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

0:00 your brain is 12.5 times more likely to believe my gesture over my words and that's because it is very hard to lie with our gestures for example you want to do little experiment with me sure okay I want you to say five but hold up the number three five hard right yeah I had to think about them separately this is why Liars use less gestures but no tool like that is critical if you're trying to set yourself up for success and we're going to go through all of them oh yeah Vanessa van Edwards is a behavioral investigator who science back research from body language and micro Expressions to vocal tones and first Impressions has revolutionized the way we build confidence and create more authentic relationships in every social and professional interaction I'm a recovering awkward person and I thought that Charisma was genetic and I didn't know how to have conversations I didn't even know how to have friends then I discovered that highly successful people speak a hidden language and that is the

0:46 language of cu's this directly from the research they know that blueprints will talk to anyone they know that if you sit within 25 ft of a high performer your own performance improves by 15% and that there's a direct correlation between confidence and anxiety and the distance p shoulder and our ear Lo so interesting they also know that 82% of our impressions of people are based on warmth and competence so if you worry that people don't take you seriously you have trouble getting raises you feel anxious and overwhelmed I have five power cues for competence but if you have ever been told you're intimidated hard to talk to I want you to use these five warmth cues first what about how to get a partner in terms of cues and body language let's start with a study that blew my mind it's impossible to be attracted to someone who that's so crazy just such a small little thing this has always blown my mind a

1:33 little bit 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribe to the show so could I ask you for a favor before we start if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the Subscribe button and my commitment to you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my power me and my team to make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to your feedback we'll find the guest that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so much [Music] much Vanessa van Edwards for someone that's just clicked on this conversation now and they're wondering why they should stay and listen to what we're going to talk about what would you say to them very highly successful people speak a hidden language and that is the

2:19 language of cu's if you don't know how to read the cues people are sending to you if you don't know how to control the cues you're sending to others you are missing a crucial element of success how do you quantify that in a way that I know that it's true are there studies or stats that reinforce what you've just said 82% of our impressions of people are based on warmth and competence that means that if we can control our warmth cues and our competence cues we know we are taking care of 82% of our impression and that is critical to being more memorable to being more confident having clearer communication and taking that a bit further what areas of my life will that as impact so if I'm warm and I'm competent which you're telling me are things that I can control what are the

3:05 downstream consequences of that so I think my mission is to tackle a big lie and that is that smart people will translate their book smarts into people smarts but actually you're no matter how smart you are if you do not know how to communicate with people you can't connect with people you can't have good relationships you can't have supportive friendships you get looped into difficult people or toxic people you have trouble getting raises or promotions when you are able to control your communication it helps you not be overlooked not be misunderstood and that affects your friendships your partner your career and also helps you feel more confident walking into a room and what is your research based on are you a researcher have you done sort of first-party research yourself where were

3:51 you drawing from so I'm a recovering awkward person so I used to believe that you were either born with Charisma or you weren't that Charisma was genetic and in 2002 I discovered a study that changed my life which said that Charisma can be learned this is when I started to tackle to figure out okay if Charisma can be learned how do we learn it how can we learn blueprints for conversation how can we learn Frameworks for how we connect and how we socialize that's when I started doing my own research so I'm a behavioral researcher and a bestselling author on communication and I specialize and helping very brilliant very smart awkward folks not be overlooked and give me some sort of depth as to the amount of research and the quantity of research that you've done how many people you studied how many hours of footage Etc

4:36 yep so I uh developed my first framework about 12 years ago and we've helped 400,000 students learn that framework Master it and Conquer awkwardness or feel more confident some of those folks had very professional goals like getting raised or promotion other folks were so socially an anxious and so awkward they couldn't make friends other people were looking for their soulmate or their partner and so 400,000 students have told me that this framework Works nobody teaches us this stuff today or actually extroverts tend to teach it so I read the quintessential How to Win Friends and Influence People back in the day and that's a wonderful book but it's a book written by an extrovert if you are not naturally extroverted I'm not naturally extroverted I'm more Amber verted it is very hard to learn how to communicate if you don't naturally gravitate towards

5:22 people I was like there has to be a way to teach introverts and Everts to be able to feel confident without having to fake it till you make it without having to pretend to be extroverted or outgoing to be taken seriously or to be charismatic what's an Ambert so Amber verts get energy from the right people in the right places so for example in this interview I love one-on-one conversations I feel myself but if we were to go to a loud bar or a nightclub I would completely shut down and want to be alone Amber verts can dial up extroversion to hit their goals so if they know they have to be friendly and meet people for an interview or a position they can do it but they need lots of recharge time the reason why it's important to know if you're an Amber vert is because you should know what are the people and places that drain you there are certain people when

6:09 you open your calendar and you look at it and you're like oh I have to be with that person that is someone that drains you they do not bring out your extroversion or your natural love of people there are also certain people who you feel you could talk to for hours they give you social energy they charge your social battery so the very first thing I have students do is sit and make a list who are the people who give you energy who charge you up who are the people who take from you those are people that we want to put boundaries around we want to say no to we want to limit as much as possible and then also the places where do you thrive is it conferences one-on-one business or is it friends socializing parties knowing those places helps you optimize your social battery and when you say cues which you said at the start of this conversation people think of just body language is that the sort of full extent

