PSYCHOLOGICAL TRICKS To Be More Charismatic & Confident TODAY! | Vanessa Van Edwards

This is the biggest mistake I think facing really, really smart people. I think really, really smart people, and this is most of my students, they're like off the charts smart, creative, brilliant. They make the mistake of thinking, "I think you gotta have a dream."

The School of Greatness. Really? Yeah. Please welcome.

Is it better to smile without teeth or with teeth in order to enroll people in you as a human being, to get anything you want in your life? What research found is that a real smile, whether it shows teeth or not, the only the biggest difference is it has to reach up here, the eyes, the the upper cheek muscles actually. So those eye crinkles? Yeah.

I do that a lot though. I feel like I squint a lot. Yeah. Yeah, you got a little smizing, right? So that's actually the only cure we're looking for. So it actually does not matter. So if you have a profile picture, a dating profile picture, a LinkedIn profile picture, I either want you neutral or with eye crinkles. The worst is sort of that in between. Now, I don't mind like a soft up mouth, right? So you and I both have this on our book covers, a soft up mouth, but it has to engage those upper cheek muscles.

What Dr. Barbara Wilde found is that when they showed pictures of people with the fake smile and a real smile, the real smile was contagious. So when people looked at the real smile, they themselves felt happier. When they looked at the fake smile, they felt no mood change. Interesting. So the reason why that's important is, I think that we think about like, "Oh, I want to show up. I want to be really my most confident self." But what we don't realize is that our cues are contagious. Yes. If you show authentic happiness, you are more likely to infect happiness.

Actually, there's one more face cue I want to talk about. So, um, this is the cue that sort of started me on this crazy journey, and it got me, I'm a recovering awkward person, as you know. So this gave me a lot of, really very introvert, awkward person, social anxiety, all the good things. So, so this story gave me so much relief. What they found was, if you are in a room and someone gives you a cue of social rejection, what does that look like? Okay. So social rejection: eye rolls, a sigh, looking away, looking right, looking away, distancing behavior, when we pull our head back and like, uh, when I angle my head back, you know, I've just disengaged from you, crossing arms. And crossing arms? Uh, sudden, sudden non-verbal rejection. Is this turning feet? Also turning? Yes. We, oh, we can talk about feet. Okay. We can talk about feet, hands, and feet. So interesting. I look at the hands and feet all the time. I can't remember if I got this from you years ago, like looking at the hands and seeing, are they in the pocket? Are they out of pocket? Yes. Uh, but go ahead. Before we get back.

Okay, so social rejection cues. And you know this, if you're in a business meeting and you suddenly feel like, "Am I disliked?" "Ah, he's not, he doesn't like this. She doesn't like this." When we see a cue of social rejection, our field of vision increases. We see wider. We literally see wider. Our pupils dilate. So we see more. The reason why that study was like a light bulb for me was, our cues are affecting others' physiology. Our physiology can change in a room in an instant. If we walk into a meeting, we feel not liked. If we feel rejected, if we feel like we're being judged, our own physiology responds. So if we're in a room and we're not feeling confident, under control, and someone sends us a cue of rejection, one, you want to know what those are because it makes your field of vision bigger, so you can see who else is sending me a cue, what's my escape route. That's literally what your body's trying to do. Yeah. Ups your adrenaline, ups your cortisol. And no one can think. Well, adrenaline, cortisol, that's why in a meeting, it can go downhill so quickly. Yeah. You're in a presentation, you've prepared all week, and then you're like, "Oh, he just rolled his eyes. Oh, she just turned away. Oh, the, I just saw a weird foot movement." Uh-huh. And then you lose your spot, you blank out, and the rest of the presentation goes badly.

The good news is, is what Matthew Lieberman found, this is from UCLA. Once you label a cue, so if you say, "That was an eye roll. That was a scoff of exasperation. That was a contempt smirk." The moment you label it, your amygdala calms down. They've proven that if they, when people are in fMRI machines and they show them a fearful face, so if your face is, when we widen the whites of our eyes and we raise our eyebrows up, if you're laying in an fMRI machine and you see fear, you will begin to feel afraid. Your amygdala begins to activate, and your body goes, "Well, if he's afraid, I better be afraid." But the moment you say in the fMRI, "That's just fear," your amygdala stops responding. Interesting.

So I think I've had a really hard time finding confidence. It's been a long lifetime journey. The way that I've sort of backdoored into confidence is control. If I can control the cues that are being sent to me, if I can control the cues I'm sending to others, it's a secret backdoor into confidence.

How do you control someone else's cues? You label them and respond appropriately. So, so you can't control how they act towards you, but you can control how you react to it, how you interpret it, how you transition afterwards. Yes. Like, you can, first by labeling it, you just controlled your own physiology. So if someone sends you a contempt, an eye roll, you just took control. You took control back of, "Nope, I see it. I spot it. I'm disengaging it." You know, in the vulnerability world, when you, you know, label the shame, when you speak about the shame and you bring it to the light, it becomes less scary. It doesn't stay stuck inside of you. So even just acknowledging it is a helpful tool to process shame or, I guess, social rejection. Social rejection. It's the same, actually. So for vulnerability, yes, you're afraid, you acknowledge it, it makes it less scary. It's the same thing in social settings, dates, professional situations, negotiations, interviews. The moment you say, "Okay, I just heard an exasperated tone of voice," or "I just saw a lid flex."

That's the one I want to talk about now. What floor? I know, I know. A lid flex. A lid flex is that an eyelid? Yes. Like, like a, like a twitch or what? Okay. So here, you asked how do we control? Oh, yeah. That's it. You just did it. Okay. So, you know, Zoolander? Yes. You know the Blue Steel? Of course. Okay. That is actually a lid flex, right? That's like, it's if you, if you're listening hard in your lower lids, then like your lips. That's what Blue Steel is. The funny thing about this cue, it's ridiculous. I know. You're like, "Where are you going with this video?" It makes sense to me because it's like, "Prove me." You're like, "Someone's doubting you." Oh, you just got it. Okay. So what's funny is, in fear, our eyes widen. So if you widen your eyes as wide as possible, so you can see the whites, you just, I can take in way more of my environment. When we're afraid, we want to see as much as possible. When we are trying to see details, universally across cultures, we have to lessen the light coming into our eyes. So we squint. The focus. We focus. So if you, like, if you were to try to see that dot over there on the wall, you harden your lower lids. And that is because, scientifically proven, when we harden our lower lids, it reduces the amount of light, and we can see more details. Without you, I can see the details on that camera better when I lower lid flex. Yeah. This is why if you open People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive," on almost every page, along with a flexed bicep, are flexed lids. And that is because women find a flex lid, oh, so when it's, so attractive. So an open lid is not sexy. Is it sexy? Like, slit? Yes. Because why? Women and men both want partners who are deeply scrutinizing, who are deeply looking at them. So if I'm sitting, when talking to you, and I go, "Oh, really?" I just showed you, "Wow, that was super interesting." In fact, when we flex our lids, we're going from just listening to thinking deeply. Interesting. We're literally trying to see something better. So if you're in a negotiation, on a date, or with a friend, and they go, "Really?" and they harden their lower lids, you're like, "Ooh, ding ding! I just hit something good."

And so the other way that we control cues is, okay, let's say that you're, and this actually happened to me. So this is a story I share in the book. I was in a meeting with a very high-powered exec team, and if the presentation went well, they were going to invite me back for more presentations. So the stakes were very high. And it was a small group. And I was in a particular part of my presentation talking about chemicals. And I noticed an executive across the room flexed his lower lids at me. Kind of flexed his lower lids. He's looking at the slide. And I was like, "Okay, what's happening? He just went from listening to scrutinizing." And so I paused the small group. And I said, "All good? Any questions?" And I literally looked right at him. And I opened up my palms. And I said, "Any questions?" So this is the universal signal for openness. It literally means, "I want to receive. I'll share anything. You are." Yes. It's literally like, "Let me receive. Let me be open to you." He went, "Yeah, you know, I do have a question." And at the time, I was teaching about oxytocin. Oxytocin, I know you talk about it a lot on the show. The chemical of connection and bonding. He goes, "I don't understand something. Isn't oxytocin what they give women to induce labor?" And I'm like, "You are right, sir. They do give oxytocin. And that's because it's so powerful that it can induce labor." Interesting. But in our position, it's for social bonding. It was such a good teaching moment because he immediately felt heard. And I know that if I hadn't addressed that concern right then and there, I would have lost him. He would have been like, "What? He would have been stuck on that one slide." And afterwards, he said to me, "You know, I really feel like you were teaching to us." Literally teaching to him. And so I think the other way that we can control the cues is, we spot it, and then we say, "How can I honor it?" Like, that's the gift that we can give people. Is I can be sitting with someone and say, "I want to listen to you so deeply. I want to listen to your words. I want to watch your facial expressions. I want to listen to your number." But I want to even listen to your voice tone. I mean, we haven't even talked about vocal power, which here is incredibly important. And not only do I want to spot that, I want to respond in the way that you make you feel the most heard by me. So it's spotting and honoring. By doing that, if you're in a presentation, whether you actually acknowledge the person or not, are you just saying that it'll bring you back to a more centered place so you can continue on a presentation? Exactly. It makes you feel in control of the narrative. It makes you feel in control of. And like, even for introverts, right? Like introverts, it's much harder for us to share a lot of verbal content. So for us, I want to give you more control over the non-verbal so that when you do speak, it's more powerful. Right? So if you're an introvert and you want to make sure you are reading the room really quickly, so you know exactly when to say your point so it's most heard and most valued, that gives you confidence because you're not guessing. Yes. I don't like the guesswork. No, I don't either.

I know you see a lot of these videos online talking about how charismatic someone is based on the way they smile, their eyes, they even the tilt of the chin, all these different things. Is it important to be charismatic? Let's talk about that first. Yes. Is it valuable? And more important to be charismatic versus less charismatic? Mm-hmm. Less to the point. Yeah. Yeah. Credible to the point, or neutral energy? I mean, what's more valuable in society in accomplishing goals and getting what you want? Very charismatic or neutral? Neutral. Okay.

