Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People | Vanessa Van Edwards | Talks at Google

Speaker 0:00 [instrumental music]

Speaker 0:05 So I've been fascinated by charisma and people skills ever since I used to play Dungeons & Dragons while I was growing up.

Vanessa Van Edwards 0:11 [laughs]

Speaker 0:12 Characters with high charisma could just roll the dice and get people to do whatever they wanted.

Vanessa Van Edwards 0:15 [laughs]

Speaker 0:16 Uh, while my wizard could never get anybody to do anything. Go figure.

Vanessa Van Edwards 0:19 [laughs]

Speaker 0:21 I always thought charisma would be a great power to have in the real world. Vanessa Van Edwards is a behavioral investigator, published author, public speaker, and body language trainer specializing in science-based people skills. She runs The Science of People, which is a human behavior research lab in Portland, Oregon, where she studies charisma, influence, and power body language. Apple chose it as one of the most anticipated books of the year. So let's give a warm welcome to Vanessa Van Edwards. [clapping]

Vanessa Van Edwards 0:48 Yay. Thank you. Hello. So thanks for joining me on your lunch break. I am so excited to be here because I really get to dive into the science of people, and I'm a data geek, a research geek, so hopefully today we can go over some of my favorite studies. So as mentioned, I run a human behavior research lab, which is basically an excuse for me to ask invasively personal questions for my own amusement.

Speaker 1:12 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:13 And we do all kinds of studies in our lab. One of the first that I wanna talk about is very relevant to us. So one thing that I do is I critique the body language of candidates for different news outlets. It was a busy year for me last year.

Speaker 1:27 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 1:28 Was ke- very, very busy. And I was curious, you know, we were focused this year so much on politics, it's dominating the news, and I was wondering, is there any kind of research that I can find in our history? So we embarked on a decent-sized study. I wasn't sure what we were gonna find. What we did is we analyzed the last 20 inaugural addresses. The reason why we picked the last 20 is because the oldest one we could find that was video was 1944, was Truman. And so we wanted to analyze many different things. We analyzed everything from tie color to body language patterns to vocal patterns. We partnered with a company called Quantified Communications to analyze the words used in each inauguration speech. And we found some kind of interesting patterns. So I was wondering if we could guess some of those patterns together. So I have a couple of quizzes for us to see if we can get it. So we used body language patterns, word usage patterns, timing, weather, tie color, and podium use just to see what we would find, see if we found any kinda interesting things. So we'll test your political knowledge with some presidential bingo. You guys wanna play some presidential bingo?

Speaker 2:27 Yeah. [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 2:27 All right. Good. Get us, let's get us warmed up a little bit. So here is the very first question: Who used the most hand gestures? Your choices are John F. Kennedy, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan. Now, the question is, is this a trick question? Right?

Speaker 2:41 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 2:41 That's what you're wondering. So go with your gut. How many people think it's John F. Kennedy? How many people think it's Donald Trump? How many people think it's Bill Clinton? How many people think it's Ronald Reagan? So pretty evenly split. You are right if you said Donald Trump. Donald Trump used 641 hand gestures in 17 minutes.

Speaker 3:04 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 3:05 That's impressive, my friends.

Speaker 3:07 Yeah. [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 3:07 That's impressive. By the way, Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, zero hand gestures.

Speaker 3:13 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 3:14 I was shocked by that. He actually gripped the podium in fear.

Speaker 3:19 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 3:19 So d- Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nip- Ni- Richard M. Nixon, that beast right there, that podium destroyed their hand charisma. So that's why I'm gonna be avoiding it how- as much as possible, trying to get away from the podium. And by the way, Donald Trump, 641. Close second was Barack Obama, second term. By the way, the difference between Barack Obama's first inaugural address and his second inaugural address on paper looked like two totally different presidents, totally different hand gestures, totally different amount of smiling, different word usage patterns, two

Vanessa Van Edwards 3:50 totally different goals. Now, I, I mentioned hand gestures, the power of hand gestures, and why I'm avoiding that little podium over there. The reason for this is I always knew the research was quite robust on the importance of hand gestures, but I didn't know how important it was for charisma. So every day at lunch, I watch a TED Talk. I love TED Talks. I'm a TED junkie. And I was searching in ted.com leadership in their search bar. Up popped two talks, one by Simon Sinek, probably most of you have seen it, called something like The Great Leaders of Tomorrow. It has over 45 million views. Another talk also popped up by Fields Wicker-Miurin. This had under 40,000. And I looked at these two talks and I thought, both of these talks are 18 minutes long. Both of them have almost the same title. Both of them were given by relatively unknown experts in the beginning. Simon Sinek got famous from his TED Talk. And both of them are on the same kind of topic, and they came out the same month of the same year, September of 2009. Why did one talk go viral and one didn't? Why is it that certain people can walk into a room and you go, "Yeah, I wanna know that person," whereas other people walk into a room and you're like, "Meh, I don't even know if I've met them before"? So we decided to analyze thousands of hours of TED Talks. Over many months, we analyzed every single TED Talk from 2010 and compared any patterns we could find to view count. The biggest difference we found is that the most popular TED Talkers used an average of 465 hand gestures in just 18 minutes. My coders, I love you. They painstakingly counted every single hand gesture.

