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

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 a 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 fewer 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 whose science-backed 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. 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 language of cues. This directly comes from the research. They know that blueprints will talk to anyone. They know that if you sit within

25 feet of a high performer, your own performance improves by 15%. There's a direct correlation between confidence and anxiety, and the distance from our shoulder to our ear. 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, if you have trouble getting raises, or if you feel anxious and overwhelmed, I have five power cues for competence. But if you have ever been told you're intimidating or 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 little bit. 53% of you who listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like the show, if you like what we do here, and if you want to support us, the free, simple way that

you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. My commitment to you is that 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 guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much! Much Vanessa Van Edwards. For someone who just clicked on this conversation now and is 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 language of cues. If you don't know how to read the cues people are sending to you, and 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. That is critical to being more memorable, being more confident, having clearer communication. And taking that a bit further, what areas of my life will that impact? So if I'm warm and I'm competent—which you're telling me are things that I can control—what are the downstream consequences of that? I think my mission is to tackle a big lie: that smart people will translate their book smarts into people smarts. But actually, no matter how smart you are, if you do

not know how to communicate with people, you can't connect with them. You can't have good relationships, and you can't have supportive friendships. You get looped into difficult 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 first-party research yourself? Where are you drawing from? 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. In 2002, I discovered a study that changed my life, which said that charisma can be learned. This is when I started to tackle and 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 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 in

helping very brilliant, very smart, awkward folks not be overlooked. Give me some sort of depth as to the amount of research and the quantity of research that you've done. How many people have you studied? How many hours of footage, etc.? Yep, so I 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 raises or… Promotion! Other folks were so socially 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. 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 ambiverted—it is very hard to learn how to communicate if you don't naturally gravitate towards people. I was like, there has to be a way to teach introverts and ambiverts 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 ambivert? Ambiverts get energy from the right people in the right places. 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. Ambiverts 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 ambivert is because you should know what the people and places that drain you are. There are certain people that, when you open your calendar and look at it, you think, "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 them; we want to limit them as much as possible. And then also the places: Where do you thrive? Is it conferences, one-on-one business meetings, or socializing at parties? Knowing those places helps you optimize your social battery. When you say

"cues," which you mentioned at the start of this conversation, people think of just body language. Is that the full extent of areas that you focus on? Yes, so cues come into four different channels. There is body language—that's facial expressions, gestures, posture—but there's also vocal cues. Vocal cues are the tone of our voice, our pace, our volume, and 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. The last, the smallest channel, is our ornaments: the colors we wear, the

jewelry we wear, the way we wear our hair, the way we wear our facial hair. Those are also signaling different things or queuing people to feel a certain way about you. And what about what we say? Because I know you're writing a book about— I don't know if I can leak this, but here we go: Yeah, you're writing a book about conversation. So, I did not realize how powerful our words are, and here's a study that really changed the way I think about this: A very simple study brought people into the lab and split 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 prisoner's dilemma-type of game. The second group came into the same room with the same researcher, and they said, "Good morning! Today you're going to play the Wall Street game." The trick was that the games were exactly the same; there was no difference between the two games. What they found was that 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" made people think and feel more about community, and made them act more collaboratively. This means the words we're using in our emails, our subject lines, our texts, and 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 and friends. When we have a meeting, one-on-one call, or video interview, I'm being cued

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 cuing that person's brain. Every single time they open their calendar, when we read a word like "collaborate," we are literally more likely to be collaborative. So, the words that we use—even a single word—can actually change the way people think. It's funny because, our entire lives, people talk about the difference between

me being a president, prime minister, superb salesperson, and exceptional entrepreneur; it's 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 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 stands out to you as being the most extreme in terms of going from zero to a wonderful place? Yes! It’s my very brilliant but stoic students. I've noticed, especially over the last 10 years—I’ve been doing this for about 17 years—that my most extreme students are the ones who are very, very smart, very talented, and good at what they do, but they don’t know

what cues to send. They completely shut down; they try to become stoic and unreadable. They attempt to have no facial expressions; they literally try to poker face all the time. As they try to make connections, whether it's with a partner or to make friends, people don't like them. People don't trust them. They can't get buy-in to their ideas. Those are the students where I see the biggest transformation. They don’t realize that muting your cues is a danger zone. If you try to be stoic and unreadable, people literally cannot get a read on you. 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: Jamie Siminoff, founder of Ring. I don’t know if you ever watched Shark Tank. In this episode, for those who haven't seen it, Jamie Siminoff entered the tank and pitched a billion-dollar idea—literally a billion-dollar idea—because it went on to raise funding from Shah and Richard Branson. But in the tank, he pitches the idea and gets so much pushback and negotiation that he walks out of the tank without a

deal. In fact, the Sharks did not like him. What happened? He had the billion-dollar idea, but he did not know how to share it. This is the biggest transformation I see: people who have brilliant ideas, who are good people, who are hardworking, yet they cannot get buy-in; they cannot make friends; they cannot find partners. How do they feel? 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 an interaction just makes them social-overthink; not knowing what to do, not knowing what

to feel—underestimated, like people don't see you or the real potential you have—a 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. I want to teach you that you can be yourself, you can be liked, and you can find your people. That doesn’t mean everyone’s going to like you, but it means 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. It’s when you're just listening or doing nothing; how does your face look? Yes, and you’re telling me that’s really, really important. It’s real! I call it resting bothered face (RBF), same thing. This is a real phenomenon: 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 going to rest it for a second—my mouth angles down into sort of an upside-down U, so it looks like this. You see how

these are going down? Are you laughing at me? A little bit! Okay, so at rest I look a little sad. 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 your mouth angles down into

a frown, people are going to think you’re sad. You’re going to have to be counteracting that with 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 people at rest even have those two lines, people are going to think you're angry or frustrated. If you have downturned eyes... So I don't know if you noticed, but I have added cat makeup to my eyes. Ah, yes! Yes, that actually makes me look 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 great thing; but second, I know that I need to make my face a little bit more up. So, when I am in ING with someone, when I'm on video, when I'm interviewing, I typically rest my face in an upward position. I've activated these muscles, so don’t I look happier?

You do, but 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 for 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 me 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 your resting default is. Are you

looking sad, angry, or afraid? I’m 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 laughed 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 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, 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 these 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 four of your eyes.

Yeah, yeah, so people, you are signaling accidentally anxiety, so try to make sure you’re not showing the upper whites. The second mistake you will make is you make a contempt microexpression, so that’s a one-sided mouth raise. So, just do a one-sided mouth raise for me. Does it make you kind of feel better? Don’t do it for too long. So, if you do it at home, there’s the facial feedback hypothesis. When you make these faces, it 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—a one-sided mouth raise—not only do they look scornful, kind of disdainful, they actually begin to feel better then and scornful. So, do not do an asymmetrical smile in your profile picture; you are accidentally signaling negativity. The third biggest mistake you will make is you do an inauthentic smile in your 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, see, I just don’t have a good smile. What, look like? What am I going to say? No, it’s horrible. Do you know I don’t have your smile? I literally have to do this when I take pictures; that’s my smile. I can’t do the teeth 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 this for me: put your 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 activate these muscles in your profile picture, it shows authentic happiness. Or don’t smile at all. I hate the advice to just smile more; fake smiles do 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 or 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’re happy, they feel good, they’re nice people, they do have that resting bothered face. I think you called it. And there are 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 are these other people who are 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 cues you're going to purposefully add. There are 97 cues; I’ve narrowed 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. 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 compelling studies on this idea of resting face or resting bothered face, as you call it? There is research on resting bothered face, and there are

certain people who, when others see pictures of their face at rest, they assume a mood change. In other words, there are certain people at rest where you look at them, and they look neutral, but there are a certain percentage of the population when you look at them; they look angry, sad, or afraid. So it’s real. People look at them, and they look happy and make you happy. Very few people have a 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 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. I kind of wavered between

