Be Confident: Use Body Language to Boost Your Influence & Income | Mel Robbins Podcast [ENCORE]

Mel Robbins 0:03 Oh, boy. Are you and I in for a treat today? We are gonna talk about the hacks and tips and tricks and research that you can put to use in your own life so that you appear more confident to other people. It's gonna help you make the impression and the impact with other people that you really wanna make. (upbeat music) Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. Oh, boy. Are you and I in for a treat today? I am super excited to talk to the expert that I have tracked down and gotten on the show for both of us. We are gonna talk about the hacks and tips and tricks and research that you can put to use in your own life so that you appear more confident to other people. How cool is that? See, I wanted to do this topic now because here in the United States, anyway, uh, it's gonna be September soon and fall is always like this second new year. A lot of people go back to school, they go back to work, they think about going to different jobs, they think about changing up their life in September. And so I thought since so many people are taking on new jobs or going back to school, right now is the time for you to have in your back pocket the best research, the best tools, and the best scripts that you can use to do a number of things. Wait till you hear the amount of things you're gonna learn today. First of all, you're gonna learn that there are three things based on the research that you must do in the first 10 seconds of a Zoom call. I bet you didn't even know that there were three things you needed to do. I didn't either. We're gonna give you tips for nailing an interview. You're gonna learn why you keep getting passed over for the promotion. You're gonna learn that a second impression is just as important as the first impression that you make. You're gonna learn why you should never, ever, ever fake a smile. A simple test that you can use to learn what people think about you in the first impression. You're gonna hear the major mistake that you make or a lot of people make when they speak, how to ask for a raise, how to be better at selling. So buckle up because this is gonna be an episode you're gonna wanna bookmark. If you are in real estate, if you are running your own business, if you have one of the social selling or multi-level marketing businesses, this is something you're gonna wanna forward to everyone because we're talking the foundational research, in fact, shocking research out of Princeton that you're gonna hear about that is gonna help you sell more. It's gonna help you be more effective. It's gonna help you get the money that you deserve. It's gonna help you nail that job that you want. It's gonna help you make the impression and the impact with other people that you really wanna make using hacks, tips, and strategies. And by the way, if you're introverted, guess what? So is our expert. So who is our expert? Her name is Vanessa Van Edwards. She's a bestselling author. She is a behavioral investigator. She is one of the world's most respected experts on the topics of charisma, communication, confidence, and influence. She's the founder of the research group Science of People, and she is here. That's right. Vanessa Van Edwards is here in the house and ready to make you and me more effective in just about absolutely everything we do. Vanessa, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. We are thrilled that you are here. And for those of you on YouTube, I'm gonna throw to the interview where I was actually dressed appropriately to talk to somebody of this caliber. And so one quick thing, you subscribe right now. Do not be a moocher on this kind of information. I need you to subscribe. Why? Because I can bring you a brand new video every single day because of the support of the ads that roll here on YouTube. You don't have to listen to the ads on the podcast, so please do a gal a favor and hit subscribe. It means a lot to me. It means a lot to our experts. And that way all new videos just get dumped right into your feed and you don't even have to think about it. I love you. Let's go talk to Vanessa Van Edwards. Well, welcome. I'm so psyched you're here.

Vanessa Van Edwards 4:31 I'm so happy to be here. I can't even tell you.

Mel Robbins 4:34 Well, let's just jump right into it because you have written the book on both charisma and body language, and so I wanna start with what is charisma and why does it matter?

Vanessa Van Edwards 4:46 What people don't realize is that charisma, more than any other attribute, is the single most important aspect of you being successful. It helps you in your relationships, it helps you professionally, helps people take you seriously. It helps you also feel more confident and purposeful in your interactions. So charisma is that missing ingredient that we need to trigger or activate our success.

Mel Robbins 5:08 Wow. I mean, you hear so much about confidence, you hear about extroverts versus introverts, but how is it that charisma impacts all those things more than your personality or confidence?

Vanessa Van Edwards 5:21 When research looks at highly charismatic people, they find that we are looking for people who are signaling high charisma because it shows all those other things. Highly charismatic people are confident, they are competent, they are warm, they are likable. And so the most amazing aspect of charisma is it can be learned. It is not an innate trait. You don't have to be born with it or not, that anyone can be, can learn how to be more charismatic through a very specific set of cues.

Mel Robbins 5:48 That's crazy. And you, you say that you

Mel Robbins 5:51 were very awkward before you leveraged all the cues you're about to teach us. Will you tell us a little bit about what you struggled with?

Vanessa Van Edwards 6:00 So what's funny about charisma, I've always been fascinated by this trait. I'm a recovering awkward person. So cr- charisma does not come naturally to me. I've always been fascinated by the cool kids. You know, I watch them and I'm like, "Ugh, how do they know what to do?" And so I was, for many years, trapped by this mistaken belief.... that to be charismatic, you have to be extroverted. You have to be bubbly, you have to be the life of the party. And I am not an extrovert, and so I always thought, "Well, I guess I can't have it. It's an innate trait. You have to be extroverted." What research actually finds is that charisma has nothing to do with your extroversion, your attractiveness, your athleticism, even your intelligence. The actual definition of highly charismatic people, what makes them different is they set, send a very specific set of social signals. Specifically, they are constantly signaling high warmth, so trust, likability, friendliness, along with, and this is the key, a balance of high competence, capability, power, effectiveness. And what's magical about this is if you're with someone and you are drawn into them, you immediately are able to answer two questions: "I can trust you" and "I can rely on you." And so highly charismatic people, that's what they're signaling, warmth and competence at all times.

Mel Robbins 7:17 Wow. Okay. So let me see if I just can bottom line this.

Vanessa Van Edwards 7:22 Yes.

Mel Robbins 7:23 So charisma, if you have charisma or you display charisma, I guess, is what I should say-

Vanessa Van Edwards 7:30 Yes.

Mel Robbins 7:30 ... if you display charisma, other people are left with the impression that they can trust you and that they can count on you. Is that right?

Vanessa Van Edwards 7:40 Yes. That is exactly right. And the funny th- the hard part about this is, you can be the warmest, most competent person in the world, but if you don't show those signals, the world does not believe you. And this comes from amazing research out of Princeton University, which found that under-signaling, so not signaling enough, and this is what happens, I think, with very smart people. So most of my students are h- off the charts intelligence, high achievers, and they think, "Oh, my smarts will speak for me." Right? "I, I'm really smart. I can make it through anything. I'm super prepared. I have great answers." And the problem is they under-signal the warmth and competence cues. And what Dr. Fiske found, the creator of this research, she found that without enough warmth, people do not believe your competence. So the problem with smart people is they think their smarts work for them, but if they're not using the right signals, the world literally cannot believe them.

Mel Robbins 8:33 Wow. That's so... So is this why charisma matters?

Vanessa Van Edwards 8:39 So I think of charisma like a lubricant, right? So when we're in social interaction-

Mel Robbins 8:43 That's sexy. (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 8:44 (laughs) A social lubricant.

Mel Robbins 8:45 That's not exactly the word I was, uh, that I thought or the metaphor I thought you were gonna use. Okay. So charisma-

Vanessa Van Edwards 8:53 But it makes everything smooth.

Mel Robbins 8:53 ... is a social lubricant, everybody.

Vanessa Van Edwards 8:55 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 8:56 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 8:56 It keeps it smooth, you know? It, it keeps it smooth. Because listen, my interactions, my social interactions before I learned the science were, like, the opposite of smooth. They were crunchy, like, not in a good way, right? Like-

Mel Robbins 9:07 Okay. So you said you were awkward. Give us an example. Come on, Vanessa.

Vanessa Van Edwards 9:11 I'm a recov- I'm a recovering awkward person. So awkwardness. Let's talk about... Awkwardness is one of my favorite topics. Awkwardness dresses up in different ways. So my awkwardness... And everyone has a different thing, so I'm curious to know if you have any awkwardness, how it dresses up. Some people, they feel awkward because of fear, their fear of b- being rejected, fear of being criticized, fear of saying something silly or sounding stupid. And so their awkwardness will dress up as shutting down. So for me, my awkwardness, I'm an over-thinker.

Mel Robbins 9:37 Hmm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 9:37 I'm the person who I get in bed at the end of the night, and I literally rethink every conversation I've had the whole day. (laughs) Right? Or, like, I, I overanalyze

Vanessa Van Edwards 9:45 my answers before I even say anything, which makes me a-

Mel Robbins 9:47 Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 9:47 ... terrible conversationalist and listener. So my awkwardness would make me shut in, shut down. And so my introverts listening, this is often what happens when you feel awkward. You're afraid of a silence or being judged. You shut in, you close down, you stop talking. Other people, my extroverts, their awkwardness dresses up as something else. Their awkwardness dresses up as showing off, over the top, being a drama queen, talking too much. Some of my extroverted awkward friends, they'll say, "Sometimes I c- I just can't stop talking. Literally, my mouth just keeps going." And so awkwardness is this really interesting way that we try to cover our fear. And so when I say I'm a recovering awkward person, I've had to conquer a lot of internal fear to be able to have interactions that I desperately, desperately wanna have. That could be in a professional setting, sharing my ideas, but it also could be just trying to make good friends, trying to be open with my partner. And so I think that charisma is this lubricant because awkwardness makes our relationships, our conversations, our communication crunchy, awkward, halting. (laughs) We talk too much. We talk too little. There's an awkward silence. We don't know what to do with our hands. Right? We're like, "What do I do with my body language?" We make weird faces. We awkwardly nervous laugh. So my, my goal with charisma, what I have found is that it's a smoother, it's a lubricant, which I just, I, we have to stick with that metaphor.

Mel Robbins 11:11 Well, it's hilarious.

Vanessa Van Edwards 11:12 Even if-

Mel Robbins 11:12 And it also makes it, it, it, you, when you use the word crunchy about those moments when you feel awkward, that makes a lot of sense to me.

Vanessa Van Edwards 11:20 Yeah. Yeah.

Mel Robbins 11:21 Because whether you're an over-talker, over-sharer, nervous laugh, interrupting people, because you're extroverted, but you feel afraid of how people are gonna view you, or whether you withdraw because you're afraid, that crunchiness is that sort of disruption you feel internally. And so I love this idea that charisma, which you say is a skill that anybody can develop-

Vanessa Van Edwards 11:52 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 11:53 ... that charisma helps you be yourself and it helps you be more influential and it helps you enjoy social settings, whether you're introverted or extroverted. That's what, that's what I'm kinda getting from this.