6:54 of areas that you focus on yes so there so there cues come into four different channels there is body language that's facial expressions gestures posture but there's also vocal so vocal cues are the tone of our voice our Pace our volume our Cadence there's also the words we use obviously verbal cues the types of words that I'm choosing to use are signaling my warmth and competence to you and the last the smallest channel is our ornaments the colors we wear the jewelry we wear the way we wear our hair way we wear your facial hair those are also signaling different things or queuing people to feel a certain way about you and what about what we say mhm because I know you're writing a book about I don't know if I can leak this but here we go yeah can you're writing a book about conversation so what we say so I did not realize how powerful our

7:41 words are and here's a study that really changed the way I think about this very simple study they brought people into the lab and they sold them up into two different groups in one group they said today you're going to play the community game and they played kind of a prisoners dilemma type of game the second group they came into the same room the same researcher they said good morning today you're going to play the Wall Street game the trick was the games were exactly the same there was no difference between the two games what they found was everyone who was told they were playing the Wall Street game shared an average of one-third of their profits everyone who was told they were playing the community game shared an average of two-thirds of their profits this means that that one word Community game Community made people think and feel more about community and made them act

8:27 more collaboratively this means means that the words we're using in our emails our subjects our texts our LinkedIn profile headlines are queuing people for how they should treat us one really simple way to think about this is your calendar I send out calendar invites multiple times a week to clients to friends when we have meeting one-on-one call video interview I'm being queed for nothing those words are so overused they're sterile if you add cues that Prime people to feel or think a certain way you're actually setting them up for Success so 2025 wins collaborative session strategy meeting goal meeting goal overview teamwork collab session those words are actually queuing that person's brain every single time they

9:12 open their calendar that when we read the a word like collaborate we are literally more likely to be collaborative so the words that we use even one single word can actually change the way people think it's funny because our entire lives are people like the difference between me being a president prime minister superb salesperson exceptional entrepreneur is probably just my understanding of other people and how I show up in my words and my cues and so when you think about it like that this could be for many people the most important subject for them to improve upon I would even go further and say if you don't have people skills you cannot succeed you cannot succeed in life you cannot succeed in love you cannot succeed in business it doesn't matter how smart you are you need people to

10:00 have success so this is I think the most fundamental skill that people can invest in and how many people did you say you've taught people skills to 400,000 students and is there a particular case study that you stands out to you as being the most extreme in terms of case studying the fact that someone can go from zero to a wonderful place yes and it's my very brilliant but stoic students so I've noticed especially over the last 10 years I've been been doing this for about 17 years in the last 10 years especially my most extreme students are the students who are very very smart very talented and good at what they do but they don't know what cues to send and so they completely shut down they try to become stoic unreadable they try to have no facial expressions

10:46 they literally try to poke her face all the time and as they try to make connections made a partner make friends people don't like them people don't trust them they can't get bu to their ideas and those are the students where I see the biggest transformation they don't realize that muting muting your cu's is a danger zone que if you try to be stoic and unreadable people literally cannot get a read on you and so my biggest Transformations have happened when I can say you don't need to hide your true feelings it's about amplifying them with the right cues there's a famous example of this uh Jamie simonoff founder of ring so I don't know if you ever watch Shark Tank yeah so in this episode for those who haven't seen it Jamie simoff entered the tank and pitched a billion doll idea literally a

11:32 billion dollar idea because it went on to raise funding from Sha and Richard Branson but in the tank he pitches the idea and he gets so much push back and so much negotiation and he walks out of the tank without a deal in fact the Sharks did not like him what happened he had the billion billion dollar idea but he did not know how to share it this is the biggest transformation I see is people who have brilliant ideas they're good people they're hardworking people and they cannot get byy in they cannot make friends they cannot find partners how do they feel so if you had to say words that make them feel seen right now how are they feeling as they're listening to this overwhelmed getting into interaction just social overthinking not knowing what to do not knowing what to feel underestimated like people don't see you or the real potential that you have a

12:17 lack of confidence and fear afraid that if you are your true self or you try any of the things we're talking about people won't like you and I want to teach you that you can be yourself and you can be liked and you can find your people and that doesn't mean everyone's going to like you but it means if you signal the right things cues tell others how to treat you if you signal the right cues you will find your people one of the things that I was sort of inferring from what you said is the importance of understanding your resting face that's like the term we use in the UK resting face which is like when you're just listening or doing nothing like how does your face look yes and you're telling me that's really really important it's real so I call it resting bothered face resting father face RBF same thing okay

13:03 this is a real phenomenon which is that all of us have different faces at rest now I want you to look at my face for a second my face at rest I'm I'm going to rest it for a second my mouth angles down and sort of an upside on you so it looks like this you see how these are going down yeah are you laughing at my you a little bit okay so at rest I look a little sad yeah that is just my mouth at rest yours goes pretty straight across I just I just you have a lot of hood that's what that's called a lot of hood this is Hood yes yes so that probably makes you do people think you're angry or tired both both okay people never call me angry they call me sad you need to look in the mirror and figure out what is the default of your face if you're mouth angles down into a frown people are going to think you're sad you're going to have to be counteracting that with

13:49 your cues if you have a lot of hood above your eyes or you have these two vertical lines that appear between your eyebrows you actually don't have them but if some of people at rest even had those two lines people are going to think you're angry or frustrated if you have down eyes so I don't know if you noticed but my I have cat I've added Cat makeup to my eye ah yes yes that actually makes me look less less sad because also my eyes slope a little bit down at the end which makes me look sad okay so people often are like are you okay are you tired I'm like no that's just my face so I have ways that I counteract it one I get to use makeup which is a a great thing but second I know that I need to make my face a little bit more up right so when I am in ING with someone when I'm on video when I'm interview I typically rest my face in an upward position I've activated these muscles so don't I look happier

