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#917 - Vanessa Van Edwards - The Art Of Effortless Confidence & Social Persuasion
01:22:40
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- [00:00]
Chris Williamson
Talk to me about where we should put our hands.
- [00:02]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Oh, my goodness. They should be first things visible. In fact, every time you say hello, you should be, hi, I'm Vanessa. So good to see you. We love a gesture. It's, it's funny because there's a primal part of our brain that knows that our hands are our deadliest weapons. So even though we think we look at the face, like when I ask people, where do you look when you first see someone? People always say, same eyes or face, sometimes mouth. And that is the second place we look. But the first place we always look, especially when we're seeing someone for the first time, or in a meeting or for the first interaction, is we want to see what is your intention. And so, as humans, we will do anything to avoid the most awkward thing in humanity, which is, are we going to hug? Are we going to handshake? Are we going to high five? Are you withholding anything? And so part of our brain is always just looking to see if you're going to handshake. High five. And on zoom, it's even more confusing because our brain knows that we should see hands, but when it can't, it worries. And that is because part of our brain and our amygdala begins to fire when we can't see someone's hands, especially when we're trying to understand them. And so the best thing you can do is have your hands visible. That helps with trust. And the second, if you want to get fancy, is to actually have them be explanatory. Which we can talk about if you want to.
- [01:14]
Chris Williamson
Yes, Tell me.
- [01:15]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Okay. So really, really good speakers, they know their content so well that they can speak to you with two different modes. They can speak to you with their words, but they can also use their gestures to emphasize, underline, and outline. So the best TED talks. You know, I love, I love TED talks. And I, my team and I analyzed thousands of hours of TED Talks looking for patterns. I didn't understand why everyone who gives a TED Talk is. Is good, right? You're not invited to give a TED Talk if you're not good. And I wondered, why do some go viral like millions and millions of views and others by relatively unk people, they get thousands. And we looked for all these variables, gender and color and smiling. We clocked the amount of time they smiled. The biggest differentiator was gestures, the view. The TED talks that had the most views used an average of 465 gestures in 18 minutes. We coded all a chunk of TED talks, the Least popular view TED talks use an average of 272 gestures in 18 minutes. What's happening is a really good speaker is making themselves easy to understand by saying, if they have three ideas, they hold up three. If they have a really big idea, they don't show that it's small. They say that it's big. In fact, if I were to say, I have a really big idea but hold up my fingers really small, you're more likely to believe my gesture over my words. And so, in this way, we have to speak to people on two levels. We have to show them what we're saying with our verbal content. We also have to say, I'm going to emphasize and underline my content for you so that you can actually comprehend an outline while I'm speaking. So it's almost like we're giving pictures to our words.
- [02:50]
Chris Williamson
Yeah. It's fascinating that the physical language comes second to the spoken language, even though that's the thing that is usually most front and center.
- [02:59]
Vanessa Van Edwards
I think this is why we love emojis, right? Like, we are actually quite pictorial. Like, we like to have images. So, you know, if I send a text message, I'm fine. My friends are, what is she fine? I don't know. Like, that doesn't sound fine. But if I were to have a little smiley crying face, I. I guess I'm very millennial because I use that crying side face, you know, that shows, look, I'm. I'm fine. Ha ha. But if I were to use I'm fine with the emoji with the circle crazy eyes, you'd be like, oh, no, she not fine. And that is because we. We tend to give more weight to the visual. And that is, I think, why we're speaking in more and more images as we go. Hand gestures in person is like adding pictures to your book, which we all like.
- [03:41]
Chris Williamson
What if someone's not speaking? What if somebody's supposed to be just receiving? Where should our hands go then?
- [03:46]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Okay, so you can be a charismatic listener. I think that people, there's a myth about charisma, that to be charismatic, you have to be the one talking. To be charismatic, you have to be extroverted and bubbly in the life of the party and tell great stories. That is one kind of flavor of charisma. But the other flavor of charisma is actually being an excellent listener. In fact, quiet, contemplative introverts are a beaut. They're very charismatic. So while you're listening, you actually don't want to use gestures. You want to use non verbal warmth cues. Non verbal warmth cues are ways you signal to the other person. Wow, I am so deeply with you that I want you to keep going and tell me more. And I'm even going to partake in your warmth. So my favorites, my favorite things to do while listening. And by the way, when you're listening with, with just with your hands, I like to keep my hands as still as possible, but still visible. And that could even be like a steeple. You know, I love listening with the steeple. You know, when you put your. The fingers at your tips of your fingers together in sort of a church steeple, that's a very. A power pose for the hands. You can put them in a steeple or have them at rest. More importantly, though, is actually your head behavior when we're listening to someone. So a triple nod, a slow triple nod. It looks like this. You do it really well. They have found that the other person speaks 67% longer when you do a slow triple nod. It's like the other person saying, please keep going, tell me more. It's like a non verbal dot, dot, dot. So I would recommend hands still visible at rest. Occasional slow triple nod. You can even do one of my favorite cues, which is called a lower lid flex. So if you flex your lower lids at me. Yeah, great. When you do this, this is across cultures. When humans flex their lower lid, it actually minimizes the amount of light that is entering into your eye, which allows you to see detail. So for example, if someone's really like squinting to try to see something, they're trying to make their vision sharper in conversation. This is a way of showing I am listening so deeply that I'm trying to see every detail. I have a theory in the name of science. I love doing research experiments. In my lab, we looked at the 50th sexiest men alive people issue. And I noticed that so many of the men were showing a hardened lower lid. And that is because I think we find it attractive when someone is so engaged they're trying to see us deeply. It's sort of that blue steel look. I think that that's why he did it in Zoolander. This is really helpful for two things. One, when you want to show that you're deeply listening, you can harden your lower lid. Ah, yes, I see you. There are times if you see it on someone else, it could mean they're deeply listening, but it also could mean that they're trying to figure something out or they're scrutinizing. So I have Noticed that occasionally in negotiations or presentations, if I see someone do that lower lid flex at me, I'll say, does this all make sense? Are we all good here, Chris? Do you have any questions for me? Because I noticed their brain just went into a deep listening mode. And there was one time where actually I. I uncovered a confusion that the boss was having right in the moment, right there, that if I hadn't have clarified that, it would have messed up the entire pitch. It would have messed up the entire pitch. So look out for it, as well as making sure someone's on the same page as you.
- [06:55]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, because they've become more intense.
- [06:57]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Why?
- [06:57]
Chris Williamson
What is it that they're doing? Is it they're paying more attention, or is it they're maybe a bit confused? Talking about giving presentations, going to do public speaking. What are some ways to build up energy and positivity before going out and speaking? Have you got a little priming process that you go through? A Tony Robbins, jumping up and down? What's that look like?
- [07:15]
Vanessa Van Edwards
You know, I. I don't jump, jump up and down. I try to change my. My chemical cocktail. So internally, I know that. Well, I know that my. My emotions are contagious. We like certain speakers because they bring confidence to the stage, and we love to be around winners. We love winners. We want to catch their winning attitude. So I know that before I head a stage, before I lead a meeting, I want to have my winning cocktail going. I want to have a lot of testosterone. This is for both men and women. I want to have as much dopamine as possible because dopamine also serves me so just very. I'm going down to the bare basics here. Testosterone does a lot of things in our body, but for performance purposes, for presentations, it makes me think more clearly, it makes me more eloquent, it makes me have less dry mouth, it makes me have more stamina. Dopamine, it's the chemical of pleasure we do, makes us feel good. But the reason I like dopamine is actually because it gives us motivation. They found that if they can gift dopamine in an interaction, people are more likely to open up, more likely to answer questions, more likely to work hard. So I'm trying to stimulate that for myself. Dopamine, testosterone, if I'm anxious, like if I'm very nervous, maybe a little bit of serotonin to try to calm myself down. Okay, so what are the things that immediately trigger those very quickly in my pre success routine? The first one is music. So there are certain songs, especially for me Everyone has their own, I have like a pump up playlist. They're songs that specifically remind me of times I've won or just give me that, oh, like this is such a pleasure to listen to. So I'm listening to the right kind of music. Second, I am very purposeful with the verbal cues I use before I do anything. And there was a study that changed my perspective on this. So what they did is they brought participants into their lab and they gave them intelligence tests like basic intelligence tasks. They split them up into two different groups. The first group took the intelligence task and they read a set of very sterile directions. The kind of directions we read all the time. So please complete the following test to the best of your ability. The second group, they wondered if they sprinkled in what are called achievement oriented words. Words like success, win, master, achieve, could they actually change the participants behavior? So they sprinkled in three or four of these words. So you know, try to win. The following answers. The best of your ability. If you achieve success, you. They just very sprinkled them into the direction. Everyone who took and read the win oriented directions performed better on the task. But more importantly spent double the amount of time on average working on the task and enjoyed the task more. I want that before I hit a stage. I want to actually enjoy my time on stage so that I have a lot of energy, I want to work at it and I get the gift of feeling like a winner. Once our body feels like a winner, our brain acts like it. So I'm trying to do all those things. So I'm using a lot of win words. Like I literally like have a win routine or a pump up routine. I listen to that playlist. I also try to laugh. Like even before our interview, I watch my favorite comedian to just like get me laughing, get me open. Laughing opens up your body, it opens up your face, it makes you breathe more, it lowers my vocal register, which for women is especially important. But for both men and women, that's, that's like magic when you're presenting.