completely shutting down and being overwhelmed, and talking too much and saying too much and just verbal vomiting all over everyone. So I shut down. 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 missed 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. 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 happened. I had no idea how to have a conversation with someone, share something real, and then have a real interaction back. It was really lonely and overwhelming. And what was the catalyst 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. 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 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 people like you study for chemistry?" That was like an Aha! moment 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 they are 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 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, and it started to work! I started to try out these kind of tiny experiments, and I actually started to feel

like myself and make more friends. I 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 changed and fixed. You talk about, I think, later in your life where you enter a dinner party and your husband was there with you, and you went home and told him that you thought everyone was angry

at you. Yeah, when was... That was probably maybe four or five years later. Okay, so I started mostly with conversation; that was sort of my first tool I needed: questions I wanted to ask, first impressions, and how to close conversation. Very practically, I also realized about five years later, I married my college sweetheart, so I've been with my husband for a long time. He said to me, "You always think everyone's angry at you." I was like, "Isn't everyone angry at me?" I realized there are certain people who misinterpret neutral facial expressions as negative. I have

this problem: I will see a neutral expression on someone and assume they are angry, afraid, stressed, or don't like me. 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; this was done by 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 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? So, I'm just basing this on the kids that were popular in my school— they were funnier, they were self-deprecating to some degree, they were good at— they were remotely good at some sports maybe. They were funny, happy; I don't know what. He found that the most popular kids—the

one single variable that held true across all the different students— was that the most popular kids had the longest list of people they liked. When he asked one of the questions of the survey, "Who do you like?" they had the longest lists. 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 in our control. Being likable means you have to

be the first liker. If you set out to like more people, you become more likable. 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 liking as many people as possible. I was laughing as you were speaking because I was just playing out all the different personas of people listening right now, and I just had this one persona of the person sat

at home who just 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 telling the wrong stories. I was trying to be impressive. The best way to be impressive, to be likable, is to help people impress you; it 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. I have three magic phrases for likability. 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 likability: One, "I was just thinking of you." Okay, so here's how you use this authentically: you think of a lot of people in your life all the time. 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 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 matcha 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 conversations, 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." 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 surface-level reaction: "Oh God, another job. You know what?" I mean, I just—I like, if I've got to set aside an hour to text everyone I know and go, "I'm just thinking of you," it's going to be exhausting. I've got like six friends, and I've got my partner, I've 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 you's." 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 reach out to them, than to just think, "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. It made me think of you." I’ve got another concern. So, 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, "Oh, how are you?" and I go, "I’m good, thanks," and then they go, "I’m good, thanks," and then—do you know what I mean? And then they ask me... I don’t believe in asking, "How are you?" That’s a whole other 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," then—okay. This is for the people who you want to level up with. There are three levels of intimacy: Level one: 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 deeper with them. Level two: people are those who 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 the last level, which is the most deep level, 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 you do—the B people, right? And

by the way, some of the people you’re close with might not be deep with—yeah, true, right? Level two: personal concerns—could they tell you what is Steven’s biggest goal right now? Okay, and then the middle layer— I didn’t understand. That’s the middle layer. That’s the mid-level. So it’s general traits, personal concerns, self-narrative. What’s self-narrative? So this is what my next book is about; I’m doing research on it right now. Self-narrative is the story you tell yourself about yourself. So, is this a group of people? It’s the levels of intimacy you have with someone. So, would your

partner 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 them 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 for my next book. The healer narrative— their story is all 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 healer: they always put other people’s needs before themselves. They have some kind of historical trauma that can... and a lot of the

time, they were put in a position of caretaking too early, like they were told that their 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, a healer is the middle one. The last one is the victim narrative. No matter what—personal, 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, the 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 healers. People who say "I don't feel lucky, I feel very unlucky" are typically victims. Dr. Richard Wiseman 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 said, "I want you to count the number of images in this newspaper." They sat with the newspaper and counted all the images, but 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 images 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; I believe that if this is resonating with you and you're like, "Uh oh, I feel unlucky; I might have this victim self-narrative," it is possible to change your perception of yourself, and that starts with small moments of

heroism. I think that changing your people skills, saying "I don't like people," and then saying "I'm going to find a way to like people," saying "I'm bad at conversation," and "I'm going to find a way to be good at conversation," saying "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 employers, I think about this a lot—these sort of verbal and non-verbal cues. I actually had an

interview some time ago, and I think I came out of the interview and, objectively, the person might have been qualified, but there was something about their energy or cues 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 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 that if you sit within 25 feet of a high performer, your own performance improves by 15%. Here's the kicker: if you sit within 25 feet 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 on confidence, 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 and feelings? Do they make you feel like a better version of yourself? There's just one more chemical aspect of this, for which we have to do more research. This is a very gross study, but it's one of my favorites. It's a little gross. You ready? Okay, so they

brought people into their lab, sorted them into two different groups, and made the first group wear a sweat suit that captured their sweat while running on the treadmill, so they sweat a lot. The second group wore sweatsuits and took them skydiving for the first time—both groups sweated a lot: treadmill sweat and skydiving sweat. They took these sweat samples and had unsuspecting participants go into fMRI machines to scan their brains. Then they gave them both sweat samples to smell. Poor these poor people! They didn't know what they were smelling. Everyone who smelled the skydiving sweat had

an activation in their own amygdala, their own fear response triggered. In other words, when they smelled fear sweat, they didn't know why, but they began to 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, vocal cues, and words, but there's also something chemically happening with the people around us: we can literally smell fear. 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 do anything because 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 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

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. It's almost like I can't control it; like something about the 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 throws me into this different state. And when I saw this, I almost figured out why, because

the first step in this Q—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 there's a cycle happening within us, which is that if you send me a negative cue, 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 flash them a social rejection cue.

That could be an eye roll, a scoff, a distancing, or blocking behavior. So the participant's 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 cue, their own pupils dilated and their field of vision increased. This means that somebody saw "uh-oh, that person doesn't like me," and their body reacted to fight or 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 cue. Here's the good news: you can stop the Q cycle from being negative. There are 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 cue we see. Dr. Matthew Lieberman 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 amygdala lit up. But when he taught them to say "fear" or think "fear," he taught them the micro-expression; it stopped activating their amygdala. 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 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 particularly famous for a TED Talk that you did, which did very, very well. 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 gestures matter—oh, so much. I think the hands are the windows into the soul. I think what we underestimate is the power of our gestures. Love it, just love it—just those jazz hands! So here's what I want to do: 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 amygdala will begin to fire, and the more distracted you become with, "Where are her hands? Why are her hands under the table?" The moment I bring my hands back out again, your brain goes, and that is because hands show intention. This makes sense

from an evolutionary perspective. If we go back to caveman days, if we were approached by a stranger caveman and they went, "Friend! Friend! Friend! Friend! Friend! Friend!" we saw they weren't carrying a rock or a spear, and they were probably a friend. In fact, when we say, "So nice to meet you," we can see someone's hands; we know that they're literally not going to harm us. 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 are two things for this. First, the moment someone first sees you, you want to be "Friend! Friend! Friend! Good to see you! Oh, so nice to meet you!" For people that can't see, the moment I walk into a room, I say, "Hey, nice to see you!" Even before a handshake, even with an old friend, I'll be like, "Oh my gosh, so good to see you!" On Zoom, for people that can't see, she's basically putting her hand in the air, which is like a little wave—a 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 literally open-palm." So, that's the first. In the first few seconds of someone seeing you in person or 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? For example, all the best TED Talks start the same way, and this is what got me my TED Talk. We studied all the TED Talks from 2010 looking for patterns, and my team and I coded every TED Talk we could find, looking for differences between the most viral TED Talks and the least viral TED Talks. We found the most viral TED speakers used, on average, 465 hand gestures in 18 minutes, whereas the least popular