Vanessa Van Edwards 12:08 Oh, that's it. And so I think that what...... we're looking for here is a lot of people talk about confidence. And I love confidence, but I am not naturally confident. And so what would happen is I would say, "Just be more confident." Like I would, you know-

Mel Robbins 12:19 (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 12:19 ... I'd be, like, trying to mantra myself into it. And if you tell someone who's awkward to just stop being awkward, it, it doesn't work. So it's really cool-

Mel Robbins 12:27 No, it just makes you more awkward, I think-

Vanessa Van Edwards 12:28 Right. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 12:28 ... 'cause then you're now focused on the fact that you're awkward.

Vanessa Van Edwards 12:31 It's like a meta-meta, right? Like, I worry that I'm a worrier, and that-

Mel Robbins 12:35 Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 12:35 ... then makes me worry, you know?

Mel Robbins 12:36 (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 12:36 So... (laughs) Right, so, like, it's like a horrible meta. So what I say is, "Okay. I like confidence, but let's put it to the side for a second. Let's talk about being purposeful." Purposeful is much more impactful and active. It's, it's an active emotion. Okay, so if I say, "I wanna show up in this interaction as highly charismatic. I wanna be my warmest self and my most confident self, and I wanna clearly signal, with purpose, to the other person I am trustworthy and likable, but I can also get it done. I'm powerful and capable." The key here is the balance. Most of us have an imbalance. So there's four segments of the population. This is what the research finds. There's the sweet spot of highly charismatic people, high warmth, high competence. That's the rare birds among us who are able to balance-

Mel Robbins 13:20 Now can you give us an example of somebody who is highly charismatic?

Vanessa Van Edwards 13:25 Let's do the classic, Oprah. Okay. Oprah is highly charismatic, and here's why. She can be in an interview and she can make the other person feel so comfortable they share their darkest secrets. That's warmth.

Mel Robbins 13:39 Mm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 13:39 That's trust. She can cry with the other person. She can mimic their facial expressions. She... Her warmth literally draws out other people's warmth. However, you also take her very seriously. You know she is smart. She knows her answers. You can't sneak something by her. And that's her signaling, "I'm competent. I'm gonna make sure that I get to the truth here. You can rely on me to ask the hard questions." That's the perfect example. What Oprah does and what most charismatic people do, which I wanna teach everyone who's listening how to do, is you can use charisma like a dial. It's just like a thermostat. So in some situations, when you wanna dial up a little bit extra warmth, you can use more warmth cues. And Oprah does this exceptionally well. In her hard-hitting interviews, she'll dial up competence. She'll hit them with the hard questions.

Mel Robbins 14:29 Right.

Vanessa Van Edwards 14:29 Go watch her interview with Lance Armstrong. I talk about, uh, Lance Armstrong a lot in the book. I pick on him a lot. Her interview with Lance Armstrong, she is high competence. She has just enough warmth to make him feel comfortable, but she asks hard questions. Versus some of her other interviews, she's dialing up warmth. She wants to make the other person feel comfortable. So, that's an example of someone who's very, uh, a nice balance and kind of uses her warmth and competence as a dial. Let's look at, for example, Steve Jobs. So Steve Jobs is often-

Mel Robbins 14:59 Zero warmth.

Vanessa Van Edwards 15:00 I'm, am I?

Mel Robbins 15:01 No, zero warmth.

Vanessa Van Edwards 15:03 Zero warmth.

Mel Robbins 15:03 Steve Jobs, zero warmth.

Vanessa Van Edwards 15:04 Oh, my god. I don't know. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 15:04 What a... The guy's a jerk.

Vanessa Van Edwards 15:06 Zero warmth, so he is the perfect example of high, high, high competence. He has, he's constantly signaling, "Take me seriously. I'm powerful." And most importantly, what highly smart people don't realize is if they over signal competence, people see them as cold, intimidating, not a collaborator, not a team player, hard to talk to. So yes, he, he was brilliant, but his lack of warmth made people feel like he wasn't a collaborator, he wasn't a good team player. And his legacy is changing the world but also being not kind. So that's an example of high competence. My highly smart people, my engineers, my really technically brilliant folks, they often get trapped in high competence because they don't know how to signal warmth.

Mel Robbins 15:52 Mm, mm-hmm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 15:53 By the way, they might have all the intention to be a collaborator, but we are not taught how to signal warmth. And so they go, "Well, guess I don't know how to do that." (laughs) So that's-

Mel Robbins 16:02 Wow, okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 16:03 ... high competence. That's one bucket. And by the way, so eh, if you're... Well, as you're listening, I want you to think about what sounds like you, what feels like you. So do you feel like you have the balance? Do you feel like, no, you're off the charts in competence? You know you're high in competence if people always think you're in charge. (laughs) You know you're high in competence if people have

Vanessa Van Edwards 16:22 ever told you that you're intimidating or hard to talk to. You know that you're in a relationship or have a partner who's high in competence if they constantly Google fact check you. (laughs) So highly competent folks, their mission is to get it right. They are very, uh, dominated by the idea of get it right, get the facts. And so they'll be in a conversation with you and be like, "Let me Google fact check that. Let me just see if that's, (laughs) that's right."

Mel Robbins 16:48 Do they share their emotions if they're high competent?

Vanessa Van Edwards 16:52 Y- usually less. They're much less comfortable sharing their emotions, 'cause vulnerability, sharing emotions, is an aspect of warmth.

Mel Robbins 16:59 Mm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 16:59 So that is one way that competent people can hack warmth is sharing more of their emotions. But usually they don't like that as much, 'cause emotions aren't correct. Right? It's hard to be right with emotion. So they'll often... The reason why a highly incompetent partner, I have one of those, is I w- I'm gonna use the word afraid of emotions or uncomfortable with emotions, is because it can't be fact checked, right?

Mel Robbins 17:22 Hm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 17:23 If someone says as a partner, um, "I feel upset with you," how do you verify that? How do you fix it? Where's the solution? A highly competent partner, they love solving things, right? (laughs) You come to them and you're like, "I'm just having a bad day." And they're like, "Let me fix that for you." And you're like, "I don't want you to fix it. I just want you to listen." And they're like, (laughs) or, "No, I don't know how to do that," 'cause they're fixers.

Mel Robbins 17:46 Got it.

Vanessa Van Edwards 17:47 So highly competent people, you have that super strength of, of getting it right, being fixers. Warm folks, my warm folks. So my highly warm folks, you are filled with empathy. You're cheerleaders, you're supporters. Your mission, so if competent people wanna get it right, highly warm people wanna be liked.

Mel Robbins 18:05 Mm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 18:05 They want everyone to feel good. They want everyone to feel comfortable. Typically, highly warm folks, their super strength is empathy, nurturing, making people feel loved and warm. But they often give too much of themselves in sacrifice of being liked.

Mel Robbins 18:21 Got it. So, like, people-pleasing doormats is what you're talking about.

Vanessa Van Edwards 18:24 That's the far end.

Mel Robbins 18:26 Yes.

Vanessa Van Edwards 18:26 People-pleasing is what they struggle with, and so I think that highly warm folks in the workplace, this is the other really important thing to understand, is if you are highly warm, you are fighting a battle in yourself, which is your desire to be liked gets in the way of your need to be respected.

Mel Robbins 18:43 Hmm. Okay, stop. I need everybody to hear that. If you default and you are too warm, especially at work, your need to be liked is getting in the way of your need to be respected.

Vanessa Van Edwards 19:03 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 19:03 And when you are too focused on getting it right, and too focused on being smart, and too focused

Mel Robbins 19:12 on dominating the conversation or the knowledge bank, your need to be right is dominate, i- e- e- y- y- how did you say, your need to be right-

Vanessa Van Edwards 19:23 Your need to be right is getting in the way of your need to be liked.

Mel Robbins 19:26 Yes, yes, your need to be right is getting in the way of your need to be liked. That even rhymes. That's amazing. I want to go-

Vanessa Van Edwards 19:33 I didn't even do that on purpose.

Mel Robbins 19:34 I want to go back to something in the very beginning that we were talking about.

Vanessa Van Edwards 19:38 Yes.

Mel Robbins 19:39 So, when I asked you, "What is charisma?"

Vanessa Van Edwards 19:43 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 19:44 And you said, "It has nothing to do with personality, it has nothing to do with introversion or extroversion, it is not about being confident," that charisma is something that you display to other people, correct?

Vanessa Van Edwards 19:58 Yes.

Mel Robbins 19:59 And charisma matters because if you have charisma people trust you, they like you, they count on you, which I would think means it makes you in- more influential, it makes you more successful, it makes you have greater influence. Is that what the benefits of charisma are?

Vanessa Van Edwards 20:24 Influence, impact, and income. So the reason why-

Mel Robbins 20:29 Whoa.

Vanessa Van Edwards 20:29 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 20:30 Hold on, hold on. So charisma-

Vanessa Van Edwards 20:32 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 20:32 ... impacts the three Is.

Vanessa Van Edwards 20:34 The three Is, all three of them. Why? If you are warm and competent, you are less likely to be underestimated, you're less likely to be dismissed and doubted. Why? We are attracted to highly charismatic people because charisma is contagious. And they have actually proven this in a lab. The more charismatic you are, the more you clearly and purposefully, I keep using the word purposeful on purpose, the more clearly you signal warmth and competence, the more contagious you are. We like to be around warm, competent people because they make us more warm and competent. And so non-verbal signals, vocal signals,

Vanessa Van Edwards 21:11 verbal signals, we are constantly aware of because we want to catch them. So the reason why we're drawn to people who are the in- that influence piece, that influence or impact piece is because we are influenced by people who we wanna be contagious with.

Mel Robbins 21:26 Mm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 21:26 We also wanna be more warm and competent. So if we're around someone who's warm and competent, it makes us feel like our best selves. If you think about the h- most, the most charismatic person you know, so just think about them for a second, they make you feel better, they make you feel like your best self. That's the difference, I think, between, for example, a highly charismatic person and a narcissist, right? Like, this is not just about confidence, it's about someone who actually is positively infectious. And they've proven this with both negative and positive cues. So for example, um, Dr. Matthew Lieberman at UCLA, he flashed people a fear micro-expression. So a fear micro-expression is when we raise our eyebrows up our forehead and we white, widen our eyes so our whites show, and we take in a deep breath, so we go (gasps) .