14:35 you do but you have have you got to consciously tell yourself to do that or do you just always remember no I have to consciously tell myself to do that now I only need to do that with people with a first impression or when I'm trying to make a good impression my team knows that I'm not sad right like my team they see me all the time they see without makeup they know that I'm not sad they know that's just my face so here's what's critical one you should know what is your resting default are you looking sad angry or afraid I afraid I didn't do so if you have um you actually have some I'm so sorry oh you're I'm so sorry I'm so sorry you have these lines some in the one of my team just left in the back so you have them just right here these light lines here so um when we're afraid we go and we raise our eyebrows up and our you can't see it because I have Botox on my forehead but um if you yeah there you go there you go that's no no open your eyes and go that's afraid so

15:23 the more you have those lines and the whites of your eyes appear like have you ever seen someone kind of walk around like a deer in the headlights yeah they make you feel anxious like if I were to do my entire interview a little bit wide-eyed you would not only feel anxious but you wouldn't believe what I was saying so you all should see if you have this default lines or if the whites of your eyes show look at your profile pictures in your profile pictures here are the three biggest mistakes you will make one they're showing for your eyes yeah yeah so people you are signaling accidentally anxiety so try to make sure you're not showing the upper whites second mistake you will do is they make a contempt micro expression so that's one-sided mouth raise so just do a one-sided mouth raise for me does it make you kind of feel like better don't do it for too long so if you do it at home you'll there's a facial feedback hypothesis when you make these faces it

16:09 actually triggers the emotion just like when you have the emotion it triggers the face there's a loop that happens so if people make the contempt expression one said in mouth rais not only do they look scornful kind of disdained they actually begin to feel better then and scornful so do not do an asymmetrical smile in your profile picture you are accidentally signaling NE negativity the third biggest mistake you will make is they uh you do an inauthentic smile in their picture the only true indicator of Happiness is when these cheek muscles are activated anyone can fake smile this is what mine looks like but you see people do it right yeah I do it yeah and people know I would rather you not no CU I I just don't have a good smile what look like what I am I

16:55 going to say no it's it's horrible is do you know I don't have your smile I literally have to do this when I take facez that's my smile I can't do the te thing I try to what am I going to do well you can smile without your teeth as long as it hits your upper cheek muscle so try just try this for me put your uh pen or your finger in between your mouth like this and smile as high as you can go oh that's better that reaches all the way up into your eyes do you see oh no not that looks so much better okay if you can activate these muscles in your profile picture you don't have to walk around like that but if you can act not the fear not the fear just here just here if you can activate these muscles in your profile picture it shows authentic happiness or don't smile at all I hate the advice just smile more fake Smiles do

17:41 not work Dr Barbara wild studied this she took pictures of people thinking of something they were authentically happy about took a picture of them smiling then she told them to fake smile and took a picture of them on the surface you really couldn't tell the difference between the two smiles they looked very similar but she had participants take mood tests then look at the picture look at one picture or the other group a group b people who saw the positive picture had an improved mood they caught the happiness from the photo people who looked at the fake smile had no mood change this means I would rather you have no smile at all or be neutral than fake smile but if you can smile in your picture it is so great for authentic happiness it sounds like it might be quite exhausting for some people because I think some people although they they're happy they feel good they're

18:28 nice people they do have that resting bothered face I think you called it and there's other people that I know that just kind of walk through life with this like resting smile yeah like we can all think of that person that's just like always happy yeah and then there's these other people who are like objectively happy too but they just have that resting bed face so it feels like life is going to be more exhausting for those people you know I think it's about choosing your heart right it is hard it is exhausting for me to show up to a meeting when I'm in a good mood and have someone be like are you sad and tired are you okay I'm like I'm fine I find that exhausting is it also a little exhausting to make sure that in my first impression I'm being a little bit more up with my face open eyes wide and open mouth a little less exhausting than that so I think you have to choose what are the cues you're going to purposefully add there are 97 cues

19:14 I've narrow down 97 that I think are the most important you get to make your own recipe you don't have to do all the cues if smiling is not your thing smiling is not essential for being charismatic when we talk about being charismatic it's about being warm and competent and you have 97 cues to choose from to make that warmth and competence recipe and so you don't have to be a bubbly extrovert to be charismatic you can be a quiet powerful introvert you can be a compassionate empathetic healer those look different and so I think it's less exhausting to find your recipe and to use those cues a lot like there are certain cues in my book that I teach that I don't use they just don't feel natural to me but there are other cues where I'm like I really like this has anyone ever done any really compelling studies on this idea of resting face or resting bothered face as you call it there is research on resting

20:01 bothered face and there are certain people who when people see pictures of their face at rest they assume a mood change in other words when there are certain people at rest where you look at them they look neutral but there are certain a certain percent of the population when you look at them they look angry sad or afraid so it's real people you look at and they look happy and make you happy very few people have happy resting face though you either look neutral or bothered so you said you were a recovering awkward person yes take me into what you were like oh and what do you mean when you say awkward person I really wanted to go it alone I was really overwhelmed by people and interactions I didn't know what to do with my hands I didn't know what to say I felt like I missed a memo that everyone got on conversation I always felt like I was saying the wrong things I had all these