So this is the biggest mistake I think facing really, really smart people. I think really, really smart people, and this is most of my students, they're like off the charts smart, creative, brilliant. They make the mistake of thinking, "If I have enough book smarts, if I have enough technology smarts, I don't need the people smarts." Now, here's what research from Princeton University found that I'm so excited about this. Yeah. Okay, because already you know what's going to say that since. Yeah. Okay. So this study completely changed my work and changed my life. It was done by Dr. Susan Fisk in 2002, and since then, they've been able to replicate it and build on it and build on it. So this is very solid research. Which she found, very highly charismatic people have to have the perfect blend of two traits. And this is where it's really, this is why highly charismatic people are so unique, is why we love them so much. To be highly charismatic, to be compelling, to be captivating, you must have a perfect blend of warmth and competence. We talked about this the very, very first time we met, but since then, so much more has come out about it. Very, very smart people make the mistake of showing up as all-competent. They try to blow you away with their numbers and their facts and their stats and their data, but they're seen as cold. Yeah. They're seen as intimidating. On the other side, you have people who are highly warm. They have confidence, but there's not a balance. They show up as highly likeable, highly friendly, but they're interrupted. They're told that they're not being taken seriously. They're not credible. Right? People forget having met them before. And so I think that most people problems, I'm going to say all people problems, all people problems stem from an imbalance between your warmth and competence. And so not only do I think that charisma is essential for being successful, I actually think it's the only way that people will be open to your competence. So you could be all the book smarts in the world. You could have the highest IQ and remember everything on any test. Or you could be an encyclopedia of wisdom and information. But what I'm hearing you say, if you don't have charisma, at least some of it, then people won't take you seriously, or they won't care as much, or they won't be as engaged. It's not just engaged. There's two questions that humans ask themselves about the person they're with. And this happens immediately in every interaction, by the way. Video two. We forget that this is not just in person. This is happening the moment you pop on video. It's happening the moment someone opens your LinkedIn profile. I did a whole bunch of research on LinkedIn profiles specifically because that's where a lot of our first impressions happen. Okay. When people see your LinkedIn profile, when people see you on video on Zoom, the first question they ask themselves, and it is chronological, the first question they ask is, "Can I trust you?" Basic instinct. Are you going to be my ally or my enemy? Can I trust you? The very second question they ask is, "Can I rely on you?" So when you're in a meeting, on a date, in a call, in a pitch, in negotiation, on LinkedIn, the two signals that you want to cue people with as quickly as possible is, "Yes, you can trust me," and "Yes, you can rely on me." The problem is, is that most professionals right now are going mute. So I don't know if you've noticed this, but it feels like in the last five or ten years, we've gone towards ambivalence. You know, we've gone towards, "I'm not going to show anything. I'm going to be as professional and sterile as possible." And so we've taken out cues from all these assets. And then people have a really hard time trusting us. They have a really hard time listening to us. We wonder why people are slow to reply to our emails. It's because we're not queuing enough. We have to have hundreds of cues to feel to answer those two questions.

Interesting. So how do we create more trust and reliability instantly? Yes. Okay. So here, let's talk about trust first, because it is chronological. We have to trust someone to rely on them. That's why starting with your competence doesn't always work. So trust. So the very first thing is the weird one. It's a really weird one that I'm going to talk about first. You don't have to be competent to be trusted. To be charismatic, you have to be competent and trustworthy. Okay. Right. So we want that perfect balance, right? You're trying to smart enough, and you're warm and yes, likable. Okay. Okay. So, like, let's look at this cover. So really, really successful book covers, just like really successful LinkedIn profile pictures, very quickly signal both trust and competence. Right? They both signal both these same time. Okay. Um, let's talk about the first one, which is space. Space zones. Okay. So, sorry, I'll give it back to you. I took it away. Space zone. Zone. We're going to talk about space. We're going to talk about the distance between people. So the distance between my nose and the camera lens. You can't see it, but in this photo shoot, I made sure that the distance between my space and the camera lens was a certain space. How far? So I wanted to be in what's called the social zone. Okay. So this is not made up by me. This is actually, uh, research is based. There's four zones for people: the intimate zone, the personal zone, the social zone, the public zone. Remember that, um, Seinfeld episode, if you ever saw of close talking? Ever had this where someone walks up like right into your face and like, yes, talks into your mouth? Okay. So that's called close talking. And that is the first big rule. Intimate zone. Intimate zone. You don't want to be there. You don't want to be there unless you're about to get intimate, or unless you like your friends, or you know each other, and you're like, "That's what you do." Do you talk six inches away from you? That's too close. No, no, no, no. That's like your, yeah. So here's what happens. This is six. Got you. Girlfriend. Inches. Zero to 18 inches apart is intimate zone. Okay. So here's what happens. This is the biggest mistake I'm seeing right now. Is we're all on video call all the time. You're taking photos, like, yes, selfie, like, yes. What does that do? When you're projecting a video or a photo of that close, it is literally saying, "I want to get close really, really fast." And so if you have someone who's super high warmth, they're like, "Yes, vulnerability, intimacy," and you're going to track those kind of people. But if you have someone who's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, take a minute," they are they are turned off. So what's happening is on video calls, you hop on Facetime, you hop on video on Zoom, and people are like, "Right up in their camera." Yeah. But their, their nose and their camera are are 10 inches apart. And so someone's like, "Whoa, it's too close." Yeah. It's too close. Okay. So that's the first one is you want to respect the space zones. The sweet spot is a foot and a half to three or four feet away. That's that social zone. That's where we're making eye contact. If I wanted to reach out and high five you, I could. We're still respecting each other's space. So for those one is when you're on video, in your photos, that if you want to have that balance, you want to be 18 inches to about three or four feet away. Okay. Social zone is 18 to three feet. Yeah. And the personal zone, by the way, is still good, but that's a little bit farther away. Right? So that's, uh, you're just starting to get to know each other. When you see someone across the room, or a boardroom, or a networking event, they're usually about, um, four to seven feet away, which is the next zone, which is the personal zone. And then you have the public zone, which is obviously from far away. What we like in human behavior is we like someone to come towards us slowly. That's one of the reasons I think we're so burnt out on video. You know, we, we have these back to back to back video calls, and we wonder, "Why are we so tired?" I'm not even in person. The reason is because it's cueing us in ways that are not natural in person. I walk into a room, right? Like I walked into the office today, and you were waiting. I was like, "Hi." And we, and we hugged. That was the per, that's the way humans like, right? It's like this from public. It's not like you open the door and I'm right there standing in your face. That would have been a lot. I was a few feet back. It was perfect. So like, that, that's natural. But on video, it's like we're here. And that's why we can get so fatigued is because the cues are unnatural.

Which actually leads me to the second kind of trust cue that's important. Yes. Is when we can't see someone's hands, our brain has a really hard time trusting someone. It's so funny. I think ever since that interview, I'm always keeping my hands out. I don't think I was keeping my hands in before, but I think I'm just more aware of it. When I'm walking by someone who might be a stranger, I just have my hands out and relaxed and loose by my, you know, I'm not like tight or tense, and I'm not like hiding them or anything. It's just, yeah, just walking normal. Say, "Hey, how's it going?" You know, I'll even do a little wave. Yeah, just to show. That's super charismatic. "Hey, good to see you." That's it. That's it.

So when we, so I love Shark Tank. Do you know that show? Okay. I know you had. I love it. Friday nights. Oh, Shark Tank. Shark Tank. So I wanted to know, watching Shark Tank, was there patterns between the least successful pitches? Interesting. And the most successful pitches? This is cool. Okay. So my team, I love my team. Thank you to my team. Not, not on just based on like what people said, but how they said everything. Everything. So we analyzed 495. Sharks come on. Yeah. What were the main things you, you solved? The most successful and those not? Okay. So thank you to Jose Pina for this research. 495 Shark Tank pitches. Literally hundreds of hours of Shark Tank coding every variable we could think of. Entrance, first impression, verbal, eye contact, smiling, interactivity, math, deal. I mean, we were looking at everything. Holy cow. One of the biggest differences between the least successful pitches and the most successful pitches was what you just did. Hands. Right? So when you walk down that Shark Tank hallway, that is beautiful, right? That's exactly what we're talking about. Space, right? Public to personal to social to intimate. So it's a nice warm-up. The best pitchers, when they were all the way in the public zone, signaled, "Hey, sharks." No way. And they'd walk into the room. They'd take their place on their carpet. They'd go, "Good morning, sharks," or "Hey, Kevin, Mark, we'd love to have a deal with you." They would greet with some kind of hand gesture. The least successful pitchers walked in with, I think they thought they were being humble, but it actually reduced trust. They hid their hands, either in fists behind their backs, in their pockets, or holding a prop sometimes accidentally. They hid their hands and they didn't hand greet. That makes it really hard for someone to say, "I can trust you." And that is a primitive part of our brain that when we can't see someone's hands, like if I were to, you know, do this entire interview with my hands behind my back, what's she doing? What's she doing? Yeah. What are her hands doing? And what's interesting is, um, Susan Goldin-Meadow researches gesture. She's on her entire academic career researching gesture. And she found that gestures carry more weight than words. So if a pitcher, a Shark Tank pitcher, were to go on and say, "Today, I have a really big idea. It's really big." And I hold my hands up like it's really big. It's really small. You're like, "No way. It looks small." Vanessa looks so small. It's not big at all. But if I were to say, "I have three, three big ideas," and hold up five, you're actually more likely to believe my fingers. So the reason why this is important is because gestures help lower cognitive load. Interesting. When I use gesture, I'm more fluent. I'm able to be more competent. I'm able to underline my words and able to say, "This is a really important point." Can I give it to you? Hand gestures, body gestures, facial gestures, hair gestures. Hand gestures. Hand gestures specifically. They are like our body language highlighter. That's how I want to think about them.

What happens if we don't? Ah, I'm just kind of socially awkward. I like keeping my hands down the whole time when I'm communicating. What happens if we don't use our hand gestures at all in a conversation, on a pitch, whatever? Now, two things. One is, it's harder for you to process. They've literally speaking. It's harder to process. It's going to be harder for you to get your confidence because gestures are a way that we underline or highlight our words. And so if you are inhibiting your own gestures, you will have a hard time explaining things. They actually did a study where they had people explain two versions of a story. Notice, two, two versions of the story. One, they could use their hands. And one, they couldn't. The one where they could use their hands, they had less pauses, they spoke more quickly, they used bigger words. The one where they just couldn't, just their hands were just underneath their legs. You know what's interesting? I was just reading some intros for the podcast right before you came in. I had another interview this morning, and I did podcast intros and ads, and I use my hands in order to do it because I feel like it's coming across as like, I'm really engaging. Yes. Yes. And I remember when I was reading my first audiobook, yeah, The School of Greatness, I tried to read it like, just kind of like with my hands down for a while, and I was like, "I can't read." Like, I read, forgotten how to read my own words. Being like, dyslexic growing up, anyways, is I'm a little slower when I read in general. But when I started be like, "Okay, I just need to get in this with my body, my hands." I felt more confident. I felt like I could flow. I wasn't messing up as much. I wasn't having to stop and restart as much. It was powerful. Yes.

Okay, that's an incredible story about gesture because if you watch the best, like cartoon voiceover folks, they are using animated. Right? Yes. They are using their whole bodies in a room by themselves, like recording on a mic, right? But they're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." We just did the same thing. Yes. Yes. That's what they're doing. That's not how I probably are doing it. Yeah. But like Susan Goldin-Meadow's research is called hearing gesture. And that is because I am using my hands right now, not only people watching, but also for my folks who are listening, because I know that the more I use my gestures, the more charisma I have vocally. And I would love to talk about vocal charisma. Interesting. So that helps me, but it also helps you. So anyone who's watching, you're getting so much information. They say 12.5 times more information from our gestures. Come on. Yes. Even when you can't see it? Uh, no. You have to be able to see it. You can hear charisma, but if someone can see our gestures, it adds more weight to what I'm saying. So when I say weight, I'm like, "It's heavy." Look how heavy that is, right? But if I were to be like, "Heavy. It's so heavy," and I kind of show it away, you're like, "No, it's not heavy." You feel, you can feel the emphasis of the words. Yes. So it's like a highlighter. Now, I have to have a caveat here because I've created a problem in the past. Yes. I love a gesture, but I don't like jazz hands. Right? So gestures are great. Not credible or trustworthy. You're like, "This is some weirdo over here." I created a problem where I had people who were like, "Entering their Zoom meetings and they were like, 'Hello, Vanessa!'" And I was like, "Oh, no. Don't do that." Oh, no, no. So it's like a highlighter, right? You wouldn't want to highlight the whole page. You just want to highlight the concepts that matter.