- [10:33]
Chris Williamson
Okay, so when it comes to the verbal cues, you said that you're being purposeful with the ones that you're using. What's that mean? That you're, you're talking to people backstage and you're just making sure that you're sprinkling Positivity.
- [10:45]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Yes. So yes, I actually think that chit chat backstage is really important. I was just talking about this another speaker and he said to me, oh, I, you know, I, I'm really in my head before And I don't want to talk to anyone. I said actually like I try to make really positive small talk with everyone and if someone says like, oh, were you nervous? No, I'm excited. I literally will try to reframe any butterflies that I feel. Any like tremors that I have. Is this is excitement. This is not nervousness. Nervousness is an excitement feel very similar the body, right. Like do very similar things. So I am telling my brain, I'm excited. You're excited. I'm excited. I'm excited to share. I'm excited to teach. When someone, when I'm talking backstage, I'll be like, what are you most excited about? What speaker did you like the best? What, what do you think is the big people's biggest goal today? I'm using words like goal, win, achieve success, excited. A really great study. I love a study, if you'll forgive me, but I think this is just so good. This was by Allison Wood Brooks at Harvard. She made students, poor students sing Don't Stop Believing into a karaoke machine that rated them for accuracy, like accuracy of singing. These students had no singing background. One group, they just sung control group. The second group, she had them say out loud no matter how they felt, I'm nervous, then sing. And the last group had to say I'm excited no matter how they actually felt and sing. The group that said I'm excited had the most accurate singing, over 80% accuracy in their singing even though they had no trained singers. The control group was next. I think the, the I'm nervous group sung with under 60% accuracy. In other words, you can have a self fulfilling prophecy. If you're about to go up and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm so nervous. I'm so nervous. You are going to make yourself think like a loser. You're going to have more cortisol, you're going to have more adrenaline and those things don't serve you. So you are better reframing as like I am excited. Like this is my moment. I'm going to win.
- [12:36]
Chris Williamson
So songs that remind you of times you won. Chit chat backstage with positive verbal cues and laugh lots. Watch a comedian.
- [12:42]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Yes, exactly. Yes.
- [12:44]
Chris Williamson
And then just step out on them.
- [12:45]
Vanessa Van Edwards
And you know, a little power posing is always good, right? The reason I like laughing is because it kind of broadens your body. It's. I also sometimes see people pacing backstage. Like, you know, I do a lot of events and I see other speakers sometimes and they're like they're hovered over their notes right they're like hunched over their notes. They're looking at their little tiny phone and. And they're like practicing in, like this very small, tight, contracted way. And they get on stage every single time. Whenever I see somebody that they get on stage from this very contracted position. And they always either start with vocal fry. So, hi, Good morning. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Because they've actually contracted their vocal power. They have less breath. It's their first word. They lose all their vocal charisma, like really right off the bat. Or they start with the question inflection. Hi, my name is Vanessa. So happy to be here. And today we're going to talk about growth. And that is because they were literally in, and I don't say this without some backing, a loser position. Research from the University of British Columbia studied winning athletes and losing athletes. This is across Olympic trials. So around the world, losing athletes contract. When they lose a race, they tilt their head down, they roll their shoulders in, they take up as little space as possible. That restricts their oxygen, that lowers their testosterone. It literally makes them feel worse. Whereas winners take up as much space as possible. Right. They're super broad. They tilt their head up. So laughing is a sort of comfortable way for me to go into winter body language. I do think it would be a little weird if I was like stomping around backstage, you know, like Rocky, I could do it. But I think it would also create a little bit of weirdness. So if you can broaden your body. That's why I think Tony Robbins jumps is he's actually trying to get all that adrenaline out. But testosterone in that winning kind of open, big spatial take up. So if you can take up space too, like, you know, a chair with armrests, a big, broad couch. All my chairs in my office, you can't see it right now. They all have armrests. Whenever I have someone, a client come over, they're always sitting in big, broad chairs. That really does affect that feedback in our body.
- [14:48]
Chris Williamson
How much truth is there in power poses? I thought they got replication crisis into oblivion.
- [14:52]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Man, did she. She got in trouble. She got in trouble. Yes. She had some statistics. She's said that she's replicated it now. And I really respect Amy Cuddy's work. There is some truth to power posing because we know that winners do it right. So we know that winners, across genders and cultures and races, when they feel pride and they take up space. This is an innate response in humans. Does it work backwards? We think so. We think that we can Take the pride of a. The pose of a winner and then kind of change those chemicals. Is it the fastest way? Maybe not. Is it the only way? Maybe not. But there is more and more science to prove that, yes, it's true. And she's been working on replicating it ever since her mishap.
- [15:34]
Chris Williamson
Okay, let's say people have sat down. Uh, meeting, interview, podcast, dinner. What are the do's and don'ts? So I'm a sat down.
- [15:43]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Oh, my goodness. Okay, so remember that when you're seated, you can still look very, very confident and powerful. The biggest thing you can do when you're seated from a non verbal. Should we talk non verbal or verbal or both? Both. Okay, we'll do nonverbal. Cause we were just talking about it. Um, one is you want to angle your torso towards the person you're speaking with, especially your camera. The biggest mistake that I see on Zoom is someone has their camera here, but their, their screen is angled off. So while they're typing and taking notes, their entire body and their face is actually angled somewhere else and they just glance over at the camera. It is almost impossible to feel like you have a really good connection with someone when you are not physically aligned with them. So when I'm on the same nonverbal page as you, our toes, our torso, our head are angled towards each other. We literally feel like we're on the same page. Like, physically, we feel like we're on the same page. So wherever you're seated, I like, like a swivel chair, you know, or if I'm at a restaurant with someone and they put us kind of kitty corner, I will like, angle my chair so that I'm angled more towards them. So one, try to get on the physical same page. Second, and this is a harder one, but I think it's fun to talk about, which is I try to mirror the person that I'm sitting with physically and verbally. That is why my way of showing respect. So for example, if I sit down with someone who is a really fast talker, really high energy, lots of hand gestures, I'll kind of dial up my physical energy. I'm leaning in, I'm using more gestures, I'm using more facial expressions. On the other hand, if I'm with someone who's quite stoic, maybe more of a slow talker, maybe they're more purposeful, they don't use a lot of gestures. I also slow myself down, slow down my gestures. Because we do feel, feel like we like to be around people who are like Us who have similar communication styles. And so that's the next thing you can do is very subtly. And I wouldn't mimic them, but try to match them like a thermostat, try to get on their temperature.
- [17:43]
Chris Williamson
What about crossing arms, hands on table, stuff like that?
- [17:48]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Okay, so when we talk about blocking, blocking is when any barrier is between your body and mine. And typically, instinctively, this is like back from our caveman days. We don't like when someone is blocking because we feel like it's a barrier between you and me, that I might not trust you. Research. This is actually more important. I want people to perceive you as open. And definitely, definitely this is very clear in the research. People rate folks with crossed arms as closed, distant and closed minded. Right. So you are going to be rated as less charismatic if you have crossed arms, even if you're cold. Doesn't matter the reason people, they rated videos and job interviews and on dates. We do not like barriers. But more importantly for me, what really convinced me because I do sometimes like to cross my arms, is you become more close minded. They have found that when they ask people to come up with creative ideas, but they're crossing their arms, they come up with less creative ideas. So literally closed body equals closed mind. When I'm in a meeting or a date or presentation, whatever, I want to be as creative as I possibly can. I want to be big thinking. And so I know that the smaller my body is, the more blocking I have, the worse that's going to be. So open body. I like visible hands, obviously. And I also think that the more you can lean, that's another warmth cue. So when we really like something, we want to lean closer towards it. We want to. It's actually our five senses. We want to see it, smell it, touch it, taste it. Is that we want to do our five senses. I don't know if we want to taste each other, but we want to get closer to it. We like things and we want to get closer to them. So you want to do the same thing if you really like someone's idea. Wow, tell me more. Lean in towards it. If you really like someone. Oh my gosh, it's so good to see you. Right. Leaning in towards them. It's like a non verbal bolding of like, I like you so much. I like this idea so much, I physically want to get closer. It works on camera too, which is really nice and also makes me feel more engaged. Like when I leaned into you, I was like, oh yeah, I do like this tip. Like, like it was Like a trick for me, even internally just now.