Mel Robbins 22:12 (gasps) Yes.

Vanessa Van Edwards 22:14 So that expression, if he flashes that expression to someone in a fMRI, their amygdala, where they process fear, begins to activate. We catch the fear. Literally just seeing someone with a fear face makes us feel afraid. The most important part of this experiment though is the moment that someone labeled the fear, so in their head or out loud said, "Fear," it deactivated their amygdala.

Mel Robbins 22:39 Hm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 22:40 In other words, being aware of the cues that are being sent to us, both negative and positive, makes us aware of who is infecting us. So that influence, that impact is that highly charismatic people are so clear with their signals, they're, it's like they're gifting, another Oprah reference, they're gifting warmth for you, competence for you, charisma for you. And not charismatic people, people who are anxious, afraid, awkward, they are signaling negative cues. That's why we don't wanna be around them. We don't wanna catch that fear, right? Like, we don't want that fear, and so we're like, "Whoa, I don't like those signals," and so we avoid them as much as we possibly can.

Mel Robbins 23:21 You know what I love about your research? What I love is that, first of all, you're about to teach us all how to become more charismatic.

Vanessa Van Edwards 23:31 Oh, yeah.

Mel Robbins 23:31 You're also about to give us hacks related to body language and getting intentional about what we're displaying and signaling.

Vanessa Van Edwards 23:40 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 23:40 But what I also love about your research is that I need everybody listening to understand something. Right now, you are unintentionally sending signals and cues to people.

Vanessa Van Edwards 23:56 That's it.

Mel Robbins 23:57 You are walking around, and whether it's a negative mood, or it's anxiety, or it's insecurity, or it's awkwardness, or you're so focused on being right that you don't realize that you're sending signals and cues that make people not like you and not trust you, or you're so focused on being liked and that you're sending these signals of being a warm pushover, which is why you're never respected and why you're passed over at work. And so what I love about this research is that you're helping us focus on two factors that you can display-... that will increase influence, impact, and income.

Vanessa Van Edwards 24:43 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 24:43 And it doesn't matter whether you're shy or whether you're bossy, these strategies are gonna work for all of us.

Vanessa Van Edwards 24:50 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 24:51 One thing I would love for you to talk about before we talk about the cues is this. So in that study that you cited from Princeton-

Vanessa Van Edwards 25:01 Yes.

Mel Robbins 25:01 ... they also found that charisma accounts for 82% of how people evaluate you. So can you unpack that? Because I think it's really important for us to understand. This is not only a good idea because you're gonna make more money, be more influential, and make a bigger impact. Based on the science, this is how people view you. And so can you-

Vanessa Van Edwards 25:32 82%.

Mel Robbins 25:33 ... unpack this for us?

Vanessa Van Edwards 25:34 So I was also shocked by that number. By the way, it's very rare to see a number that big in science, right? Especially because if I were to ask someone, "How do you want to be perceived?" You're gonna get a list of 100 adjectives, funny, extroverted, bubbly, attractive, whatever. Actually, when someone is interacting with us, and by the way, this is not just in person, this is on your LinkedIn profile, in Zoom, on the phone, in chats, in Slack, in DMs, in your email inbox. People are using warmth and competence signals to make up 82% of their judgment of you.

Mel Robbins 26:09 Okay, stop. Everybody, did you just hear that? People are using warmth and competence, which are the two things that make up your charisma. 82% of how people judge you, evaluate you, size you up, decide to hire or date you, has to do with whether or not you're warm or competent. That's bananas.

Vanessa Van Edwards 26:31 It's bananas. And it's not just your first impression. It's actually every single impression. So yes, your first impression is important, but even if you don't feel you've had a good first impression, that's okay. We are re-evaluating this on every Zoom call. If someone sees your name pop up in their inbox, they're also wondering, is this a, is this a warm and competent email? In other words, can I trust this email? Can I rely on this email? The more warm and competent your email is, the faster response rates you're gonna get. We as humans have a really hard time responding to, connecting with, building rapport with, being impacted by people who under signal or people who signal in an imbalanced way. So what we're talking about here, that 82% is making it easier for people to interact with you. I believe that your warmth and competence tells the world how they should treat you.

Mel Robbins 27:20 Wow. And here's what I believe, Vanessa.

Vanessa Van Edwards 27:22 So you want to be treated-

Mel Robbins 27:22 You want to hear what I believe, Vanessa?

Vanessa Van Edwards 27:23 Yes.

Mel Robbins 27:23 I believe we all have a huge blind spot when it comes to what we're signaling other people, that you may think you know how you come across and what you're displaying, but I have a feeling that we are about to learn from Vanessa-

Vanessa Van Edwards 27:38 (laughs) .

Mel Robbins 27:38 ... that we have a massive blind spot when it comes to warmth and confidence and how you're displaying charisma or not. So how can we, number one, figure out how charismatic we are?

Vanessa Van Edwards 27:52 Okay.

Mel Robbins 27:52 What do we do, Vanessa?

Vanessa Van Edwards 27:54 Okay. All right. So first, we're gonna, the first kind of diagnostic that I talked about was just which one sounds more like you. That's where we start, right? So where do you think you fall? You higher in warmth, higher in competence? Do you have a balance or are you under-signaling, right? Do you shut down and not signal enough?

Mel Robbins 28:08 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 28:08 The next thing you can do is you can actually do our diagnostic. It's totally free. And I love this because there's two ways that you want to, I want you to do this. You can take this as many times as you want. The whole point, the reason I put it up from the research is 'cause I want people to be able to take a diagnostic, see how they come across. So they're gonna be very simple questions like-

Mel Robbins 28:24 Does that mean a test?

Vanessa Van Edwards 28:25 Yes, it's a test.

Mel Robbins 28:25 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 28:26 Really simple test scienceofpeople.com/charisma.

Mel Robbins 28:29 Wait, hold on. What's it ca- what- what- what is, what is the URL?

Vanessa Van Edwards 28:32 Scienceofpeople.com/charisma.

Mel Robbins 28:35 Scienceofpeople.com/charisma.

Vanessa Van Edwards 28:39 /charisma.

Mel Robbins 28:39 Wait, is that the New York Times Science of People?

Vanessa Van Edwards 28:42 No, just my Science of People.

Mel Robbins 28:43 Oh, that's your site. Okay. Scienceofpeople.com/charisma. We will put that in the show notes. So you can take this test...

Vanessa Van Edwards 28:49 As many times as you want. And so first I want you to take it as you, and we're gonna take it as you, and I want you to take it not on your ideal self, your real self.

Mel Robbins 28:58 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 28:59 Okay? Okay. So on a, on a normal day, I want you to screenshot your results. Then what I want you to do is I want you to do a 360 review. I want you to send the quiz to a partner, a friend, a colleague, and ask them to take it as you. This is the key because it's going to show you how other people see you and have them screenshot the results, and then go to dinner and get a lot of wine because it'll be a great conversation.

Mel Robbins 29:28 (laughs) . So do you find that most people have no idea how they're showing up with other people?

Vanessa Van Edwards 29:36 You were right. Most of us have a blind spot. We think, we hope, we think of ourselves as our ideal selves. And there are days, of course, we are a little closer to that sweet spot of warmth and competence. But what's really key, what we find is that not only are people giving them different results, but they even might even have different results for home and work. So they're showing up as two selves. And that's a very important thing to know about yourself. If you're going to work and you're dreading it, you're burnt out, you're drained, it could be that you are not honoring who you truly are because you're either under-signaling competence or under-signaling warmth, or trying to fake it till we make it. I have a little problem with that phrase. I don't love that phrase-

Mel Robbins 30:17 I hate it.

Vanessa Van Edwards 30:17 ... because I think that the problem is if you're gonna fake warmth, it's exhausting, right? And so this is also a way to sort of get a very quick snapshot in how are people perceiving you and is it what you think you're showing?

Mel Robbins 30:31 Um, you also have a suggestion that we record our Zoom calls in order to read how charismatic we are. That sounds horrible.

Vanessa Van Edwards 30:41 It's horrible. Uh, I'm not gonna lie. It is horrible. And not only do I want you to record a Zoom call, I want you to record a Zoom call that you worked hard on.... presentation, an important client meeting, a call. And then I want you to code it. So when we talk about-

Mel Robbins 30:55 What does code it mean?

Vanessa Van Edwards 30:56 Okay. So when we talk about que- cues, so cues are the social signals humans send to each other. Okay? There are four different modes of cues. Verbal, the one we talk about the most, so our words. This is what we, most of us think about all the time. We want to prepare the perfect answer, share the perfect presentation, we practice our stories. So verbal is only one mode of cues. Second is non-verbal, our body language, our gestures, our facial expressions. The third, the most important one that's overlooked, is voice tone, our vocal power, our volume, our pace, our cadence, our tone. And the last smallest one is ornaments, the jewelry we wear, what's behind us in our background, uh, the h- the color of our nails, how we wear our hair, our glasses. Those are the ornaments. What I want you to do is I want you to code yourself for every cue that you're showing. Everything from how many gestures you're using, to what your facial expressions are doing, to your movement, to your fidgeting, to your vocal power, to the kinds of words you're using. That's also gonna give you a snapshot because what we have found in our research is that there are certain very clear signals of warmth, cues of warmth, and cues of competence, and the last one are danger zone cues, cues that are negative. My goal, this is a way that you can see, is how are you signaling warmth and competence? What are you doing with your body and your va- your voice and your face that's making people treat you the way that they're treating you?

Mel Robbins 32:19 Okay. So, (laughs) I, I feel like everybody needs to grab a pen-

Vanessa Van Edwards 32:26 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 32:26 ... and a piece of paper, and this is definitely one of those podcast episodes that I know every single parent is going to be forwarding to their kids who have interviews.

Vanessa Van Edwards 32:38 Yes.

Mel Robbins 32:38 Because we are about to get the cheat sheet, everybody, for how to nail charisma, whether you're in a virtual meeting, whether you're in an interview, whether you're sending an email. And so let's go through the cues.