So let's go back to hands for a second, because you said there were four hundred videos. I think you guys researched on Shark Tank, 495 pitches, and one of the main factors was waving as you were walking in or as you were getting planting. Planting. Yes. Not all the way back like waving. Some of them did. But also once you sat there and said, "Hey, hey, morning sharks." Yes. "Hey, sharks. Good morning. Happy to be here." Even this, "Happy to be here," like an open palm gesture. What are a few other things that you noticed? Okay. Yes. Okay. So we love gestures. And by the way, this is super easy on a video call, in person. "Hey, nice to see you. Good morning." The biggest mistake we make. Someone walks in and we go, "Hey." We give them a nod. Right? Give them a hand that you like them enough to give them a hand. Right? So that's really easy. It's like every YouTube video, I'm like, "Hey friends." That's literally how I start every video. Okay. That's the first thing. So the second thing is where things get more interesting. So remember, these sharks were in pitch after pitch after pitch. They're tired. They're like, they are so tired. I've been on set there. I've seen like the whole day. It's just like, it's a lot. It's a grind. Okay. So the most successful pitches. The next thing we found, this was very, very clear, is that the more that the pitchers could spark dopamine, the more likely they were to get a deal. Now, dopamine is a very complicated chemical. So just for our purposes, eating something? No. Giving them like, "Oh, try my." Yes. Yes. I was like, food. Like taste testing. Like, "Try. Open. Try it. Taste it. Smell it. Lick it. Touch it. Feel it. Wear it. Play it." Any of any of those senses. We love. So when we are doing something that's different, that's tactile. So yeah, touch, smell, taste, wear, play, do, try. That was going to wake the sharks up. Dopamine is a little bit. It's a very complicated chemical. But I want to talk about it a little differently. It does feel good, right? So if they were to say, "Sharks, sharks, today I have a gift for you." The brain goes, "Ooh, a gift. Gift. A gift. Again. Oh, give me a gift. Gift, gift, gift." Dopamine is like that feeling of, "I want it. I want it. I want it." It's, it's excitement, but it's also motivation. So what they've found is that when people have a lot of dopamine, they are more motivated to do things. They are more motivated to figure out a deal. They are more motivated to ask questions. So when a pitcher went in and not only had some kind of interactivity, some kind of a surprise for them, and some of it, sometimes it was a surprise. And they would literally say, "And guess what, sharks? Why?" "What?" "Dopamine. Dopamine." Dopamine. So it doesn't have to be like, you don't have to walk in every meeting and hand out and like, throw, throw out Snickers bars. Love a Snickers bar. And that will work really well. It'll work. It will work every time. But it's also verbal surprise. So it's also saying, "Today has something really special to share." Right? Anticipation. Anticipation. It doesn't even have to be something major. It can be throwing in those little elements of surprise that people can look forward to.

And here's the biggest one. So this is research that blew my mind. It changed the way that I write emails. So if you write a lot of emails, this study is for you. So I'm going to break it down. It's kind of a complicated study. So here's what they did. So researchers had participants come into their lab and do like a little quiz, like a little math test. One group of participants read a set of directions that was very simple. "Please take the following quiz. Take your time. Use a pencil. Tell us when you're done." Very simple set of directions. The other participants got the same set of directions, but they sprinkled in a couple of achievement-oriented words. So achievement-oriented words are words like, "win," "succeed," "master," "greatness." Okay? Those are achievement-oriented words. There's a reason why this is so, so powerful. In the directions, they would say something like, "Please master all these questions. Uh, take as much, as much time as you can to win the right answer." Right? So they just sprinkled in a couple of these words, two or three of these words. They found the participants who had the achievement-oriented words performed better. They actually got more answers correct. Interesting. Now, this is incredible. If you're a manager or a boss, or you're working with people, and you want them to perform at their best, just a couple of word swaps can help set them up for success. The second thing they found is that it also doubled, doubled participants' desire to keep working. Now, they could win, succeed, achieve. They were like, they worked on it longer. They worked on it harder, and they enjoyed it more. And the last one is that reading achievement-oriented words can change our own dopamine and testosterone. That's fascinating. You know, it's interesting because for years, in high school and college, I had all, there was this story called succession. Something was called. I don't know if you remember this. It was like a motivational, inspirational story that had like a poster of like an eagle soaring with a quote, right? Or like this in my office. Like, something was just like, it was like Ted Lasso, you know? Store. Yeah. Just like, "Believe in yourself" with like this. Where is this store? I want it. Okay. I think it's called Successions. I can't. I can't remember the name of it. I don't know if it's around anymore. But my dad bought me a lot of stuff, and I had all this sports type of inspirational quotes. And you know, you know, Rocky posters and all these things of just people achieving. And I would stare in this, like, these walls and I should be like, "I want to be that." Let me go take the actions every morning to work a little bit harder to reach the goals. And I was just consumed in a success. You know, word. You were literally, yeah, you were literally priming yourself with those cues.

Another study, I promise I won't do too many more. They put a picture of an athlete winning a race on top of telemarketers' scripts. The people who had the picture of the athlete winning earned more money. On yes, right. Just in front of them. Literally a printed picture on their script. Oh, wow. So why I share this is because we do not realize that we are cueing people incorrectly, or we are missing opportunities in every single email that we send. So if you send an email out to your team on Monday morning, "Hey everyone, today is going to be a busy day. We have a lot of challenges. Let's make sure we're not late." Research has found that when people read words like "busy," "challenge," or "late," it literally primes them to be busier and later and more challenged. You are literally making it harder for them to help you. So if instead, you think about, and this is a challenge I would love to, if you're brave enough to take it, open up your email sent folder and pull up five emails you've sent to important people, boss, partner, colleague, whatever, client. I want you to print those emails and I want you to count the number of priming words you use, good or bad. Yeah. And even more, are they warm or are they competent? So this is where the next level happens. Who would give it to me? Highly charismatic people prime others with warmth and competence. This is what I was going to say is one of the spark dopamine. A simple compliment or acknowledgement sparks dopamine. From my experience, just by seeing someone acknowledging something you appreciate about them, or you like about them, or "Great shoes." Or whatever it is. "I'm sure you've got a great smile today. You've got good energy today." That sparks dopamine. Right? Oh, 100%. Actually, this leaves me my next, my next third point. My Shark Tank point. We also noticed that when pitchers specifically acknowledged things from the sharks, and specific sharks, they were more likely to get a deal from that shark. "I really liked this thing about you, Lori." "I've been so looking forward to working with you, Robert." "I love all your deals with all those athletes." "Mark, I've been a huge fan of yours for years." Or this, this was the winning phrase in a pitch. If we heard this phrase, it was a high likelihood that someone was going to get a deal, which is, "You remind me of myself." That could have been one of the sharks. That could have worn the entrepreneurs. But the biggest compliment we can give someone is, "You remind me of me." "You're my role model." I put you in. So this is what we're talking about is kind of the next level here. Is I think that, yes, I want you to be your most charismatic self. I want everyone, hopefully who's listening, to be inspired to be their warmest, most competent self. But what a bigger gift? What a better way to be great to gift other people to be their warmest and most competent self? So that when you're sending an email and you say, "Hey, I'm introducing Sarah," or "We have Sarah on the call," or "Here's that quick email intro I promised to Sarah." No priming words. What if instead you thought, "What's the warmest and most competent thing about both Sarah and the person I'm introducing to?" And you say, "Hey, I'd love you to meet Sarah. She's been leading our marketing team for 10 years. We are so lucky to have her. She's a gem." Lucky gem leader. That is the perfect balance of warmth and competence. And you are gifting that to both Sarah, the person you're showing to, and yourself. And so I think, I think our words are gifts. And this doesn't have to be every email, but in your most important emails, that you, that audit that you send, count how many warm words are you using. So warm words are words that, uh, trigger connection, trust. Words that make you feel warm and fuzzies. They're very oxytocin words. Count the number of competent words. Efficient, productive, brainstorm, leverage, lead, streamline. Those are all great competence words. Uh, note a funny note here is, um, emojis. Are they good or bad? Highly warm, right? Not good. You can have likability, connection, high, high warmth, right? So emojis and exclamation points count as one warm word. So if you have someone, and this happens a lot, where people send a highly warm email to an important person. "Hi, friend. Friend." Warm word. Exclamation point. Two warm words. "I love talking to you yesterday." Three warm words. "It was so exciting to catch up." Exciting, catch up. Five warm words. Heart emoji, heart smiley face. Now we're at seven warm words. Or one sentence in, right? They wonder why they're not taken seriously. They're one, they wonder why they didn't get a follow-up interview. They wonder why that person takes four days to reply. It's because it's too much warmth. You have to balance out with the competence. So I want you to count and see what kind of signals are you sending to the people who matter to you.

That's interesting. Do you want to, you know, you're bringing up something I used to do years ago when no one knew who I was. I was just getting started, 2007, 2008. I used LinkedIn as a tool to create connection with people that were, you know, successful business leaders and people that have done things that I wanted to do in the future, right? And for a while, none of them would reply to me because I started off saying like, "Hey, I'm just getting started. I'm brand new. And I'm looking for some advice. Can you help me?" Those types of warm, warm, warm, warm language. Yeah. All those words you just said are all warm. Yeah. And I started switching it and getting a reply almost every time from anyone, like anyone I'd reach out to. I was like, "They're going to reply to this." And I started doing, uh, a few things. In the first sentence, I was just trying to find, you know, spark dopamine, essentially, is what I was doing. I was looking for a mutual connection we had. And I'd speak about the mutual connection. Mutual connection is highly competent. It's saying, "You know this person. I know them too. I'm in the know." Trust. And one warmth and competence. This person likes me. If you like them. Yeah. Perfect balance. Yeah. I don't even know that. And I was just doing it, right? And it was working. I was like, "Okay, let me keep doing this. Let me find someone that we know in common." And I would always try to have a conversation to get some intel on them. Because you tell me something about so-and-so, and I would speak about that information. And I would speak into them. I would also look for a couple other areas of interest that we have in common. And I would try to have three different things in common in the first sentence or two. Wow. You know, something that they did that I'd experienced before, or a place they're, they're from, or whatever, some some mutual interest. Uh, within competence, maybe that's competence, maybe it's both. Yeah. It's beautifully both. Yeah. So I would do that. And then I would just add, and then I would say something like, "I'm really inspired by what you've created. I'd love to learn your story of success." Say it again. "I'm really inspired by what you've created. I'd love to learn your story of success." Oh, man. That just gave me the chill. That's essentially what I did. Almost every email. That sentence. We just like to talk about. So that sentence is the perfect blend of warmth and competence, right? You have love, you have learned, you have success. And so that didn't take a lot of words. It's not like you were writing them a six-paragraph email. But it's so much better than, "Let me know if you have any questions." Oh, yeah. Or, "Can I pick your brain for coffee?" Exactly. You know? Yeah. So I think what we have to do is, there are hidden opportunities waiting for you in your texts, in your emails, and your profiles if you choose to take them. Yeah. And all it takes is a couple of word swaps. Like, I'm not talking about 15. In that direction sheet, they sprinkled in like two or three words. "Win." Even reading the word "win" makes the other person think more like a winner. What a gift to give. That's cool.