- [19:49]
Chris Williamson
What about hands on face, hands around face, hands on mouth?
- [19:53]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Research from Cornell looked at four untrustworthy behaviors. Behaviors that when people see them, they immediately feel a little bit of untrust or mistrust. One of them was hands touching face. That was one of them. So research says that when someone is touching their face, we typically don't like it. But I want to add a little caveat here. There are different ways of doing this. For example, it can be quite pensive to hold your chin very still and think while holding, when you are rubbing your face. So rubbing your chin, biting your nails, you know, rubbing at your eyes. Totally different. Why liars often touch their mouth and their eyes, they also touch their nose. So lie detection research, I, I think these research communities were acting independently of each other. But yes, as humans, we, we see someone touching their face as untrustworthy. Why? In the lie detection community, research has found that liars are literally trying to hold things in. So liars will often cover their mouth because, like, instinctively they're trying to, like, don't say it, don't say it, don't say it. You might even see, like, if you watch Bill Clinton's testimony during the Monica Lewinsky trial, which I've coded in depth, he literally does a shush gesture to himself as he's waiting for his question that he's about to lie on. Like, literally, he's holding a shush gesture up. Also, we tend to mouth block as like, shh, it's going to get me in trouble. Do not say it. We also, and this also happened in the Monica Lewinsky trial, I believe Alan Hirsch is the researcher. He counted the number of times that Clinton touched his nose, and he found that it was like 8x times when he was lying versus his truthful answers. This is because there is a little bit of a Pinocchio's nose. They found that we have tissue in our nose that tingles sometimes when we feel guilt. And so it kind of like liars will often they feel that tingling in their nose, so they touch their nose. So we instinctively know this. And the last big one is eye blocking. When we don't want to see something like, ugh, I just embarrassed, I don't like it. We will try to cover our eyes, close our eyes because we are ashamed of it. So shame or guilt, they're very close. They're not the same thing. Will often cover our eyes. So I'm, I'm pretty against face touching as only if it's still, you Know if you're pensively holding a chin pose. Okay. Otherwise I would say do not, do not make someone think you're a liar. Right. Do not accidentally do that. Oh, I should make a note. There is no Pinocchio's nose. There's no one cue that makes someone a liar. And so these are like one off cues. Like if someone, you're talking to someone and they haven't touched their nose once, but all of a sudden you're like, so what do you think of the new girl? And they're like, yeah, you know, she's, she's great. That's when I would be like, why did that just happen around that weird verbal? So you're looking for clusters of red flags. When we're talking about lie detection that are signals of shame or guilt or fear.
- [22:52]
Chris Williamson
What were the other three actions?
- [22:55]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Okay, so touching the face, touching the stomach. So like they like rubbing or touching your torso or your stomach. Again, a blocking behavior. Right. Like instinctively we know that wringing or rubbing hands. So knuckle cracking, ringing hands, movement around hand, self touch, which makes us nervous and, and blocking behaviors. Right. So like any kind of like sudden crossing or blocking, what is it that we're doing?
- [23:19]
Chris Williamson
Are we trying to self soothe there in some way?
- [23:22]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Yes. And that's the problem with lie detection and why it's not a true science is it's very hard to separate anxiety from guilt. If someone's accusing you of lying, you're going to be anxious and you're going to do some of those behaviors. We're trying to self soothe, right? We're like, for example, we, we rub our neck, right? To like calm ourselves down. That reminds us of being a baby. When our parents rubbed us, we bite our pens or our fingers as a pacifying gesture because it reminds us of sucking at the, the boob or you know, a pacifier. They're all instinctive, but it's hard to know the difference between guilt and anxiety.
- [23:55]
Chris Williamson
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- [25:01]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Okay, so there are statistical cues to deceit. These are things that liars typically do, but there's no one cue. So the way that I do lie detection, the way that I teach lie detection is I think of it as, you have to know someone's baseline before you can know what they do when they lie. So we can actually do this together. I think that everyone should know their lying red flags. Every single person on this earth has things they typically do when they lie. It is good to know what yours are. Know what yours are. So I'm gonna help you figure out what those are. You ready?
- [25:31]
Chris Williamson
Okay.
- [25:32]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Okay, so here's what I want you to do. You can do this after, after the interview. Okay. First you have to figure out what your baseline is. So I want you to turn on your camera and I want you to say your name, your age, and then I want you to say so like on your phone or whatever. Then I want you to tell me what you had for breakfast yesterday. This is how you look when you're recalling something. So Chris, just think about what you had for breakfast yesterday. Okay, so you looked up and to your right. Yes.
- [25:59]
Chris Williamson
Yes.
- [25:59]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Okay, so that means that when Chris is recalling a truth, you tend to look up to your right. Right. So by the way, there was a huge myth back in the day that like, if you look up to the left, you're lying. If you look up. No, people do look up when they lie, but they also look up when they're recalling. They're remembering. So we would know that. Chris, when you're recalling a truthful thing, you tend to look up to the right and maybe down over to the side. Also, I wasn't Seeing the whole. Your whole body. But I'd want to know your hand gestures. I want to see your feet. And then. And then I would also ask, I would hear your verbal answer. You know, do you use ums or likes? Are you using a high voice like this? Are you using a low, low voice like this? I want to know where you went. So record your response to that code it vocally, non, verbally, verbally. What are you doing then? What I want you to do is. I want. That's your baseline, your recalling baseline. Then what I want you to do is tell me your most embarrassing story. Pretend you're talking to me. Right? Okay. We do these, by the way, in our lab. We have them. People submit these videos. And when you tell me your most embarrassing story, I want you to kind of relive it. Like, I want you to, like, recall the humiliation that you felt during that embarrassing story. I'm trying to get your body a little bit nervous, right? I'm trying to see your nervous baseline. Code it vocally, verbally, audibly. What are you doing? You'll see on our. We've done this with hundreds of different. Of participants. Movement goes up. Typically, people touch their face. They're using more gestures, or they go really stoic. Deer in the headlights, like, very, very still. Whites of eyes showing, Recounting it like they wish they were dead. It tends to be either one. So record yourself. It's your nervous baseline, your nervous tells. And you should know what your nervous tells are as well, because I'll tell you what, you're probably doing them during your presentations, and you should know how to counteract them. Right? Like, I know what my nervous tells are. I work very hard to keep them under wraps because I don't want to infect you with nervousness. The last one, the hardest one, I want you to make up an embarrassing story that did not happen to you, and I want you to tell it to me. The camera trying to convince me that it's real. So pretend like this was you. It cannot be a real story, what we're doing. I don't need to rehearse this ahead of time. Your body is going to leak. Deception tells. It's going to leak. This is not true. You're going to see what you look like when you're trying to come up with a lie. Those tells are your lying tells, and.
- [28:26]
Chris Williamson
The goal is to make lying tells into recalling tells.
- [28:31]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Well, depends on what your goals are. My goals are to look less nervous. Those are my goals. I don't want you to Teach. I don't want to teach you to be a better liar, although you could do that with this. My goals really are just to make sure you're not accidentally leaking nervousness. So many really smart people that I work with, most of my students are like super smart, high achievers, off the charts, but they don't know how to present themselves well. And my number one goal is your ideas are great. Don't ruin them with nervous cues. So that's my goal, is that you're identifying your nervous cues so you can kind of displace them or stop them. That is the first step for yourself. You also can practice this with your friends, partner, member, bring them in on it, do it with them. You will then see your partner's nervous tells and your partner's lying tells. You will see your kids nervous tells and your kids lying tells. And that's when we begin to look for red flags. So there are certain cues. Touching the nose, touching the face, eye blocking. Another really big lying red flag is people drop pronouns. This is called statement analysis. This, this is an email. So there's some really interesting science about lie, lie detection and emails which I'm working on currently. Um, when we lie, we don't want it associated with us. Lying feels dirty. Lying feels bad. So what we do without realizing it is we drop the personal pronoun. So instead of I'm running late, we say running late, sorry. Instead of saying, I didn't see your email, we see, we say, must have gone to spam. Instead of saying my car broke down, we say, oh, got got broken down. Be there in a bit. So if you see lack of pronouns again, that's nothing's a definite lie. It just when I see that over and over again in emails or in a certain area of conversation, I'm always like, hmm, why are they using distancing language separating themselves from the actual content? The other big lying tell that I like to share with people is the disgust micro expression. So disgust is when we raise our nose up and we crinkle our nose, we flash the upper whites of our teeth. Like it. You can try it. Yeah. Discusses when we have this a lot of activation around our nose and our upper lip, we do not make that expression lightly. Like that's a very weird thing to do with our face. And we often see it if someone smells something bad or tastes something bad. You also see it with liars. In our research, we asked people to play two truths and a lie with us. So like tell two true statements in one lie. We found that lying makes us feel dirty, like a little bit self disgusted. And so sometimes people will show disgust while they're talking, while they're sharing the lie. So it looks like this I were to say. So what do you think of the, of the new guy? Oh yeah, you know, he's. He's great. He's great. And they have to disgust showing in their face. It usually means that someone is, does not feel good about something, but they are afraid to share the truth. So disgust is another one of the other statistical cues you will see misaligned. Like misaligned non verbal and verbal.