Vanessa Van Edwards 32:51 All right.

Mel Robbins 32:52 What is the easiest way to walk through these?

Vanessa Van Edwards 32:56 All right. Let's go. Let's go.

Mel Robbins 32:56 Do you wanna go by warmth? Do you wanna go by, like, do you wanna go, like, how do you wanna do this? 'Cause there's a lot to cover.

Vanessa Van Edwards 33:02 Yeah, so let's do it by time. So what I wanna do is actually I wanna do the first 10 seconds of your, th- your video, the first minute of

Vanessa Van Edwards 33:08 your video. That actually helps us break it down 'cause actually the first 10 seconds are really important, the first 10 seconds of you being on camera.

Mel Robbins 33:15 Really?

Vanessa Van Edwards 33:16 So, yeah, because, um, it sets you up for the rest of the time. So if you can nail your first 10 seconds, it makes the next hour easier. And then-

Mel Robbins 33:26 Wow.

Vanessa Van Edwards 33:26 That's what we mean.

Mel Robbins 33:27 So, so what do we have to do?

Vanessa Van Edwards 33:28 Okay.

Mel Robbins 33:28 What are we doing? So, so, so you're about to tell us-

Vanessa Van Edwards 33:31 Yes.

Mel Robbins 33:31 ... in the first 10 seconds-

Vanessa Van Edwards 33:33 Yes.

Mel Robbins 33:33 ... of a Zoom meeting-

Vanessa Van Edwards 33:35 Yes.

Mel Robbins 33:35 ... you must do this in order to be influential. What do you do?

Vanessa Van Edwards 33:39 Okay. First 10 seconds, and th- you, I want you to code this if you did this on your last video 'cause here's what you should do and here's what you should code. Number one, in the first second, you should try to show your hands. I know this sounds really weird, but they use-

Mel Robbins 33:52 What?

Vanessa Van Edwards 33:52 ... eye tracking studies and they found that one of the first places the brain looks when they're trying to gauge someone's warmth is hands. Why? This is actually a survival mechanism. Back in our caveman days, if we were approached by a stranger caveman, we wanted to see if they were carrying a rock or a spear. Right? So this still remains. Something interesting happens. I'll do a little experiment for you. So if you're watching the video, um, I'm gonna hide my hands. If you're listening, I'm hiding my hands right now.

Mel Robbins 34:18 Yeah.

Vanessa Van Edwards 34:18 The moment you can't see someone's hands, so if I were to give this entire interview with my hands behind my back, something interesting would happen in your brain and Mel's brain, which is that your amygdala would begin to activate. And that's because when you can't see someone's hands, you wonder, "What is, what is she holding?

Mel Robbins 34:34 Hmm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 34:34 What, what's her intention?" And so the longer I keep my hands behind my back, the more distracted you should become with the fact-

Mel Robbins 34:39 Yes.

Vanessa Van Edwards 34:39 ... that my hands are behind my back. Y- you want them to come back out, right?

Mel Robbins 34:42 Yes.

Vanessa Van Edwards 34:43 Get it back. Right?

Mel Robbins 34:44 Okay. There they are.

Vanessa Van Edwards 34:45 And then, ooh.

Mel Robbins 34:45 Hello.

Vanessa Van Edwards 34:46 That is so much better. So, this is a survival mechanism. The moment you hop on video, walk on stage, walk into a board room, walk on a date-

Mel Robbins 34:53 Like, put your hands up. Like, "Hey, everybody."

Vanessa Van Edwards 34:56 Hey. Good morning. Nice to see you.

Mel Robbins 34:59 Okay. Okay. So the first-

Vanessa Van Edwards 35:00 Amy.

Mel Robbins 35:00 ... 10 seconds, we turn on, the camera's coming on. We put the hands up.

Vanessa Van Edwards 35:03 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 35:03 Hi, everybody.

Vanessa Van Edwards 35:05 Or just one. Right? Like a little wave.

Mel Robbins 35:06 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 35:06 Nice to see you. You're, you walk into a crowded restaurant to see your date. "Hey. Good to see you." That hand gesture immediately deactivates their fear processing. Easy. Okay? So I want them visible. Second little bonus tip here is the space, the distance, and I literally want you to measure this. The distance between your nose and the camera. The reason for this is because in person, we are very aware of what's called proxemics zones. Proxemics zones are the space between people. So we know, and this is a little bit different culture to culture, so hand gestures, universally, we like to see hands. But culture to culture, we also like to know how, what's the distance between people? So I highly recommend, make sure your camera is at least a foot and a half away from your face.

Mel Robbins 35:51 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 35:52 The reason for this is 'cause imagine if I were to give, now I'm gonna get really close to the camera. Imagine if I were to give my entire interview really close. You'd be like, "Vanessa, back up. Back up." Right?

Mel Robbins 36:02 Oh my God. I totally, like, lean into the camera. I, I, I, I have no h- space above my head. I, like my whole face right in there. So maybe I gotta back off a little bit on the camera.

Vanessa Van Edwards 36:14 Let's talk about this for a second.

Mel Robbins 36:16 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 36:16 So there are no bad cues in the sense of... They're all purposeful. When you are really c- and I, I love your videos. I've seen your close-up videos. You should know on purpose if you are very close to the camera, right up in your face, you are signaling intimacy. You are signaling-

Mel Robbins 36:33 Oh.

Vanessa Van Edwards 36:33 ... "I'm right up in it." And that's because as humans, there are four different proxemics zones, the public zone, the social zone, the personal zone, and the intimate zone. We reserve the intimate zone, which is 0 to 18 inches away, 0 to a foot and a half away, for people we feel really close with. So our partners, our parents, sometimes our best friends. And so actually when I watch your videos where you're really close, I feel like we're besties.

Mel Robbins 36:57 Mm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 36:57 It's like, "Mel, tell me, tell me everything."So, I would say reserve those videos for your intimate moments.

Mel Robbins 37:05 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 37:06 Your literally singling them. So, in a normal Zoom call, I want you at least a foot and a half away. It also helps you show your hands, right?

Mel Robbins 37:12 Oh.

Vanessa Van Edwards 37:12 It helps to have those gestures.

Mel Robbins 37:13 So smart.

Vanessa Van Edwards 37:14 Easy.

Mel Robbins 37:14 Okay. So the first 10, uh, first 10 seconds, everybody. We got the hands up, and we gotta be about a foot and a half away-

Vanessa Van Edwards 37:21 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 37:21 ... because this is s- oh, and there's more?

Vanessa Van Edwards 37:23 Oh, there's more.

Mel Robbins 37:24 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 37:24 There's so much more. Okay, second, vocal. So that was a non-verbal cue. I want you to make sure you are not accidentally using the question inflection on your name or an important information. The question inflection's when we go up at the end of our sentence, so it sounds like we're asking a question. And so often,

Vanessa Van Edwards 37:43 we found in our lab that people would use the question inflection in their first 10 seconds, which made people doubt them. So I'm gonna, I wanna share this study because this study gave me the chills when I first heard it, and I think it's so incredibly important for people who are listening who wanna be taken seriously. So what they did in the study, I promise I won't get too into the science, very simply they brought doctors into their lab, and they wanted to know if people would change their perceptions of charisma based on their voice tone. So they asked the doctors to record 10-second voice tone clips. So these clips, they had to say their name, where they worked, and their specialty. So it sounded like this. I'll use my lipstick as an example. "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 that sounded like this. (warbled sounds) Okay? They asked participants to then rate these doctors on warmth and competence.

Mel Robbins 38:47 Based on the warbled thing that you just did?

Vanessa Van Edwards 38:49 Yes. So imagine that I just did that, and, uh, then I asked you, "Do you like this person? Is this person smart?" So participants rated these gobbledygook clips on, do they like this person, is this person smart? They found the doctors who had the lowest warmth and competence ratings had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits.

Mel Robbins 39:10 What?

Vanessa Van Edwards 39:13 The doctors with the lowest warmth and competence ratings, simply based on their voice tone, had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits. This implies that we don't just dislike people based on their skills. We dislike people based on our perception of their skills, and that happens within the first few seconds of hearing them.

Mel Robbins 39:35 Wow.

Vanessa Van Edwards 39:35 The biggest pattern, it, it's, it was such a, it sent a shockwave through the community because these were, these are doctors who are very well-trained. What they found was patterns. There were certain doctors who, across the board, were rated as highly charismatic from gobbledygook. And there were certain doctors that over and over again, they were rated as not very smart, not very likable. Here was the biggest pattern, uptalk. The doctors who had a introduction like this, "Hi, my name is Dr. Edwards. I specialize in oncology, and I work at Children's Presbyterian Hospital."

Mel Robbins 40:10 (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 40:11 Right? What it did is it changes the way that we listen. They found that when we hear the question inflection accidentally used on a statement, our prefrontal cortex shifts from listening to scrutinizing.

Mel Robbins 40:27 Hmm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 40:28 We think, "Why did they just question themselves? I guess I should question them." We hear this all the time in sales calls where someone is killing it in a pitch, this is what, this is the income, the, the last I. Or in a salary negotiation, "I'd love to work for your company. I, I think s- I'd be a great fit for you. I love your mission, and I'm really looking for a salary range of over $100,000."

Mel Robbins 40:54 (laughs) Oh. Everybody, did you hear that question?

Vanessa Van Edwards 40:58 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 40:58 "I'm really looking for a salary range of, um, $100,000."

Vanessa Van Edwards 41:02 When you ask your price, you are begging people to negotiate with you. You're telling people, "I don't really believe this number, and you shouldn't believe it either." So what happens in the first 10 seconds is we're nervous, right? We're really nervous. We've been holding our breath. We're waiting for a Zoom call, and so we accidentally give away all of our vocal power in the first 10 seconds. We say, "Hey, everyone. Uh, my name's Vanessa. We'll get started in a few."

Mel Robbins 41:29 Whoa. Okay, I just, this is why it's important to tape a Zoom call you're on, everybody.

Vanessa Van Edwards 41:36 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 41:37 Because now you have three research-backed, incredibly subtle but profound behavior changes that you need to make immediately.

Vanessa Van Edwards 41:51 Immediately.

Mel Robbins 41:52 Hands up. You gotta have the right distance, which is a foot to a foot and a half, nose to camera. No uptalk, everybody, and I, I would imagine that most people don't realize that they do it.