The quote that I heard in high school from Roosevelt is, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." It saved my life. Literally. That's one of the competence, right there. Because I didn't feel competent in my entire school life. In school, I was at the bottom of my class. I just graded poorly, which confirmed, like, "I'm not smart enough. Like, I'll never be able to be as intelligent as my classmates or anyone in the world." So why would anyone like me or trust me? Because I didn't feel competent. Then when I heard that quote, I go, "I have a chance." Like, I can build confidence in another area of life. I can be emotionally intelligent, and I can show people how much I care. And by doing that, that's been pretty much my whole life. Everyone who's listening, I hope what this shows you is that caring about someone, there's multiple ways to do that. Yes. It's emotionally intelligent. It's also honoring someone's cues, or gifting them the right cues. Yes. When you make someone feel more like a winner, what a gift.

You just gave them. You're putting confidence into them. You're speaking joy, confidence into that person. Yes, you're literally gifting them the chemical dopamine, so they themselves have more motivation. Yes.

And don't we all need more motivation? Absolutely. Yeah. Um, can I, since you shared a vulnerability, can I share a vulnerability and a compliment?

Sure. Okay, okay, okay. So I've been so excited to tell you this. So your book, "School of Greatness," um, I love the cover. I just thought it was so inspiring. And when I was taking my cover shoot for "Captivate," uh, this is six years ago now, it was not going well. I was super awkward. My, my photographer, amazing, uh, Maggie Kirkland, was like, "Listen, like, this isn't working. You're really awkward. I need you to relax." I can't relax, right? The worst thing you can do to someone who's anxious is to tell them to relax. So we weren't getting the shot. We weren't getting the pictures. And she's like, "Okay, just think about your role models. Who's your role model?" I was like, "Lewis Howes." So she pulls up your book and she goes, "Okay," she said, "Look at Lewis. Channel him." And so in the shoot, I channeled you. And I, I did your pose of my hands over my stomach with your face. And crazily enough, that is the "Captivate." I'm going to send you the, I'm going to sell how many copies? You get a lot. I better. I better send you some royalties.

So anyway, I channeled you because that, even that cue there was something about it. So I, I thank you for even the cues that you send out because that gifted me confidence. You didn't even know about it. There you go. I appreciate it. I'm glad, I'm glad it worked.

What's another thing? Yeah, in the Shark Tank, talking about sparking dopamine, what else? Okay, so we talked about reading, we talked about dopamine, we talked about interactivity, we talked about, um, complementing in a way that allows someone to see themselves in you or pulling out a similarity, right? So like, you know, like you, Lori, we really value Mr. Wonderful. We love Mr. Wonderful products, right? Like that really helped. I mean, it sounds like sucking up, but actually, it really works. It really worked.

The other thing that we noticed about the interactivity is what they would do is they would cross space zones. So they would have something to give the sharks, and they would go from the carpet to the chairs. That worked. Usually worked because they were going into intimate zone very quickly. So this is called a non-verbal bridge. It's kind of an advanced technique. Do you want to talk about it?

Yes. Okay. So a non-verbal bridge is a way that we cross into someone's intimate space, but safely. So what happens is, when we're with someone, we want to connect with them. We want more oxytocin. We want to bond with them. But sometimes it can be hard to break that boundary. A non-verbal bridge is a way that we can create oxytocin with permission. So that could be handing someone something, that could be giving a high five, that could be touching their elbow. And that is exactly what successful pitchers did. They would have a reason or an excuse to, "Hey Lauren, let me guide you up here." "Hey Kevin, let me zip on this suit for you." "Hey, um, you want to try this amazing cinnamon roll?" And when they did that, they created these small little bridges. So this is what I would think about is like, how can you create bridges to people where you're engaging them, even physically, right? And that's harder on video, but in person, that was the thing that we found in that tank.

How do you do it in a way that the person feels comfortable if you touch them on the elbow? Because someone may not feel comfortable. So you have to be really intuitive to, you know, is this person going to be receptive to me? Are they already interested enough where I can get closer? Yes. Yes. Are they leaning in? Are they giving eye contact? Are they nodding?

Oh, I forgot another one that was really important. So, um, vocal power. So we haven't really talked about vocal power, and this was a big one in the tank. So we hear confidence, we hear competence. And the biggest way that we do this is with inflection. So inflection is the biggest mistake that we make is the question inflection. So the question inflection is when we go up at the end of our sentences, right? It's also called up-talk. So if I were to, "Don't do up-talk. Don't do up-talk." We're going to talk about why. So when we use the question inflection, it cues the other person's brain to know, "Ah, we're being asked a question." The problem is, is that when we accidentally use the question inflection, it makes people question you, right? They really trustworthy? Right?

So what happened is, in this study where they looked at doctors, they found that the doctors who had, uh, so I'll break down the study. So what they did is they asked doctors to record 10-second voice tone clips. And they said, like, their name, their specialty, where they worked. So it sounded like, "Hi, my name is Dr. Edwards. I work in oncology. I specialize in children's medicine." Something like that. They took the clips and they warbled the words so you couldn't understand the actual words being said. So it sounded like, [garbled sounds]. Then they asked people to rate these clips on warmth and competence, right? Again, this research has been repeated over and over again. Imagine this for a second. You're asked to listen to a clip of gobbledygook, yes, to see if they're confident, are they smart, do you like them? Yeah. And people do it. What they found is the doctors who had the lowest warmth and competence ratings had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits. That implies that we don't just sue doctors based on their skills. We sue doctors based on our perception of their skills. And that happens in the first few seconds of hearing them. So your communication is everything. Everything. It's not just the words you're using. Are they warm? Are they competent? It's even how you're saying the words.

So the very first story I break down in the book, and this is in the intro. So if you want to just look at the sample chapter, you could. I analyzed Jamie Siminoff's pitch. Jamie Siminoff is the founder of Ring. That didn't get any money, then it sold for a billion dollars. Thank you. Yes. Here is a brilliant guy, right? Jamie Siminoff is brilliant. He had a successful product, right? Ring is a very successful product. Amazon acquired it for over a billion with a B dollars. Yet he goes into the pitch in a Shark Tank and he pitches, and he doesn't get a deal. Why? That pitch plagued me because I was like, here is a smart guy with a great idea, but his cues were the problem. The, I think that he lost his pitch. This is a really big, a really big statement. And if you listen to it, you'll hear it. I think he lost the deal in the first 10 seconds of them hearing him. And the reason is, he made the choice to close the doors to the tank. So in his pitch, he doesn't walk down the hallway. You don't see that long first impression. You don't get public to social to personal. He closed the doors. And what he did is he went, he knocked on the door. They're like, "Hello?" And he goes, "It's Jamie." So he asked his own name. And when you're a shark and you're trying to make a very quick first impression of someone without seeing them, and you hear the question inflection supposed to be used on a statement, you immediately begin to question. "I don't know." And that is also because we know that liars are more likely to use the question inflection. If you've ever played, uh, "Two Truths and a Lie," ever played that game? Yeah. Okay. So "Two Truths and a Lie." Here's a little tip for everyone. If you ever play that game, people almost always ask the lie. So they'll be like, "Oh, yeah, two truths and a lie. Um, I, uh, have a goldfish. I am a vegetarian, and I love dogs." They almost always go up on their lie. And that's because when we're lying, we don't know if you believe us, so subconsciously we give it away.

So Jamie starts his pitch, and he doesn't have a first impression. He doesn't do any greeting in the hallway. He misses that whole walk-up. The very first words out of his mouth, doesn't even matter what he says, is, "And then Mark Cuban says, uh, 'Are you here to pitch?'" And he says, "Here to pitch?" Again, using the question inflection. I think that what happened was, is it gave away his competence. And then the doors open, right? And he explains this idea of Ring. It's a doorbell. The problem is, is his first impression was very low incompetence. And so he had a lot of trouble having the sharks take him seriously. He was a very competent individual building his business, right? He was very smart, very intelligent, knew the technology, how to build product teams, all these things, get sales, whatever it was. But the warmth wasn't there as well, it seems like, right? Like the trustworthy charisma, warmth, confidence. He undersignaled every step of the way. So he undersignaled warmth. He undersignaled competence. And then was trying to dial up. And you hear in the rest of the pitch, he's trying to build it back up. He's like, "Yes, but we've done this, and look, we've got this technology, and his money, and then this." And so he cannot get it back. He couldn't get it back. And so I think I watched that pitch, and I break it down in the book of what happened to this brilliant guy who had one bad day. And I think that if he, you know, he scripted those answers, he prepared for that pitch, and he had really good verbal answers. There was even a couple times where I think this thing happens for people who over-rehearse. So if you have an interview or a presentation, what do you do? You rehearse it, right? You practice the perfect answer. That can get in your way, though. Because if you practice the perfect answer, this is exactly what happened to Siminoff. And very highly intelligent people do this. He would hear a question from a shark, usually a challenging question, because they were like, "Really pushing him on the deal, and they didn't believe him." No one believed him. They all thought, "Oh no, it's too crowded over market. It will never work." They literally said that to him. "Okay, I have a Ring on my front door." Yeah. And they literally said, "Number..." He couldn't believe him. Because what would happen was, they would ask him a question. He would start to answer it organically, and then he would switch into his rehearsed answer. "Oh, yeah. So you would hear, 'Oh, yeah, yeah. We do have market traction. Our America attraction has been wonderful. In fact, the last five years, we've done X numbers.'" And you would be like, "Who is this robot?" Yeah. Just say what's on your heart. Yeah. Yeah. Just say it organically, right? And so I think, um, you can be the smartest person in the world. You could have the best ideas, but if you don't share them, right? You're not helping people help you. And so that, that's my, it drives me crazy when smart people can't get their ideas heard. And that pitch crushed me. I felt so bad for him. And he made it. He's okay now. He's doing really well. When he was like a guest shark or whatever. Yeah. Okay.

And what's amazing is when you watch him walk into the tank as a shark, you can see the difference. You can feel the difference. The confidence. Oh, Mike. You know, he walks into the tank. He walks down the hallway, right? He walks in the hallway. He's smiling. He gestures. "Hey everyone, good to see you." He shakes hands. He does all the things he didn't do in that original pitch. And, um, you can see the difference. And it hasn't, he's the same person. Same person. Same ideas. Similar suits. Yeah. He looks like a different person. Fascinating. It's not about what you say, it's how you say it. Um, how you present yourself and your words. Uh, and your words. [Laughter]

I'm curious about this. There's a big topic out there right now. I just did a recent interview with, uh, Dr. Romini, who is a therapist, psychologist, talking about narcissism a lot today. Can you talk to me about the difference between charisma and narcissism? And how can you spot when someone is actually warm and caring and charismatic versus someone who uses the skills or the tools of charisma in their narcissistic approach towards manipulating, controlling, and getting what they want in life?

