross study, but that's one of my favorites. It's a little gross. You ready?

    8. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    9. VE

      Okay. So they brought people into their lab, they split them up into two different groups, and they made the first group wear a sweatsuit 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 like... Everyone who smelled the skydiving sweat had an activation in their own amygdala, their own fear response triggered. In other 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.

    10. SB

      Well, I was gonna say, well, then we're all screwed, aren't we? We can't, we can't do anything 'cause 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...

    11. VE

      Mm, no, because I think intention is the backdoor 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 gonna 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 really likable. Ooh, we have a good little cycle.

    12. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    13. VE

      So I think that intention, going in with really purposeful cues, helps you feel more confident and triggers these beautiful cycles.

    14. SB

      The cycle, is this the cycle you're talking about?

    15. VE

      It's the cycle, yes. It's the cycle.

    16. SB

      The cue cycle.

    17. VE

      The cue cycle, yes.

    18. SB

      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 was because it really hit close to home, because I'm someone that meets a lot of people, and, um, when I meet people, there's, 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, it, and it's nothing that I could consciously tell, like-

    19. VE

      Right.

    20. SB

      ... say, oh, it was-

    21. VE

      Right.

    22. SB

      ... the way they shook my hand. Just something about them-

    23. VE

      Yeah.

    24. SB

      ... throws me into this different state.

    25. VE

      Yeah.

    26. SB

      Um, and when I saw this, I, I, I almost figured out why, because the first step in this cue c- You, you explain. I mean, it's your cue cycle.

    27. VE

      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. What we don't realize is there's a cycle happening within us, which is that if you send me a negative cue, 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 flash them a fe- a social rejection cue. That could be ugh, 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 is an actor, sends them a social rejection cue. What they found was the moment that participant saw the social rejection cue, their own pupils dilated and their field of vision increased. This means that somebody saw, "Uh-oh, that person doesn't like me," and their body reacted to fight or 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 cue. Here's the good news: you can stop the cue cycle from being negative. There's also positive cues, right? We can catch-

    28. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    29. VE

      ... positive cues that can be good for us. But we can stop the negative cycle if we label the cue we see. Dr. Matthew Lieberman 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 amygdala lit up. But when he taught them, "Say fear," or, "Think fear," he taught them the micro-expression, it stopped activating their amygdala. 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 backdoor 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 it also can help you like people, for all my people who don't like people.

    30. SB

      Okay, so in those moments I should, in my head, just say what, what, what I'm-

  15. 41:55 – 43:38

    The Importance of Hand Gestures

    1. SB

      it was called You Are Contagious, and it really opened my eyes to the importance of hand gestures...

    2. VE

      (laughs) Yes.

    3. SB

      ... which I didn't really think were that important before. But, uh, it's funny 'cause going through this election cycle, and 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.

    4. VE

      Mm-hmm.

    5. SB

      And in your TED Talk you make the case that hand gestures matter.

    6. VE

      Oh, so much. I think the hands are the windows into the soul. I think what we underestimate is the power of our gestures. Mm, love it, just love it, just those jazz hands.

    7. SB

      Mm, yeah.

    8. VE

      Just those jazz hands. So here's... I'm gonna do a little experiment with you.

    9. SB

      Okay.

    10. VE

      So, I'm gonna 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 amygdala will begin to fire and the more distracted you become with, "Where are her hands? Why are her hands under the table?" And then when I bring my hands back out again, your brain goes ... (sighs) 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, we go, "So nice to meet you," we can see someone's hand, we know that they're literally not gonna 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 you. Oh, so nice to meet you.

    11. SB

      We'll put your hand up for people that can't see.

    12. VE

      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.

  16. 43:38 – 54:15

    Hand Tricks to Be Liked

    1. VE

      Hey, team."

    2. SB

      For people that- for people that can't see, she's basically putting her hand in the air.

    3. VE

      Which is like a little wave.

    4. SB

      A little wave.