Vanessa Van Edwards 42:10 No idea. That's why coding is so important. That's why seeing yourself, that's why we don't realize when we walk into a salary negotiation or we walk into a pitch meeting with a client or we go on a date, and we think it went well, right? How often have people been sideswiped, and they think, "Yeah, I think that went great, but I didn't get a call back," or, "I didn't get a second date." It's because you are accidentally telling the world how to treat you. And if you under-signal warmth, people don't like you. If you under-signal competence, people don't take you seriously.

Mel Robbins 42:39 And the uptalking, everyone-

Vanessa Van Edwards 42:41 Ugh.

Mel Robbins 42:41 ... is when you're under-signaling competence.

Vanessa Van Edwards 42:45 Competence.

Mel Robbins 42:46 You might be the most competent and, and qualified person, but if you walk into that interview and you don't, you know, not sure, like, "It, my last job was great. I think I'd do great here. I'd, you know, 100,000? That would be..."That'd be great. Like, it-it-it, uh, you just shot yourself in the foot.

Vanessa Van Edwards 43:07 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 43:08 And you don't even realize it 'cause you don't hear it. I bet people do this with dating all the time.

Vanessa Van Edwards 43:12 All the time. And the problem is, it's a permi- it's a permission-seeking behavior. So, if we really get down to the root cause of it, which is, which is one thing that fascinates me is, this is appeasement body language. Right? So, this is, "Do you like me? Do you agree with me?" So oftentimes, highly warm people who really, really desperately want to be liked use more uptalk because they're asking, "Do you agree? Do you like me?"

Mel Robbins 43:37 (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 43:37 The crazy thing is-

Mel Robbins 43:38 So annoying. (clears throat)

Vanessa Van Edwards 43:40 ... it's actually the opposite effect. Right? So, that, I also want you to get really to the root cause of if you hear yourself do uptalk, and by the way, please go listen to your voicemail. So go listen to your voicemail or any voice recordings. If you've sent any voice recordings or voice memos in the past few days, go re-listen to them and see if you accidentally use uptalk. And go re-record. Go re-record.

Mel Robbins 44:01 Oh. So, how do you coach somebody who has a style of speaking where they naturally end sentences with this uptalk? So, it's almost like you've got a statement, and, and as you speak it, it sounds like a question at the end.

Vanessa Van Edwards 44:17 Yes.

Mel Robbins 44:18 And do women do this more than men?

Vanessa Van Edwards 44:20 Yes. So, women do this more than men. Also, the research finds that women typically, but not always, are seen as higher in warmth, and that's because from a very young age, women are often taught to be liked. And so they tend to dial up their warmth earlier. Typically, but not always, men are seen as higher in competence, and that's 'cause often men are told to be right.

Mel Robbins 44:40 Mm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 44:41 So, we also have to be aware of those gender differences. So yes, women typically more often use, um, uptalk or high warmth. So luckily, this is actually a very easy thing to fix.

Mel Robbins 44:51 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 44:51 So, we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it with breath and pausing. So, one of the things that can happen with uptalk is we're nervous and we're speaking very quickly. And so what I want you to think about is, what do you want to say with purpose and how can you deliver it with purpose? So, there's three kinds of inflection. There's uptalk, so going up at the end of our sentence. There's neutral, going up, going, staying neutral at the end of our sentence. And then there's the downward inflection, which is very commanding, which is going down at the end of our sentence. Okay?

Mel Robbins 45:19 Mm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 45:19 So, all three of those things signal something very, very different. What I want you to pay attention to is the tension in your vocal cords. So, when we are tense, when we're nervous, we tend to take in a breath and talk at the top of our breath. It's really, really hard to sound confident when we're up here. So, what I want you to do is when you say hello or your first few words, I want you to speak on the out-breath.

Mel Robbins 45:43 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 45:44 What most people do is they hold their breath before they get on a Zoom call or a phone call. So they go, "Hello," all the way up here.

Mel Robbins 45:51 (laughs) Oh my gosh. You're right. 'Cause you're like, "Hi."

Vanessa Van Edwards 45:56 "Hi. Hi! Oh, so good to see you."

Mel Robbins 45:59 (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 46:00 So, we did this experiment where we had people submit recordings of important phone calls, and we found the highest part of the entire call, uptalk and vocal tone, was the first 10 seconds. Literally people would go, "Hey, it's so good to see you. So how's it going?"

Mel Robbins 46:16 That's 1,000% right.

Vanessa Van Edwards 46:19 So, this is really easy to fix.

Mel Robbins 46:21 What do you do?

Vanessa Van Edwards 46:22 In- instead of holding your breath, I want you to speak on the out-breath. So, let's do a little experiment. I want you to hear the highest end of your range. So, the highest end of your range is when you speak at the top of your range. So, on the count of three, I want us to say, and wherever you are, you can do this in your car, tell your kids to do it with you. So, I want you to take in a deep breath and say hello at the top of your range. So, it's gonna sound like this. One, two, three. Hello. So, you wanna try it with me, Mel?

Mel Robbins 46:45 Yeah, I do.

Vanessa Van Edwards 46:46 Ready? One, two, three. Hello.

Mel Robbins 46:49 Hello! Hello. Yeah. Hi.

Vanessa Van Edwards 46:51 That-

Mel Robbins 46:51 It's very high.

Vanessa Van Edwards 46:53 So- That's the highest end of your range. If you hear your range going up there, you are speaking too high. If you hear yourself go there, what I want you to do is try to relax your vocal cords by speaking on the out-breath.

Mel Robbins 47:03 Hello.

Vanessa Van Edwards 47:04 So, this time... There you go.

Mel Robbins 47:06 (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 47:06 That was it. So, you just heard the difference. So, here's my difference. Ready? Hello. Hello. Those are both me, but they sound totally different. So, this time what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a deep breath in. On the count of three, I want you to say hello on the out-breath.

Mel Robbins 47:21 Okay. (clears throat)

Vanessa Van Edwards 47:21 I want you to see it in the downward inflection. Okay, ready? One, two, three. Hello.

Mel Robbins 47:26 Hello.

Vanessa Van Edwards 47:26 Mm. Mm-mm-mm.

Mel Robbins 47:27 Mm-mm. Nice deep voice.

Vanessa Van Edwards 47:29 That sounded good.

Mel Robbins 47:30 Yes. Okay. So, signaling competence. Uh, we now have a bunch of things that you can do, including, and probably one of the most important, is learning how to take a breath and then talk-

Vanessa Van Edwards 47:45 Yes.

Mel Robbins 47:45 ... on the out-breath.

Vanessa Van Edwards 47:46 I, can I add one more competence cue that I think is really easy?

Mel Robbins 47:49 Please. Yes.

Vanessa Van Edwards 47:49 Really easy. Okay, so hand gestures, there's two sides of hand gestures. One is visible, right? So, we mentioned having a little, you know, wave, hello, greeting at the, at the top of a video call or in person. The next thing we look for in hand gestures is purpose. What highly competent people did, so we did a research study where we analyzed thousands of hours of TED Talks.

Mel Robbins 48:08 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 48:09 I was curious, why do some TED Talks go viral and some don't? So, in our lab, we analyzed thousands of hours, counting cues, coding. We literally coded TED Talks and looked at the view count. We found that the most viral TED Talks used an average of 465 gestures in 18 minutes. Whereas the least popular TED Talks use an average of 272 gestures, so almost half. What happens here is the best TED Talkers, they get on stage and they typically go, "Good morning," so they have a visible hand out of their pockets right in front. And then what they do, uh, I'm gonna demo this for you. Um, and by the way, if you're just listening, I'm gonna show some hand gestures along with my words. Mel, see if this looks familiar to you. This is every popular TED Talk. Today, I wanna talk to you about a big idea. It's gonna change your life in three different ways.... that is cuing the brain to say, "Wow, this person knows their content so well, they can speak to me on two tracks. They can speak to me with their verbal, but they can also demo their concepts along with their words." So, if I were to say, "Today I have a really big idea," and hold up my hands like I'm holding a penny, you're like, "Vanessa, it looks so small." Your brain is more likely to believe my gesture than my word.

Mel Robbins 49:30 Wow. Wow. Okay, so let me just say, if you wanna watch this, go to youtube.com/melrobbins.

Vanessa Van Edwards 49:39 Yes.

Mel Robbins 49:39 This entire episode, the unabridged version, we put 'em up there, you can check it out. And it was very interesting because when you said big idea, what she did, everybody, is she held up her fingers, like, making that gesture when, like, imagine if I were like, "It's really puny."

Vanessa Van Edwards 49:56 Tiny.

Mel Robbins 49:56 And now I'm making that tiny little, like, my fingers are, like, a quarter inch apart.

Vanessa Van Edwards 50:01 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 50:02 When she said, "It's a big idea," and she showed me the hand signal for puny, Vanessa's dead right. My brain went right to the hand gesture, and I was like, "Wait a minute, that doesn't match. Why the heck is she saying puny? Like, why is she not saying puny?" 'Cause clearly it's a puny idea if she's making it... That's really interesting.

Vanessa Van Edwards 50:22 So that, this is where I think inauthenticity comes from. So, people who are inauthentic are saying one thing with their words, but their non-verbal, their vocal doesn't match. And our brain does not like this. Our brain is like, "Wait a minute, that was incongruent," right? Like, "That didn't work." So, and by the way, this is very hard to do. So everyone who's listening, I wanna do a little experiment with you. What I want you to do in a second is I want you to say five, but I want you to hold up the number three. Okay, ready?

Mel Robbins 50:48 Yeah.

Vanessa Van Edwards 50:49 Five.

Mel Robbins 50:50 Five. Oh, that's weird.

Vanessa Van Edwards 50:52 Horrible.

Mel Robbins 50:52 My brain literally went, "That's the wrong hand gesture, Mel."

Vanessa Van Edwards 50:57 Yeah, your brain was like, "Stop. Stop." That is because our brains also like to be congruent. So, our brains use our gestures as truth-telling. And so what happens is, is there's this really interesting cycle of if you wanna be shown up- show up as competent, the other thing you can think about in the first 10 seconds and then throughout is, how can you demo a concept with your hands? Now, this is not interpretive dance. I don't want you to, like, "Good morning."