So this is my biggest fear with this book. This is my, this is my single biggest fear. And it, uh, was an issue for me when I first started writing it. Is I'll be honest, you can use this book for manipulation. Yeah. Of course. And that scares me. And when a smart person is narcissistic, is going to study everything and then start using it, it scares me. So how can you tell the difference? The subtle cues. These are very subtle. Now, very subtle. Yeah. So we're talking about big to subtle, right? There's like a range of them. So first, it is my biggest fear with this book that people do not have the right intentions. And my hope is that we can actually use these powers for good and not evil. That is the number one thing. You, you can, if you want to. Here's the good news. There are certain cues that we cannot control. And if you have bad intentions, they will leak. So I call these danger zone cues. So in the book, I talk about there's four different types of cues. There's highly warm, non-verbal, verbal, and vocal. So these are things that make you highly warm, highly trustworthy, highly likable. There's highly competent cues, verbal, non-verbal, and vocal. And then there's charismatic. The ones that are just knocking it out of the park, like they're just great. And the last one is danger zone cues. Danger zone cues are the cues that get us into trouble. They're the cues that liars use. That the way that we leak guilt and shame. Actually, shame is not a bad thing. It's only when you have guilt that you've done something wrong. So in the danger zone, it is very hard to inhibit those cues. So I teach them because I want people to be able to spot them.

Okay, what are those cues? Okay. So there's a bunch. And all, let's talk about as many as we can. So this might be someone who's very successful, someone who's accomplished a lot, potentially someone that seems very credible, someone that could be in a power position, owning a business or having influence online or something like that, right? Yeah. Yeah. Extremely successful. They could be successful. They could seem credible, trustworthy. Yes. But might be super narcissistic underneath. Yes. So there's a couple danger zone cues that we can control, which a manipulative person could inhibit. Right? So, for example, one that I found that I talk about in the book is Lance Armstrong. So Lance Armstrong, for those who don't know, spoiler alert, uh, Lance Armstrong was doping. So someone was like, "There were spoilers in the book." And I was like, "You haven't heard it?" I also talk about Britney Spears in the book, uh, because there's some really interesting cues on her, which I think why we're worried about her, why her fans worry. She shows a lot of danger zone cues.

So Lance Armstrong, in one of his early interviews on Larry King Live, he's asked about doping, and he does what's called a lip purse. So lip purses, okay? When we push our lips into a flat line, we mash our lips together. That is a universal withholding gesture. So when we're literally trying to hold something in or hold something back, or we don't like what's being said or heard, we go [mimics pressing lips together]. And so you'll notice that when someone has been asked something they don't like, when someone had to lie, a lot of the time. So we did a massive experiment in our lab where we asked people to send in videos of themselves lying. Actually, you play in the book, it's called "Lie to Me." Uh, "Lie to Me." Play this lie game to diagnose your own tells. It's very important to know your own tells because you should know what your danger zone cues are when you're licking them. And one of them, you should know those. It's good to know those in the back of your pocket. Um, do that with your partner, right? You don't want to, you want them to know what those are too. Um, so one thing that we notice is on lies, that was one of the biggest indicators. So in "Lie to Me" game, we ask you to do two things. We ask you to tell us an embarrassing story, your most embarrassing story, and then a fake embarrassing story. And we want to see if we can tell the difference. If we can, if we cut the clips, can we know which one is the fake one? Man, that'd be interesting. Yes. And it's amazing. You see the same danger zone cues over and over again, right before someone's about to lie and tell their fake embarrassing story, they go, "Okay," and they lip purse, right before they're going to do it. And that's because we don't like lying. Our body knows it's going to get us into trouble. So we're like, "Stop it, stop it, stop it," and we hold ourselves back. You ask a woman how much do you weigh? She'll go like, literally close those lips because no woman wants to talk about how much she weighs. So it's a withholding gesture. And so that's the first thing is you want to look for some of the bigger cues, withholding gestures. Lip purse is one. A sudden distancing behavior. So we also noticed that liars in our lab, they wanted to like get away from the lie, like as if it smelled. So like when they were telling their most embarrassing story, they'd be like leaning in, using gestures, always. So embarrassing. Remember, embarrassing stories are negative, right? It's not like it's a positive memory. It's like people are like, "Oh, gosh." And they do a shame touch. The universal shame touch is when people, uh, touch their fingers to the side of their forehead. What's happening? "Oh, gosh, I'm so embarrassed." So they usually tell the truth and they do like this. Yes. Because they're actually embarrassed, right? So these are all good, like congruent, right? We're seeing embarrassment and shame gesture. We're seeing negative non-verbal. People shaking their head. "I can't believe that happened." Right? Like they, oh, they're so upset that happened. We're seeing cringes, we're seeing fear, we're seeing sadness. Congruent, right? Like that's all congruent emotion. On the bad stories, we often see people will lip purse and they try to get away from it. So they'll say a statement and then, uh, you know, and then, and they're literally like, as far away, I hope I'm not messing up my audio. They're as far away from the lie as they can possibly get. They're leaning back. They'll sometimes literally lean their head back in the chair. And that's because physically, we want to distance ourselves from things we don't like. So we're looking for lip purses, sudden distancing. And there's a lot of cues that we can't control, right? So blink rate is another one. Eye blocking behavior is, um, liars have higher blink rates. They blink more. Yeah. Actually, in Britney Spears, she had a really interesting interview that I, I actually break this on my YouTube channel, so you don't have to read the book if you want to see it, where I break down the cues in this early interview. This is right before the conservatorship started. Very, very full of cues because it's right before it happened. And she gets asked a very difficult question, and she all of a sudden, her blink rate goes from a normal rate to a high rate. So she starts to, to really quickly blink her eyes like this. And that is because when we're really nervous, we literally want to close out stimuli to not see what's happening so we can process what's happening. So blink rate is something that a lot of manipulative people cannot control. In fact, when I share this, people go, "Oh, I know a very narcissistic, manipulative person who has a very high blink rate." Interesting. Because they're literally like trying to block out the lie or the manipulation. And so they'll sound really good, but they're like, really like processing a lot. And you, and you're like, "Why are they blinking so much?" And it's because they're trying to process. Oh my goodness.

So just knowing those cues are not all bad on their own, but just it's important to know what those cues look like so you can spot them. And I do think, I really think manipulative people will get caught eventually. It is very hard to fake competence. It is very hard to fake warmth. It's hard to keep that. Yes. And so for the long game, yes, you can learn a couple of these cues and try to master your way around them, but for the long game, it's really hard. I mean, look at, you know, Theranos, right? So, um, Elizabeth Holmes. So spoiler alert, Theranos did not go well. I feel like I always have to say that. So one of her interesting cues is, um, I don't know if you've ever seen her talk. She has a really, she uses a really deep voice, like fakely deep, like down here. And people used to say, like, "Is that real?" It's because she read in some cue book. It wasn't mine because my book wasn't out then, thank goodness. She read in some book that having a lower tone of voice makes you more competent. And that is true. Research has found that people who use the lower end of their natural voice tone are seen as competent. That's for both men and women. So you have a very deep voice, and it serves you really well. When I'm talking right now, I'm trying to use the lowest end of my natural register when I'm talking to my, Thomas, right? Right. When I'm talking to my toddler, I'm much more up here, you know, "Hey, baby, how are you?" But if I were to do my entire interview like this, it would drive you crazy, right? Right. You want to feel competent. No. And it wouldn't. And people would go, "I can't. I'm not taking or take her seriously." So she read that study, obviously. It went an octave. Oh, there you go. And an octave lower. So it wasn't her natural voice tone. It was like one step lower than her voice tone. She was always talking like this. Which in an interview, she would talk like this, and you would hear that, "This just doesn't sound natural." And part of your spidey sense would be like, "Why is she talking so low? It sounds really unnatural." And it came out that when she was drunk, her employees noticed that she went back into her natural register. Wow. So there are cues. They will eventually. Don't drink alcohol. Don't drink alcohol, or you're gonna get caught. So like, you can't keep it up for that long, right? It is that she was faking that cue. We think. I think you're also just your body is out of integrity. Like the more you're, you're keeping back something, you're telling a slight lie, or whatever. I mean, I felt this from the past because I've been out of integrity in my life at different times, from different stages of childhood to adulthood, for little white lies to bigger stuff, hiding from my parents, or whatever. They feel bad. So you're like, "Oh, like something inside of you feels off." Right? And then you gotta like, keep the lie up, and you're like, "Uh, eventually you're gonna explode or you're gonna have a heart attack or something." Yeah. It's going to leak. It's going to leak. You leak those cues. And like those are the cues that we're looking for. Like I want you to be on the lookout for them because when something feels bad, like even, like something feels bad, even just then when you were saying it felt bad, your voice tone changed, right? Just then. Yeah. Because when you think about, "Oh, I'm like, think about seeing a toxic person." And I know that people probably have toxic people in our lives. And this is why toxic people are so challenging because toxic people put us out of integrity. Toxic people force us to use warm cues where we don't feel like it. Now, we can do it. What do you mean? We got to be nice to them or something? Yeah. So like, if you have a toxic person, and this is the thorn, and, and I think our work is, I want everyone to be their best selves. I want them to show up as their warmest, most confident self. But what if you have a toxic person? How do you do that authentically? And this is what's so hard about toxic people. You have a colleague or co-worker or family member you don't like, right? And you have to break out the fake warmth cues. "Oh, hi, how are you?" Right? And so what do we do? We fake smile, right? So, "Oh, it's so good to see you. Great." And it's like, "I don't look like it, right?" Or we say, "Oh, yeah, so how, oh, that sounds good. Congratulations. Great." You know, "Your L.A. roots are coming back to you, right?" That's why toxic people challenge us is because they come into our lives, we know we're supposed to be warm, and so we try to force that warm sound, and it comes out sort of forced, and it makes us feel bad. And then we're trying to overcompensate for it. And so, you know, what the antidote here is not learning more fake warmth cues. It's it's time to get rid of toxic people. I think that's like the side effect, right, of the book is like, don't keep them around. Yeah. Keep those people around because it will leak. And so set boundaries. It will leak. Like your integrity will leak because you're constantly trying to be nice, but they're actually out of integrity because you don't want to be right. Is that right? Right. That's exactly. Your body is like, "I'm doing something that's not authentic to me because I feel like I have to with this person." That's right. And the more frequently you do that, you feel out of integrity with yourself. Yep. Exactly. So yourself. Yes. That was perfect because you were asking a question. I knew yes. Is if you allow toxic people to come into your life, especially without boundaries, we have to have some of those people we deal with. If you don't have boundaries around them, they come into your life and you have to fake niceness, and that feels really bad. What happens if, let's just say, there's a person you don't like? Yeah. Maybe they're not toxic. There's someone you don't like, and you don't like being nice to because you feel like, "Why am I supposed to? I just don't. Not my person." Yeah. Totally. Let's say you're in a work environment. Yeah. And you're at a company, got 50, 100 employees that you're working with. You're on a team with, and you're just, "Okay, I'm here." Yeah. Is it better to be inauthentic and lie and act nice around this person, friendly, fake, "How are you?" interested, even though you've like been around them for six months or a year and you realize you really don't like them? Or is it better to go right after the person after six months, say, "You know what? I just want to be completely honest and not fake with you because I feel like I've been fake. That I don't connect with you. I don't like you. I think I think you're out of integrity. I think you're authentic. And maybe I'm being judgmental, but I'd rather be honest with you than fake nice to you."

Okay, that's A and B. Can I give a C?