    5. VE

      A 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're 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- vir- 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 used an average of 271 gestures. So n- not quite half, meaning if someone walks on stage ... Here's a really good TED Talk. They all start this way. Are you ready? "Today, I want to talk to you about a big idea. We're gonna share three different things that are gonna change your life." So for people listening, I was outlining with my wor- 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 a beach ball big? Is it ... What is this big? Donkey big? This a donkey? I don't even know.

    6. SB

      Um, yeah, most donkeys.

    7. VE

      Uh, big. A goat?

    8. SB

      Yeah.

    9. VE

      A goat? This is a goat big. 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 a little experiment with me?

    10. SB

      Sure.

    11. VE

      Okay, I want you to say five but hold up the number three.

    12. SB

      Five.

    13. VE

      Hard, right?

    14. SB

      Yeah.

    15. VE

      So it's really hard for our-

    16. SB

      I had to think about them separately.

    17. VE

      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 incongruent with our gestures. Liars typically use less gestures.

    18. SB

      Ah.

    19. VE

      So we're also drawn to people who are using gestures, who are congruent with their gestures, 'cause it makes us feel like, "Ooh, they know their stuff and they're being honest."

    20. SB

      So it made me reflect, i- w- 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?

    21. VE

      Mm-hmm.

    22. SB

      So is it about nerves? Um, and the less, um, confident, more nervous TED speakers are doing less gestures just because they're self-soothing a lot, and they're- they're kind of closing off their body. Is confidence the thing here? Is it nerves?

    23. VE

      I don't think so. I think it's about engagement. So I think most TED speakers, and I watched 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, whether good or not, had over-rehearsed and rehearsed out their hand gestures, or were holding a podium, or were 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 gonna let themselves use their hands to explain their points? And that becomes more engaging.

    24. SB

      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. And if it's more retentive for the algorithm, it suggests it more.

    25. VE

      Yes.

    26. SB

      If it's suggested more, there's more views.

    27. VE

      Yes, yes, yes.

    28. SB

      So, so I would like to tell my guests, all of the past and particularly, uh, 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. (laughs)

    29. VE

      Okay. 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 ho- hold- doing any hand gesture, it didn't even matter what it was, it could be this, it could be this, it could be ... Any hand gesture, that got more clicks.

    30. SB

      Mm-hmm.

  17. 54:15 – 56:47

    The Scientific Formula to Be More Charismatic

    1. SB

      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 pick-up artist book-

    2. VE

      (laughs)

    3. SB

      ... 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 something you could learn.

    4. VE

      Yes.

    5. SB

      And, and, you know, when I say body language, I mean everything. Um, and it's, it's interesting 'cause now after reading your work, I actually think maybe what I should've been aiming at was how to be more charismatic.

    6. VE

      Mm-hmm.

    7. SB

      And you talk about these five science-based habits for being more charismatic.

    8. VE

      Yeah.

    9. SB

      I guess the first question is, what is char- charisma?

    10. VE

      Yes.

    11. SB

      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?

    12. VE

      You are charismatic, but you lean higher on competence. So, so, let's break it down, okay?

    13. SB

      Okay.

    14. VE

      So this is not my work. This is the wa- work of Dr. Susan Fiske. 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, you have to signal high warmth and high competence, and that this makes up 82% of impressions of people. Warmth: trust, likability, 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.

    15. SB

      Hmm.

    16. VE

      Have you been told that? Intimidating?

    17. SB

      In- indirectly. (laughs)

    18. VE

      Indirectly, yeah. Right.

    19. SB

      People are too scared to say it to me and I'm joking. But no, I do get that. I do, I do. I think I have, like, some degree of self-awareness as- as to how I come across, and I think how you described it is exactly how I come across.

    20. VE

      You do. And that's not a bad thing.

    21. SB

      Yeah.

    22. VE

      Right? Like, you get to pick your own recipe. Like, I lean a little higher on the warm side. I'm also female, and there are differences between men and women. So typically, not always, men default to higher in competence. Women are defaulted to higher 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 wanna 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 competence. 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.