Speaker 5:31 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 5:32 So they use an average of 465 hand gestures. The least popular TED Talks use an average of 272 hand gestures, almost half. What's going on here? So the academic research is pretty clear on hand gestures. What happens is, is when we see someone's hands, and if you watch TED Talks, they all look the same. I'm gonna show you what they look like. Are you ready? So usually they have TED Talker offstage, and there's a red dot in the middle, and they go like this, come to the red dot. "Today, I wanna talk to you about a big idea I'm gonna break it down to three different areas that are gonna change your life.

Speaker 6:10 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 6:10 Right? They all do that. They actually don't all do that, but the most popular talks, the ones that we've seen, they do that. In other words, they're kind of signaling or triggering your brain to say, "This is gonna be good."

Speaker 6:25 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 6:26 Like, that's basically what they're saying. Because we give a lot of weight to hand gestures. So if I say, "I have a really big idea."

Speaker 6:34 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 6:36 "It's huge"

Speaker 6:37 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 6:40 Your brain laughs because you're like, "It's not very big. Look how small it is."

Speaker 6:45 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 6:45 Where if I'm like, "I have a big idea", you're like, "Whoa, that is a big one. It's almost beach ball size big." And that is because our brains give 12.5 times more weight to our hand gestures. So the best TED Talkers are actually doing something very interesting. They're speaking to you on two different tracks. They're using their words, but they're also explaining their words along with their hands. They're actually giving you Cliff Notes with their hands. They're saying, "I have a really specific thing I wanna tell you. Look how specific it is, I can actually hold it in my hand just like that." Or they're saying, "I have three different things that I wanna show you." And they tell you, "One, two, three," they cue you. Or they say they have a big idea, or they say they're bringing two different groups together, or they say there's three different levels, or they say it really means a lot to them. All of those things are like bolding or highlighting their words along with their hands, hands along with their words. So we found that was a huge indicator of charisma. As I mentioned, our non-verbal signals are 12 to 13 times

Vanessa Van Edwards 7:46 more powerful than our words. So for example, if I were to come up here today and say, "Hi, Google. I'm, uh, so happy to be here," you would know, because of my voice tone, my facial expressions, and my body language, that that wasn't true, because you give more weight to my non-verbal. Let's go into the next one, talking about emotionality and how we read emotion. So looking at word usage, passion language, persuasive language, which president used the most emotional language? The choices are John F. Kennedy, Donald Trump, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush. How many people think John F. Kennedy? A lot. How many people think Donald Trump? Okay. How many people think Jimmy Carter? Got two, one taker. All right. How many people think George W. Bush? Three takers. This one was shocking, right? By the way, for people at home, only three people voted for George W. Bush. People at home always like to be, come with us, participate. So when we look at the, the breakdown of this for pos- for emotional language, so I was shocked, by the way, that George W. Bush used the most emotional language. Most people are, that's surprising. Second was Jimmy Carter, but not by a lot. And our lowest emotional use was Lyndon B. Johnson, the least emotional language. Now, here's a question. Which party uses more emotional language? So how many people think the Republicans use more emotional language? How many people think the Democrats? People are now afraid to vote. I can see people are afraid to vote.

Speaker 9:16 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 9:16 So this time, so the Republicans actually use more emotional language. They use much more emotional language, whereas Democrats, by the way, use more numbers. Um, that, that chart is not on here, but I'm happy to send out the white paper. So the Democrats use more data, more numbers, what we call logic, in, in their speeches, whereas Republicans are much more emotional. Which party uses more I language, so more uses of I, me, or my, versus we, our, us? Democrats, Republicans, or it's about the same? How many people think Democrats? How many people think Republicans? And how many people think it's about the same? So this one, absolutely Republicans use more we, our, us language. Next one. What is the most popular tie color? Going into a little more fun thing here.

Speaker 10:06 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 10:06 Little less, little less important. So we looked at the tie colors. We were just curious to see if there was any pattern there. Um, choices: blue, red, gray, or there was a tie. Do you get it?

Speaker 10:17 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 10:19 A tie between red and blue. That made me laugh so hard when I wrote my own slide.

Speaker 10:23 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 10:24 Like, I can't tell you. Okay. So how many people think blue? Only three or four. How many people think red? Most of you. How many think gray? Couple. How many think there was a tie between red and blue? That was just funny, guys. That wasn't actually true, sadly.

Speaker 10:39 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 10:40 So this one is, my remote is broken. Maybe not. It's really dramatic, right? Or really exciting.