Sure. Okay. So I don't believe in "fake it till you make it." So I, I, I try not to give, like, "fake it." I don't, I don't roll that way. Like, I just think it's exhausting. I think it's going to leak. The C option here is to not fake warmth, but is to double down on competence. So if you are working with someone that you don't like, the one thing that you do have to do is get stuff done with them, right? You have to master your tasks. You have to be on it. You have to be responsive to emails. So that is something you can be authentic about because to do your job, you have to be able to get along with them in a very professional setting. So I would skip all the fake warmth stuff. Don't go right into confidence. Yeah. Right? Like stick with where you're authentic, which is like, "I don't need to hear about your weekend. I don't need to go to happy hour with you. Um, I don't need a fake sitting with you for coffee." But you know what? We can get stuff done. You know what? We will align. Uncle boundaries around the, "Hey, let's go have coffee." "So busy. I'm so busy today. But you know what? Let's do a brainstorm session tomorrow at the end of the day so we can really kick off." Yeah. Yeah. So get back to like the mission on the task at hand. The confidence. And maybe you've just got to be like, "Okay, this is someone where, you know, 20 seconds a day, I've got to be around someone that's trying to be fake lady-daddy with everyone. And I'll just wait. I'm going to get stuff done and then I'll move on to the next." That's it. Exactly. Because then at least you're focusing on where you can be authentic. And also, that's even if that were to come up, you could honestly say, "That kind of conversation could be, 'Listen, like, you know, I'm, I'm not really into like, you know, connecting at work. I'm more about getting it done. I want to get home to my kids and my family. I hope that's okay with you. You know, when we're together, if it's all right, I might skip lunch and just have us like, you know, work it out and be really efficient. I really appreciate how efficient you are because it allows me to get home to my kids faster, right?'" Like that's authentic. So what can you appreciate about them that's competent? Yes. What can you highlight about them that's competent?

What if you don't feel like they're warm or competent? You're like, "This person on a team is just, they can't get anything done. They're not smart. And they have fake attitude around me all day." I mean, this depends on how you feel. But I would say, deal with it like you've got, like, go to your boss. Right? And say, "Hey, you say, like, I don't know how I can work with this person. I don't want to be unauthentic, but I'm telling you that we're not getting stuff done. And they are causing issues on the team." Like, I don't like to ignore that stuff. You can hope it gets better, but ask for help. If you have someone on your team or someone in your life who is not warm nor competent, and doesn't treat you with warmth or competence either, get them out of your life. Set a boundary. Or get help. Give them life. Don't live with them or something. Yeah. Don't live with it. Life is too short to feel fakely competent or fake warmth. Right.

What's been the, I think I asked you this last time, what's been the charisma strategy, yeah, you want to call it strategy, you weren't sure about that for sure. I don't know what the word is, right? But what is the charisma or social cue that you've learned in the last six months that has brought some new attention to your life where you said, "Ah, I wasn't aware of that fully, but now the research is showing that when someone does this, it improves this." There's a new cue that I snuck into the book in the very last draft because I just learned it. And this is actually brought to me by one of a couple of my male readers. And I'm so curious. Do you agree with this, Louis? Okay, here's what they said. So in the book, I had a whole section on nodding. So nodding, affirmative nods, upside down, right? Yes, yes. You're an honor. It's a really high warmth. We love it. We thought that was good. Yes, is great because vertical nods. And by the way, this is different in certain cultures where they'll nod, are they not, um, sideways, that's different. Okay. So just vertical nodding in Western cultures is agreement. It's yes. In fact, research has found that when you nod at me slowly, I speak three to four times longer. Ah, that's cool. That's why you're a good interviewer, is because you'll nod be like, "Keep going." "Keep going." I'm just kind of, I'm just like a bobblehead. I'm just kind of like, yeah, like very slowly. I'll pause. I'm like, "Okay, cool. Okay." Well, actually, you're right. Slow nodding is "tell me more." Fast nodding is "finish up." Yeah. Okay. Got it. Got it. Right, right, right. Okay. So that's the difference there. If you want someone to wrap up in a meeting, give them a one, two, three, triple nod. Like, "I got it." If you want them to keep going, an introvert, uh-huh. Yes. Okay. So that's the difference. That's number one. So I shared about this. I taught it. And then a couple of my male readers said to me, "You know, Vanessa, we think that there is a secret non-verbal cue between guys." No. I don't know what this cue is. Here's what they said. If you know a guy, and you're trying to acknowledge him, guide a guy, you nod. Yeah. "Good to see you." It's literally like an open gesture. You're open. If you don't know a guy, but you're trying to acknowledge his presence, you, "Hey, good to see you." "Oh, wow, that's so true." Is it true? That's so true. Yeah. "Oh, good to see you." Yeah. Yeah. Acknowledged. "Good to see you." Yes. "Hey, what's up, buddy?" Okay. Yeah. It's so true. Okay. So this is so I snuck it into the book. Wow. That's fascinating. I wonder, is that like biology? Is that? Yes. Like, okay, here's my, here's my theory on this. As soon as I heard this, I was like, and I started looking. I started watching men. I asked my husband. I asked my guy friends. And this is why I think it happens. When we know someone, we expose our jugular. So this is a very vulnerable part of our body. And we're saying, "I know you. I trust you. Look, I'm opening. I'm acknowledging you. And I feel trust with you." Yes. When you don't know someone, what you want to show respect. You're not down to protect your jugular. I don't know you, but I see you. I got you. I got you. I'm here for you. Kind of. Yeah. But I'm here. [Laughter] Do I know you or do I not know you? So in that sense, makes sense. This is a high warmth cue. "Hey, buddy, what's up?" It's high warmth. You're showing your jugular. This is a high confidence cue. "Hello, good to see you." I look ridiculous. I don't do that. All right. I'm like, "Hi." You know? So I think that that, that was so surprising to me because there's so much more, I think, to be done. Like, I list 96 cues in the book. Right? There are. That's just the start. I think I'm, we're discovering more and more. And that's where, like, the excitement comes in. So that was the new one. That's so cool.

And what about, what are the three most powerful cues, body language cues of leaders? Okay, so this is the competence area of the spectrum. Right? So when we talk about charisma, we talk about warmth, competence, charisma, and danger. Okay? So three body languages of leaders. Um, the example that I give that I really like to teach from is the Nixon-Kennedy presidential debate. Okay? Have you ever heard of this?

Hysterical. We were not around these debates. I'd be shocked if you'd seen it. So we want to be in the high. There you go. The high charisma. There you go. Yes. We want to be doing those cues all the time. That's right. We want to be in the star. So right now, we're, you're talking about competence. You just asked me about leaders. So leaders typically are high competence. And they can go into warmth when they want to. High competence and charisma, right? Are they high competence and high warmth? Yes. Exactly, right? So highly competent cues. If you know that you're warm, and you need to dial up competence to hit the sweet spot, these are some cues that will help you. And the, my favorite is from the Nixon-Kennedy presidential debate. So this, have you heard about this debate before? It's kind of remind me. Okay. You're like, "Actually, yes. I watched it on the History Channel." I mean, maybe you mentioned this before, but isn't one of them was angry or something? I can't remember what happened. But so this is, this is why I like this story is because it created a puzzle. And I like puzzles. So here's what happened. During this part in U.S. history, Nixon and Kennedy were running for president. And about half the population watched the presidential debate on television. And about half the population listened to the debate on the radio. Everyone who watched the debate was sure that Kennedy won. And everyone who listened to the debate was sure that Nixon won. Wow. And it was the first time where there was discrepancy between the winners, the perceived winners, because one sounded competent, the other one looked warm. One sounded like a leader, and one looked like a leader. Ooh, you match them together. That's the sweet spot. That's the star. Okay. That's the star. Exactly. So one sounded like a leader. So Nixon sounded like a leader. He had really good vocal power. But he looked like a loser. And I hate to use that word, but he himself said in his memoirs, he believes he lost that entire presidential election based on the first few seconds of that debate. First few seconds. He himself said that. What he's, what happened, that's always, it was kind of like the Shark Tank guy trying to buy back confidence and warmth. He gave away his competence in the first few seconds of the debate. So anyone who saw it went, "Oh, no, no, no, no. This guy is not a winner." And this was before they even spoke. So in the first 30 seconds, the debate, neither of them speak. You see them on camera. And if you were watching, you saw, "Wow, Nixon looks so weak." And here's why. What most people don't know is that Nixon had just injured his knee on the campaign trail, and he had been in the hospital for the week. So he came in with a bandaged knee and a fever. Kennedy had been tanning. Yeah. He was, he was like, nice suited, everything. He was ready to go. And also, a kind of funny thing is, the debate was in black and white. And, um, Nixon's suit was too brown. It blended into the background. So we, I talked about color psychology at the very end of the book. Colors. And so that was an issue. One, he didn't pop as much on the black and white. Okay. So he shows up, and he's sitting, what's called the runner's stance. The runner's stance is when someone's, you know, runners before they win a race, they like go into the crunch position, one leg back. We know this as a readiness position universally across cultures. If someone's about to run away from us, they will get into this position, right? Like they're literally about to run away. It's why sprinters start a race like that. Well, Nixon spent the first 30 seconds of the debate in that position because it was knee, because if he was knee pain, he was trying to like, he was nursing it. Yeah. But it made it look like he was about to run out on us. That's from a, just a quick non-verbal perspective. The first impression was, "Where is he going?" Even though people didn't consciously realize it, he looked not planted. And we don't like leaders who aren't going to stay with us. Whereas Kennedy, on the other hand, he had a really nice, relaxed cross. And he used what's called humility hands. Research calls it humility hands. Humility hands are when your hands are on your leg, and they're resting. Humility, humble, humble. So he looked relaxed, calm, here to stay. You know, "Not 10 minutes. I'm here. I'm your leader." Right? So he looked quote-unquote presidential. So first, the runner stance. Second, this is in the first 10 seconds sitting. They were sitting next to each other. No. So here's your first snapshot of the debate. And you see Kennedy, humility hands. Yes. Relaxed, sitting tall. And then you see Nixon, who's like, "Ready, ready to leave." And we see these cues, and people already made their decision. But people who were listening didn't see any of that, right? They heard the voice. I heard the voice. And so Nixon lost the debate to Kennedy. He lost the election to Kennedy. And he said in his memoirs, "That's why." Is because of the cues I sent. And so for leaders, here's what we want to think about. One is relaxed, here to stay. So the more you can settle into your place, the distance. This is such a weird measurement. I want to see the biggest distance between your earlobe and your shoulder. The reason it's not like this. Yes. Yes. Because why? When we are confident, we are winners. We take up as much space as possible, right? We broaden our shoulders. We tilt our head towards the sky. Winners feel pride. So we look at the distance between someone's ear and shoulder. We're like, "Oh, he looks, she looks confident." When someone hops on a video call, this is the mistake I see. "Hi, everyone." Shoulders pinched up towards ears. And we wonder why people aren't taking us seriously. We wonder why people are interrupting us. Is because this distance. If I'm like this, "Hey, everyone, happy Monday." With your tonality as well. But yeah, right? Like if I start a video call like this, "So, um, today we're going to talk about some updates, and I'm going to go over some different slides with you, and we're going to wait a few minutes so people log on." Rightly so. Horrible. If I'm on your team, are they? Is everyone just like, "Hey, yes." Are you just calling each other out on your soul? Everyone's a winner on my team. They're amazing, right? Like we, we like, play music. Like, yeah, right. Of course. You can lean in sometimes. You can. But in that first impression, especially, right? It's like, "Hey, good morning, everyone. Good to see you." So I want you to think about profile pictures, videos. I love chairs with armrests. Why? It helps our, our shoulders stay grounded. So that's the biggest one is taking up space. The second thing that happens that also gives you more vocal power. So if I were to do my, this entire interview with my, uh, shoulders up, it would look bizarre, right? I would look scared. You would be more closed. Yeah. It would be. And so if I tense my vocal cords, right now, I'll begin to go into vocal fry. Vocal fry, have you heard this before? When your voice sounds like sizzling bacon? I just don't know. I'm not sure. But like, I was just thinking about it. And if it's, oh my goodness, it's horrible. And the reason why we'll accidentally go into fry is because we're literally clenching our vocal cords, and they cannot get enough breath. Vocal fry, not to be gross, but vocal fry happens when our vocal cords rattle together. And that's what we're hearing is the rattling. That's why we don't like it. And so when you have space, you prevent vocal fry. Okay. If you hear yourself in vocal fry, here's the quickest fix. You have to speak louder, right? So the best way to get rid of vocal fry is to just up your volume. It will push more air through your vocal cords. It makes them, uh, hum. Yeah. If other people on your team are using vocal fry, just ask them to speak up and speak a little louder. Yeah. That would usually get them out of uncle friend. Okay. Little secret. Don't, don't blame it on me. But that's a really easy way to, if you're interviewing someone and they're in vocal fry, and you know what's going to drive your listeners crazy, just like, you know, the audio, they just can't hear. "Could you speak a little bit louder?" It will work.