    23. SB

      We're gonna go through all of those.

    24. VE

      Yes.

  18. 56:47 – 58:45

    The Danger Zone of Being Too Warm or Competent

    1. SB

      I saw this wonderful graph-

    2. VE

      Yes.

    3. SB

      ... which kind of explains it, which I'll put on the screen for anyone that's watching.

    4. VE

      Yes.

    5. SB

      Um, and this was really, really interesting. There's a danger zone.

    6. VE

      Uh-huh.

    7. SB

      The danger zone I'm guessing is when you're low warmth and low competence.

    8. VE

      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 Siminoff in the tank. He did not show enough warmth or competence cues. He relied solely on his ideas and his numbers, and he could not get a deal. So people who wanna 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.

    9. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    10. VE

      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 pushback." Or they're, I do sales trainings, they can't close. People pushback 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."

    11. SB

      Can you be too warm?

    12. VE

      You can be absolutely too warm. You can be too warm and too competent. Too warm, you know what that looks like? (laughs) Oh, yes. That's too warm.

    13. SB

      Ah, okay.

    14. VE

      Okay? Too warm is, so we'll talk about the five warmth cues. Too much of any cue 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 ditz or not competent. That's what happens. We have too much warmth, it takes away from our competence.

    15. SB

      Where should

  19. 58:45 – 1:07:55

    The Power Cues

    1. SB

      we start?

    2. VE

      Let's start with the power cues.

    3. SB

      Okay, the power cues. So this is competence?

    4. VE

      Yes, power cues. Let me get to my power cues.

    5. SB

      Okay.

    6. VE

      Mm-hmm. 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 high in competence. It's called the steeple.

    7. SB

      Oh, this. This little-

    8. VE

      Oh, yes. It's on the cover-

    9. SB

      ... little, little one.

    10. VE

      ... of my book if you want to see it. Yes. This look, when your hands look like a little steeple, they're kind of relaxed open.

    11. SB

      It's a triangle, for anyone that comes... It's kind of like a triangle.

    12. VE

      Yep, 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.

    13. SB

      Yeah.

    14. VE

      This is Mr. Burns-

    15. SB

      Yeah.

    16. VE

      ... for those of you who know, right?

    17. SB

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    18. VE

      So it's a nice, still steeple. Uh, they have found, they rated 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 it a lot in my interpersonal re- interactions because it doesn't feel super natural to me. It's funny because we took one picture for my cover type, cover photos, and my, uh, all, every single picture of me for 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 cue." 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 competence cue.

    19. SB

      That picture of you on the front.

    20. VE

      Mm-hmm.

    21. SB

      What is that signaling?

    22. VE

      So it's a, it's a perfect balance, right? So one, I have the steeple cue, competence gesture. Two, I'm angled towards you, my body is angled towards you, which is a warmth cue, 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 cue.

    23. SB

      Ah. That is actually how it makes me feel.

    24. VE

      Oh, good.

    25. SB

      There's a, there's an element of power, but it's not an intimidating level of power.

    26. VE

      Because I balanced it with that warmth.

    27. SB

      Yeah.

    28. VE

      Yes.

    29. SB

      It's like a welcoming kind of power, yeah.

    30. VE

      Well, yay. Whoo, we did it. Now I gotta do it for the next one.

  20. 1:07:55 – 1:15:23

    How to Spot a Liar

    1. SB

      fifth.

    2. VE

      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, uh, research has actually looked at what the brain does when it hears an accidental question inflection. If we are listening to someone and we hear them accidentally use the question inflection, our brain goes from listening to scrutinizing. Why? Our brain wonders, "Why did you ask me that?" Liars typically accidentally use the question inflection. If I say to my daughter, "Did you take the cookie from the cookie jar?" And she goes, "No."

    3. SB

      Oh, yeah.

    4. VE

      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, but one of the biggest ones was that liars asked their lie statement. So it could sound like this. Here, you can play with me and I'll-

Episode duration: 2:43:34

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