Speaker 10:48 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 10:49 Did it work? Yes, it worked, just delayed. Blue. So very few of you guessed blue. Most of you guessed red. I don't know what's happening here. Um, so with the, there was actually 10 presidents that wore blue ties. Only four presidents wore red ties. I think less than three wore gray or black. The problem is, is that someone told me they think that the reason for this is actually not emotional or not a choice, it's 'cause actually blue looks better on camera. So this might be different if we looked at speeches that were older in time, but more presidents wore blue. How about this one? Who had the shortest speech? Your choices are Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford, George W. Bush, John F. Kennedy. How many of you think Lyndon B. Johnson? Couple of you. How many of you think Gerald Ford? How many of you think George W. Bush? How many people think John F. Kennedy? So this one is Gerald Ford, eight minutes. What was funny about this fact, the only reason I included it, is because he had the shortest by far. The longest, by the way, was 22 minutes. He also had the best weather day of any candidate. So I thought it was funny that he had the shortest speech, but didn't take advantage of that beautiful weather. So Gerald Ford. Lyndon B. Johnson, for those of you who guessed him, was second, and Dwight D. Eisenhower was after that. Here's a good question. Which party speaks more? So the amount of minutes used, was it more Democrats or more Republicans? How many feel like the Democrats spoke more? How many of you think Republicans spoke more? You would be right, those of you who guessed Republicans. Republicans used more minutes, 61% versus 39% of the minutes spoken. Which president smiled the most? So we, what we did here for this is we actually had a stopwatch, and we ha- we actually stopped the watch every time they smiled to get the total number of seconds smiled during an inauguration speech. So your choices are Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, George Bush Sr., and Barack Obama. How many people think Bill Clinton smiled the most? A lot of you. How many people think Jimmy Carter? How many people think George Bush Sr.? We got one guess. How many people think Barack Obama? So this one is Barack Obama smiled the most in his second term inaugural address. Remember how I said the first and second term were totally different. His second term, he was much happier. Just so you can see the number of seconds clocked, 14.5 seconds by Barack Obama. So only one person, I think, over here guessed George Bush Sr. Actually second, which really surprised me, with 13.5 seconds.

Vanessa Van Edwards 13:22 Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter after that. By the way, usually I have really beautiful pictures in these slides, but we don't have the rights to all those president pictures, so you'll have to stick with just my text. So the next study we did off that smiling research with the presidents is I thought, okay, we know some things about political leaders, some patterns. How about business leaders? How about entrepreneurs? How about investors? So I love the show Shark Tank. Does anyone else watch the show Shark Tank? So I love that show. In the show, if you haven't seen it, it's a panel of investors, named sharks, are pitched by entrepreneurs who come into the tank. So I was fascinated to see was there patterns between the most successful and least successful entrepreneurs because I don't know about you, I watch that show where I watch people pitch, and a lot of the time I think it's more about their charisma than their actual idea. So I wanted to see was there any truth to that. Was there any difference happening behind the scenes? So what we did, me and my coder, Jose Pena, you're amazing, researched all 495 pitches on Shark Tank. It took us six months, and he coded every variable we could think of. So everything from the introduction to their grand entrance, to the amount of times the sharks laughed to try to find patterns. So let's see how we do on some of these. So here are the things we tracked specifically. Body language patterns. We spent a lot of time on the first impression, those first few seconds, trying to see if the research about first impressions is actually true. We looked for pitch patterns. So, uh, what was the structure of a pitch? Some sha- sharks, some entrepreneurs pitched with the hero's journey, like they talk about their personal journey, whereas other entrepreneurs talk about the pioneering aspect of their ideas. We wanted to see was there pitch patterns there, and we also looked again at word usage patterns. The biggest thing we found right off the bat was there was a deal breaker. So if you did not know your math, that broke you no matter what. No matter how charismatic you were, if you couldn't get path, past the math problems, you couldn't do it. So 64% of no deals had some kind of math problem. That was the biggest thing. But once you got past the math problem, then we had a lot

Vanessa Van Edwards 15:23 more room. When we talked about smiling, we found that 45% of successful entrepreneurs smiled while walking in, so that first impression smile seemed to be very important, while only 21% of unsuccessful entrepreneurs did. Interesting note here, but I think this speaks to a larger implication about smiling and about our facial expressions. We take a lot of cues about someone from their facial expressions, and I'm obsessed with the micro expression. So we used to believe that babies were born and learned facial expressions from their mom or dad. So ma- a baby would look at its mom or dad's face and then mirror it or mimic it, and that's how babies learned facial expressions. But actually what they found is congenitally blind babies, babies who've been blind since birth, make the same facial expressions at the same time as seeing babies. This was a huge surprise in the body language community because we're thinking, well, if you don't learn facial expressions, but we all seem to emote in the same way, where are they coming from? Somehow how we express is coded, and that means maybe we can study it. So Dr. Paul Ekman is the champion of this research. He's an incredible researcher, and he discovered something called the micro expression. The micro expression is a very quick, involuntary facial expression that all of us make when we feel an intense emotion. So this is across genders, across races. He went to remote tribes in Papua New Guinea, showed them pictures of Americans making faces, and asked them in their own language to describe the emotion,