Now, what's the difference between the humble hands on a knees or on a table, I guess, right? Here is this work on a table as well? Yes. Yes. Versus hand over top of the other hand, which is relaxed but also his closed body? Yes. Versus two hands, two hands side by side, relaxed, not like intense, but relaxed, side by side. What's the difference between these two?

Perfect questions. So your book cover, your book cover is hand over hand. Yeah. And they're relaxed. Yeah. And it's a closed posture, but it works, right? And so it's okay to.

As long as your hands are relaxed, I don't care if they're closed or open. Now, I do care about this. So, when we protect our trunk, arms crossed, yes, I do care about this. And why is because when we are crossing like this, I know it's comfortable for some people. What research finds is two things: one is, we look more closed off, so we never want to close off. But second, they found that when people are trying to be creative or strategic, they literally cannot generate as much ideas when they are like this.

What's the alternative? Humility. Hands open, posture, holding a drink, typing at a computer, taking notes, anything else? Anything else like that? Anything else? So, I love props. So, I, the way that I don't cross my arms, because I actually like to cross my arms, relaxing, you know, kind of like, I know. But actually, if you're thinking or processing, cross away. Right? If you're, if you like, take a minute, take a step back, it's a great way to break. So, I hold a clicker for presentations and a pen, you know, like for slides, because every time I think about crossing my arms, I remember, oh, I have the clicker.

When we think about getting rid of, I call them like bad nonverbal habits, right? So, ticks. So, um, crossing arms, uh, those are all bad nonverbal habits. Slouching. Slouching, yeah. It's really hard to just say, "Don't do that." So, what I'd rather you do is replace it. Displacement tactics. Okay? So, you don't, you know, you cross your arms. Can you hold a coffee mug? Can you hold a pen? Can you hold the clicker? Can you always have a Moleskine notebook? I have a student of mine who always has a Moleskine. He doesn't need it. He just holds it. He has it. He opens it up and he'll write the date and the meeting name and what he had for breakfast. But that's it. He literally uses it because if he doesn't, he puts his hands in his pocket or crosses his arms. And so he has it in front of him because it helps him feel very grounded. A replacement tool. It's a replacement tool. So, I would think about what are some tools you can use that will help you do that.

What about like, what about the, uh, the finger crossing? So, like, look at the difference. Like this. When I'm white-knuckling, you can see that I am tense. I'm trying to keep it together. Vanessa, right? Like this is this. So, this is called a steeple. The fingertip. Oh, I love a steeple. Yeah. So, it steeples when the tips of your fingers touch, and like a church steeple, it's like Mr. Wonderful just does this the whole time. Exactly. You will notice that when, yes, when Mr. Wonderful is trying, contemplating a deal, he'll go like this. Why doesn't it make you feel like you're just in control? And so this is a, a really good power gesture. It's one of our competence cues. That's why I have it on the cover of the book, is to show high competence. Um, because it's about getting in control. The steeple, we love it because it shows our palms, which shows we're not concealing anything. Do you want the steeple off pointed at someone? Or any of those? Any and all, whatever that would appear like the diamond. I wouldn't do this. I wouldn't be like, "Hello everyone, good morning." So, here, or pointed out. That was right. Totally fine. You'll notice that like Mr. Wonderful does it perfectly. He'll like go like this. He'll tap it. The only thing I would be careful of is drumming fingers. That looks like Mr. Burns, evil, right? Don't look like you're scheming like that. Can look a little bit crazy. But if you're like, "Oh, yes, I'm thinking about it now."

I want to give a caveat. Please only use cues that you've tried on a few times and feel natural. There are some cues in the book where there's 96 cues in the book that I still don't like. I've tried them every which way and I do not like them. What's the most powerful cue that you don't like, but you know it's extremely effective in charisma or connection or trust or probably leadership? Volume. So, research shows that people who speak in louder volumes literally are taken more seriously. But that makes me a little bit uncomfortable. And so, even on stage, when I'm like, really excited, I still don't want to be like, "Let me tell you about something very..." Oh god, that's horrible. Yeah, I don't like it. But volume dynamism is a cue I teach in the book that I have trouble with. But the research shows that people are more trustworthy or more competent. Competent. It is a competent cue because if you're soft, it's like you don't believe in your words. It's actually volume dynamism. So, it's being able to use your volume to match your intention. So, for example. So, tonality and fluctuation at the right moment. Yes. Yes, yes. So, like, for example, I feel a little ridiculous when I do this. This is why this is what's cute that I struggle with, which is like, "Let me tell you about something super important." Yeah. I just feel ridiculous. But some people do it so well. It works. Oh, it works so well. Someone is your people are so charismatic. Yes. When you can get the tonality, the fluctuation is out of this of the tonality. They taught this to us in Toastmasters as one of the ten initial lessons of being a competent communicator. One of the exercises is to give a five-minute speech using tonality. It's very, you have to like find the cues of when you like pause and slow it and then you bring it out. Right here. It's like, how do you make it authentic? Yeah. So, some people do it naturally. They're so good at it. Gifted. That is not me. That's why I don't have a podcast. That's why I have a YouTube channel. Right? Like on YouTube, I can use my gestures and my facial expressions. It's why I don't have a podcast. I feel I am not dynamic enough in my vocal power. And so that's one cue that I, I work on, but I have a hard time being in control of my volume. Yeah. Okay. So, we have that. These hand gestures. This is fine on the table. Also, yep. All good. Relaxing. What about hands open on the table? Okay. So, let's talk about palm versus palm down. Yeah. Okay. So, when I was using for the book, I was looking for my favorite or cues hiding in plain sight. Those are my favorite. I, oh, I just used it. Yeah, you did. That was very organic, very natural. I'm really happy right now. Like you're sticking to a girlfriend, just naturally flowing through. Let me tell you right here. Yeah. Okay. So, that was great. It was very exciting. I felt very excited. Okay. So, I love cues hiding in plain sight. And so, I had a lot of political examples, a lot of celebrity examples, and Britney and Lance Armstrong. But I wanted historical examples. And so, I was looking at famous paintings and I noticed The Last Supper, painted by Leonardo da Vinci, has hidden cues in it. You'll notice that, uh, the way that it's positioned, Christ is positioned in the middle. So, Da Vinci positioned in the middle. Okay. Most people do not realize that in that picture, Christ is doing this. He has one palm up and one palm down. It's hard to see it in that. Yeah. His left palm is up. Yeah. The right palm is down on the table. Right now. This is very interesting because like, most people don't look at this right away. But why? Why is he doing that? Why would he put his hand like that? Why would he put his hand like that? And what do those mean? So, let's look at the research. Palms open are universal gestures of openness. When we want something, what do we do? We hold open our hand. Me, yeah. When we're offering something, what do we do? We hold up on our hands. When we're open to suggestion, we show our palm and we have it visible. A palm down gesture is a high competence cue. It shows dominance. It shows directiveness. You might think of, I won't mention them by name, some famous dictators of the past who did palm down gestures. Why? That is a very dominant gesture. When you are giving people are giving directives, they often say, "Be quiet. Sit down. Right. I don't want to hear from you right now." It's a very direct, dismissive, too, in a sense, right? Especially if you shake it at someone. So, why would we have these two cues? They perfectly balance each other out. Christ is depicted as the highest, most charismatic person in the painting. And so, what does he do? He literally balances warmth and competence. He's showing the universal gesture of openness and giving, while at the same time, a universal gesture of direct authority. When was this painting? 1498. Wow. So, Da Vinci, I think, hid cues that signaled the viewer, "Wow, he's charismatic." The takeaway from this, by the way, is if you're giving a directive and you don't want it to be questioned, you're better off giving palms down. You're better off saying, "Listen, team, we've got to get this done. We've got to be efficient. We got to be streamlined. I need you to do it for me. Just go. Yeah. Just go. Just do it." If you want feedback, like when I take Q&A, I'm like, "What can I do? What questions can I answer?" Right? I'm giving open. That's a very, very subtle but very powerful cue. Okay. So, that's how Christ has depicted balancing. The other thing that he does is, if you measure the amount of space that Christ takes up in the painting, you'll notice he takes up the most space. He is literally has the most distance between his shoulder and his earlobes. Yes, because he's tilting. So, tilting is a warmth gesture. And so, he's the only pictured person who is head tilt with also expansive posture. So, there's all these hidden cues that I think paint this picture behind what's happening.

Now, if you look at Judas. Now, if you didn't know anything about this history, Judas would be the character painted with the most intrigue. If you notice, he's also holding a clenched fist, right? He's the only character in the picture who has a clenched fist and is distancing. He's literally turning his body away from us. And we know, we already talked about the distancing is a danger zone cue. So, here is the person who is later about to betray Christ. And how does Da Vinci signal that? He hides cues. He shows a clenched fist, which shows withholding and anger. And then he shows that he's about to lie. That he literally turns his body away. The reason I show this is because I think that we don't realize there's these views being sent to us all the time. You know, I do a lot of breakdowns on my YouTube channel of politicians. And we don't realize, even when we look at political campaigns in one picture, there's thousands of cues being sent to us. And we should know what's being sent to us.