- [31:29]
Chris Williamson
You mentioned there about smart people sometimes struggling with being charismatic. Explain that to me.
- [31:36]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Smart people often have the mistaken belief that book smarts equal people smarts. They hope that all their hard work and great ideas and brilliance and talent will translate because it's so good. The problem is what the research shows is that competence without warmth leaves us feeling suspicious. So you can have the best idea in the world if you don't know how to share it. With warmth, likability, trust. People cannot believe it doesn't matter how good the idea is. The kind of famous example I share this in my book is Jamie Simonoff. He's a founder of Ring. He went on Shark Tank and Ring is that video doorbell company. Ring is literally a billion dollar idea. Like he went on to sell Ring for billions of dollars. He went on to get Shaq, Richard Branson, incredible investors. What most people don't know is he went on Shark Tank, pitched a billion dollar idea and got no deals. Like a complete failure of a pitch, tons of pushback. They didn't believe, they didn't like him. Why? He relied too much on his book smarts. He had a dialed pitch, the numbers were good, the words were good. But he looked scared. And he also went really mute with his non verbal cues. Muting in itself is a non verbal cue. And smart people think, I don't need to think about all this body language stuff. I don't need to worry about my vocal power. My ideas are strong enough. So Jamie was delivering a great pitch verbally, but he looked completely mute. And so the sharks were like, I can't get a read on this guy. And they would not invest. And so for smart people, they have to learn no cues is bad cues. The wrong cues are even worse. So how do you frame your ideas, your competence with warmth, with trust, with likability. That balance is really hard for my smart students.
- [33:26]
Chris Williamson
Wow. Yeah, it's interesting that it gets in the way. It's as much a block as it is an enabler. I had a great conversation recently with William von Hippel, and he was talking about this tension between warmth and competence. I know that's something that you talk about a lot, and it was interesting to see it. Now anthropologists talk about it as well. Yes. People that are competent and demonstrate competence is often seen as being more cold. People that are warm are seen as less competent. And you've got this sort of ruthless tension between the two.
- [33:55]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Yes. And I think also we forget that highly charismatic are a blend. Highly charismatic people are a blend of both, but they also use warmth and competence like a thermostat. And so we have two goals. One is making sure that you're showcasing both verbally as well as non verbally. So even in my emails, we do an email audit with our students where we have them literally calculate the number of warm cues and competent cues in their emails. Because your emails are a big part of your communication. Especially nowadays we're constantly online. So one, you want to be both. But the real charismatic people, really good ones, if they know they're emailing a competent person, they dial up the competence. If they know they're emailing a warm person, they dial up the warmth. And we can do this with very specific cues, emojis, exclamation points, words like yay, wow, fab, and whoop. Very warm. Right. It's like. It's like a little button you can just sprinkle them in. It's like warm, warm, warm, warm, warm. Whereas competence, numbers, data, graphs, percent words like power through, efficient, capable, master, those are all very competent cues. And so we can be in control of how people perceive us. But also, more importantly, we can also infect people with warmth and competence. The reason why warmth and competence is important is because very charismatic people are making other people feel more charismatic. You show up as warm and competent, you make everyone in the room more warm and competent. That's why we like highly charismatic people is we want to catch their warmth. We want to catch their competence. So if you are using warm and competent verbal cues in your emails, you are literally gifting warmth and competence to everyone gets them, which means you get better replies, faster replies, and you become more memorable. Research proves that we can produce warmth and competence with the kinds of words that we use. And that is super empowering, not only to us, but to others.
- [35:50]
Chris Williamson
What about in person, Competent people that want to feel more warm and warm people that want to appear more competent.
- [35:55]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Okay, so if you want to appeal more warm, we talked about one of the cues, which is a nod, right immediately. That slow triple nod is high in warmth. A head tilt is also very high in warmth. So when we expose our ear universally, it shows that we're trying to hear better. That's also a warmth cue. They've found that if I were to deliver bad news to you with a head tilt, it softens the blow. Like, it actually feels a little bit better because I'm giving more empathy. So a slight head tilt. This also works really well in a profile picture. So if you are a highly competent leader and you're like, ah, I need to dial up my warmth, consider adding visible hands. So, like, not so close to the face, as well as possibly a head tilt. The worst profile pictures, I don't know why this is all over. LinkedIn is like, people have their arms crossed and they're like, leaning back and looking over their shoulder. Have you seen this on LinkedIn? Like, this is like, yeah.
- [36:46]
Chris Williamson
Oh, I have actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [36:48]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Oh.
- [36:48]
Chris Williamson
I don't spend that much time. I try to spend as little time on LinkedIn as possible.
- [36:51]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Good, good on you. Yes, that's great. Um, and so if you want to be seen as warm or incompetent one, you should angle your body towards the camera. You can consider having a head tilt. Another warmth cue, obviously, is a genuine smile, not a fake smile, not a half smile. A fake smile is on the bottom half of the face and it rubs us really wrong. So if I were to have a fake smile on the bottom half of the face, it would make me seem more inauthentic. A real smile reaches all the way up into our upper cheek muscles and that immediately activates a lot of warmth. It's also more contagious. So if you're going to smile in your profile picture, do it big. If you're not gonna smile, be neutral. So, for example, something to think about is men and women have different perceptions of warmth and competence. Typically, women by default are seen as higher in warmth. Men by default are seen as higher incompetence. So this is something important to know. So for my books, I decided to not smile on. On my book covers, my first two book covers, because I know that as a woman, people are already going to see me as higher in warmth. I was trying to dial up competence. So on my book cover, I'm staring right at the camera, which is also a high competence cue or a power cue. In one of them, I have a steeple, so I'm showing my hands, but I have that power pose. And I'm not smiling so you don't always have to smile. But if you wanted to have warmth, you can competent side so gaze. Especially prolonged eye contact or highly powerful people also tend to make gaze at the end of their sentence. I think a bad tip that sometimes people get is like make eye contact all the time. No, that is creepy. Do not make continuous eye contact. That is weird. It's way too much pressure. We actually, when I asked you earlier, what did you have for breakfast two days ago, you looked off to the side. That is because as humans we, we process away like we typically will. Stop making eye contact to process away natural. What highly competent people do is they'll often ruminate as they're thinking they're looking off and away. And then when they deliver their point, they deliver right at the end when they make eye contact to you. So eye contact at the end of a point or a sentence, it's like very, very powerful.
- [38:58]
Chris Williamson
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- [40:21]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Yes.
- [40:21]
Chris Williamson
You're thinking about stuff like, what was that thing? And I was doing that other stuff.
- [40:26]
Vanessa Van Edwards
It's almost impossible to compute difficult ideas looking at someone. And that is because our body, when I'm making eye contact, we're producing oxytocin. Our body's like, ah, we're connecting with a human. We better produce oxytocin, which will make us feel trust. When we're doing that, our brain is like, don't solve math problems. Don't try to recall that thing you had for breakfast. Don't try to sort something out. We're focusing on oxytocin. So that's why in natural conversation, people kind of peel away to process something and that feels natural. There is a myth that liars are shifty eyed. No, no. Liars make more eye contact. And that is because they've typically verbally rehearsed. They don't have to think and they are watching you to see. Do you believe me?
- [41:10]
Chris Williamson
Oh, that's interesting. Because they also have to use less processing power to think about what they're doing. They're actually recalling as opposed to generating.
- [41:18]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Exactly. They are literally verbatim memorizing a script. Which is why it kind of creeps us out when someone doesn't break eye contact because we're like, what is going on? Do they verbally memorize this? And also like, give me a break.
- [41:30]
Chris Williamson
Yeah. What about the issue of over rehearsing again, for smart people who want to try and do it? And they're not trying to be deceitful, they're not trying to lie to you. But you know, the, the perils of being under prepared versus being over prepared.