Vanessa Van Edwards 16:54 and they were able to pick the same emotions as Americans did when they saw the Papua New Guinean's face. So these are tribes that had never even been exposed to Western culture, had never seen television before. So how do we, how does this benefit us? They have discovered there are seven universal facial expressions, and today I want to teach you two, I think I'm going to teach you four of my favorites. So the very first one, smiling, as we talked about earlier. Smiling is the easiest one to talk about. However, most people think that smiling is just a smile. Uh, happiness is just a smile, right? But anyone knows that you can do a fake smile, right? Like, "Yeah, I'm so happy for you. Ha." Right? That smile on the bottom half of the face. So when you look at the difference between a real and a fake smile- [laughing] ... you see the difference. So real smiles, the only true indicator of happiness is when the smile reaches into these upper cheek muscles. So this is the engagement of a real smile. You have to be able to physically see it in the eyes. Why

Vanessa Van Edwards 17:54 this is important is because when we see fake smiles, that comes across as inauthentic. When you hear people talk about, "Ugh, she just seemed a little fake to me. She a little, seemed a little inauthentic," what you're actually picking up on is an incongruency, that someone said they were happy for you or said they were happy, but weren't actually showing that genuine happiness. Next one's getting a little harder. So happiness was the easy one. We got that out of the way. Now I'm gonna test your skills. What is this face? This is one of the seven universal facial expressions. Surprise, amused, curious, or fear. How many people think this is surprise? A lot of you. How many people think this is amused? How many think this is curious? And how many people think this is fear? So this one is the universal micro expression for fear. Surprise is a different micro expression. That's one of the seven, but this is not it. This surprises most people. Most people guess surprise. So when we talk about fear, I like this micro expression, I like starting with it because this face keeps us the safest in terms of danger. Let me explain how this works. So when you look at the fear micro expression in action, let's say that I'm hiking, and all of a sudden I see a snake. My eyelids and my eyebrows jump out of the way so I can take in as much of the environment as possible. Is there another snake, and what's my escape route? Then my mouth opens, [gasps] I take in oxygen in case I have to fight, flee, or yell for help. This face, and you can try it with me if you want. If you raise your eyebrows up and you widen your eyes, very good. You'll actually begin to feel a little anxious.

Speaker 19:33 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 19:36 And the reason for that is because of something called the facial feedback hypothesis. So what they found is that our emotions are feedback loops. We don't only feel the emotion which causes the face. If we make the face, it also helps us feel the emotion. This is the basis of empathy. When you get on a subway car and you see someone make this face, [gasps] you immediately make that face as well. What's going on? What's happening? Right? You immediately begin to feel fear before you even know what happens. That is your body's way of protecting you. Why I think this is so helpful in business environments, not just for walking on a subway car seeing snakes, is because you see fear all the time in business environments. You mention something that s- that confuses someone. You mention something that they didn't know. You give them a piece of information that makes them uncomfortable. You put them in an uncomfortable situation. They will flash fear at you. If we know what we're looking for and we're just looking for the whites of someone's eyes, you will see that flicker all the time. That gives you so much information. The moment you spot someone's fear, you have a choice. You can either keep it, tuck it away, insider piece of information, which is always helpful, or you can choose to address it and s- and soothe them, calm them, reassure them. Here are your choices when it comes to fear. One, you can give them reassurance, right? If something you said made them uncomfortable, you're in a pitch, you're trying to sell an idea, and someone flickered fear at you. Maybe you said something that was confusing. Maybe you said something that they mistook as something threatening. So you can go into reassurance. You can also just go into more explanation. Since we tend to be afraid when we are confused, sometimes more verbal explanation will calm the fear, just having more understanding. And lastly, you being calm and confident also can soothe their fear. Let's go into the next one. What does this face mean?

Speaker 21:27 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 21:29 Choices are disgust, suspicion, anger, and sadness. How many people think this is disgust? How many people think this is suspicion? How many people think this is anger? How many people think this is sadness? So this is anger. By the way, if you raised your hand in suspicion, I'm gonna give that to you also. Um, and the reason for that I'm gonna explain in a second. So this is anger. Anger is real easy. I want you to actually try it with me. So I want you to pull your eyebrows down so these two vertical lines appear. Very good. Now hold it for a second. Squint your lower eyes at me and harden your lips. You will begin to feel real irritated.

Speaker 22:04 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 22:05 Don't do it for too long. Okay, wipe it away, wipe it away, wipe it away, wipe it away.

Speaker 22:08 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 22:08 [laughs] And that is because that feeling of like, "Grr," that is the face that we make when we have that emotion. What you're looking for in the workplace is those two vertical lines. The moment you see those two vertical lines, you know that that person is starting to bubble into anger. I also want you to look for the lower lids. This is a very weird tip, but it's really protected me against some bad deals. The sister emotion to anger is suspicion. Suspicion is a really important one to spot, and suspicion happens when someone lowers their lids, the, uh... tightens their lower lids. I'm gonna show you what that looks like, so watch my face. I'm gonna tighten my lower lids. Right? When I do that, you are seeing that, even though it's a very micro gesture. Can you guys see that in the back there if I pr- Okay, a little bit. It's when I tighten my lower lids. You can try that with each other. So even all the way back there, they can see it. That is because as humans, we like to know if someone does not believe us, right? So even all the way in the back corners of the room, you can see when I'm like, "I don't think so." In fact, I can see when you're doing that to me.