TED Talkers used an average of 271 gestures—so not quite half. This means if someone walks on stage, here's 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." 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 likely to believe my gesture over my words. What we can do as speakers, as very highly charismatic speakers, is think about how we can outline very basically—not modern dance—what we're saying or how we can emphasize things with our gestures. If something is big, show me! Is it beach ball big? What is this big? Is it donkey big? Is this a donkey? I don't even know! Yeah, big—a goat. 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 an experiment with me? Sure! Okay, I want you to say five, but hold up the number three. Five! Hard, right? Yeah, it's really hard. I have to think about them separately. 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 incongruent with gestures. Liars typically use fewer 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: 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? Is it about nerves? The less confident, more nervous TED speakers

are doing fewer gestures just because they're self-soothing a lot and 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. Most TED speakers I watch—these TED Talks—they're all good; all of them are good. Some of them are experts in their field. The difference is: do I want to watch? They're 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. Think

those speakers, whether good or not, had over-rehearsed their hand gestures or were holding a podium, or were 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 whether they are going to let themselves use their hands to explain their points. That becomes more engaging. One of the things I've noticed on this podcast is that people who are using their hands are more expressive, and if they're more expressive, there's likely to be more intonations in their voice. 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 for the algorithm, it's suggested more. If it's suggested more, there are more views. So, I would like to tell my guests, both past and particularly future guests, that 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 that 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 got more clicks. 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—it shows competence. 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. The more—like, if I were to try 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. When we hear someone who's able to, for example, give us the TED Talk voice—so I'm going to 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!" That is a voice that is telling you, "Oh, this is important!" You also hear that really good speakers will use a "numbers voice." A

numbers voice sounds like this: "Did you know that 43% of humans all believe in the same thing? 43%!" 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, "Oh, we're doing a 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 many different ways, and that's the best speakers I see on stage. It's so interesting because in this podcast, we had quite a long conversation a couple of months ago about arms on the chair—the chair that you're in now. 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 happened to have arms on them. What I noticed was that guests would lean, and it took

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. I actually do recommend chairs with arms, not in this setup, because look at the difference. Right before this interview, you asked me to scoot my chair in, right? Your amazing team asked me to scoot my chair in—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 it's amazing

how the physical environment can change how we are perceived and how we move. 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. It's not going to be the same, and there's not going to be the same level of intimacy. We also thought a lot about how big the table was. This is quite a big table. What's the distance? I'm going to say it's about just sh... two meters. Wait, can you hold your arm out? Okay, so

this perfect distance—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 printed 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 8 feet away—I don't know, uh, not feet, but 5 to 8 feet

away. Then you have the social zone, which is where we like to socialize with people. That is, depending on who you ask, 3 to 5 feet away. Then there's the personal zone—that's our favorite zone—that is about, uh, arm's distance apart, right? So we could shake hands if we wanted to. That's where our best conversations happen. And then there's the intimate 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. Have you ever been on a Zoom with someone

where their face fills 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 is measure the distance between your nose and your camera. It should be one arm's length, so it should be from 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 conversations over Zoom. That's really interesting as well because

I was 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 did feel a little bit intimate. It does, um, because they called me on FaceTime. Yes, and obviously, if I was on my laptop, they would call me on Zoom or something else, and there would be a different setup. 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 is actually accidentally tricking you into being in the intimate zone with someone. This is also why 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 cue 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 feels very relevant. My older brother, Jason, he ordered this book called The Game by Neil Strauss. Yes. He ordered it to university, but he accidentally put the wrong address, and so it came home. This sounds like

an elaborate story for me, like buying a pickup artist book. But it came home, and I read the book, and it was my first time understanding that body language was important—something you could learn. And when I say body language, I mean everything. And it's interesting because now, after 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, let's break it down. Okay, so this is not my work; this is the work of Dr. Susan Fiske. This is an instrumental study that has been repeated many times since back in 2002. It found that to be charismatic, you have to be both highly warm and highly competent—or, more importantly, to signal high warmth and high competence. This makes up 82% of impressions of people: warmth, trust, likability, friendliness, competence,

power, reliability, and 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 competence, it means that people can see you as cold or stoic if you're not showing enough warmth cues. Have you been told that you're intimidating? Indirectly, people are too scared to say it to me! I'm joking, but no, I do get that. I think I have some degree

of self-awareness about how I come across, and I think how you described it is exactly how I come across. And that's not a bad thing, right? Like, you get to pick your own recipe. I lean a little higher on the warm side. I'm also female; there are differences between men and women. So typically—not always—men default to higher in competence, while women are defaulted to higher in warmth. Typically, not always. This isn't a bad thing, but you... You should know that if you are trying to come across as warmer on your team, you're trying to inspire

more collaboration, and you're trying to make more friends, you want to dial up your warmth cues. If you're someone who's interrupted a lot, not taken seriously, and people forget meeting you, you need to dial up confidence. This is like a thermostat; you can dial up warmth cues and dial up competence cues, and this changes the way people treat you. So, I have five power cues for competence and I have five warm cues for warmth. We're going to go through all of those. I saw this wonderful graph which kind of explains it, which I'll put on

the screen for anyone that's watching. This was really interesting; there's a danger zone. The danger zone, I guess, is when you're low warmth and low competence. Those are those folks that are stoic. If you don't send enough warmth cues and if you don't send enough competence cues, people cannot trust you. They have trouble working with you; they have trouble talking to you. This is the curse of very smart people. Very smart people think, "My ideas will stand alone; my book smarts are great. I don't need to communicate these cues; my ideas are enough." That's what

happened to Jamie Siminoff in the tank. He did not show enough warmth or competence cues; he relied solely on his ideas and his numbers, and he could not get a deal. So, people who want to be taken seriously have to show warmth and competence. The other problem with highly competent folks, and you lean higher in competence, is that, according to the research, too much competence without enough warmth leaves people feeling suspicious. So, no matter how competent you are, no matter how good your ideas are, if you are not showcasing that with warmth, people are skeptical

of you. This is what happens with a lot of my students; they say, "People don't trust me; they don't believe my ideas; they're skeptical. I get pushback," or if I do sales training, they can't close. You'll push back on their numbers, and that is because some part of them is saying, "I hear your competence, but you're not giving me enough warmth." Can you be too warm? Absolutely, you can be too warm. You can be too warm and too competent. Too warm— you know what that looks like—yes, that's too warm. Okay, okay, too warm is... So,

we'll talk about the five warmth cues. Too much of any cue is dangerous, right? So, too much nodding, too much laughing, and too much vocalization are all too warm, and they make us think this person is a bimbo or a ditz or not competent. That's what happens when we have too much warmth; it takes away from our competence. Where should we start? Let's start with the power cues. Okay, the power cues. So, this is competence. Yes, power cues. Let me get some of my power cues out. Okay, so we talked about the importance of hand

gestures. There is a very good competent hand gesture which everyone should know if you want to be perceived as higher in competence; it’s called the steeple. This—oh, this! Yes, it's on the cover of my book if you want to see it. Yes, this looks... When your hands look like a little steeple, they're kind of relaxed and open. It's a triangle for anyone that—kind of like a triangle, yes, a triangle. It's a power pose for the hands. Why? If you are doing this pose, you're showing, "I'm not hiding anything from you; you can still see my

palms, but I am very relaxed and poised enough that I'm keeping my hands together." Now, be careful, don’t drum—this is evil fingers! Yes, this is Mr. Burns for those of you who know, right? So, it's a nice still steeple. They have found, they rated hand gestures in a study, and they found that this was the single most—the highest-rated hand gesture that leaders made was when they made this gesture. Now, personally, I don't use this a lot in my interpersonal interactions because it doesn’t feel supernatural to me. It's funny because we took one picture for my

cover photo—and my, all, every single picture of me from my cover photos, I was smiling—and my wonderful photographer, Maggie Kirkland, said, “Vanessa, can we just do one of you serious?” and I was like, “But I’m not serious!” She’s like, “Just one—just do your most powerful power cue!” and this is the only picture! And that was the one that we chose for it. So, it’s just funny because it’s a very high competence cue. So, you can try the steeple; just be careful not to do evil fingers with it. That's a high confidence cue. That picture of