Mel Robbins 51:22 (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 51:22 "I'm so happy to be here," you know? "I love you."

Mel Robbins 51:26 (laughs) You're hilarious.

Vanessa Van Edwards 51:27 Right. Right, we don't wanna do that. But there is a difference of, you know, "I'm so happy to be here. I wanna talk about two different things in the meeting today." When someone holds up two and they say two, not only does it make you look competent, they think, "Wow, it really is two," you're also hooking the other person's brain to think, "I better remember both."

Mel Robbins 51:46 Hmm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 51:47 You become more memorable with more purposeful gestures. People believe your competence when your gestures and your words are congruent. A very easy one.

Mel Robbins 51:56 What are mistakes-

Vanessa Van Edwards 51:58 Hmm.

Mel Robbins 51:59 ... that, let's start with introverts. What are mistakes that introverts make-

Vanessa Van Edwards 52:05 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 52:05 ... when it comes to body language?

Vanessa Van Edwards 52:07 Okay, so, uh, one of the biggest mistakes that we have identified, there's- there's a lot of them, is with our facial expressions. So, I think with our facial expressions, we forget how rich our face is in demonstrating emotions or cuing emotions. So, a big mistake that I see is people will fake smile. I love smiling, but there is nothing worse than fake smiling. I do not believe in toxic positivity. So, people have been told, "Smile, smile more," which I think is, like, the worst advice, right? I'm like, "Smile purposefully, don't smile more." So, a really simple mistake is someone will say, "Yeah, I'm so happy to be here."

Mel Robbins 52:47 (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 52:48 (laughs) Incongruent. Incongruent. So, what will happen is, an introvert really wants to show up as their best self. They come with the best intention, or someone will hop on a video call and they're trying to be positive, and so they'll have a lot of incongruent messages by trying to show warmth with a fake smile. The problem is, Dr. Barbara Wild and her associates, they actually looked at fake smiling, and what they did is they showed people pictures of smiling people, fake smiling people, and neutral people. By the way, just the science of this, a fake smile or, uh, a real smile reaches all the way up into these upper cheek muscles, so if you were to smile all the way up into your upper cheek muscles, they activate your crow's feet. Right? That's a real smile.

Mel Robbins 53:26 Got it. Yes.

Vanessa Van Edwards 53:27 Only one in 10 people can consciously activate those muscles. So, they really do happen with authentic happiness.

Mel Robbins 53:32 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 53:33 Fake smiles are only on the bottom half of the face, so if I was in a face mask, you could not see my fake smile.

Mel Robbins 53:39 Right, but you could see the smile lines in somebody's eyes.

Vanessa Van Edwards 53:42 If it's real. If it's real.

Mel Robbins 53:43 So, a real smile, you actually make with your eyes.

Vanessa Van Edwards 53:46 Exactly. Exactly.

Mel Robbins 53:47 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 53:48 Upper cheek muscles slash eyes, exactly. So, what happens is, wha- what happened in this research experiment is she showed people pictures of real smiling people, and people caught the happiness. It actually affected their positive mood. They felt happier. When people saw the fake smiles, they caught nothing. In other words, cuing for real happiness actually makes you more contagious. Fake happiness makes you less memorable. Nothing happens. So, the biggest mistake that will happen with introverts is they want to come across as warm, and their only tool in their toolkit is smiling. Problem is, there are, the good thing is there are many other warmth cues that you can use.

Mel Robbins 54:26 So, what are the other warmth cues that you can use?

Vanessa Van Edwards 54:28 Okay. So I would, if you're gonna smile, smile for real.

Mel Robbins 54:31 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 54:32 And please, please go look at your LinkedIn profile picture. Please, please go look at your dating profile pictures.

Vanessa Van Edwards 54:38 I either want you neutral, sexy, or smiling all the way. No fake smiles, okay? So, make sure (laughs) that smile is all the way up into your eyes, 'cause if you have a fake smile in your LinkedIn profile picture, you are literally signaling fake happiness inauthenticity.So, if you don't want to actually smile, that is totally okay, that's not your only warmth cue. Here are your other warmth options. One, a head nod. So a slow triple nod, one, two, three-

Mel Robbins 55:06 (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 55:06 ... is an immediate warmth signal.

Mel Robbins 55:07 Wow. One, two, three. Okay, we-

Vanessa Van Edwards 55:10 Right?

Mel Robbins 55:10 ... can do that, people. Yes.

Vanessa Van Edwards 55:12 Easy. So, and by the way, the funny thing about this, the research found, this just tickles me, that when someone does a slow triple nod, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, the other person speaks 67% longer.

Mel Robbins 55:25 Wow.

Vanessa Van Edwards 55:25 It's like a non-verbal dot-dot-dot. You're literally saying to someone, "Tell me more. I want to listen. I want to hear you." So, a slow triple nod, "Oh, no, it's so good to see you."

Mel Robbins 55:34 I think they teach that to therapists, don't they?

Vanessa Van Edwards 55:36 Yes.

Mel Robbins 55:36 I think they, they teach the therapists triple nod technique.

Vanessa Van Edwards 55:40 Yes.

Mel Robbins 55:40 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 55:41 Right, so a slow triple nod, very easy. You don't have to smile, it just, it's a, it's a warmth cue. The other thing that we found, we did this in LinkedIn profile pictures, if you add a simple head tilt, doop, you are seen as warmer. (laughs) So if I tilt my head to the side, this is a universal response, if I want to hear something better, so if I say, "Mel, do you hear that?" We automatically tilt our head and expose our ear. That's a way that we want to hear better. And so when you are on a video call, on a date, in your LinkedIn profile picture, if you want to be seen as warm, you can tilt your head to the side as if to say, "I am deeply listening. I am really trying to hear you." And it's much more natural than smiling maniacally.

Mel Robbins 56:20 This is fascinating.

Vanessa Van Edwards 56:21 Easy.

Mel Robbins 56:21 So we've got the triple nod, everybody, we've got smile with your eyes, we've got tilt your head slightly. What are other warm cues?

Vanessa Van Edwards 56:29 Okay, so other warm cues, vocal. So let's talk about vocal. So those were three non-verbal cues. Vocal, remember, is the one that we often forget. You have a lot of power in your voice.

Mel Robbins 56:37 Mm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 56:37 So another warmth vocal cue is what I call vocalizations. Ooh, do we love a vocalization. So a vocalization is surround sound listening, it's, it's showing that you're listening. So this is gonna immediately make me sound warmer. Mm. Huh?

Mel Robbins 56:52 Oh, I just did that. Ooh, I'm very warm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 56:54 Huh? Huh? Yes.

Mel Robbins 56:55 Mm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 56:55 So actually, you have very good balance, Mel, of warmth and competence. I was gonna say you when you asked for an example, but I was like, "That's way too brown-nosy," so I didn't.

Mel Robbins 57:03 (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 57:03 But you have, (laughs) you have a very good warmth and competence because you will vocalize for me. So as a speaker, when you nod at me, I can see you nodding right now, right?

Mel Robbins 57:12 Oh, yeah. I'm just doing it naturally.

Vanessa Van Edwards 57:14 When you... Yeah, and that encourages me as a speaker. I'm doing good. That makes my crunchiness smoother. So-

Mel Robbins 57:22 Oh.

Vanessa Van Edwards 57:23 Right?

Mel Robbins 57:23 That's so awesome.

Vanessa Van Edwards 57:25 So your warmth cues are gifts to awkward people. When you show someone who's crunchy, awkward, afraid, "I'm listening to you, mm, that was interesting, oh, aha," you are gifting them lubricant. You are saying, "You got this, girl." Like, "I'm listening, I am hearing you. This is super smooth," which then makes me more smooth. And so I, there's two sides of why I wrote this book; yes, I want you to be more charismatic, but I also want you to be more inspiring. I want you to be contagious in a way that's gifting warmth and competence.

Mel Robbins 58:04 Mm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 58:04 And so adding vocalizations is a very easy way, especially for my introverts. Remember my introverts, I want y- I wanna teach you how to be heard without being loud. So non-verbal cues, vocalizations, that's a way for you to participate in conversation without saying a word. Right? So, mm, oh.

Mel Robbins 58:21 That's fantastic.

Vanessa Van Edwards 58:23 Easy.

Mel Robbins 58:24 All right. Do that again. So what, what are the, what are the other ones other than mm?

Vanessa Van Edwards 58:28 Ooh, ahh, wow, what? Those are all warmth vocalizations. In fact, doing them t- right now should kind of give you the warm and fuzzies, like a little bit. Should be like, "Mm, that feels so good." So whatever, I, I, I say vocalizations are kind of like a warming blanket, it like makes the other person feel like, "Wow, I'm doing so good." So vocalizations are super easy.

Mel Robbins 58:51 You're, you're doing better than good. You're doing fantastic, Vanessa.

Vanessa Van Edwards 58:55 Oh. (laughs) Thank you.

Mel Robbins 58:55 How do you display competence?

Vanessa Van Edwards 58:57 Okay.

Mel Robbins 58:57 What are some cues for competence?

Vanessa Van Edwards 58:59 All right. So competence, um, low tone, which we talked about already, so not using the accidental question inflection is really important, explanatory gestures, so being purposeful with our gestures, eye contact. Eye contact is a, is a hard one because I know that eye contact can be different for culture, different cultures. But what I want us to understand about eye contact is that eye contact produces a chemical. So when we mutually gaze, and they even found this happens through a screen, so if I make eye contact with the camera, then we also produce this chemical oxytocin.

Mel Robbins 59:31 Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 59:31 Oxytocin is a very complicated chemical that does a lot of things in our body, but for social purposes, oxytocin is the chemical of connection. When we are making eye contact, when we first meet someone or we hop on video, our bodies go, "Oh, we're both mutually gazing. We must be friend, not foe, therefore let me produce the chemical that allows me to trust." The more oxytocin that's in our bodies when we're communicating, the more open we are, the more we say yes, the more we feel like, "Ah, I'm on the same page as this person." So eye contact is one of the fastest ways to get or gift oxytocin. Now, the amount of oxytocin is different. I do not believe, and I really wanna repeat this, I do not believe in a 100% eye contact.

Mel Robbins 1:00:17 Oh, thank God. Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:00:18 Oh, God, no.