- [41:42]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Oh, okay. So when we did our TED Talk research and we found that hand gesture finding which was just so illuminating, now it's like, oh, yes, smart people use lots of gestures because they understand their content. The bad TED Talkers. Remember, everyone, if you're invited to give a TED Talk, you're, you're good. You're going to be good. There's not going to be anyone bad. They're rehearsed to some extent. The bad TED Talkers were actually so perfect, you did not believe them. They took the stage and they sounded so scripted and so precise that was literally hard to pay attention or distracting. The best TED talks, if you go look at like the top 10 TED talks of all time, they are super conversational. They almost take the Stage like Brene Brown's original TED Talk. Highly recommend to go watch just the style. She walks on stage as if she's walking into coffee with you. She shares her stories as if she's telling you like an old friend. Ken Robinson, one of the most popular TED talks of all time. He walks on stage and he shares a little anecdote about his son. And it feels like we're just chummy chatting on the side of the road. He was prepped. Okay. All these TED talkers were very prepared, but they were not scripted. And this is what's really important. I actually never, ever believe in scripting, ever. I don't believe in teleprompters. I don't like them. I only use them when I absolutely have to. I would much rather you bullet stories, ideas. If you're prepping for an interview or a pitch, go off of your slides. Never over rehearse the exact words you're going to say. Try to tap into the original emotion. Those bullets give you charisma, charismatic freedom. And that conversational tone is so much better than polished, perfect, formal, which smart people love. Smart people make the mistake. They think, oh, I should be stoic and super formal, super polished. But actually that makes it very hard for someone to relate to you.
- [43:26]
Chris Williamson
That's interesting. Yeah, it's certainly trying to be as precise as possible, trying to control the outcomes, trying to ensure that every word is said with absolute accuracy. It. I don't know, it communicates the ideas correctly, but it's not exactly the vibe that most people are going to feel most.
- [43:45]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Warmth toward Jamie Siminoff. Right. He had the perfect verbal pitch, it was dialed, but they didn't believe him. They could not relate to him. I think that also, like, look, this is a little bit more granola, but I. Perfect is not real. Perfect doesn't work. I think people tend to think that if they have the perfect story or the perfect joke or they look perfect, then people will like them and they'll be impressive. We don't like perfect people because we know that it's not real. We actually like vulnerability. We like raw. And I think we also like people who are not trying to be impressive. When we try to go in perfect and polished, that's what we're trying to do. I would much rather you focus on what's a way that I can share this with genuine emotion that I actually feel and even like a little bit of vulnerability. For many, many years, I tried to hide that I'm a recovering awkward person. I feel very awkward with People, that's why I do what I do is it does not come naturally to me. Pitches and presentations do not come natural. Conversations do not come natural. And once I started sharing that, people were like, oh, this is a learned behavior. If she can learn it, maybe I can learn it. So I think, like, if there's something you can share that's just real, that's way better than perfect.
- [44:53]
Chris Williamson
What should we know about vocal charisma?
- [44:56]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Ooh, vocal charisma. Okay, so one thing I didn't talk about from lie detection research is the importance of our. Our vocal cues. So a lot of the cues in lie detection are vocal, and that is because it is very hard to lie with our vocal tone. Right? Like, it's hard to manipulate or change your voice. So the reason why we're so cued in to listening to how someone is saying something is our brain is trying to figure out, are you telling the truth? Do I believe you? Do you believe you? So there's a couple vocal cues that are really important for both truth telling, but also just powerful vocal, Having a powerful vocal charisma. The very first one is using the lowest end of your natural tone. All of us have a range, both men and women. So right now, I'm working very hard to stay in the lowest end of my natural range. This is still natural for me, but when I'm talking to my husband or my kids, you know, I'll often say, oh, hey, girls, how's it going? I love you so much. But if I were to give this entire interview in this tone of voice, it would drive you crazy. You would not like it, even though it's natural to me. So we like people who are in the lower end. Why? When I'm in the lowest end of my register, the way that I get my voice down, there is one. I keep my shoulders as low as possible. I maximize distance between my earlobes and my shoulder. Second, I'm taking in a lot of oxygen, so I'm taking in very deep breaths in this interview to keep my vocal cords nice and relaxed. I am letting you hear it now so you can hear me take them in. But normally I take them a little bit slower. When we are anxious, we hold our breath. So what happens is we go, hello. How are you? Good to see you. Yes. Up here, we're holding our voice, and everything is tense, and we don't like it. This should make you feel nervous when I'm talking like this. So when I speak on the out breath, it immediately forces my vocal cords to relax. The problem is people typically do this on their very first word. So they answer the phone. Hello. Oh, how are you? Good to hear from you. Hi, my name is Vanessa, and I teach people science. We do that at the very top of our breath because we're the most nervous. What I want you to make sure that you do is from the very first line is you are speaking on the out breath. A little experiment you can do with me if you want to try this is say hello. So taking a deep breath and say hello at the top of your breath so it sounds like this. Hello. Are you gonna do it? You could try it. Hello. There you go. That was your highest range. You should not sound like that. Right. If you that sounded familiar to you when you just did that out loud, that means you're speaking the highest end of your range. Now, the opposite of that is speaking on the out breath. So I want you to hear the difference for me. So this is the highest hello. This is the lowest hello. Right. Like, still me, but I sound so much better. So now try to say hello on your out breath.
- [47:40]
Chris Williamson
Hello.
- [47:42]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Lower, deeper. That's the voice you should be using. When I'm in a pitch or presentation, the moment I hear myself go a little higher in my register, I take a deep breath and I lower down. And you might have heard in this interview, there has been moments where I've gotten a little high, and then I correct and breathe out and bring myself down. This is also where we get vocal fry. So part one, speaker and speak in the lower end of your range. Now, please don't be Elizabeth Holmes. Don't go so low that it sounds unnatural to you. That's weird. Lowest end of your natural range. It should not feel like you're trying. Second is vocal fry. This has to do with breath and volume. The other thing that can happen when we're very nervous is we take very shallow breaths. And that shallowness makes us breathy. It also makes us lose volume. So you'll notice that people with low volume and low breath, they use like. Like vocal fry. And so they'll be like, hey, everyone, like, morning. It's like, nice to hear from you. I don't know that grating sounds. That vocal fry is like bacon on a frying pan. It we do not like it because we can hear that someone is a little anxious. We don't want to catch it. Whenever I hear someone in vocal fry or if you hear yourself going to vocal fry, speak louder. It's a trick. It will get you out of vocal fry immediately. So if I hear myself hitting that at the end, I immediately just speak a little bit louder. That volume gets rid of it, pushes your voice through. Vocal fry is just your vocal cords rubbing together like rattling. So if you're adding more volume, it just pushes them together so they make a better sound. So if someone's using it, have them speak up.
- [49:15]
Chris Williamson
How dynamic should people be when it comes to volume?
- [49:18]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Quite right. Quite dynamic. And they've actually researched this. So dynamic volume is a power vocal cue. Now, look, I don't always teach this one because you gotta get it right. And so if you're gonna use this, I really want you to practice it. We love dynamic volume because it helps us with comprehension. So, for example, if I'm really excited about something, I'm like, you are not gonna believe this. I'm talking at a high volume. But then when I share something a little bit personal, a little bit more private, I might go down on my volume. That immediately cues you in, wow, we're coming in closer. We're doing something a little bit more intimate. But then I'm talking about something super exciting, like, it just cues you into the emotional state. We like it as a listener. So I would say if you can use a slightly. A touch higher volume when you're being authoritative, so you're giving a command like a. A boundary or a deadline. When you're very excited about something, we literally tune in more to it, I think. By the way, I think there's, like, Netflix or YouTube. They turn up the volume on ads. Has anyone else noticed this? Because, like, we're cued to listen to things that are louder. So if you're saying something important or you're excited about, up, volume, up. If you're saying something intimate, vulnerable, personal, kind of secretive, or even, like, surprising, lower your volume. People will either lean in, or it also triggers their brain to think, oh, we're saying something, like, a little bit softer. And that kind of excites us in a different way. So. But be careful, right? Like, this is a hard thing to master. I barely do it. Like, in interviews. I find it's. It can. I don't do it purposefully. If I do it accidentally, I'm like, yes. It's a lot of cognitive load for me. Remember, I'm an awkward person, so I have to think a lot about my communication. I'm a social overthinker. So if any of these cues feel like too much cognitive overload, do one at a time. And that is because we can grow social muscles. So things that Used to be hard for me. I practiced enough times where now I don't even think about them. So it's okay to also go cue by cue. You know, there's 97 of them. You can go one by one if you want.