20:46 awkward silences and then what would happen is I would try to overcompensate by sharing a ridiculous story or talking too much or completely shutting down and I kind of like wavered between completely shutting down and being overwhelmed and talking too much and saying too much and just verbal vomiting all over everyone and so I shut down and in college especially I just felt so left out I just felt so lonely and I don't know if anyone watching is feeling lonely I thought it was all my fault I was like I miss the memo I don't know how to have conversations I don't even know how to have friends that's what it felt like that I desperately wanted to make connections but I had no idea how to level up a new person to a friendship I had no idea how that path

21:33 happened I had no idea how to have a conversation with someone share something real and then have a real interaction back and so it was really lonely and overwhelming and what was the cist for you to go on this journey I was in college and there was a group paper assigned and you had like five people and everyone had to do five pages and I went to the professor and I said I will write double the amount of pages if I can work by myself and he was like Vanessa the point of the paper is not the paper it's working with the people and I was like and I started to cry in his office I was like that student I was like I I don't know how and he was like Vanessa you're very good at science you're very good at breaking things down what if you studied

22:19 for people like you study for chemistry that was like an aam for me he said why don't you study good conversation why don't you study the popular kids why don't you look at what are they doing in conversation that's working study it like it's a science hence my brand was called science of people that's when I realized okay it didn't come naturally to me but maybe there's research on actual things I can do with my body things I can do I can say verbally questions that work that will help me learn this the other way turning soft skills into hard skills that's when I started creating my first conversational blueprints that's when I started creating my conversation formula it and it started to work IED started to try out these kind of tiny experiments and I actually started to feel like myself make more friends it was tools I

23:06 had to use tools to be able to connect because it did not come naturally to me was it fixed from day one no so it was a journey it was a real journey yeah I think that's important because often people think you know read the book get the tips and tricks and you're you're changed and you're fixed you talk about I think later in your life where you enter a dinner party and your husband uh was there with you and you went home and told him that you thought everyone was angry at you yeah when was that that was probably maybe four or five years later okay so I started mostly with conversation that was sort of my my first tool I needed was questions I wanted to ask first impressions and how to close conversation very practically I also realized about five years later my I married my college sweetheart so I've been with my husband for a long time and

23:52 he said to me you always think everyone's angry at you I was like isn't everyone angry at me and I realized there are certain people who misinterpret neutral facial expressions as negative I have this problem so I will see a neutral expression on someone and assume they are angry or afraid or stressed or don't like me and that was creating this really bad Loop because when you think someone doesn't like you you shut down and become more unlikable there was a study I discovered right around this time um this is done by uh Dr Van Sloan he wanted to know what makes popular kids popular very clever study he studied thousands of high school students across a variety of high schools looking for patterns why is it that some kids across these grades and ages are really popular he had all the

24:39 kids ranked across all these schools he had them looked at traits and then he guessed what made the popular kids popular were they more athletic were they more attractive were they funnier were they smarter what was it can you guess what it was uh I'm so I'm just basing this on the kids that were popular in my school um they were funnier they were self-deprecating to some degree they were good at they were remotely good at some sports maybe um they were funny happy I don't know what so he found that the most popular kids AC the one single variable that was hold held true across all the different students was the most popular kids had the longest list of

25:25 people they liked so when he asked one of the the questions of the survey was who do you like they had the longest lists and when he looked at their day-to-day they had micro moments of liking they would go down the hallway and be like hey Chad hey Chelsea hey Sarah they liked so many people and that in turn made them more likable this showed me that being likable isn't AR control being likable means you have to be first Liker if you set out to like more people you become more likable and that was a really big shift for me because for so long I thought it was all about me it's a very selfish way to be right I was like I better be impressive I better be funny but actually what makes us likable is just

26:11 liking as many people as possible I was laughing as you're speaking because I was just playing out all the different sort of personas of people listening right now yeah and I just had this one Persona of the person sat at home who just like slumped over because they realized they hate everybody when you said that they were like I hate everybody look I get it I get it I get it and I also think that if you hate everyone if that's you let me try to convince you for a second it could be because you're asking the wrong questions okay I think I fell into that camp I don't need people I don't like people I was very much in that camp for the first couple of years why because I had terrible interactions and terrible conversations and it was awkward of course I didn't like people but I was also asking the wrong questions and I was telling the wrong stories I was trying to be impressive the best way to be impressive to be likable is to help

26:57 people impress you is to make them feel so liked that they begin to like you back it's aggressively liking so that means that when you're with someone you should be constantly giving them verbal and non-verbal assurances of how much you want to like them watch them change watch your relationships transform so I make it a policy of aggressively liking people so I have um three phrase Magic phrases for like ability can I teach them to you please okay so I want you to use these as many times as you can three magic phrases for like ability one I was just thinking of you okay so here's how you use this authentically right you think of a lot of people in your life all the time yeah if you are thinking of someone and you can text them text them I was just thinking of you how are you I was just thinking of you how'd that

27:43 project go I was just thinking of you it has been a while since we talked or and better you see a movie you see a documentary you see a Macha latte you see a mug you see a ceramic candle and you're like oh this made me think of you so my text messages my convers are full of actual moments where I was triggered to think of that person actually that this thing made me think of you or I was just thinking of you I wanted to ask you about if you don't think of someone they're not a person you need to have in your life okay so that's number one that's number I want to pause on number one because I've got some sort of questions to ask here yes it sounds exhausting it sounds like it's going to cost me a lot of time that I don't necessarily have and this is just my like my Surface level reaction was oh God another job you know what I mean I just I like