you on the front, what is that signaling? So, it’s a perfect balance. Right? So, one, I have the steeple cue, the competence gesture. Two, I’m angled towards you—my body is angled towards you, which is a warmth cue. That’s fronting. My toes are angled towards you, which is warmth. I also have a smoldering eye contact look, which is high competence, and I have an upward-facing expression. I’m not in my resting bothered face, so that’s a slight warmth cue. That is actually how it makes me feel. There’s an element of power, but it’s not an intimidating level

of power, because I balanced it with that warmth. Yeah, it’s like a welcoming... Whoa, we did it! Now I have to do it with the next one, Ste? Okay, SE. Yes, second. This is a weird one. The most... An important measurement on your entire body is the distance between your earlobe and your shoulder. This distance, right here—watch, if I were to do this in the interview the entire time—if I were to have a very small distance between my ear and my shoulder, I would look anxious. I would also have a really hard time giving you

vocal power. You would have a hard time trusting me, right? You look nervous, and I look nervous. There's a direct correlation between confidence and anxiety, and the distance between our shoulder and our ear. Very quickly, we're trying to just assess someone. In the first few seconds of seeing them, we're trying to assess: How confident are you? Can I catch it? We don't like people who are anxious; we don't want to talk to someone like this because we don't want to catch that anxiety. But we do want to talk to someone who has the maximum distance

between their earlobes and their shoulders. So when you're in a first impression, also in your profile pictures, I want a relaxed distance—shoulders down, ears out—which is another reason why I like that this is how your table is set up because it pushes my shoulders down, so I have a maximum distance that makes me look more confident, but it also makes me feel more confident. There's a look here, so when you do the steeple and then you roll your shoulders down and back, you will begin to feel more confident. Don't you feel good? What if you

raise your head, though? If I'm trying to get my ears away from my shoulders, I might go like this. Actually, they're the same distance. So you want to keep your chin level, and if you can help it, you don't want to actually look down your nose at someone. It's quite a scornful, judgmental look. Exactly. So you just noticed it, even when I did it. So it's not this; it's just this—maximizing this difference. The third one I love is eye contact. We all know that good eye contact is important, but here's what you might not know

about good eye contact: eye contact is a power move. When you look at someone at the end of your sentence, so we're very used to if someone's thinking about something and they're processing something in their head. I'm telling you that there are 465 gestures in a TED Talk; that is the most important way that I want to showcase something to you. We like it when someone is actually accessing different memories or areas of their brain, but then, when I end my sentence looking right at you, you're like—so highly competent people make eye contact specifically at

the end of their sentences to drill a point, ideally when the other person is saying something important. Okay, interesting. I just did it then, but I do that when I'm doing interviews because I kind of look off into the distance to think a little bit, and then I come back. The worst advice I hear people give, body language experts give, is to make more eye contact. Make 100% eye contact! Actually, in Western culture, as they've studied this, the ideal amount of eye contact is between 60% and 70% of the conversation. If you make over 70%

eye contact, it's actually considered a territorial gesture. So if I were to make 100% eye contact with you, it would feel very invasive, very awkward. We like it when someone is processing or gathering information from around; like if I'm processing something or I'm thinking about something or I'm accessing all that. All that matters is at the end of my point, I'm looking right at you, and that feels so much more powerful. Okay, so that's number three. Yeah, that's number three. The fourth one, one of my favorites, is called a lower lid flex. The lower lid

flex is one of the least utilized but one of my favorite cues. So biologically speaking, when we are trying to see something far away, we harden our lower lids. Like, I'm trying to read the titles on your bookshelf; I harden my lower lids. That is because when our eye is trying to see far, it squints to block out the light. So you'll see more details in my face when you harden your lower lid at me. So harden your lower lid. If you look at people's "Sexiest Men Alive," almost every man in that magazine is—it's Zoolander,

right? Blue steel. Blue steel is actually just a lower lid flex because, when someone is trying to really focus on something and really understand something, their lower lid is flexed—as you’re doing right now. And boy, oh boy, do we like it when someone is lower lid flexing at us because it means you are really trying to understand and see me. So a lower lid flex is a great power cue to use in moderation, nothing too much. When someone is saying something on a date or in a meeting, or a colleague is saying something really important,

and you want to show them, “I am really listening,” that lower lid flex shows them, “I am super focused and intense on you.” That is why women find men who do the lower lid flex very sexy because they feel like he’s really focusing on me. Now, there's a little side note: the lower lid flex is not inherently a positive cue; it's a cue of focus. If you are in a presentation or a meeting and you say something, and someone suddenly flexes at you, you might have just said something that makes them go, “Really?” A game-changing

moment occurred when I was giving a presentation to a bunch of executives. I said something about oxytocin, which is the hormone of love, cuddle, and connection. I saw him lower his lid and flex at me, but he also turned his head—though I don't remember if he turned his head. All I noticed is that distinctly, he went from "mhm, mhm" to "ah yes." I asked, "Does that make sense? Any questions?" So, if you see a lower lid flex, your best choice is to try to gather more information. Does that make sense? All good? Any questions for

me? How do we feel about this? I said, "Any questions for me?" and he replied. I looked right at him and asked, "Any questions for me?" He said, "You know, I think they gave my wife oxytocin in labor. Is that the same thing?" It’s true that they give a form of oxytocin to induce women in labor. That's how strong oxytocin is; in high doses, it will put women into labor. It's a form called Pitocin. I said, "You're absolutely right. In medical settings, they can give synthetic forms of oxytocin to push women into labor." That was

a moment for me because, one, I realized I was able to stop the skepticism and the confusion right there before we moved on to anyone else. Anything else? Now, when I teach about oxytocin, I say in social settings, it means this; in medical settings, it means something different. So, noticing that lower lid flex is incredibly important for you to understand where you might have a hint of skepticism or a hint of confusion. If you're in a sales meeting or a presentation, you want to make sure you have addressed whatever that person is flexing about before

you move on. It's super interesting in that example you gave. Had you not investigated that lower lid flex, you might have thought something you said was wrong and lost your confidence, which can spiral into closing off and becoming a worse presenter. This is why I thought people hated me, and I hated people. For my folks that are listening who are like, "I hate people," I get it. I was misreading cues as skepticism or negativity toward me when they could have been neutral, curiosity, or trying to understand something better. If you can give these a try,

it will help you more deeply understand people, which might help you like them more. Ready for the fifth one? I'm ready for the fifth. Okay, the fifth one is a vocal cue. We talked a lot about body language cues, but vocal cues are incredibly important. Vocal cues tell someone how you are feeling about them and how you feel about yourself. One of the biggest ones is an accidental question inflection. A question inflection is when we go up at the end of our sentence, so it sounds like we're asking a question even if we're actually making

a statement. Brain research has shown what the brain does when it hears an accidental question inflection. If we are listening to someone and hear them accidentally use the question inflection, our brain goes from listening to scrutinizing. Why? Our brain wonders, "Why did you ask me that?" Liars typically accidentally use the question inflection. If I say to my daughter, "Did you take the cookie from the cookie jar?" and she goes, "No," Liars are asking, "Do you believe this?" We conducted a massive experiment in our lab where we had people play "Two Truths and a Lie" with

us—so share two truths about themselves and a lie. We found overwhelmingly that one of the biggest patterns—there are a couple of different patterns—was that liars ask their lie statement. It would sound like this: "Here, you can play with me, and I’ll add the question inflection to one. I love dogs, I live in Austin, Texas, and I love cilantro." Oh yeah, you don't like cilantro? "No, it's like a crime against humanity. Why do people put cilantro on anything?" Notice that people ask the lie because they're asking, "Do you believe this?" Our brain is very adept at

this. If we hear the accidental question inflection used, we go, "Wait a minute, is someone lying to me?" The biggest mistake that salespeople make is they get through their entire pitch and then ask their number. It sounds like this: "Hi, we'd love to do business with you. We'd love to have your project, and the cost of this service is $5,000." If you ask your number, you are begging people to negotiate with you. If you are asking for a raise or a certain salary and you ask it, you are signaling to the other person, "I don’t