- [51:21]
Chris Williamson
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- [52:20]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Oh, yes, this is. I think my mission in life is to help my fellow social overthinkers. And this is how there is no such thing as perfect, but there is purposeful. When you are purposeful with your interactions, it takes all the overthinking out of it. If you know in a conversation you have two goals, warmth and competence. That directs all that social overthinking that's like negative, not helpful to you into warmth cues, competence cues, warmth, verbal, competent, nonverbal. It actually gives your brain something to think about. That's not. I'm doing bad. I sound dumb. Do they even like me? Are they mad at me? So I want to replace all those negative internal limiting beliefs with really positive ones and purposeful ones. So warmth and competence, winning. I got this. I'm excited. Great. The other thing that you can think about doing is, okay, what's my conversational intention here? I know that when I'm interacting, I'm trying to find out as much about the person as possible. And I have one singular goal in normal conversation. How many times can I say me too? I know that there's a psychological effect, the similarity attraction effect. It is the most powerful effect in basic interactions, which is we like people like us. We're of course attracted to sometimes our opposites. My husband is my opposite, and that's a good thing. But we like people who have similar values, similar interests. In a conversation, if I can feel and get the other person to feel, oh yeah, me too. I also love that we're winning. So I've taken away all those negative worries and all I focus on is what questions could I ask to find our similar interests? What stories could I tell to find our similar core values? How more, how much more can I say Me too. That is completely game changed. The internal focus of my overthinking, just.
- [54:11]
Chris Williamson
Trying to resonate with people. I guess what we don't want is to feel like were the odd one out and some sort of weird lone ranger thing. Yeah, and resonating. What about small talk? The, the absolute nightmare encounter that lots of people have. How can you get better at small talk?
- [54:27]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Okay, so this is actually what got me started on my career journey 17 years ago, aging myself. So I started in 2007 and my very first YouTube video was about this in November 7, 2007, which was how do we elevate small talk to be less boring and more engaging? I am allergic to small talk. I hate it. It turns me off. It makes me like want to lead every conversation. It wants me, wants me to be more introverted. I'm actually an Amber in between. So we did an experiment about a decade ago where we took 500 speed networkers and I assigned them conversation starters that I hypothesized could break small talk scripts. The problem with small talk is that we're on autopilot. And this is why it goes so badly. We meet someone and we're like, so what do you do? Uh huh. Where are you from? Okay, well it was nice meeting you. Like we have the same questions and we've answered them a million times before. So our brain is just dead. Right? Like a part of me dies when someone asks, what do you do? Like that's like just how I feel right inside because I've answered it so many times. Okay, so I, I, I assigned how are you? And what do you do? The two questions we ask and answer the most often. Then I assigned four questions that I thought would produce better conversation. We set up cameras in all four corners of the room. We tested volume, body language, gestures of excitement. So more gestures, more leaning, more nods, more smiling. And then I asked each person to rate the quality of their conversation on a scale of 1 to 5. One being that was the most awkward conversation I've ever had. I want to die inside, and I could barely fill the time. Five being that was the best conversation I've ever had. This could be my soulmate, right? Like, on a scale one to five, how are you and what do you do across the board? The lowest ratings, yet we ask them all the time. So my very first tip for small talk, do not ask, what do you do? We need to go on a small talk diet. If you ask boring questions, you will get boring answers. You have to be willing to be conversationally courageous, which means breaking the social script. No more. What do you do? No more, how are you? No more. What's up? Been busy? How's it going? No more. You're literally chewing the new boring. Second, the highest rated question was, what was the highlight of your day? Why? I was trying to think of a replacement for how are you? Right. Like, it's hard to, like, walk into the office and be like, what are your greatest dreams in life? Right. Like, that would be deep, but it would. People would not like it. So I'm like, what's a better replacement for how are you? What's the highlight of your day? Or what's been good? It completely changes the autopilot. One, it disengages it, but second, it makes the other person think, oh, what has been good? Good, good, good, good. And you're gifting them optimism. They are literally in their brain thinking, what's been good? Good, good, good. And they're going through all the good things in their mind, which immediately changes them to be more positive, gives you a better, more engaging answer. So, what was the highlight of your day? Or what? What's good? Is the question that I want you to start with. Whenever you walk into office, hop on a call, even an email, the second two questions were almost tied for second place. They were working on anything exciting recently. And this is a replacement for what do you do? What do you do? Is also asking someone, what are you worth? And I think that for people who are not defined by what they do or they're ashamed of what they do, it's actually a hard question for them. And so if you ask instead working on anything exciting recently, you are giving them permission. Because if they love what they do, oh, they'll tell you. They will tell you if they don't love what they do, they'll tell you something else that's great. A side hustle, a personal passion. If they don't work, they'll tell you about being a staying at home parent. It's a permission question. And it immediately lights someone up because they're like, what's exciting? What's exciting? The third one was, what personal passion project are you working on, which people love to talk about? And by the way, even if someone doesn't have a personal passion, they can be like, you know, I have to work on that. And then you get to share yours, Right? Like, you can still then share yours and have a little bit excitement. The fourth question, for those. For my math folks who are counting, the fourth question almost broke my data in the sense that people either gave this question A5, they loved it, it was amazing. They made best friends, or a zero, which wasn't even an option on my scale. That's how much they hated it. Can you guess what it was?
- [58:51]
Chris Williamson
No.
- [58:51]
Vanessa Van Edwards
This question is, what's your story now? I wondered because this is kind of a deeper question. I wonder what this were. Extroverts love this question. They're like, what's my story? How much time do you have? Should I start in the childhood years or college? Like, they are thrilled to share their life story with their Uber driver. With the person on the side of the street. Like, they love it. Introverts, you ask them this question and they're like, I have to go to the bathroom. I don't want to share this with you. And that is because it's a little bit personal. It's a little bit too deep, too quickly. So I would just share the first three questions. Great. Be careful with what's your story? Only ask it if it's an extrovert and when in doubt, I would avoid asking it until later. Until you know them better.
- [59:36]
Chris Williamson
Do introverts have more of a problem with being charismatic?
- [59:40]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Ah, I thought you were gonna. I thought you were gonna ask, do introverts have a harder time with small talk? And the answer is yes, because they use less words on an average day and they're more. They're less comfortable sharing. Introverts have a very difficult problem because they crave privacy, but they also crave connection. And so they're like, I so want to connect with people in a good way, in a deep way, but I'm also. I value my privacy. Do they have a hard time being charismatic? I think they do struggle more than extroverts. That's not based in the research. But I think that extroverts who are talkers, who thrive with people, they're just, they. They're at ease in social interactions. Right. The difference between an extrovert and an introvert is an extrovert gets energy from people. An introvert gets energy from being alone. An ambivert can get energy with the right people in the right situations, but needs recharge time, like needs alone time. So introverts are often set up to not be as at ease because when they're with people there, their energy battery is used. They are juicing it. They are juicing it. Now. I think that if they know what to say, they have exactly what questions to ask. They know what to do with their hands, they know what they're searching for. It becomes easier, their battery is drained less so they can be extremely charismatic, but it takes more work.
- [61:03]
Chris Williamson
What about becoming more resilient? When we think that people might be socially rejecting us or we kind of get into an awkward conversation, we're a new one in the group. We don't really know how people feel about us. And you don't want to come across as being too brash. You don't want to come across as being too much of a wallflower. That hyper vigilance. I imagine that a lot of introverts and people that pay attention, maybe smart people have as well, where the micro movement of everybody that's in the room and they're paying attention to it all. How can we become sort of more resilient to that fear of social rejection and maybe actual social rejection?
- [61:37]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Yes. This is, I think the mission of my life is helping people feel braver. Because what's fascinating is we tend to over overestimate our abilities in all areas when it's not correct. We tend to think we're smarter than we are, we contribute more than we contribute. The only exception to that is in conversational awkwardness. We tend to think that we're bad at conversation, which actually when actually we're better than we think. So the first thing I would say is you might be harder on yourself than you need to be. And a lot of this can also come from our past bad experiences. Like if you struggle with social anxiety or if you had a narcissistic parent, you often misinterpret neutral facial expressions as negative, which means you have been in interactions where you think people are angry at you, you think people are disappointed or not happy, but actually because of your background, you're misinterpreting neutral as negative.
- [62:32]
Chris Williamson
What were the what? What are some of the sort of predictive factors for that?
- [62:36]
Vanessa Van Edwards
That we. We. It's a cycle, right? So we. If we had a narcissistic parent, that that parent was overly critical of us and often was negative towards us. So we take that imprinting. We take it into social interactions. We see a neutral person who's like, oh, that's interesting. You do marketing. And we misinterpret.
- [62:56]
Chris Williamson
They hate me. They think I'm boring.