Mel Robbins 1:00:18 'Cause for somebody with, uh, I have ADHD and I've noticed every time I talk, every time I read anything about body language, you're lying if you look away, and I'm like, "I have a hard time holding eye contact for a long period of time," and I know it has to do with the ADHD.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:00:37 That, that is cor- that is correct. So let's talk about this. First of all, I want to talk about looking up to the left is lying, 'cause that's a very, a myth I want to bust. Second, the worst advice that bad body language books give is make more eye contact. No, eye contact is great and it can produce oxytocin, but actually-... we should not be making 100% eye contact, or even 80 or 90% eye contact. That is a territorial gesture. Our bodies know that when we're trying to process something mentally, we look away. So for example, if I were to ask you to do some, some math with me, Mel. If I were to say, "Mel, what's 10 times 10-"

Mel Robbins 1:01:11 Um.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:01:11 "... plus five minus..." Wait, I'm not gonna make you do it, but you immediately-

Mel Robbins 1:01:16 But, it's-

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:01:16 ... break eye contact.

Mel Robbins 1:01:17 105.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:01:18 (laughs) Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:01:19 I looked up to do the math.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:01:21 Yeah, (laughs) you looked up.

Mel Robbins 1:01:22 I, and I... Yeah, I'd never noticed that, but you're right. I, like, I looked up to go... Like, I looked up at an imaginary chalkboard-

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:01:29 That's it.

Mel Robbins 1:01:29 ... and imagined 10 times 10 plus five, 105.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:01:33 And this is a really important thing for humans to do. Why? If I ask you a complicated question, a technical question, even a memory-based question, "Oh, tell me about your last job. Tell me about your last girlfriend," you need to look up to access the memory or to access the knowledge. So-

Mel Robbins 1:01:48 You do? Like, is that a, like, a neurological thing?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:01:51 Yes, yes. Because when... R- think about this from a, from a chemical perspective. When we are talking and we are bonding, I wanna make eye contact. But if you ask me a hard question about my past or a math problem, I need to break the eye contact, stop producing the oxytocin so I can access that memory. So it's our brain's way of saying, "Don't give me too much input. I need to access this input and this information over here." So that's why it can be s- so confusing for people who are trying to make more eye contact. No.

Mel Robbins 1:02:21 Right.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:02:21 I want you to make eye contact when you wanna bond with someone. Absolutely, especially in the first few seconds. But when you're processing or accessing information, I actually want you to look away because you're gonna give a better answer. And humans understand this. Right? So if I were to, if you were to ask me a very hard question that I didn't know the answer to and I went, "Huh, that's a great question," you are more likely to believe my answer because I looked away-

Mel Robbins 1:02:45 Oh, wow.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:02:45 ... to process it. Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:02:47 That's fascinating.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:02:49 So, um, that's the first thing I wanna bust about eye contact, is do not feel pressure to make more eye contact. Competent people make purposeful eye contact. Competent people, they know that when they're trying to bond and connect, they're right at you. But when they're trying to access a competent answer, they're accessing it over here or over here or over here.

Mel Robbins 1:03:10 Hm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:03:10 So that's actually a mark of competence. It's also a way to pause, to introduce, "I am deeply thinking about what you just said, so I can give you a really good answer." Second thing is we have done a ton of lie detection research in our lab. In fact, I almost, almost... Uh, we have one chapter on lie detection in the book. I almost put it into its own book because it's, it's so much research. I wanna bust a myth. Looking up to the left or looking up to the right does not mean someone is lying. That means someone is accessing different information. What I do think that people should do is know their lying tells. I think a fundamental piece of information every single person should know about themselves is what they do when they lie. So here's what I want you to do-

Mel Robbins 1:03:52 W- wait, hold on. Let me just make sure I, um... So you're not saying here's a tell when someone else is lying. You're saying what is the tell when you're lying?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:04:01 That's it. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 1:04:02 Oh, why do I need to know that?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:04:04 You need to know that because you need to know when you are accidentally signaling inauthenticity. 'Cause what can often happen is you should know your own lying tell, 'cause hopefully you're not lying a lot. But oftentimes, people will do their lying tell when they're not even lying, when they're nervous-

Mel Robbins 1:04:18 Oh.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:04:18 ... or afraid.

Mel Robbins 1:04:20 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:04:20 And it's signaling to the world, "I'm nervous and afraid."

Mel Robbins 1:04:23 What's your lying tell?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:04:25 So my lying tell is I hide my hands. So like, my hands get really cold and I usually hide them or I clench them. So if you see me ever have, like, a clenched fist, I'm like, "Keep it together, keep it together, keep it together, (laughs) keep it together." So a clenched fist, or white-knuckling it, or I hide my hands. I also, um, use a little bit of a disgust micro-expression. So we talked about fear as a micro-expression. Disgust is when we, uh, crinkle our nose up and we flash the whites of our teeth. Uh, this is a... Like, if I, I were to say, "Oh, I smell something bad," disgust is a really common lying red flag because liars, including myself, we hate lying. It makes us feel dirty. Literally, lying makes us feel dirty. Liars will often use more Purell afterwards 'cause they, they... it makes them feel physically dirty.

Mel Robbins 1:05:09 Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:05:09 So you'll see people, if you ask someone, "So, uh, what do you think of the new girl?" "Oh, yeah. You know, she's, she's nice. Yeah."

Mel Robbins 1:05:18 (laughs) You've got a disgust face as you say that.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:05:20 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:05:20 And now as I'm watching you, I'm like, "You're lying."

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:05:24 Totally.

Mel Robbins 1:05:24 Because you're saying she's nice, but your face says disgust.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:05:28 Yeah. So that-

Mel Robbins 1:05:28 So how do you, though, know your own tell? Because I'm sitting here trying to think-

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:05:33 No.

Mel Robbins 1:05:33 ... well-

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:05:33 I ha- I'm, I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you the-

Mel Robbins 1:05:35 ... I don't know what it is.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:05:36 ... most fun... This is a fun Friday night. If you're willing to, to kind of do this with a couple friends, it's really fun to do this. I highly recommend doing this with your partner. Uh, my, my partner and I know our each other's tells-

Mel Robbins 1:05:45 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:05:45 ... which has made our marriage super honest, which I love. Like, radical honesty, I'm all about it. So here's what I want you to do. Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:05:52 Get ready, Kris.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:05:53 Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:05:53 Date night.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:05:54 (laughs) Get ready. One, if you can film this also, it's helpful to rewatch it together.

Mel Robbins 1:05:58 Oh, God.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:05:58 First, I want you to open up your camera or your phone. One, I want you to tell me what you had for breakfast yesterday. Okay? The reason for this-

Mel Robbins 1:06:08 I can't remember.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:06:09 ... is this is a recall test. You need to know what you look like when you're recalling truth. You will notice you'll probably look up to left or look up to the right-

Mel Robbins 1:06:18 Yeah, I looked to the left.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:06:19 ... touch your face, or touch your face. <|agent|><|en|>

Mel Robbins 1:06:20 I kinda... I looked to the left and then I looped my head around.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:06:24 Okay. So that's... And you also were tapping your foot. You're, you're shaking your foot.

Mel Robbins 1:06:26 Was I? Oh, I was? Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:06:28 Yes, yes.

Mel Robbins 1:06:29 Okay, cool.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:06:29 Okay. So that's your recall test. That's what you look like when you are accessing truthful information. You're great.

Mel Robbins 1:06:35 Wait. I... You know why I click my foot? It's like I'm cranking the brain back up.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:06:39 Come on. I think you did.

Mel Robbins 1:06:40 I still can't remember what the hell I had for breakfast yesterday-

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:06:42 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 1:06:42 ... even though I'm cranking the foot and I'm looking to the left, but okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:06:45 (laughs) Because you're like, "What was it, what was it, what was it, what was it?"

Mel Robbins 1:06:47 What is today? Yesterday was Thur- Sunday. I c- I can't remember what I had for breakfast.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:06:52 Uh, if I, if I made you sit and, and think about it... By the way, it's okay if it takes you a couple seconds to think about it. We'll see exactly what you look like or what Mel looks like when she's recalling truth.

Mel Robbins 1:07:00 Oh, I'm, like-

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:07:01 Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:07:01 ... scrunching my face up right now.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:07:04 Yeah?

Mel Robbins 1:07:04 I'm not sure I had breakfast yesterday.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:07:06 And that could be the answer.

Mel Robbins 1:07:07 Yeah, I don't think I ate breakfast yesterday.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:07:10 So we just saw-

Mel Robbins 1:07:11 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:07:11 ... what Mel looks like when she is recalling truth.

Mel Robbins 1:07:14 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:07:15 Right? Okay. That's very important to know about someone, because if you ask your teenage daughter, "Did you hear about the, uh, drug incident at school?" and they use truthful recall cues, you're good.

Mel Robbins 1:07:27 Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:07:28 Right?

Mel Robbins 1:07:28 Cool. I like this game.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:07:30 Truthful recall, yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:07:30 So how do I know when I'm lying?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:07:32 It's coming. Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:07:32 Okay, good.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:07:33 So the second question I want you to answer-

Mel Robbins 1:07:35 (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:07:35 ... to camera, and by the way, what was it? (laughs)

Mel Robbins 1:07:38 What was, what did I have for breakfast? I don't think I ate anything.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:07:41 Okay, good. Okay, got it. So you can do this all in one take, it's even better. Like, I like the pausing. We wanna see what you do in those moments of, like, "What was it? What was it?" Okay. Second question, I want you to tell me your most embarrassing story. The more embarrassing, the better. I want you to deliver it right to camera. This is how you look when you're recalling something that makes you nervous.

Mel Robbins 1:08:02 Oh.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:08:02 The biggest mistake that we make in lie detection is we confuse nervousness for guilt.

Mel Robbins 1:08:08 Got it.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:08:09 They are different. So when... You recall your most embarrassing story, and I want you to, like, feel it, and you're like really feel it. I want you to see what you do when you're nervous. That's your nervous tell, and those are also things you don't wanna show when you're trying to come across as confident, because they're your nervous leaks. So common nervous tells are mashing the lips.

Mel Robbins 1:08:28 Oh, I think I just did that.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:08:30 Yeah. We, like, try to hold it in.