28:29 if I've got to set aside an hour to like text everyone I know and go I'm just thinking of you it's gonna be exhausting I've got like six friends and I've got my my partner I got my family and my team it's a lot it's a lot then just them and also it doesn't take an hour when you're like oh stainless steel mug this made me think of you right like you're only doing it when it's actually naturally occurring to you I don't want you to sit at your desk and be like I'm due for some I was just thinking of yous no this happens in the wild okay you're watching a documentary you're at a restaurant you're on the bus you're like oh that reminds me of this person quick text that is less work than missing an old friend and not knowing what to say it is less work to see something in real life or have a thought of like I wonder how Sarah is and reaching out to them

29:15 then I Miss Sarah but I'm not going to reach out to her it's also less work when you see someone and you haven't seen them in a while or they're a friend of a friend or they're that casual coworker relationship and you're like what do I say I think it's a lot of work to go up to that person and be like how was your weekend I think that's a lot of work I think boring small talk is a lot of work if you actually thought of them to say you know I know you love Dolphins I saw this dolphin documentary on Netflix have you seen it I was just thinking of you made me think of you I got another concern so if I if I start firing out these WhatsApp messages telling people when I'm thinking of them it's just going to be it's going to be opening up loads of conversations that I then have to deal with do you know what I mean like it's going to be like hey I was just thinking of you and then they reply they go oh how how are you and I go I'm good thanks and then they go I go how are you they go I'm good thanks and then

30:01 do you know what I mean and then they ask me I don't believe in asking how are you that's a whole another thing this is a good test if you are worried that they're going to start a conversation that's going to bore you and feel like work they're not a close friend so don't text them okay it's a very good test if there's someone where you're like I don't really want to hear how they are yeah them okay this is for the people who you want to level up with there are three levels of intim people who you kind of know you know their personal you know their General traits where they work where they live what they do that's it you don't want to go any different with them level two people are people where they know your personal concerns you know their goals their motivations their personality traits their worries those are people who you want to invest in then there's a last level which is the most deep level

30:47 which is called self-narrative which is the story We Tell ourselves about ourselves if you categorize your relationships another activity I love for my students to do is make those three levels on a piece of paper write down the 20 people you can think of the top 20 people you spend the most time with where they fall so we have acquaintances we have acquaintances who just kind of know where you're from what do you do the B people yeah right and by the way some of the people who you're close with might you might not be deep with yeah true right level two personal concerns could they tell you what is your Steven biggest goal right now okay and then the middle layer I didn't understand that's the middle layer that that's the miday so it's General traits personal concerns self-narrative what's self-narrative so this is what my my next book is about I'm doing research on it right now self-narrative is story you tell yourself about yourself so is this

31:33 a group of people it's the levels of intimacy you are with someone so would your partner okay know the story you tell yourself about yourself I'll give you an example 100% she would I think so so I think that there are basically three main types of narratives and you should know what these are for the closest people in your life maybe only two or three and you should also know what it is for yourself the best one is a hero narrative this is I've worked really hard I've had some challenges and mistakes but I've overcome with hard work and smarts and now I am where I am every version of their story their career their life their relationships is that same narrative over and over again then there's what I think is called the Healer narrative again I'm doing research on this from an next book the Healer narrative their story is all

32:18 about helping others they typically are in careers of service of helping others physical therapists nurses Healthcare their story is how can I be more helpful they tend to have a problem though if you're in a relationship with a with a Healer is they always put other people's needs before them themselves they're do they have some kind of historic trauma they can and a lot of the times they were put in a position of caretaking too early like they were told that you're of value if you can caretake you're of value if you put your needs last so they tend to be people Pleasers they tend to say yes to everything you have to be careful if you work with a Healer because they're great to work with they help help help but they say yes to too much so uh healer is the middle one the last one is victim narrative victim narrative no matter what personal

33:04 professional love life taxes they have the same narrative I experienced challenges and mistakes and I didn't overcome no matter how hard I work no matter how smart I am the world is against me so question I ask people to begin to uncover their self- narrative is do you feel lucky do you feel lucky I feel very lucky I also feel very lucky people who have a resounding yes to I feel lucky are more likely heroes or or healers people who say I don't feel lucky I feel very unlucky are typically victims Dr Richard wisman did a study he asked people to perceive their own luck how lucky do you feel then he gave them a challenge he gave them a newspaper and he said I want you to count the amount of images in this newspaper they sat with the newspaper and they counted all the images but

33:49 there was a trick there's always a trick in these studies on the second page of the newspaper in big print it said stop counting there are 42 Imes in this newspaper almost all of the people who perceived themselves as lucky saw the ad closed the paper and gave it back so there are 42 images almost none of the Unlucky people did The Unlucky people missed the ad and kept counting spent a lot of time and made more mistakes this means that if you think of yourself as lucky you literally see more opportunities if you think of yourself as unlucky you miss them is it possible to change how you see yourself I do believe in a growth mindset so I do believe that if you if this is resonating with you and like you're like uh oh I feel unlucky I might have this

34:36 victim self-narrative I do believe it's possible to change your perception of yourself and that's starting with small moments of heroism I think that changing your people skills saying I don't like people and saying I'm going to find a way to like people saying I'm bad at conversation I'm going to find a way to be good at conversation to say I'm an awkward person no I'm a recovering awkward person if we can begin to take those tiny experiments and change them one by one we begin to have small moments of heroism and that's how we change our self narrative as Employer I think about this a lot these sort of verbal and non-verbal cues I actually I had an interview some time ago and I think I came out of the interview and I think objectively the person might have been qualified but there was something about their energy or cues or something