The thumb pinch. Oh, the thumb pinch. Obama, right? Okay. He did this all the time. Did anything? So, here's what's funny. Is Obama used to be a pointer. We don't like being pointed at. So, there's something about it as humans. It's like, "Let me tell you what to do." It's kind of a better. Then. So, I think he was coached because all of a sudden, he never pointed again and he only used the thumb pinch. The thumb pinch is a very clever gesture because in Western cultures, this means good job. Thumbs up. Good job. Or like me, like literally social media. Like, this is what we see. Like, like, like. Give me a like. And so, the thumb pinch is a very subtle thumbs up gesture. So, every time he does it, it makes you think, "Oh, first of all, it's not. He never clenches. It's relaxed. It's relaxed. It's kind of like an open thumb. It's an open up because he's saying, "Okay, okay. Like, like, like." And he's also saying, "This is a point I want you to remember." It literally looks like a bullet point. Am I right? I'm going to give you a point that you should remember. Yes. And Obama, I'm going to do an Obama impression. It's going to embarrass us both. Okay. I'm not very good at impressions. But Obama does this thing that I just, I find so interesting. So, Obama uses a downward inflection. So, we talked about the question inflection, right? So, when we go up at the end of our sentences. Obama goes down at the end of his sentences. He literally slings down his words. And downward inflection, we hear is very authoritative. So, I'm going to do an Obama impression. Okay. So, this is him slinging down his words. He goes, "Sasha, Malia, it's very important that what we do today is going to be remembered forever. And if we don't do those things, we are going to be in deep trouble." I, that's a terrible Obama. You can hear what I'm saying, right? Of course. He slings his words down. And that is very authoritative. So, even that vocal cue makes us think, "Well, he knows what he's talking about, right?" It's more authoritative, more confidence, more authoritative. Versus if he were to say, "Sasha, Malia, I have something really important to tell you. It's really important we do this for our future." Could you imagine if he gave speeches like that? And so, even that vocal inflection worked for him because he also creates a lot of space in his mouth. He has a lot of space in the middle part of his mouth. So, he talks very deeply in his mouth. And that helps keep his resonance really low because he has a space in the back of his mouth. And that creates a lot of resonance. It's a good. Thank you. It's a good impression. I like it. Yeah, that was good. You're not embarrassed for me? No, that's great. It's because he creates this low resonance point. And we like it. So, that's that downward inflection is really important.

So many great cues in here. The power of the pause. The pause for power. So, a mistake that I used to make is I would pause at the end of my sentence before continuing on to my next sentence, and I'd get interrupted, right? So, the mistake that people will make is they'll give a thought, pause, and then keep speaking. Now, pauses are quite powerful. Powerful people typically use pauses in their speech. But if you pause in between your sentences, people will interrupt you because they think you're done. You're actually better off using what I call a power pause. A power pause is when you pause right before you give something away. So, not a day, not the end of a sentence, right in the middle of a sentence, before you're going to share something really. So, let me tell you something really important. That's it. Exactly. So, like, so, so here's the mistake that people make is they'll say, "Something really important happened in my childhood that I want to tell you about." Pause. "It was when I was..." Okay, people are like, "Should I talk to you? Should I ask another question? What should I say?" It actually creates conversational confusion, which is the last thing you want. Versus, "I want to share a really important story from my childhood." That creates a lot more intrigue because like, "A story? Oh, from your childhood?" And I have no desire to interrupt. So, that's a very advanced tip. That's that's towards the end of the book. It's a very advanced tip because if you have trouble with people interrupting you, I would practice switching your pauses and think about that. What's the drama you can get? Drama. Yeah. Create the volume. Pauses. Yeah. And by the way, Obama did that very well. He would, he would deliver a point, right? He would go into his resonance and he would say, "What this country needs is better systems." Right? I'm saying nothing, but you're like, "What's better? What is it? You know, what is the thing that we need?" It's not what you say, it's how you say it. That's it. Um, although, although how you say it is important too. That's really the confidence. That's the last chapter. So, the last chapter, I have to end on is verbal. Because yes, we spend a lot of the book talking about nonverbal and vocal, but your words matter. As we talked about with achievement-oriented words. But man, if you can deliver achievement-oriented words with power pausing with a steeple, look out. Look out world, you're coming. That's big.

I am a big believer that the most important thing we can do is learn how to heal the different traumas or triggers from our past that get us in a reactive state. When the world is happening and we become uptight, reactive, we say things we don't want to say, we regret the things we do, we act out, whatever it might be. Healing the past memories, pain, frustrations, whatever you want to call it, I think it's one of the most powerful things. The second most powerful thing we can do is learn how to master the art of communication and learn how to be comfortable in our own skin and our own voice. You know, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" was a book that was extremely powerful for so many people to learn how to socially connect. And again, in life, we are either enrolling other people in us, in our vision, or we're unenrolling them in us, in our vision, based on how we communicate, how we connect with people, whether we're trustworthy or untrustworthy. This book and your research and studies and content has been extremely powerful for so many people, including myself. I learn a lot and I feel like this is something I'm always studying. Yeah, because I feel like you can never learn enough of understanding the science of people. Yes. And so, I, one, want people to learn how to continue to heal. It's a journey. Yes. But two, I want them to learn how to understand people. Again, if we go back to the quote that changed my early adult life, which was, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." If you can learn how to communicate that to people, it'll take you much farther. You know, you can, you can get by with less skills and less smarts if you understand how to be deeply empathetic and have connection skills with other people. It'll take you a long way. Eventually, you've got to have some confidence in there and be skilled. And of course, everyone who's watching does, right? Like, we know that you've got to have skills. And I think it's always important to invest in developing new skills as well to make you more competent. But this, uh, this book, your work is extremely valuable and important. "Cues Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication: Small Signals, Incredible Impact." Vanessa Van Edwards. I want everyone to get this book. I want you to buy a few copies for your friends, for the introvert friends in your life, for the socially awkward friends, for the anxious friends. Charisma is a, is a superpower. A superpower. It is a superpower when used correctly. And here's the thing, if you use it incorrectly, you'll be humbled at some point in your life. That's right. Eventually, bad things will happen, and they'll keep happening. Oh, we'll train you, drain you. So, you're going to be humbled by the world, uh, if you, if you don't use humility with your charisma. But I'm very excited about the book. I can't wait to dive in more and go back to this interview even more. I want people to get the book. They can follow you on the website, scienceofpeople.com, which has got an amazing newsletter that I subscribe to and get a lot of wisdom from. Thank you. You're always sharing new research and all this stuff in there. Scienceofpeople.com. Uh, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, V. Van Edwards. That's me everywhere on social media. Your YouTube as well. It's extremely fun to watch you just break down those things visually. Yes. So, I, there were a couple things that didn't, I didn't get to put in the book because they were too visual. Like, it was just too hard to explain it. And so, if you want to just get a little taste test, I break down the rock. Because, yeah, it's great. Who doesn't want to see many, like dozens of customers? I break down the rock. I do a deep dive of Britney Spears because I didn't even, that was a whole book, right? Like, I didn't have time to do it. I do Morgan Freeman, how does he get that vocal power? I talk about how he does it. Princess Diana, why were we so intrigued by her? And Justin Bieber. So, I break down some cues in there. You just want a little taste test. And that's all science of people. Or is that? That's on YouTube. And on science of people, and we have our interview on on there too. So, people want to go watch that, they can. Yes. Final two questions. Before I ask them, I want to acknowledge you, Vanessa, for constantly showing up. I think it's, I think introverts who felt like they grew up socially awkward, takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there, to constantly be in front of a camera, to be speaking on stages, to be learning this work, and then sharing your work. I think it's really challenging to do for introverts. So, for the journey that you've been on, to try healing. Yeah, exactly. Healing is big too. But the journey you've had, and you constantly keep showing up and putting this work out there, is really inspiring. So, I acknowledge you for that. Thank you. Um, you've, I asked you this question before, but this is called the three truths question. Imagine it's your last day on earth, many years away. And for whatever reason, all of your work has to go with you to another place. So, no one has access to your content. If you can leave three lessons to the world behind, what would you say would be those three lessons for you? Life is too short to fake it. Find the real warmth or the real competence, or get rid of it. There are unique flavors of charisma. You don't have to be the bubbly extrovert. You can be the wise, competent sage, or the quiet, powerful leader, or the empathetic, compassionate healer. Those are all charismatic. There are different flavors. And lastly, your words have power. Your cues have power. Don't waste them. We can change someone's physiology with a single word. So, with every word you put out there, think about how can you infect people for good. That is powerful. What's the most powerful word we can infect someone with in a positive way? I think gratitude. I think every time you say thank you, I'm appreciative, I'm grateful, you're gifting them honor, and you're feeling grateful yourself. It's the only word I can think of that has a double effect, both ways. Wow. So, can I end on gratitude? I want to thank you so much because you created a tipping point in my career where you believed in me, you listened to me wholeheartedly, and you put my work out there, and people listened, and it was a total tipping point in in my career. And so, um, you made me do podcasts. You made me realize I can do them in their safe spaces, which I was a little afraid of. Um, you made me realize that I can find my people, and I just have to speak to them. And so, I just, and you always say, you always say, "Yes, how can I help?" Which I'm so grateful for. Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you in return. You know, it's interesting, appreciation, the word gratitude, and appreciation. Vanessa said that it made me reflect on my girlfriend and how I feel like every day I tell her how much I appreciate her. You know, I'm like, "Beautiful, I'm so, I'm so grateful for how you did this," or just this thing you did for me, "I appreciate it so much." And every time I do it, now that I reflect on it, she's always just like, it just warms her up even more. Yes. Yes. Because we don't often feel gratitude in our relationships, right? Like, especially, I've been married for 10 years with my husband for 16 years. And you get very caught up in the logistics. Yeah. And so, for anyone who's watching, I think we take the people we love for granted. We think about giving gifts of word to our colleagues, or to our clients, or to our customers. But like, don't forget the person you live with. Don't forget the person you care about. Don't get stuck in the logistics, right? Where you're like, you know, "Hey, honey, take the kids." And so, I think that gratitude is especially important at home. And I think we, the more comfortable we are, the less we are gracious, the less gratitude we have. And so, I hope that, 10, 20, yeah, I mean, everyone in their first, I guess, year or two, you're like, "I love you so much. You're amazing." Not everyone. No. Not everyone. No. Not everyone. And so, I would say, like, in the first couple of years, no. I think saying that to her as a gift. And so, if just your goal is 10 years from now, you can say that to her again. What a beautiful goal. Often, she'll be like, "You're the most amazing man ever." And I'm like, "I don't feel like I'm doing anything. I'm just saying I appreciate you. I'm just like, man, I really, I'm so grateful you just did this. Thank you. I really appreciate the way you said this." Like, I don't think I'm like doing something extraordinary. You know, it's big. She's like, "You have no idea." Yeah. It's like, "You're the most amazing man." I'm like, "I'm not like doing some grand gesture. I'm literally just saying, like, I'm focusing on something that I really appreciate that she did every day. And I'm like, I really appreciate the way you showed up here, here, here." And that's why I think gratitude is the most powerful word there is. Because just being appreciative of her makes her think of it as a grand gesture. Imagine that. Like, one word of gratitude is a grand gesture. It doesn't take a boat ride down the water. It doesn't take, you know, 12 dozen roses. It's like, just telling someone you appreciate them. Yeah. And if that's one thing you take away from this interview, that you will right now text someone that you love them and you appreciate them and thank them for being them. That's big. People remember that stuff. That's a gift. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Final question. What's your definition of greatness? I love this because this is my third time here, and I've had, I think my definition has changed over time. It's being in integrity. So, it's going back to that important thing. Greatness is showing up as you are, how you feel, and be feeling free to be that way. So, that means you like the people in your life, you respect the people in your life, you're showing up congruent, you're showing up with lots of integrity where your cues match your words, which match your emotions. And I think that I'm, I'm my greatest self when I can show up somewhere as myself and not worry about having to hide, fake, or change. Vanessa, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening. What would be three questions if you could only ask three questions to a human being to figure out if they're telling a lie or telling the truth? How would you start those three questions? What would they be? TED. T. E. D. Tell me. Explain. Describe. Then I would fill in the rest.