really believe this number, and you shouldn't either." So, the power cue number five is using the downward inflection. Highly competent people do not mistakenly use the question inflection; they actually go down at the end of their sentences. President Obama has been very good at, and is very good at, lowering his words, which makes you want to listen. It sounds like this: "I'm going to say nothing so you can hear it: The problem in this country is that we don't take seriously enough the issues of our people, and if we don't take those issues seriously, we

will be in grave trouble." He tends to go down at the end of his sentences. He also has a lot of space in the bottom of his mouth, which gives him more resonance. Also makes us think, "Oh, he really believes his word," because it's the opposite of the question reflection. If you have a boundary, if you're setting a limit, if you're telling someone something really important about you, say it—don't ask. That is the biggest thing you can do to get people to take you seriously. Interesting. And don't ask your name! Most often, I hear people

ask, "What's your name?" and it destroys their vocal charisma. So, that would be, "My name is Vanessa Van Edwards." My name is Vanessa Van Edwards. Your perceptions of my confidence in those two introductions are radically different. There's a study that looked at this, and they examined the vocal statements of surgeons. They had surgeons come into their lab and record 10-second voice tone clips—the clips that are most important when they're meeting patients: their name, their specialty, and where they work. It sounded like this: "Hi, my name is Dr. Edwards. I specialize in oncology, and I work

at Children's Presbyterian Hospital." They took these clips and they warbled the words so you could hear the volume, the pace, the cadence, but not the actual words being said. It sounded like this: I worked very hard on practicing that, by the way. That's amazing because it has to sound like me, but nothing. They took these clips and they had people rate these surgeons on warmth and competence—the two things that we know are most important for charisma. The doctors who had the lowest ratings of warmth and competence had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits. In other

words, we don't sue doctors based on their skills; we sue doctors based on our perception of their skills, and that happens within the first few seconds of hearing them. So, if you give the question reflection on your name, on your specialty, on what you do, people begin to doubt you. So the bad doctors sounded like this: "Hi, my name is Dr. Edwards. I specialize in oncology, and I work at Children's Presbyterian Hospital." Those doctors got rated as low in both warmth and competence because their brains were going, "Why are they asking? Are they not sure?

I'm not sure either." So it's really signaling conviction in who you are, what you're about, and what you do. Interesting. So practice your name, your price. "My name is Steven." No, that was up! That was a little, "Hi, my name is Steven." That's it. Okay. Yeah, okay! I literally asked that like a question, didn't I? The first one I was like, "Hello, my name is Steven." I was actually asking you if it was a good pronunciation. That's so funny! That was the upward inflection, and didn't it feel different? Totally different! The second one was me...

The first one was like seeking validation, and you used a lot of downward inflection, except when you're asking questions, which we like, okay? Right? That's why you lean higher in competence—because you use already a lot of downward inflection. It's so interesting because, as you were speaking, something came to mind which I was reading about in your work, which is you're really good at what you do. You're very good as a guest on a podcast, and just as a professional generally. And as I was thinking this, I was saying to myself, "I'm sure she knows, and

I'm sure she can tell from my face that I think she's good." But it's funny because in your work, you say that we actually over-assume people can read us. Yes! So, like when I was thinking, "Oh, she's so good," in your work, it says that I was doing it—I was assuming you knew how I felt about you. But in your work, you also make the case that I actually should say it. Yes, yes! There's an effect where we think that people know how we feel. Specifically, it's called signal amplification bias. There's a name for this

study, which is that we think our signals are obvious—that if we like someone or if we're having a good time, we think, "Oh, they for sure know it." They don't! The three magic phrases we never finish are: "I was just thinking of you." That's a way of assuring someone, "I do think of you," only if it's true. The second one is, "You're always so..." So if you're with someone and you're impressed by them, or they're interesting or they're funny, saying, "You always make me laugh," "You're always so interesting," or "You're always so great at interviews,"

gives them a positive label, which is the best gift you can give someone because it's fighting that signal amplification bias. The last one is, "Last time we talked, you mentioned…" Yeah! We are so honored when we get brain space that you remembered and you're going to bring it up, and you specifically bring up something that they lit up with. So they were like, "Ah, it was great! It was exciting! It was wonderful." Those are my three magic phrases, and it's because they are fighting that signal amplification bias. I have no idea if you like this

interview. I have no idea if you like my work. I have no idea! And the more that you can broadcast those signals, the more people actually like you. So, what advice would you give me then as an interviewer? I guess I'm an interview host of the show. What is—because people come here sometimes, they're nervous, you know? We have people come, and they—some people come in there nervous a little bit, and I always try... Always want to make them feel comfortable, but you know, as you said, I probably don't rank that high on warmth, so it

doesn't come that naturally to me. I'm not the kind of person that comes out and it's like, "Hi, welcome," and, like, "Hey!" That would be off-brand for you, yeah, and it wouldn't be authentic. No, no, it would be off-brand for you, right? It's too much. Okay, so five warmth cues. For those of you who are listening, the five power cues I just shared are for those who think they are really high in warmth but worry that people don't take them seriously, are concerned that people ignore them, or find themselves getting interrupted in meetings. I want

you to use those five power cues if that's you. Now, I'm going to teach you five warmth cues. If you have ever been told you're intimidating, hard to talk to, or cold, and if you often feel like people are holding back or not opening up to you, I want you to use these five warmth cues. This is dialing up your thermostat. Okay? These are for you, you too. Mhm. First, we love a triple nod! Research has found that if we do a slow triple nod, the other person speaks 67% longer. So, as an interviewer, this

is a great cue. Watch. My triple nod is, "We love it!" It's like a non-verbal dot dot dot—it's like, "Tell me more, tell me more!" Now, be careful; don't bobblehead. You don't want to do it too much, right? That's too high in warmth. And second, you don't want to do it too fast. A fast triple nod signals impatience; it means, "Shut up!" So, if you want someone to wrap a question—yeah, that's exactly right. Here's for everyone watching: there's a good "please hurry up" nod. That shut the up nod! I've seen that before, and it works.

It's a really nice way of saying, "Please wrap, please end." So, I love a warm triple nod, but you have to be careful with it. Okay, so that's cue number one. Second, a head tilt. Universally, if we're trying to hear something, we tilt our head up and expose our ear. We're as if we're like, "What was that?" Dogs do this when they're curious; they expose their ear. Humans also do this across cultures because it's a way of signaling that we're listening. Research has found that if you deliver bad news with a head tilt, you are

more likable. People take the news better if you deliver bad news with a slight head tilt because it literally makes you look warmer—it makes you look like you’re listening. Now, I only want you to do this when you're actually listening, but a head tilt is also a way that you can slightly add warmth to your conversation, your interview, or your date. Not too much though, okay? We don't want to go too far; that looks weird—just a little weird, right? Not too much. And I also like to teach a head tilt to my highly warm folks

who are bobbleheaders. If anyone’s like, "Oh, I do this a lot," yeah, I’m a bobbleheader. I’m a recovering bobbleheader because I like people to like me, right? So, I’ll nod too much. If you are a bobbleheader, you can train yourself to replace it with the head tilt because it's physically impossible to head tilt while you nod. So, if you're a bobbleheader, just head tilt! Okay, head tilt. There's something about the head tilt which signals that you care and that you're empathetic. There’s something about someone's head tilt; if someone was firing me and they were doing

it like this, I would feel like they don't care. There's something about it, but if they're doing it like this, it conveys that they really care about me. That's so crazy, just such a small thing. You know that you mentioned the book "The Game"? Yes, I know a lot about that world, and there’s a funny trick they teach, which I’ll teach you. It’s not part of my warmth cues, but it’s interesting. Don’t let anyone use this on you, okay? And nobody at home, don’t use this on anyone else! So, there's this thing that NLP people