35:21 that signaled something else to me that they were an unhappy person or they were tired or they didn't really want to be here or something like that are there any studies that confirm that our hidden communication is driving our success in the working environment yes so this study blew my mind it's 58,000 working hours over 11 different companies so a huge am amount of data they wanted to know if low performers infect the people around them and if High performers infect people around them what they found was if you sit within 25 F feet of a high performer your own performance improves by 15% here's the kicker if you sit within

36:06 25 ft of a low performer your own performance decreases by 30% this means that our negative emotions are more contagious that if you're around people who are low performers whatever that means to you who have negative cues who are feeling anxious or tired or low confident you could catch those cues and that affects your own performance this is why it is incredibly critical to invest in the five people who you spend the most time with you want to make sure those five people are the cues you want to catch do you like the cues they're sending do they give you the right motivation feelings do they make you feel like do they make you a better version of yourself there's there's just one more chemical aspect of this which we have to do more research on this is a very gross study but it's

36:53 one of my favorites it's a little gross you ready okay so they brought people into their lab they so them up into two different groups and they made the first group wear a sweat suit where they catch your sweat and run on the treadmill so they sweat a lot on the treadmill the second group they wore sweatsuits and they took them skydiving for the first time both groups sweat a lot treadmill sweat and skydiving sweat they took these sweat samples and they had unsuspecting participants go into fmri machines and scan their brains then they gave them both sweat samples to smell poor these poor people did not didn't know what they were smelling they went it everyone who smelled the skydiving sweat had an activation in their own amydala their own fear response triggered another words when they smelled fear sweat they didn't know why they began to

37:39 feel afraid everyone who smelled the treadmill sweat had no change at all this means that yes we can talk about facial expressions and body language and vocal cues and words but there's also something chemically happening with the people around us that we can literally smell fear and we catch it and that is also why it's really important to follow our gut oh dear I was going to say well then we're all screwed aren't we we can't we can't do anything because there's if we're giving off these chemicals which are impacting those around us it doesn't matter if I smile and do the whole like no because I think intention is the back door into confidence it's very hard to fake confidence I don't believe in fake it till you make it I don't really but if I say I have a conversational tool for you that's going to make your conversations better you become less nervous you

38:25 become more excited you ask a better question they give you a really good answer you feel super charismatic they feel really liked you feel real likable oh we have a good little cycle so I think that intention going in with really purposeful cues helps you feel more confident and triggers these beautiful Cycles the cycle is this the cycle you're talking about the Q cycle the Q cycle yes I'll put it on the screen and in the description for anyone that wants to see it but when I saw this the reason I printed this off is because it really hit close to home because I'm someone that meets a lot of people and um when I meet people people there on the very rare occasion something about someone will just kind of throw my energy and it throws my energy to the point that I realize I'm then acting a little bit in terms of my interaction with them and it's almost like I can't control it like something about the

39:10 person has unnerved me or just made and it's nothing that I could consciously tell you like say it was the way they shook my hand just something about them yeah throws me into this different state yeah um and when I saw this I I I almost figured out why because the first step in this Q you you explain it I mean it's your Q cycle yes okay so we often mistakenly think that we send a signal to someone else they send a signal back to us and that's it we don't realize as there's a cycle happening within us which is that if you send me a negative q i internalize it and that changes the cues I'm sending back to you here's a very simple experiment that showed this they put a participant in a room and they had an actor in the room flashed them a fe a social rejection cue that

39:56 could be an eye roll a scoff a distancing and blocking Behavior so the participants in the room and this person across from them they don't know as an actor sends them a social rejection cue what they found was the moment that participant saw the social rejection queue their own pupils dilated and their field of vision increased this means that somebody saw uhoh that person doesn't like me and their body reacted to fight ORF flight do does anyone else feel this way about me are there any Escape Routes for me and that then changed what cues they sent back to that person they were more anxious they were more nervous if you walk into a room with someone and you're feeling bad you probably caught a queue here's the good news you can stop the Q

40:42 cycle from being negative there's also positive cues right we can catch positive cues that can be good for us but we can stop the negative cycle if we label the queue we see Dr Matthew liberman at UCLA studied this very clearly he put people in fmri machines and he flashed them a fear micro expression the one that you showed us earlier with your eyes really wide when people saw the fear micro expression they caught the fear they began to feel afraid and their amdal it up but when he taught them say fear or think fear he taught them the micro expression it stopped activating their amydala meaning if you know how to read the 97 cues and you see contempt or social rejection or a mouth shrug or a lip purse all not great cues you can in your head say lip purse I'm good or clocked noted that Intel is actually empowering so that

41:29 back door into confidence is also you can label it name it tame it and you're in control of it that is a much better way to interact and also can help you like people for all my people who don't like people okay so in those moments I should in my head just say what lab clocked yeah that's what I say to myself or like red flag or noted you're in you're particularly famous for a TED Talk that you did yeah which did very very well um it was called you are contagious and it really opened my eyes to the importance of hand gestures yes which I didn't really think were that important before but it's funny because going through this election cycle obviously Trump has now been elected as the next president of the United States He is someone in particular that uses a lot of hand gestures and in your Ted Talk you make the case that hand