- [62:58]
Vanessa Van Edwards
They hate me. They hate me. I'm gonna excuse myself. Bye. We don't ask for their number. We don't think that we're clicking. We think that we're doing a terrible job. We go home early, right? And, like, I know this so intimately. Like, if this is you, oh, we are together. Like, it took me years of coming home from parties and me saying to my husband, well, she hates me. My husband will be like, what are you talking about? I'm like, yeah, she was so mad at me. He's like, no, I don't. I don't think so. And it took a lot of dissecting. This is why I learned micro expressions is because I was like, I have to know what anger looks like, so I don't misinterpret neutral as angry. I have to know what contempt and disgust. I have to know what these look like. So I know exactly when I should be seeing negativity, when I'm. When I'm not misinterpreting it. So one is getting very clear on the cues that are being sent to you. I think that could be extremely empowering, learning what the negative expressions look like so you're not misinterpreting them. Second is, not everyone is going to like you. That's good. It would be exhausting and overwhelming if everyone liked you and you had to be friends with everyone. I think the moment we're okay with some people are not my people. I actually think we should be more forthright with this. I believe in creating friendship allergies. There are certain people who I get along with so well, and there are certain people who, like, I'm allergic to. Like, we just don't get along that well. I would rather know that sooner rather than later because I have a social battery that only is half full usually. So I now create allergies where I figure out this out really quickly. One of the ones I ask is very early on in a conversation, if we're connecting, is. I'll be like, so, like, what's your big goal for 2025? This is because I am super goal oriented. Like, I love a goal. I thrive off of goals. If you tell me, oh, you know, I'm not that into goals, or I just never, you know, I have all these goals and I just never achieve them, we're probably not going to get along. Like, I'm, I'm with my friends. Like, I will bully you into achieving your goals. You know, like that if you have a goal, it's my goal too. Like, we're going to be in it together. And so I think, like, thinking about what are the questions you could ask that are going to very quickly help you find your people actually makes you feel more confident. Because trying to make it work with someone who isn't your person is exhausting.
- [65:19]
Chris Williamson
It's like a conversational shit test.
- [65:22]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Yes, exactly, exactly. And we have to think about these, like, what are things that you just know are a deal breaker? Like, I'll give you one of my husbands. He's going to be so mad at me when I share this. But it's true. So he really does not like horoscopes. He's just like, very much not into horoscopes. And so he will ask, like, early on, like, so, like, what's your sign? And he sees how into it someone is. And if they're too into it, he's like.
- [65:52]
Chris Williamson
Thank you. Thank you for sending up a warning. Flair. Nice and early.
- [65:55]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Yes, exactly. And so whenever we're with a new couple, you know, and we're trying to be friends with this couple and someone starts talking about horoscopes, I'm like, no, it's done. We're not gonna be friends. Oh, no.
- [66:08]
Chris Williamson
Oh, no. Okay, what about coming across as more attractive when it comes to dating?
- [66:15]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Yes. So this is kind of a weird one. I think that we put a lot. We put too much focus on looks for attractiveness. That sounds weird, right? But actually being attractive is about being physically attractive, but it's actually being physically available. We are very attracted to people who are not going to reject us. And so in dating, there's something called signal amplification bias, which means that we think that we're being over the top obvious with our attraction cues and who we're into. But actually we are biased to this. People miss most of our cues and they tend to think that people are not interested in them. So you have to over signal availability to others and that makes you immediately more attractive. I think it was researcher Monica Moore. She looked at singles in a bar and she found that the most attractive women were often approached the least because they were signaling less availability non verbal cues. Women who were signaling the most non verbal availability cues, which I'll talk about in a second, were approached the most and had the most dates and had the most follow ups. So we've learned a couple of these already. But we love, especially in a courtship setting, darting glances. So I'm going to try and do these with the camera. Maybe they'll translate or not. Monica Moore found this in her research study that the women actually, especially the women, it works for men to women too, but for women to men especially, who do very quick, lingering glance. So it's like a very quick 1, 2, 1, 2, like 17 times. Like that's how many times it took for a man to approach. This is in heterosexual dating. It took 17 times for. For the guy to get it. So it takes way more than you think. So quick darting glances, lingering glances. I also think this was not in the research study. But there's a very low pressure way to be attractive verbally. And it's to be very clear. If you see someone who's attractive in the gym or a hallway, all you have to do to suss it out if there's anything happening. There is like a hey. Just that. Because if they're married or not interested, they'll be like, hey, you're like, cool. Like, not my person. Got it? But if they're like, hey, you're in, girl. Like, you're in. This works for both men or women. Just try like a little subtle soft hey. Lowest voice tone, little lingering gaze. It is the fastest way to be like, I'm available. Are you? And we gotta do that more often. Like, life is too short. I have so many amazing single students who are catches. They are incredible. And they are single and they are lonely. And I'm like, when's the last time you said hey? And they're like, what? I don't want to be rejected. And I'm like, would you rather be lonely? Like, we gotta get some social exposure. And this is my last tip for dealing with anxiety, which also answers your attractiveness question is I would rather you over signal availability, which has no repercussions if you do darting, lingering glances and no one approaches you. Okay. There's no downside to that. If you approach someone or walk away someone in the gym and you're like, hey. And they ignore you. No repercussions. Like, it is totally okay. I think we have to get out there and expose it because they have found that the more that we can do social Exposure to things that make us slightly anxious. They stop making us anxious. So if I'm saying this and this is making you nervous, please go do it ten times. We got. We gotta just rip off that band aid. I promise you, by the 11th time, and if it's not true, you can come find me on Instagram and yell at me. By the 11th time, it will feel a little less scary. By the time you might have a date.
- [69:53]
Chris Williamson
So much of the stuff that you're talking about sort of aligns with a lot of what CBT teaches. It's a combination of exposure therapy, CBT reframing. Look, this isn't as bad as you think it can be. You know, it's not just rooted in sort of nonverbal and verbal communication. It's, I'm going to guess, the neuroscience of what's going on in your brain and how that actually relates to. To your habits of communication.
- [70:14]
Vanessa Van Edwards
And I think yes, yes. And if you've tried CBT or any of these techniques before and they haven't worked, they're gonna work this time. And let me tell you why. Sometimes CBT will give or social exposure therapy will give you an assignment without enough tools. And if you've struggled with social anxiety like I have, or if you're a recovering awkward person like I have, you'll do these over and over again, and they still feel bad. If you have an intention, like, you know what to do with your hands, you know what question you're gonna ask, you know exactly how you're gonna say, hey, you know you're gonna do flirting, darting, ling. That takes on the anxiety because it gives you something to do with it. So if it hasn't worked in the past, it will work now, because now you're going to have very specific tools you're going to use that are going to get you out of that overthinking.
- [70:54]
Chris Williamson
What about online dating profiles? Cues, Important attractive cues there.
- [71:00]
Vanessa Van Edwards
So again, I'm going to say you don't want to appeal to everyone. So many of my friends who do online dating, by the way, I've been married for 15 years, together with my husband for 18 years, so it's been a minute. So just caveat all my dating advice where it's been a minute. But I do think that I know what a successful relationship looks like, and I'm working backwards from that. Working backwards from that is you don't want to marry just anyone. You want to find your person, which means you want to find them quicker. The fastest way to deplete Your social energy on dates is to go on dates with the wrong people. So I want you to. To create allergies on your dating profile. Like, I have a friend who loves dogs, and she didn't have any pictures of dogs on her profile. And I was like, no, you wanna attract a dog guy. Like, you wanna attract a guy who loves dogs, have a dog in every one of your profile pictures. Like, you need to be featuring your dog because you don't wanna have someone who's like, I'm allergic to dogs. I don't really like dogs. I don't like when they sleep in our bed. Like, that's a very. A very specific and small one. But if you have values, you wanna state them as clearly as possible upfront. So you're getting better dates from the very start. The second thing is try to ask Level 2 questions on your dates. The other thing that could happen on these dates is you're talking, but you're not really connecting. So you're on a date and you're, like, checking things off. I know I've had a couple amazing experiences where I've got to observe some speed dates. And everyone nowadays has, like, checklists. You know, like, people have, like, things in their mind that they want. And so basically I can hear them doing their checklists in their heads. They're like, do you travel much? Oh, yeah, I love travel. Check. So, like, what do you do for fun on the weekends? Oh, yeah. Also does yoga, also does running, also goes to the gym. Also great. Check. So, like, what shows are you watching these days? Oh, great. We have the same humor. What kind of music do you listen to? Like, I can literally hear them doing those. And those things are okay, but it's going to limit you in terms of depth. Those are not very deep questions. Questions. And so then you'll end up being on seven dates and feel like you don't really know that person. I would much rather you go to level two. So level one, when we talk about connection, is general traits, basic interests, job, where you're from, like your general facts. Level two is goals, motivations, worries, fears, personality traits. These are the questions that I want you asking. Even on date number one, I want you going there. Not in the first few minutes. You got to hit some of those level one questions, but, like, as quickly as possible. So this is. What are you learning right now? What is your biggest goal right now? What keeps you up at night? What excites you? Where do you see yourself in five years? Those kinds of questions are getting to values they're getting to motivations. And that's where we actually begin to find alignment, especially with personality. Like, is this person as extroverted as you? Like, I would literally ask them or have them listen to this podcast and be like, where's your social battery? Like, are you an introvert or extrovert? Like, how much socializing do you like to do in a week that is so important for your relationship? Much more than music tastes.