Speaker 23:12 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 23:14 So when I go into further explanation, it's because I'm seeing more than one suspicious face in the audience. You can do this even if you're in front of a huge crowd or one on one. So I want you to watch out for those lower lids hardening, 'cause you're not done selling yet. You're not done explaining yet. That's one of the most interesting power tips I can give you on micro expressions. So what do you do when you see anger or suspicion? One, it is our instinct as humans, we cannot help it, that when someone flashes anger at us, we either flip into the offensive, right, or we go into the defensive. It's either not my fault or it's all your fault. So what's really important if you wanna stop their anger from happening is to stay as neutral as possible. Don't follow that instinct right away to go into offense or defensive. Try to figure out what is the source of this anger. It might not actually be you. It could be something else, something beyond your control. What is the source of that anger? And then lastly, trying to figure out how you can highlight cooperation. If you can figure out what the source of anger is, and that you can actually help them solve it or get through it or talk through it, then you are not the source of the anger. You're more of an ally against it. So that can help you get... prevent a no or a miscommunication from happening later. I wanna briefly go into the power of personality. It ties in really well. People often ask me at this point in the presentation, you know, when else would I see these with my colleagues? When am I gonna see anger or fear? They seem like such intense emotions in the workplace. And this brings

Vanessa Van Edwards 24:46 me to some of the differences, our wired differences in personality. So I'm fascinated by personality. We have a whole chapter [laughs] on it in the book because I think that it is one of the most fundamental aspects of our communication. The biggest thing that I want you to think about is that a lot of our personality is not a choice. Specifically, 35 to 50% of our personality is genetic, and a lot of the rest of it is formed in our childhood. So the time we get here in the workplace, our personality is pretty inflexible. This is a really interesting computer rendering of an introvert face versus an extrovert face, which actually shows you that there's some tie between our hormones, our pheromones, our facial development, and our wiring, our personality traits. By the way, who, which one do you think you look more like? Do you think that fits your persona- Don't worry, I won't ask you to raise your hand, but I always think it's interesting to see if it fi- compares to your face. So when we talk about personality science, I'm not gonna go into all the details today. They're the only personality science that's used in academia. Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, DiSC, those are great paradigms. They are not ba- backed up in real science. The only personality science that's actually used in academia, it's called the Big Five, and that is these five personality traits: extroversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness, and agreeableness. I wanna talk about two of them today because I think that these two are the reasons why you see a lot of anger, and fear, and contempt in the workplace. Specifically, let's talk about conscientiousness first. So all of us rank either high or low in our personality traits. So people who are high in conscientiousness, it's how we focus on details. A lot of engineers are typically high in conscientiousness. I just did a training at Intel. Very, very high conscientious group. They are called focused. They love details, steps, lists, schedules. They like to go in order. They like to have agendas. Low conscientious people are called flexible. They much prefer big ideas. They like to be easygoing. Schedules make them feel boxed in. They like to ha- They, they don't like lists. Lists make them feel like they can't be creative enough. We are wired to either be high or low. How many people feel like they are high in conscientiousness? They love details, and lists, specifics. How many people think that they are low in conscientiousness? And lastly, how many of you pe- people feel like you can flip into both if you need to? Okay, so as adults, we also develop this skill. This is less, we do this as kids. As adults, we develop this really great skill where, in the right situation, we can dial up or dial down our personality depending on where we need to go. I actually think leveraging that is incredibly important. So what I want us to think about for conscientiousness is a couple of things. One, with the people you work with, are they the same as your conscientiousness level or are they different? The biggest problem that I see in the workplace, when you see anger most, it's when a really high conscientious person has a whole detailed project plan, lots of phases, tons of lists. They bring the project to someone and they say, "Here's this huge project." And the low conscientious person is like, "Just what's the big idea here? Just, uh, give me the, just couple, couple, couple bullet points on this." And the low conscientious person feel- feels overwhelmed by all the details, where the high conscientious person feels like their work is not being taken advantage of or not being appreciated. So I want you to think about the people you work with and where they fall on the spectrum. How would they most like to be pitched? Second, when you talk about pitching, what is the best way to approach them? So a high conscientious person, they love agendas on calls. They like scheduled meetings. They like thing, when people show up on time. Whereas low conscientious people, that feels like they're, that's boxing them in. So if you wanna approach them on something really important, how can you do it according to their personality traits? I've always liked the golden rule, right? Treat... We, we know the golden rule is-

Speaker 28:43 Treat others-

Vanessa Van Edwards 28:44 Treat others the way you want to be treated. So I have a funny story, just briefly. So I asked that to an audience a few weeks ago in Silicon Valley, and it was a lot of millennials, and I'm a millennial, so that's great. But it was a lot of millennials. I said, "So the golden rule is..." And someone said, "I am awesome."