or pickup artists will do where they move their hand like this, and the other person will begin to nod because typically, when we do this with our hand, the other person starts to nod, which makes you think, "I agree, I agree, I agree." What are you doing? For anyone that it's hard to visualize, I'm moving my hand up and down in a nodding "yes" motion. Manipulative people will do this while they are speaking, saying things like, "Don't you understand what I'm saying? Do you get this?" And the other person starts to nod. I’ve seen audiences

where the entire audience will start nodding, and then you think to yourself, "Well, I'm nodding, so I must agree with this person." It's a secret way to get someone to agree with you, so just be careful—make sure no one uses that on you. And you're doing it in a bit of a circular motion; it's not straight up and down. You're just kind of like—"anyone?" That can't see she's like we're rolling something forward, and then you're like, "I want to." It's really hard to not nod your head when someone's doing this, which then makes you feel

like you agree with them. That's so crazy! It's like you've got a string on my head and a string on yours; it's very weird. So don't let anyone do that to you, and don't use it on anyone. I don't teach it in my books because I'm worried that it's too powerful. It's too powerful, okay? Triple nod, head tilt: one and two. Okay, third, we already talked about this one—an authentic smile, right? A smile that reaches all the way up into your eyes. Highly warm people typically do that authentic smile more. Now, I don't like a

fake smile, so I only want you to do it when you're authentic about it. That was my authentic smile! You laughed. This is why I don't smile; this is why people think I'm intimidating—because people laugh at my smet. That's good, that was better! I can tell you're lying, Mrs. Body Language. I can tell you're lying. That was better; that was better than the first one. Better than the first one! That does mean it's good. I'm looking for good. Anyway, number four is, uh, so authentic smells—number three, authentic smells. Number three. Number four: we love a

lean! Oh, we love a lean! When in the proxemic zones, right? We're in those four zones. If someone's leaning into you, it shows they're literally trying to cross into that zone very, very subtly. You'll notice very highly charismatic people—who you want to be friends with—they'll be like, "Tell me more, tell me everything!" and they lean in really close to you, and that makes you also feel closer. So if you want to be seen as high in warmth, you can do this as a speaker. You can lean in as you bold an important point. Like when

I'm making an important point for you, I lean into it and say, "Listen to this; this is good!" But if I'm listening to you and you say something good, I'll be like, "What? Really?" So you can do it as a speaker and as a listener, and it immediately adds more warmth. It's funny, okay, this might be a little bit of a tangent, but it just came to mind as you were speaking. There is, like, the odd person in my life who I've known for many, many years, but whenever I'm around them, it goes back to

what I was saying earlier: my body is just off. I just don't know what it is. I'm thinking of one particular person, and I shan't name them, where I could be in a room full of people and be relaxed, calm, whatever. The minute they arrive in the room, I wouldn't be able to be the same person, and I don't know what it is. Suddenly, I start overthinking my body language, thinking, "Is it how my legs are? It's my body," and I start covering and blocking a little bit. What is that trying to tell me? Do

I need to cut this person out of my life? Are there words unspoken? What is it? I would say it means do more research. I think that gut feelings are incredibly important because, you know, the best cue-reading machine we have is our subconscious, right? Our subconscious or unconscious picks up on lots of cues that we can't consciously know. We can't consciously know that we're smelling adrenaline, but we are smelling it. So I think that's a very important thing to pay attention to. It doesn't mean you should cut them out, but I think it's time to

do more research. Are they truly happy for you? Are they truly rooting for you? Are they secretly angry or jealous? Maybe I'm doing it to them. It's possible that you're in a loop with them, right? Like you're expecting that bad thing, and that expectation becomes reality. They've studied this; the Pygmalion effect is real! If you expect not to like someone, you send off more unlikable cues. They feel unliked and, therefore, don't like you either. It could be that you're in a loop with this person, and maybe you make them feel the same way. What do

I have to do then when I see them next? Because I want to dial up, I don't know, some warmth with this person or something, or break that cycle. Okay, if I were you— They're important to you. Yeah, they're important to me. Okay, so I would recommend asking questions that will level you up with them to level two. My guess is you might be stuck in level one with them because you're obviously uncomfortable with them. Research shows that the more commonalities we have with someone, the more that we understand them, the more compassion we have

for them, and the more that we like someone. So I wonder if we could level up your relationship with them so you get to know them better, which means you'll like them more. If you make it through these six or seven questions and you still don't like them, then maybe they're not your person. Okay, can I give you some questions for them? Please! Okay, please! So here are my favorites. I call these level one, level two, and level three questions in the framework that I'm researching right now. It's not done yet, but I have four

questions for each level, and I'm working through these questions. But here are the... Questions that I think are the shortcut to connection: okay, if you ask these questions with your partner, your friends, or colleagues, you're going to level up with them. Okay, first: "Are you working on anything exciting recently?" So stop asking "What do you do?" Stop asking "How are you?" Stop asking "How's it going?" That's why you hate people; if you're asking those questions, of course, you're going to hate people. Those are the most boring questions anyone's ever asked. Can I give you a

challenge? Here's one challenge from this podcast: stop asking "What do you do?" For 30 days, I want you to go on a "What do you do?" diet. Asking "What do you do?" is telling the person's brain to stay on autopilot. D.I.A. last night? No, no more! We’re on a diet. Also, asking someone "What do you do?" is asking "What are you worth?" If someone is not defined by what they do, it’s actually a rude question. Do you know what? You're so right. It's so funny you say this because yesterday I went to this thing in

New York, right? I was introducing myself to some people, and there was one particular person I went over to. We were having a conversation, and halfway through the conversation, I went, "So what do you do?" And do you know what they replied? They went, "This." I just went home thinking about it; I was like, "Of course we’re at work!" What I’ve done there is I’ve just belittled what we’re doing right now as if it couldn’t possibly have been what they do, right? I just honestly got in bed last night thinking about it. I thought, "Oh

God!" You know what it was? I think I was so impressed by them that I was a bit awkward, and then that just came out mid-sentence: "What do you do?" Yeah, God. Okay, so we’re going on a diet, everyone! For the next 30 days, we’re going on a diet—no more "What do you do?" You’re going to replace it with "Working on anything exciting these days?" or "Working on anything exciting recently?" This is permission connection. When you ask someone that question, you are giving them permission. If they want to tell you about what they do, oh,

they will! If they are not defined by what they do, they'll tell you something better. And that also gives you really good nuggets for the next time you see them when you can say, "Hey, how was that thing you were working on that was really exciting going?" So start with "Working on anything exciting these days?" or "Working on anything exciting right now?" Second: "What’s your biggest goal right now?" If you can, especially as we go into the new year or in the new year, right? Being part of the year, I love, I ask this question

in December, January, and February. I ask everyone, "What’s your biggest goal right now?" or "What’s your big goal for 2025?" When you ask this question, you're going to get one of two responses: one, someone shuts you down with, "I don’t believe in goals— not my person." Not my person. I’m a growth-minded person. If someone says that, I’m like, "Cool! Peace! We’re not going to get along very well because I have a lot of goals." Or they’re going to be like, "Oh, let me tell you." And they're going to tell you all about their goals. That’s

also a great thing you can follow up on because then when you see them a month later, or a week later, or a year later, you can be like, "Hey, how did that go?" It’s a great interview question. I was just thinking that I should ask people that in the interview, because, yeah, you’re right: someone that can’t articulate some kind of goal is probably not my kind of person. Those kind of people—actually, those kind of people don’t listen to this podcast anyway; they just leave comments and up-vote. Yeah, exactly! So it’s a very, um, I

call those "allergy questions." It’s interesting; it’s a way to see, "Are we going to have an allergic reaction to each other?" It creates an allergy. I know there’s a type of person; it susses them out really quickly, and that’s not my kind of person. Okay, so "Working on anything exciting?" "What’s your goal right now?" And then this is harder. This is a self-narrative question. Do we want to go deeper for a self-narrative question? Of course, we want to go that way! So if we're getting into self-narrative and you're trying to figure out yourself or someone