- [74:06]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, it's. It's strange, the stuff that we think that we're going to resonate with other people on compared with what it's actually going to be. Is there a. Are there sex differences between men and women? The way that we sort of come across in terms of charisma, how we get adjudicated, how, how gender neutral are these bits of advice? Or are there certain things that only work for men and women?
- [74:32]
Vanessa Van Edwards
There are some. There are some differences and actually not as many as you would think. Like, even the big five personality traits, which is a really robust science, has very little gender differences. But there are some and they're typically how we communicate. So, for example, women love what are called vocalizations on a date. A woman thinks that a date is going well and also is more attracted to the person she's with. I believe this is both in heterosexual, heterosexual and homosexual relationships. The more they are saying, oh, wow, oh, that's called a vocalization. And they love doing them as well as hearing them. So men, if you would like to be more appealing, the more vocalization you can give the other, the, the woman that you're with, the more she's going to feel like, wow, like we're resonating. We got this. We're literally on the same wavelength. I'll even hear like really good relationships, like old marriages, they like on the same wavelength. So like the woman will be like, don't you think? Like they're like literally syncing up their vocalization. So try to give more vocalizations. That's for women. Men are okay with not having any vocalizations at all. They don't, they don't need that at all. That's like the biggest one. The other ones have to do with warmth and competence that women tend to come across and feel they should be warmer. So they tend to laugh more, giggle more, self touch more. Right. Like they'll self touch their hair, their earrings. They also use different cues to be attractive. So women, to be attractive will touch their lips, they'll touch their supercenal notch, like the notch in between their two collarbones. They Will stroke their hair to show the health of their hair, which shows that they can bear children. Men will typically try to showcase the squareness of their jaw. So like they might do one of these things like, or like they'll rub their face to like shit at. They also want their pheromones out there. So they might like even like rub this or try to get like their armpit pheromones out because they know that could that signaling high testosterone. But that's a little bit different between homosexual and heterosexual. But the way that we are attractive is a little bit different. Availability is good for everyone, but some of those smaller cues are a little bit different.
- [76:48]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, I think especially in this new world of guys being very concerned about not wanting to make women feel uncomfortable or be part of some awful news headline or a TikTok or in the background of a gym. But a lot of women still getting sort of living in this blast radius of why men love bitches. Treat him like you, treat him mean. Keep him keen. I think we need an iOS update for what it is that women understand about sort of how men are interpreting. If it's anything other than an absolute hell yeah. With a big sign above your head, it's a, oh my God, I don't want to get in trouble.
- [77:25]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Right, right. And I think like asking like all the kinds of non verbal permission are also great as well. Like for example, in this culture that we're in right now, it's like a very odd place to be. Touching used to be a thing that people did when they were flirting. This used to be a thing that we did where like a man and woman was attracted and so you would sort of lean out and touch their arm, you touch their lower back. Well, now it's like I, you know, I don't want to touch too quickly. So what you can do instead is you can reach out as if you're about to touch and then let the woman go the other way. So like you can like, I call it a hover touch. Like. Right. So you can like. It's hard to do it on myself but like if you were, if you would normally to flirt with a woman, like reach out and touch her hand or touch her back, you could reach out and not actually touch her and see if she leans into the touch or is receptive to the touch. So there's also things that we can do to have like that slow halfway house.
- [78:20]
Chris Williamson
What about, have you looked at paying and receiving compliments, how to get better at doing that?
- [78:26]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Well, I'm probably Not the person to ask on compliment economics. Because while I know I shouldn't need compliments, compliments make me feel good and therefore I really want compliments. So I think that we should actually compliment, like, a skill and take a compliment like a skill. What I mean by this is don't compliment. Compliment the tall guy on being tall, right? Like, do not compliment something. Someone on something that they already know is a thing for them. Like, I often hear, like, I'm with VIPs, right? And someone will compliment the VIP on the. The thing that they work really hard on. They're like, yeah, yeah, I know you're better off complimenting someone on something that they're working really hard up but they haven't quite perfected. Right? So if there's something that they're working on they haven't quite perfected. And you're, like, seeing the progress. Complimenting on progress is one of the best things you can do. We love progress as human beings. So complimenting more specific things that you. That they're working on. And the second thing is we should be good at receiving compliments. And I've had to work on this where, like, if someone compliments you like, oh, my gosh, that is so kind. And then don't say it back. This is like the worst when someone's like, oh, my gosh, you look so pretty. And then someone's like, oh, you look pretty too.
- [79:36]
Chris Williamson
Really, like the things that you could come up with.
- [79:39]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Yeah. No one believes that. So if you get a compliment, just say, thank you so much. That's so kind. Just that don't apologize for it. Don't say that they're wrong. And for heaven's sakes, don't fake compliment them back. Just take it.
- [79:53]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, it's being able to take compliments well, I remember, sort of. I don't know whether it's the Brit in me, although I do think that a lot of Brits do this. This sort of disparaging. Oh, God, you know, I mean, like, someone would say, I really love how much attention you pay to do to. You know, I've got nothing else going on in my life. So it's like you. This person said something really nice to you. You've managed to make it even more about you somehow, but in the saddest way possible.
- [80:24]
Vanessa Van Edwards
And also, like, we hate feeling wrong. So if someone compliments you and you'd argue with them, you're giving them.
- [80:30]
Chris Williamson
No, I'm not. No, don't be silly. It's like, hey, this person just said something Nice to you. And you've denied the accuracy of the world.
- [80:37]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Yes. And here's how I want you to think about it. We love a lot of things as humans, but two things we really love. One, feeling really smart. Second, giving advice. So if you say to someone, my gosh, I have been loving how much you're doing on YouTube. It's incredible, your videos. And I say, oh, no, no, I didn't do any of it. My team did all of it. They're like, oh, I feel stupid. That is the worst thing for someone to feel. The second thing is, can you double down and be like, oh, my gosh, what did you like about it? Tell me everything. You've just doubled up on the compliment. Not only have you accepted what they've given and made them feel smart, now you're actually going to ask them for advice, which really puts them in the position of expert. So when someone compliments me on something like that, especially like, if someone compliments me on my book, I'll be like, oh, my gosh, what was like the biggest takeaway? Like, what did you love the most? I'm trying. I'm writing my next book. I'm trying to figure out the nuggets that stuck with people. And they're like, well, let me tell you, right, like, it's also a little.
- [81:35]
Chris Williamson
Bit of a shit test to make sure that they're actually. It's like the thing about the lying, I really like the thing about the lying.
- [81:43]
Vanessa Van Edwards
I mean, like, I'd rather know, like, are you going to fake compliment me or real compliment me? So, yes, the other. The hidden objective of that is also. Is this real? I'm not gonna sniff test this.
- [81:53]
Chris Williamson
You bullshitting me? Vanessa, you're awesome. Chase, mutual friend of ours has been harping on about you for forever and it's awesome. As a recovering, socially awkward, only child person who's also British as well. You're doing the God's work. Where should people go? They wanna keep up to date with all the stuff that you've got going on.
- [82:11]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Oh, my goodness. Well, I read my audiobooks, so if you like audio. I do cues and captivate. They're both on audible. And then I'm@scienceofpeople.com if you want tips every Monday.
- [82:21]
Chris Williamson
Heck yeah. Vanessa, until next time. I appreciate you.
- [82:24]
Vanessa Van Edwards
Thank you. Bye.
- [82:28]
Chris Williamson
When I first started doing personal growth, I really wanted to read the best books. The most impactful ones, the most entertaining ones, the ones that were the easiest to read and the most dense and interesting. But there wasn't a list of them. So I scoured and scoured and scoured and then gave up and just started reading on my own. And then I made a list of 100 of the best books that I've ever found. And you can get that for free right now. So if you want to spend more time around great books that aren't going to completely kill your memory and your attention just trying to get through a single page, go to chriswillx.combooks to get my list completely free of 100 books you should read before you die. That's chriswillx.combooks.