Speaker 28:57 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 28:59 And I was like, "That's not the golden rule, but good job. Nice try." [laughs] So the, I prefer what's called the platinum rule. The platinum rule is treat others the way they would wanna be treated. So this is how I go about my work interactions. Yes, I know my own personality traits, but I would much rather have a lens of their personality traits so that I am speaking to them where they come from. I'm meeting them where they are at. So we see a lot of anger when there's a mismatch, right? We see a lot of anger when you are pitching a low conscientious or a high conscientious person that's opposite from you. And lastly, which I'm gonna ask for every single one of these, is what could you do to respect their level of conscientiousness if you had to? If you had to dial up or dial down, could you? The next one I wanna talk about, when we see a lot of emotional, emotional changes, is neuroticism. So neuroticism gets a really bad rap. Whenever I ask people, "Are you high neurotic?"

Speaker 29:57 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 30:00 Hey. You were in the front. You didn't see no one rose their, raise their hands. But I am neurotic with you. So neuroticism always gets a really bad rap, but I wanna explain something about neuroticism. I am a high neurotic, and there is a chemical explanation for this. So researchers looked at high neurotics, and they found that many of them carry a long form of a certain gene. This gene is a serotonin transport gene. Now, serotonin is a really important chemical for us. Simply, basically, it kinda keeps us calm. So let's say that you are driving to work and you almost get into a car accident. Someone almost hits you. They don't, but they almost do, and you're like, "Oh." You have adrenaline, you have cortisol, you're really anxious. Serotonin is what comes into your body and says, "You're fine. You're okay," and then calms you down. A low neurotic person transports and produces serotonin faster, meaning something bad happens to them, they freak out and they go, " [sighs] It'll all be okay." A high neurotic person, we, something bad happens to us, and we are freaked out for a long time because our serotonin just takes a little bit longer to go. So my lovely husband, who's a low neurotic, will say, "It's fine." And to a low neurotic, "It's fine" sounds like you're not worrying enough, so I better worry enough for the both of us.

Speaker 31:24 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 31:26 That's how a high neurotic feels about it. So high neurotics not only produce less serotonin, but they also have a greater physiological response to negative events. So if you go into a high neurotic's office with s- a small piece of bad news, not a huge piece, a small piece of bad news, you go in, you present it, and then you go, you might have left that high neurotic in a state of panic, and they might stay that way for many, many hours. And then you reach out to them later, call them later, Slack them later. I don't ... Do you guys use Slack at Google? No? Maybe? Mm, mm. Chat, chat.

Speaker 32:03 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 32:03 [laughs] You chat with them later, and they're still kind of salty. It's because they're still recovering, serotonin-wise, from that bad news you dumped on their desk earlier. So I want you to think about, when it comes to neuroticism, how can you work with your high neurotics? My high neurotics in the room, you are called reactive. So high neurotics have much more emotional fluidity. We have m- high moods and low moods. That's because we often will catch the moods of the people that we're with. And if something even slightly bad happens to us, it lasts a lot longer. We are also, because we're such worriers, because we have a greater response to negative events, we try very hard to prevent those negative events from happening in the first place. I think this is a good thing. In fact, you have to have a high and low neurotic on your team. Your low neurotics are resilient. So low neurotics, very little mood change. You're almost always the same m- same mood. You don't catch other people's emotions very easily. You can always kind of see the bright side of things, or at least the realistic side of things, depending on if you're optimistic [laughs] or pessimistic. Someone got my joke. Woo.

Speaker 33:08 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 33:09 So j- I'm just curious. How many people think that they're a high neurotic? Love you guys. Okay, how many of you think that you're a low neurotic? I love you guys, too, because you're my rocks. How many of you think that you're in the middle, you kind of flip depending on where you are home or at work? It is extremely important to know where you fall on the neuroticism spectrum. Why? You want to have both on your team. Your low neurotics get you through crisis. They're the ones who have a nice calm head. They can think real logically. They're really good to have if something's going wrong. But your high neurotics prevent the crisis from happening in the first place. They're the ones who sit at their desk playing what if, what if, what if.

Speaker 33:50 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 33:51 My high neurotics, you know what I'm talking about. We make those pros and cons lists, right? We think, like, months and months of bad events into the future just in case that could happen. So it's really important that you leverage both of those strengths, and you know who to call depending on where you are. Want to have a brainstorming session? Want to prevent or protect anything bad from happening? Call a high neurotic into the room. If you're having a crisis, you want to stay calm and get through it, call your low neurotic, right? Those are your rocks. So here are a couple specific things I want you to ask about yourself as well as the people on your team. One, how do they self-calm? So everyone self-soothes in different ways. Some high neurotics calm by verbalizing. They want to come into your office or come by your desk and just verbalize out loud forever until they're calm. Others completely shut down and want to process by themselves. They don't want to talk to you. They don't want to talk to anyone. They just want to self-process. The best, the greatest gift I think we can give to our fellow human beings is by helping them self-calm in their natural way. So if you know that someone's a verbalizer, and they've had a really bad day, or you just had bad news, the greatest gift you can give them is to go and be like, "Hey, you know, let's go for a walk. Let's go talk this thing out." Whereas if you have a high neurotic who self-calms by just totally shutting down, you say, "Hey, you know what? I'm gonna give you some space. I'm gonna check in later. Why don't you, uh, go take some time and let me know when you're ready to talk?" Those are two very different responses that respect how they are wired. Next, what do they worry about, and how do they worry? So all neurotics have certain things that get them triggered. Triggers, you know, we have those things that really get us going. It's also very helpful for both low and high neurotics to know what do we worry about, what triggers us, and how do we worry. Do we worry out loud? Do we worry by ourselves? Do we seek friends? So do you seek camaraderie and community when you're in your worrying stage, or do you want solitude and quiet? And