Mel Robbins 1:08:32 Yeah.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:08:32 Uh, common nervous tells are, uh, um, touching the stomach, the face. That's often we're like, "Oh," nervous. W-

Mel Robbins 1:08:42 Do people do this on Zoom calls too? You see them doing this?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:08:45 All the time. All the time. All the time. It's a great way to s- I mean, I don't want you to, like, do this to your colleagues without them knowing it, it's always good to do it honestly, but it's very helpful to know. Like, on my team, we do team calls every week. It's helpful-

Mel Robbins 1:08:58 Oh my god, I would hate-

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:08:59 ... for me to know...

Mel Robbins 1:08:59 ... to be on a team call with you.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:08:59 ... when I'm making someone nervous.

Mel Robbins 1:09:01 (laughs) What'd you say?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:09:03 It's helpful to know when I'm making a teammate nervous. Right? Like, I have a, a wonderful big team, and if I share, "Oh, we're having a big New Year's launch, and how does everyone feel?" And I know my team members' nervous tell, and I see it on a Zoom call, I can say, "Hey Rob, are we, are we good on that? Like, any, any hesitations? Any hangups?" That then gives him permission to say, "I don't know if the graphics are gonna be ready in time." So a deeper way to interact, I believe, is radical honesty, where, on my team, we know each other's nervous tells, so I can address them, right?

Mel Robbins 1:09:36 Can you give us the top five signs that somebody is nervous, based on their body language?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:09:45 Yes. So,

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:09:46 uh, touching the hands, uh, touching the face, touching the stomach. That actually comes out of Cornell University. They actually found that when we're nervous, we touch our, um, stomach, or we clench our stomach, or we touch our face. Um, third is, uh, purposeless gestures, so wringing the hands, cracking the knuckles, touching the back of the neck. Purp- gestures that have no purpose.

Mel Robbins 1:10:06 Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:10:07 Um, what's another one? I, I want, I wanna t- so I'm trying to do the research.

Mel Robbins 1:10:11 Playing with the necklace?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:10:13 Playing with your necklace, fidgeting, uh, those are also, also purposeless gestures. Uh, adding unnecessary pauses or awkward pauses. So someone's in the middle of a talk and they're, they're really trying to ex- explain it, but they're pa- they're pausing as mid-

Mel Robbins 1:10:30 (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:10:30 ... mid-word or mid, mid-sentence, like that. Um, that's also a thing.

Mel Robbins 1:10:33 If you call out somebody on a Zoom meeting-

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:10:37 So-

Mel Robbins 1:10:38 ... for their nervous tell-

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:10:39 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 1:10:39 ... do they get more nervous?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:10:41 It depends on how you do it, right? Intention is everything here. So I don't like being like that, "Gotcha." Yeah. That, that's not a good way to interact with cues. However, if I notice, like I'm on a team call, and I say, "Hey everyone, we're having a big New Year's launch," and I notice one of my team members shows a cluster of three nervous tells. One, one cue by itself does not usually mean anything, right? Like, for example, we're gonna talk about lying in the last, the last question. One of the top lying red flags is touching the nose. So liars have, um, we have a very specific kind of tissue in our nose. And research has found that when we lie and we're in guilt, it, uh, swells and it causes our nose to itch. So Bill Clinton, during his Monica Lewinsky testimony, when he lied, he touched his nose 26 times.

Mel Robbins 1:11:26 (gasps)

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:11:26 In his truthful testimony, he touched his nose twice. So this is a, a response that we have. So, uh, but-

Mel Robbins 1:11:32 Are you lying right now? 'Cause you just touched your nose.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:11:34 No, I'm showing you. I'm showing you, because-

Mel Robbins 1:11:35 (laughing) Oh, oh, I'm sorry. (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:11:37 ... I, I... But also, what if you have allergies? What if you have a cold?

Mel Robbins 1:11:42 (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:11:42 So one cue by itself is never good. Three cues, so if I see someone nose touch, and let's, another, um, uh, like, interesting lying tell is a shame touch, so when we touch the side of our forehead. We often do this when we're very embarrassed. It's an eye-blocking behavior. And I see a lip purse, so we press our-

Mel Robbins 1:12:02 Yeah.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:12:02 ... lips into a hard line, that's three very, very big red flags in a row. That's when I either will pause the Zoom call and I'll be like, "Hey everyone, I just wanna check in. Rob, does this sound doable to you, this launch timeline? Are we good on this? Anything that I should know or we should, uh, we're not thinking about?" That's me, not me saying, "Rob, I saw you touch your nose." Right?

Mel Robbins 1:12:22 (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:12:22 Which is, like, terrible. But it's me checking in with him. Or I might, afterwards, hang up the Zoom call, text him, or call him, or email him and say, "Hey, are you good with the launch? I just wanna make sure." So I believe in that.

Mel Robbins 1:12:35 Got it. Got it. Okay. That's super cool.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:12:37 Okay. So-

Mel Robbins 1:12:37 So how do I tell what my-

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:12:40 Tell me.

Mel Robbins 1:12:40 ... lying tell is?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:12:40 Okay, so the last question. So we did what you had for breakfast, your most embarrassing story. The last one is the most important. I want you to make up an embarrassing story that did not happen to you, and tell it to the camera and try to convince me it happened to you. This is an example of what you do when you're trying to make up a completely false story. And you will see exactly what you do when you lie.

Mel Robbins 1:13:02 Wow.That's so cool.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:13:05 It's fun. It's really fun.

Mel Robbins 1:13:06 So, I wanna, I wanna do some rapid fire questions now.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:13:09 Okay. Let's do it.

Mel Robbins 1:13:10 Okay? Um, so what are your top tips for displaying charisma and being more influential on a Zoom call?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:13:24 Okay. So, on a Zoom call specifically, there's a couple non-verbal cues that translate really well over camera. So, one of them you do a lot, which is a lean. So, a lean is a universal charisma cue. The reason for this is because when we're trying to understand something better, when we activate our five senses, we lean in. We hear something better, we lean in. We wanna see something better, we lean in. We wanna smell something, we lean in. So, a lean cue is what you can do on a Zoom call when someone says something super interesting or powerful. We do this in person, but on Zoom we forget that we have that kind of personal reaction. So, if you were to say something, Mel, that was super impactful, I would go, "Really? Wow, that's so interesting." Not even a lot, just a couple of inch- inches. And I wanna do a little experiment here so you can actually feel this. Wherever you are right now, if you're sitting or standing or running or cooking, I want you to lean forward just two inches. Go ahead and try it with me. What research has found is that when you lean forward two inches, it actually activates a pre-action part of your brain. It literally makes you more motivated. And so what can happen is when you lean in, it makes you a better listener. It also is contagious. It tells the other person, "Wow, they like what I'm saying so much they're literally trying to lean in to activate what I'm saying." So, you wanna use the lean very purposefully when you hear something good or when you're saying something that you want someone to pay attention to. So, if I, for example, even on this interview, when I'm saying something that I really strongly believe in, I will bold it by adding a lean. So, I'll say, "This is one of the most important things I could share today." That is a cue for you. Bold. Bold. Listen to this. So, leans for you listening and as a speaker.

Mel Robbins 1:15:12 I love that.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:15:13 Easy.

Mel Robbins 1:15:14 Is there any phrase or something that you suggest particularly somebody who's shy or introverted to say or do during a virtual meeting to be more influential?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:15:28 Ah, okay. We didn't even talk about w- verb, w- verbs. We didn't even talk about words. So, words are an incredibly important aspect of our charisma that we also need to address, right? So, for, for verbal power, what you wanna do, especially for my introverts and especially on a video call, is use warmth verbal cues. We actually did a study, uh, with Dr. Paul Zak. Dr. Paul Zak is a big oxytocin researcher. He's incredible. He's one of my good friends. Where I wanted to know during the pandemic if saying warm words could stimulate connection. So, in other words, I'm on a video call. If we were in person, Mel, you and I would be hugging, we'd, you know, high five, we'd, we'd have some sort of touch. I wanted to know, could you replace that verbally? What we found was we had people wear, he created a software that people wear that measures their skin conductance, their physiology. When I say, "I'm sending a virtual high five, I wish I could give you a digital hug, I'm, uh, giving you a warm wave from here," when I say those words, it actually triggers a physiological response on your skin. So, one thing that you can do in the very start of a call or the very end of a call is, "Ah, I wish I could give you a hug. A virtual one will have to do." Or, or, "You know, this has been so lovely talking to you. I just feel so much warmth and I just had such a great time connecting with you." Using warm words, connection, warmth, trust, hug, handshake, they actually trigger a physiological response in the other person. So, if you can use those warm words, it is a very easy way to trigger more warmth.

Mel Robbins 1:16:58 That's fantastic.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:17:00 Easy.

Mel Robbins 1:17:00 Okay. Terrific. What about emails?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:17:03 Ah.

Mel Robbins 1:17:03 How do you display more influence, more charisma in an email? What is the pros? What's the danger zone?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:17:10 Okay. So, remember, the good news is... By the way, I just wanna say a, a big rule here. I'm sharing a lot of cues. Some of these cues you're gonna hear and you're gonna be like, "Oh, that one is so good." Great. Some of the cues I'm gonna say and you're gonna be like, "I don't know about that." That's good. I actually want you to follow your instinct. There are 96 cues in the book. It's like a recipe. There are some ingredients you're not gonna like, and I don't want you to do cues that you don't like. For example, um, one of the cues I teach is a steeple. Right? So it's a, it's when you just touch your fingers together and you make sort of like a church steeple. If you watch Shark Tank, Kevin O'Leary loves this gesture.

Mel Robbins 1:17:47 Yes. (laughs)

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:17:47 Some people love it, some people hate it. If you love it, great. If you don't, discard it. So, what I'm about to share cue-wise, I want you to make sure that you actually like it before you use it. Like, you're able to use different ingredients. Like, that's-

Mel Robbins 1:17:59 Right.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:17:59 ... actually a good thing. I totally forgot what the question was. Will you repeat it for me? (laughs)

Mel Robbins 1:18:03 No problem. Actually, let me ask you this one.

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:18:06 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:18:06 What are the danger zone cues on a virtual meeting?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:18:10 Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:18:10 What should you never do?

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:18:12 Okay. So, great. Okay. So, danger zone cues in a virtual meeting. One, I always, always, always, always want you to front with the camera. So, research is very, very clear