else's narrative, you want to ask the question that sounds innocuous but is not: "What book, movie, or TV character is most like you and why?" It’s kind of a silly, like, dinner party question; it sort of sounds casual, but the answer to this question is so incredibly important. And here’s an example: how someone relates to characters— their values or personality— is how they see themselves, and people's answers will shock you. I'll give you one example: I was friends with someone for six years; one of my closest friends. I saw them all the time on weekends;

we went on trips together. I thought I knew her so well. I was like, "I know her!" I asked her this question, and I hypothesized— this is all my research for my next book. I was like, "I hypothesize she’s a mom of three, super funny, super savvy; she’s going to pick a great, like, TV mom character, you know? That’s super savvy and funny." I asked her, and she thinks about... It for maybe one second and goes, "Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games." I was like, the one who's like fighting for her life. She's like, "Yeah,

that's how I feel every day." For the first time in six years, we had a conversation about how she feels about her day that was totally different than anything I had ever known. She feels scared and lonely and that she is fighting for survival. It was the first time that I truly connected with her. I cannot tell you how many times the answer to this question has changed for people in my life, and I'm like careful which examples to use because I'm worried that they're going to be watching. It has changed my relationship with people

in my life based on how they see themselves, not how I see them, but how they see themselves. It's really interesting because there are so many people listening right now that are now doing that, and they're discovering maybe for the first time even how they see themselves. It's funny because when you said that, obviously I did it in my head, and I was like, "Well, now I want to know what it is." You like stereotypically—no, I'll tell you now—I was thinking it's funny because the first person I thought of was Will Smith because people say

I look like him sometimes, right? Like, people, you have to correct someone if someone says who they look like; you say, "No, no, I look like Valu!" Personality. But then when I thought about TV characters, I actually thought about Will Smith in "The Pursuit of Happyness." If you think about his journey, he was broke, and he was fighting really hard to get out of that situation. He got out of that situation, so it goes back to the personality type you described at the beginning where, like, you're the hero of your own journey, like where you've

overcome something, and that's kind of... yeah. Do you feel you found it? Found, um, found it happiness? Are you at the end of the movie? I'm at the end of the movie. Um, I don't know if you can ever get to the end of the movie. That's the struggle with that question because there's, like, I think I've found it, but I've always... I don't know, like, not the end of your movie. It's not the end of your life movie, but like in that example, we could have a long discussion about like what is it? Have

you made it? So the reason why I think I'm hesitating is because I think to myself if I say I’ve made it or I'm at the end of the movie, then I'm like, it kind of robs me of the future in a weird way. In my head, it's like robbing me of like doing anything else with my future. No, because what I mean—yeah, yes, yes—if you feel like the end of the movie, I'm like, "Oh God, like, yes." No, that's true. You're never at the end of the movie, but like if you feel that you've

made it, it means you have the freedom to pursue things and do work for meaning as opposed to hitting it. Yeah, of course. Yeah, like I used to work in call centers at nighttime selling hotel rooms and car insurance and artificial grass. Now, I get to sit here and have conversations with people like you, and like people tune in and stuff. It's like if I don't realize at this moment how much, um, how much privilege I have, I think I'd be pretty upset. So, yeah, I do feel like disproportionately, like unbelievably fortunate in a way

that I actually don't think I can understand. I think maybe I dreamed of this, but to be here feels, um, feels suspicious. Suspicious? Yeah, it's a strange word that came to mind. Yes, it feels suspicious because it... I don't know. You just think sometimes. You think, "Are you worried?" It's maybe it is worried, but it's also just like, "Surely not." Like, it's so, so interesting because I had the dream of being successful in business, but I didn't have a dream of or ever imagine that my life would be like this, where like people know who

you are. I never had that dream, never imagined it being possible—that was other people for sure. Also, I—that's a very accurate, like, that's how I think of Will Smith in "The Pursuit of Happyness." A little bit is like you never really see him truly happy in that movie. No, he's always just, yeah, running. Like, that's something that I... that's why I asked, like, "Did you get it?" You know, you've pursued it, you're here. Of course. I'm so chasing after something. That's what I think I can... I don't know what I'm chasing. I wonder what you're

chasing after. I don't know, actually don't know, but I think that you're interviewing for something. Like, when I watch your interviews, which are amazing, I'm like, "He's trying to find the answer to something." What is it? Always, like, with every person, it's a different thing. And actually, most of the answers I'm looking for are my own answers. And my general belief is that if I, like, authentically go in search of my own answers, which requires some level of, like, being open and willing to be open even though there's a lot of people watching, then there'll

be lots of other people out there that are struggling with the same things or searching for the same answers as well. Yes, it's interesting. I do ask myself a lot, "What am I like? What's the point? Like, what am I?" I, but is it not the case that we should all be searching forever? Like, we should all be in pursuit of something forever. I do love a quest, and I love pursuing, and I think humans are built to pursue things. But I also think— I hope I'm not here yet; I'm getting there— that there's a

point in our life where we can stop the grind. Like, I think I'm grinding a little bit in my career; I don't know if you feel like that. I've made it; I feel like I've made it. I'm luckier than I ever thought I would be! I can't believe I get paid to do what I do, but I'm still pursuing. I hope there's a point in my life where I can just be sharing wisdom, where I'm not pursuing anything— it's not a number or a list; it's just like all I'm doing is sharing wisdom and giving

out public education. I think that I'm hopeful there's a stage of our life where it's just that. It's number five on the one, did Lean. Which was number four? Number five is actually—I have to pause on lean because I wanted to ask you about something I read in a book—about peacocking. Yes, so I read in this pickup artist book that I read when I was 18, and some of the videos that I watched thereafter, and some of the other books that I read thereafter, and some of the other videos I watched thereafter about this concept

of peacocking, where if you're on a date or you're interested in a girl or a guy in a bar, if you lean in too much, you're signaling low value. Ever since I learned that, I’ve seen it everywhere. I remember my friends and I went to a bar or somewhere—I can't remember; it was many, many years ago—and there was this beautiful girl there, and we were all pursuing her, yes, like that, like a Labrador. Yeah! I was saying to my boys—there's actually a photo of it on my phone—there’s me, Dman, and my friend Ash sitting there,

looking over at some of our other friends, and we were saying, “They're peacocking; they’ve got no chance.” And that’s how the story transpired. Then when this beautiful girl came over to my other friend, he was aware of this peacocking concept. He kept his neck back, he kept his chest back, all these kinds of things. He didn't lean in, even though it was loud and closed. Okay, here’s why too much of a lean is a bad thing. It’s called a bow. If you lean too far over, you get very quickly into bowing or submissive behavior. We

don't like people who are submissive to us; we want equals. So, you're absolutely right: what it triggers in the brain if you're leaning too much is literally, “I am subservient to you,” and that makes someone who does not want to be in control or in an unequal relationship feel very uneasy. So that is why too much of a lean— always with these non-verbal cues— is too much of a good thing. If you lean too much, it’s considered a bow. You also don’t want to lean the entire time; then you look like a hunchback. Right? I'm

lowering my value by leaning in too much, and it’s distracting. I want to lean in as a bold or a highlight; if I were to be reading a book and highlight the entire page, the highlight means nothing. If you lean in when someone’s saying, “What? Really?” and then I lean back, then it's powerful. Every single one of these cues we are using as a bold or an emphasis or a highlight. Just enough of a good thing! Okay, not too much leaning— just use it as a party trick, like... no, no. I mean just use it

as a highlighter, as a highlighter you're highlighting! Yes, yes, yes! Number five: okay, five non-verbal bridges. So, this is a concept that I learned on the road. I saw this in action in a lot of our experiments. We did a big speed networking experiment in our lab where we had 500 speed networkers try out different conversation starters. We recorded them, we coded their conversations, and we looked for patterns of good and bad conversations. We found there were certain questions that worked better than others and there were certain questions that did terribly. One thing we found

is that when people rated a conversation on a five-point scale— like, five amazing, best conversation I had; we’re going to connect on LinkedIn— I think I like them the best. The ones that worked best used a lot of non-verbal bridges. Non-verbal bridges are when someone is trying to bridge the distance between you, so that could be a lean; lean is one of them. But it also could be a reach out. We noticed that in the good conversations, people were trying to physically close the distance between them with hand gestures, with leans, with nods, with foot

movement, with drinks. And when they were close enough, they would often do very light touches on the arms, on the shoulders. So, have you seen this? Like, on a really good date—have you ever been in a restaurant? My husband and I like to play this game where we look and we try to guess if a couple is a very new couple, or an old couple, how they're doing. In a very good date, they are looking for as many opportunities to touch as they can. "Possibly, can that's non-verbal bridge, even if I were to be like,