Vanessa Van Edwards 35:53 lastly, what else can you do to respect their level of neuroticism? How about this one? Back to microexpressions. What does this face mean? Confusion, contempt, sarcasm, or boredom. How many people think it's confusion? How many people think it's contempt? How many people think it's sarcasm? How many people think it's boredom? This one most people get wrong. This is the universal expression for contempt. Most people guess boredom. We actually have had, I think, 22,000 people take this quiz on our website, and most people guess boredom. This is very dangerous. Contempt is an extremely negative microexpression. It's also the simplest. It's a one-sided mouth raise. Kind of see when you ... If you just lift one side of your mouth up, either side. It's a very pessimistic, scornful kind of microexpression. The reason why it's important actually has to do with, I think the best way to discuss this with a research that was done by Dr. John Gottman. So John Gottman's actually here in Seattle, and he did a massive experiment with married couples. Analyzed thousands of married couples, followed them for many years, and he found that one of the biggest indicators of divorce was when one of the couples showed contempt towards the other. In fact, he can predict with 93.6% accuracy if a couple will get divorced within 30 years by watching a silent video of a couple. What he is looking for is contempt. Contempt is powerful because it's the only emotion that doesn't go away. Of all the micro expressions, fear comes in a burst, you self-soothe. Anger comes all at once, you calm down. Happiness comes, then you go back to neutral. But not contempt. Contempt, if it's not addressed, it sits and it festers, and it grows and it grows into disrespect. And that's why at the end of a very bad marriage, you get people who can't even look each other in the eye. So when you see contempt, especially on a colleague's face, you have to address it immediately. So here are the things that I like to do when I see it. One, figure out exactly where it's coming from. So it might not be something you said. It could be some self-contempt, could be something that they are working through. Second, how can you make sure that you are an ally against it as opposed to an enemy of it? So whenever I see contempt on someone's face, whether I'm in a negotiation or a pitch meeting or an interview, I will always say, "Are we all good? Does it all make sense? Anything you want me to review or retake? You know what? Let's pause, let's rewind for a second. I'm gonna go back over this to see if I see it again." I give them the opportunity to verbally tell me if something's bothering them and/or I will go back, retrace my steps, and see does it pop up yet again. This kind of protects us against nasty miscommunications that could happen down the line. By watching out for this expression, it's a subtle way of checking in with someone emotionally. It's like taking their emotional temperature. So I think that watching out for this contempt is incredibly important. One last one I want to teach you before I show you another video. So the choices are amused, disgust, upset, and embarrassed. How many of you think this is amused? How many of you think this is disgust? How many of you think this is upset? How many of you think this is embarrassed? So this is the universal expression for disgust. Now, this is kind of a funny one. So people are always like, "Vanessa, why do I have to know disgust? I don't care if they don't like the food or something smells bad." But I want you to actually make this face for me. So pull your nose up. Very good. Flash the upper whites of your teeth at me and then go, "Ugh." That is the face that you make when something smells really bad. The other time that we make the disgust face is when we're trying to think of a nice way to say something that we don't like.

Speaker 39:46 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 39:48 Ask someone any preference-based question, they're trying to think of a polite way to say no, they look like this. "So, uh, what do you think of the new girl?" "Yeah, yeah, she's great. Yeah."

Speaker 39:58 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 40:00 So that disgust can sometimes indicate that something is going on beneath the surface. So last one, disgust. If you see it, identify the problem immediately and give them permission to tell you the truth, right? Give them permission to s- come out and say whatever it is that's bothering them. So why facial expressions? Obviously, I think it helps us decode hidden emotions, which is a lot of information for your bag of tricks. Second, it also helps us respond in the right way. A lot of you raised your hands at the wrong emotions, and that's 'cause we're not as intuitively good at spotting micro expressions as we would like. So if you know what you're seeing, it helps you respond in the right way. We often confuse anger for fear, but there could not be more of a different emotional internal state for that person. Or we con- confuse contempt for boredom, and those are two extremely different emotions. So making sure that you're responding in the right way. I also think that reading people's micro expressions helps you listen

Vanessa Van Edwards 41:01 to someone on a totally new level. We are never listened to with that kind of attention, right? To actually put down our phones and not only be listening with our ears, but actually listening with our eyes and reading them 'cause we're trying to figure out really what's going on for them, I think is one of the most amazing ways to respond. I want to end on a quick story, and I think we might have time for a few questions before I do the book signing. Famous story of Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. This is how I like to think about interactions. Both of these gentlemen were running for Prime Minister of the UK many, many years ago, and it was a contentious race. They were extremely close in the polls. And the week before the election, a journalist took both men out to lunch, and everyone was following these lunches. Everyone wanted to see, who would the journalist pick? Who did she, who was she more charmed by at the end of these lunches? And at the end of both of these lunches, she wrote a big article about them, and here's what she said. "After sitting next to Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest person in England. But after sitting next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest person in England."