42:15 gestures matter oh so much I think the hands of the windows into the soul I think what we underestimate is the power of our gestures love it just love it just those jazz just jazz hands so here's I want to do a little experiment with you so I'm going to put my hands in my lap I've been very careful to leave my hands on the table for the entire interview that's on purpose now something funny happens in your brain when you can't see my hands and the longer my hands are underneath the table the more your amydala will begin to Fire and the more distracted you become with where are her hands why are her hands under the table and the moment I bring my hands back out again your brain goes and that is because hands show intention and this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective so if we go back to caveman days if we were approached by a stranger caveman and they went friend friend friend friend

43:02 friend friend we saw they weren't carrying a rock or a spear and they were probably a friend in fact when we go so nice to meet you we can see someone's hand we know that they're literally not going to harm us so our brain still keeps this mechanism that if we're on video and we can't see someone's hands or they walk into an office with their hands in their pockets or behind their back we feel a little bit uneasy so there's two things for this first is the moment someone first sees you you want to be friend friend friend good to see see you oh so nice to meet you what put your hand up for people that can't see the moment I walk into a room hey nice to see you even before I handshake even an old friend I'll be like oh my gosh so good to see you on Zoom morning for people for people that can't see she's basically putting her hand in the air which like a little wave W Little Wave we love a palm as humans we love seeing someone's Palm there's something about it that makes us feel like ah they are

43:48 literally open palmed so that's the first in the first few seconds of someone seeing you in person on video try to flash your palm very very simply second we understand competence in two ways very highly competent people know their content so well they can speak to you on two tracks they can speak to you verbally but they also can speak to you with their hands this is why we loved picture books as kids and so when someone is speaking we're listening to their words but second we're looking are their hands outlining their words so for example all the best TED Talks start the same way and this is what got me my TED Talk is we studied all the TED talks from 2010 looking for patterns and my team and I coded every Ted Talk we can find looking for differences between the

44:35 most viral TED talks and the least viral viral TED Talks we found the most viral Ted speakers used an average an average of 465 hand gestures in 18 minutes whereas the least popular Ted talkers use an average of 271 gestures so not quite half meaning if someone walks on stage here's a a really good Ted Talk they all start this way you ready today I want to talk to you about a big idea we're going to share three different things that are going to change your life so for people listening I was outlining with my hands along with my words if I were to get on stage and say today I have a really big idea it's huge and hold up my hands in a really small way your brain is 12.5 times more

45:21 likely to believe my gesture over my words and so what we can do as speakers as very highly charismatic speakers is think about how can I outline very basically not modern dance what I'm saying or how can I emphasize things with my gestures if something is Big Show me is it beach ball big is it what is this big donkey big is this a donkey I don't even know yeah big a goat a goat this is a goat Pig if you have something that's really small and no big deal doing this actually helps you think that it's not a big deal I'm making a little kind of dismissive gesture with my hand this also works with emphasizing points you want people to remember if you have three ideas tell someone you have three ideas it is very hard to lie with our gestures for example you want to do experiment with me sure okay I want you to say five but hold up the number

46:08 three five hard right yeah so it's really hard I have to think about them separately yeah it's really hard our brain is not meant to lie with gesture which is why humans pay so close attention to gestures because we're looking to see are they congruent it is so hard to be in congruent with gestures Liars typically use less gestures so we're also drawn to people who are using gestures who are congruent with their gestures because it makes us feel like oh they know their stuff and they're being honest so it made me reflect it how do we establish causation here in terms of these hand gestures could it be the case that the more confident Ted speakers are doing more gestures because they're less nervous so is it about nerves um and the less um confident more nervous Ted

46:55 speakers are doing less gestes just because they self soothing a lot and they're they're kind of closing off their body is confidence the thing here is it nerves I don't think so I think it's about engagement so I think most Ted speakers I watch these TED Talks they're all good all of them are good and some of them are experts in their field the difference is do I want to watch their good it is hard for me as a viewer to pay attention for 18 minutes with someone who didn't use enough gestures it was like physically hard for my brain to pay attention I think those speakers what good or not had over rehearsed and rehearsed out their hand gestures or were holding a Podium or we're holding a clicker too hard so I actually think that it's less to do with the speaker's nerves or confidence and it's more to do with are they going to let themselves use their hands to

47:42 explain their points and that becomes more engaging one of the things I've noticed on this podcast is people who are using their hands are more expressive and if they're more expressive there's likely to be more sort of intonations in their voice and if there's more intonations it's more engaging and if it's more engaging then it's more retentive for the algorithm if it's more retentive the algorithm it's suggested more if it's suggested more there's more views so I would like to tell my guests all the past particularly future guests that if you're if you have more expression in what you're saying and more intonations in your voice then our show will grow okay let's talk about two things here one is we did a test on my YouTube channel and found that if we used a thumbnail of me doing any hand gesture it didn't even matter what it was it could be this it could be this any hand gesture that got more clicks

48:27 people even in the thumbnail like to see the hand gesture even more than my crazy facial expressions we tried both so yes we are because if you see a thumbnail of me you know holding up two you're like what two things is she talking about what is it so it's we we like it it shows competence and the second thing is that vocal variety is an incredibly important aspect of Charisma we're talking about gestures but there is a feedback loop here that the more like if you if I were try if I were G going to sit on my hands for this interview you would notice my facial expression would get less charismatic my vocal tone would be less charismatic it's really hard to be charismatic without movement vocal variety is a critical aspect of both warmth and competence that is because when we hear someone who's able to for example give us the Ted Talk voice so