Speaker 42:09 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 42:11 With all of these skills, I hope that you will use them to gift people amazing interactions. I think when we read someone's micro expressions and we respond to them, when we look at their personality trait, and we look at them through their lens, not ours, I think that is one of the best ways to make them feel truly honored, and that is the best way to interact. So a couple next steps. Packed a lot into today. Try to tackle one skill at a time. So if there's one thing that really resonated with you, start with that, and then move down the list. With the micro expressions, it's very hard to try to spot all four of the ones we learned at once. Pick one. Say this week I'm gonna look for just contempt. Or this week I'm gonna look just for anger. It starts to retrain your brain, 'cause our brain is a muscle, on how to spot those facial expressions. Second, the learning does not have to stop here. This work changed my life. I'm a recovering awkward person.

Speaker 43:03 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 43:03 I could not, truly, I could not read facial expressions for the life of me. That just did not come naturally to me. It was not until I discovered this science where I was finally able to interact with people, because I was able to study them in a systematic way, a science based way. So we have so much free practice on the website. All seven of the micro-expressions, all seven of the micro-expressions are in the book. Any way I can help, I'm here to help. And lastly, please use your powers for good and not evil. I'm happy to take a couple questions before ... Yes, sir.

Speaker 43:35 I love to play poker. What can you do-

Vanessa Van Edwards 43:36 Ah.

Speaker 43:37 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 43:38 Yes. Okay. So, oh great. So, oh. Um, could- The question was- Excuse me just- "I love to play poker. Are there any tips for poker players?" So I ha- yes, I'll send you an article. I have an article on poker playing. Specifically what poker players need to look out for is definitely the micro-expressions. So if someone hates their hand, they are more likely to show contempt or disgust. Usually not anger, usually not sadness, but contempt or disgust if you don't like your hand. But really what you're looking for are what are called micro-messages. So micro-messages are more the body. So we didn't talk a lot about body language today, we talked more about the face. There are two buckets. There are micro-negatives and micro-positives. So when you look at a micro-message, these are the little signals we send off. Micro-negatives are any kind of self-touch. So the more someone is self-touching, usually the lower their confidence is, the lower their competence is. Any time we self-touch on our arms it produces oxytocin, which helps us stay calm. So if someone has, they're trying to keep themselves nice and calm, they're trying to keep themselves nice and calm, they're literally trying to produce oxytocin to keep them relaxed. I wear oxytocin around my neck.

Speaker 44:41 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 44:41 My husband was, he, my, my husband ... It's my favorite chemical. I, that's a scientist, right? I have favorite chemicals.

Speaker 44:46 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 44:46 My husband's like, "I wanna get you a necklace." I was like, "No hearts, oxytocin."

Speaker 44:49 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 44:49 So, um, you're looking for those micro-negatives or micro-positives. So self-soothing is a micro-negative. Micro-positives are leans, nods, half smiles, and more open body language. The moment someone opens up their body, roll their shoulders back, have more space between themselves and the table, that's when you're gonna see much more of those. It's a subtle indication of positive feelings.

Speaker 45:09 So what are good techniques not to give it away myself?

Vanessa Van Edwards 45:12 Ah. What are good techniques to not give away myself? The best thing that you would wanna practice is hearing extremely bad news and not having any physical movements at all.

Speaker 45:21 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 45:23 So you need to know, like each of us, it's true, each of us have tells, right? So we do a lot of lie detection. Everyone has a basic non-verbal tell, usually two to three they do every time they lie, or every time they feel an intense set of nerves. We have found there are 33 common red flags. They are, these are the most common red flags that people show when they're lying. So you would wanna tape yourself hearing very, very bad news, or getting a really bad hand, or losing a lot of money, but it has to be real stakes. Right? Like real stakes, can't be play. And see what you do. Like right now you're crossing your arms in front of you, so I'd guess it's a blocking technique. You also crossed your leg over your, over your knee, so I would guess that that's probably a negative non-verbal. I'll, I'll take you off the spot. That's probably what I would guess-

Speaker 46:04 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 46:05 That's what I would guess is maybe some of the, some of the non-verbal tells, uh, that you don't wanna fight with. [laughs]

Speaker 46:10 Well, I, I don't lose when I play.

Vanessa Van Edwards 46:13 Okay good.

Speaker 46:13 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 46:14 Good. Good job. [laughs] I won't call ... You know, everyone's like, "I'm not asking a question now."

Speaker 46:18 [laughs]

Vanessa Van Edwards 46:18 There's no way. Well, I will be here afterwards signing books. Thank you so much for giving me your hour, and thanks for having me at Google. This was great. [clapping]