49:12 I'm going give you the Ted Talk voice you ready this point is going to change the way that we think about the world and if we don't analyze this point we will be in huge trouble like that is a voice that is telling you o this is important you also hear that really good speakers will use like a numbers voice so a numbers voice sounds like this did you know that 43% of humans all believe in the same thing 43% like there's and if you're telling a story it changes again so a story tone would go like this you're never going to believe what happened to me so last week I'm walking down the street and I saw this guy it's a totally different vocal variety that is a gift to your listener that makes you more engaging because they're able to clock H we're doing a

49:59 number now oh we have a story now oh this is an important point I better write it down really good Ted speakers are outlining their talk for you in me in many different ways and that's the best speakers I see on stage it's so interesting because in this podcast we um had quite a long conversation a couple of months ago about arms on the chair the chair that you're in now and it was just this observation we had when we first flew out here to New York the chairs that we ordered were pretty similar to this but they just happen to have arms on them and what I noticed was that guests would lean oh and and it would take out their arms yes so it took out their arms and they became less expressive and the conversations were less interesting yes so we removed the arms again okay so let's talk about this just very briefly yeah I actually do recommend chairs with arms not in this setup because look at the difference so

50:46 actually right before this interview you asked me to scoot my chair in right your amazing team ask me to good my turn thank you for that because it makes it so that I want to put my hands up if I were to be sitting farther back I'm just going to lean back for a second I would be tempted to put my hands in my lap yes so the critical piece of this is you're having me scoot up to the table it would be really hard if I had arms because then I would want to go like this and it would make me look like a duck yes right so you want to use a chair with arms to be broader it actually does broaden your arms out unless you're really close to the table then you can put your hands on the table but I I it's amazing how the physical environment can change how we are perceived and how we move but even that we're very intentional about the sort of mirroring our body language and just making sure that we're head on because this conversation is entirely different if we're side on very much

51:31 it's not going to be the same very much and there's not going to be the same level of intimacy we also thought a lot about the how big the table was this is quite a big table what's the distance uh I'm going to say it's about Just sh two Mets wait can you hold your arm out okay so this perfect distence the perfect distance between two people having a good conversation is that we could shake hands if we wanted to okay and that is because there are four different proxemic zones so the fancy word for space is proxemics I don't know if you have the beautiful graphic I print out this oh yes that's it yes so there are four different space zones and these are really good to know if you're trying to set yourself up for Success the public zone is about 5 to eight feet away I don't know uh not feet but 5 to8 feet away then you have the social Zone which is where we like to socialize with people that is depending on who you ask

52:16 three to 5 feet away then there's the personal Zone that's our favorite Zone that is about uh arms distance apart right so we could shake hands if we wanted to that's where our best conversations happen and then there's the in inate Zone a big mistake people make is they Place their video camera too close to their face which means they are accidentally signaling intimacy cues with their colleagues and their co-workers have you ever been on a zoom with someone where their FA is the entire camera yeah I was on one earlier on and you're like please back up and that is because your brain is going too close even though they're across a camera so what I would really recommend measure the distance between your nose and your camera it should be one arm length so it should be the tip of your nose to the tip of your fingers or a foot and a half to three feet away that is the ideal zone for having good conversation over Zoom that's really interesting as well because I was

53:02 thinking about the conversation I had actually on the way here in the car with a colleague of mine and they had called me on FaceTime now the thing with FaceTime is it's going to be close it's going to be close and it it did feel a little bit intimate it does um because they call me on FaceTime yes and obviously if I was on my laptop they would call me on Zoom or something else and you there would be a so I think that that's why we can sometimes at least introverts feel like don't FaceTime me it's way too personal it's because there's a setup there that it's actually accidentally tricking you into being in the intimate Zone with someone this is also why uh loud bars and nightclubs work so well for facilitating romantic relationships what happens in a loud bar or a loud nightclub is you can't hear someone so you go what and then you get a little bit closer and all of a sudden you're accidentally standing in someone's intimate Zone which then that

53:49 Q cycle begins to kick in where you're like well if I'm standing within a foot and a half from this person maybe I should feel intimate with them which then makes you lean more makes you want to touch more that is why people go to bars and nightclubs to facilitate these romantic relationships it's accidentally going into the intimate Zone when I was younger I've said this a few times on the podcast before but it's feels very relevant my brother my older brother Jason he ordered this book called The Game uh by Neil Strauss yes and it um he ordered it to University but he accidentally put the wrong address and so it came to home this sounds like an elaborate story for me like buying a pickup artist book but it came to home and I read the book and it was my first time understanding that body language was a important but even some you could learn and and you know when I say body language I mean everything um and it's it's interesting because now after

54:34 reading your work I actually think maybe what I should have been aiming at was how to be more charismatic and you talk about these five science-based habits for being more charismatic yeah I guess the first question is what is charisma yes and then what are these five science-based habits that can make me more charismatic as a person like how do I know if I'm charismatic you are charismatic but you lean higher on competence so so let's break it down okay so this is not my work this is the work of Dr Susan Fisk this is a instrumental study it's been repeated many times back in 2002 that found that to be charismatic you have to be both highly warm and highly competent or more importantly if to Signal High warmth and high competence and that this is makes up 82% of impressions of people

55:19 warmth trust likeability friendliness competence power reliability capability so very highly charismatic people you meet them you see them and they are signaling you can trust me you like me and boy am I reliable and competent at the very same time so when I say you are charismatic but you lean very high in

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