'Oh, let me tell you something.' Like that slight reach-out tap of the knuckles to the arm—that's a quick saying, 'I'm going to reach into your intimate zone, but I'm not going into your intimate zone.' Really good relationships, really warm people, are those who are bridging all the time. They walk by you, they touch your shoulder, they say, 'How's it going?' 'Hey, I want to let you know I'm thinking about you.' They're constantly doing these very small bridges, and that could or might not be an actual physical touch; it could even be the look of a

touch. One thing that I teach my students who are uncomfortable with touch is that you can even touch without touching. That sounds really weird, but like, put your arm closer to me so I can demo it for you. So, like, pretend that we're at dinner—I could be like, 'Oh my gosh, really?' Okay, so you didn't touch my hand, but it did the same thing. Yeah, not quite, right? Yeah, but kind of; I get it. Yeah, she's trying to close the intimacy of the distance. So, non-verbal bridges are trying to reach out, reach into someone's space

very briefly, and come back, trying to lean into someone's face very briefly. This is why giving people things or serving people is such a warm thing. You hand someone a drink—like, you come to my office, I offer you hot chocolate, I offer you tacos. I want to break the social scripts; I want to give you something different, and I'm looking for reasons to serve you. 'You give people tacos at your office?' Yeah, I'm in Austin, Texas. Strange? You would like it! You would like it! If you were hungry, you'd be like, 'Give me that taco!

Give me that taco!' It's what...I don't know if that's office food, but each to their own. So, hugging and stuff like that—there's this thing that people talk a lot about, which is awkward hugging. Sometimes you hug someone, and you just feel like, 'Oh, they didn't like that; I didn't like that. That was bad for both of us.' Yeah, horrible. Can we address the hug issue, please? Okay, you need to signal what kind of greeting you want from the moment someone first sees you. You can stop awkward greetings from happening with simple non-verbal cues. Here's what

they are: you want a handshake? 'So good to see you!' I want you to be doing this from 10 feet away: 'So good to see you! I'll come in with it!' Yeah, you're literally signaling to someone, 'So good to see you!' This immediately signals their brain, 'Don't try to give me an awkward hug; don't side-hug me; don't hug me. We're handshaking.' It is a very clear way to be like—it's called blading. So, we angle our body a little bit forward and we put one hand out. You know I'm coming in for a handshake. If you

want a hug and you're a hugger? 'So good to see you!' Okay, arms out! Arms out! And that's also going to prevent the awkward side hug. The worst thing you can do is be like this—which is a kind of...but one arm up! People are like, 'Do I shake it? Do I side hug? Are we going to hug? Are we going to high-five? Are we going to fist bump?' If you want a fist bump, you're coming in with a fist bump. I'm very hugger—'cause I don't always—it’s context-dependent. I do not like hugging people when I first

meet them. I was pitching a TV show about recovering awkward people at a very big network, and I walk into the pitch room, and at that point, I was a hugger—or I thought I should hug, because that was one of the things. In L.A., people are huggers and cheek kissers a lot. And so, I was like, I walk in and say 'Oh, it's so nice to meet you! I'm a hugger!' Oh yeah. And then he goes, 'I'm not.' Oh, just cringe! Oh God, just—I died inside. I died inside. And you know what? That pitch went

terribly. Do I have a TV show called 'Recovering Awkward Person'? No, I don't. That's 'cause I think I hugged him, and I went forward with it—too much warmth, too much warmth, not enough competence, and so I will never do that again. So, now I never, ever say, 'I'm a hugger,' and I always offer my hand. Now, if someone says to me, 'Oh, but I'm a hugger,' and they wave my hand away—no problem. No problem! That's interesting. If we take that back to the Charisma framework of warmth and competence, it is signaling a little bit too

much; a lot of warmth; it's a lot of warmth. And I know a lot about a person when they tell me, 'I'm a hugger.' What, you know? Go high—high warmth, probably a people pleaser, overeager, really want to connect, probably feel lonely, a little bit afraid, and I want to make them feel as liked as possible. Gosh, that's a lot just from that one sentence—I've hugged a lot of people. No! It is also—I, you know, I have amazing students. You know, we have millions of views on our YouTube channel, and they feel like they know me.

And so, if they want to hug me, I'm totally okay with it because I've been in their bed, I’ve been in their living room, I’ve been in their kitchen, TV on, their phone. I've shared my stories with them, and I..." I understand why they want to hug me; because we feel like friends, and that actually is a compliment, and I like it. I do like it! Like when a student says, "Oh my gosh, I love you! I love Captivate!" I'm like, "Come here!" It feels like a friend. So, on the hugging point then, is there

a great way to hug someone? I mean, yeah. How is that? Have you been told you're a good hugger? Because then you might not be. I've tried to work on it, and I think I am now. Okay, I actually have been told I am. Part of the reason why is because I've learned a lot from doing this podcast, and someone told me, "Don't tap on the back. Don't tap on the back." They told me that we don't like being tapped on the head; we don't like being tapped on the back. It's a submissive cue, right?

You'll notice power players in politics will sometimes demean someone by going, "Hey, bud!" Yeah, yeah, yeah! So, we definitely don't hug like that. You're going to want to approach equally; you don't want any kind of asymmetry in your hug, right? That's why you want to approach someone like this: no asymmetry, none of this straight on. This is hard if you are taller than the person; you typically want to go up. You want to avoid like "who's going up," right? So, the taller person should always try to go up. You want to literally angle up, and

the lower person is going to angle down, and you're going to try to go torso to torso. Okay? And I like a two-second hug, by the way. There is research on the length of handshakes; I haven't seen research on the length of hugs, but a handshake should be between one and three pumps, or one and three seconds. For example, we're saying, "One, two, three," that's good. Typically, they've found that if we do a three-second shake, it's with a new person. So our first shake was about three seconds because we didn't know each other, but if

I were to see you again, I'd say, "Oh, it's so good to see you!" Okay, you do? Okay, so typically if you already know someone, you're just doing a quick greeting; it's a one-second count. If you don't know someone, it's a three-second count. What if I did your face, and I got to four seconds? You're like offended; you're like, "Not my person!" You probably cursed me out with your eyes. Yeah, it was horrible. That's how I feel getting my arm back. You also want to make sure that when you're doing a handshake, you're offering thumb

up. Thumb up is really important! You'll notice certain political power players will... here, if yeah, that. So they'll flip you—oh, Donald Trump! Yes, he'll really pull, and he'll pull you off. I’ve never shaken hands with him, so I don’t know, but I've watched many videos, and he'll shake your hand and turn you. This is a very vulnerable place to be; we don't like it as humans to have these arteries exposed. So, he'll flip and he'll pull you off; it doesn't feel good, does it? But what does that signal? Does that signal competence and strength? No,

I don't think it's either. I actually think it's a danger cue. Okay, see, it's purposely... none of the cues I teach are manipulative in that way. That is purposely trying to get someone off balance—like to give them dis-equilibrium. I like relationships to be equal; that's why I want you to offer thumb up. I also don't want you to offer your hand like you know, up where you're saying, "I'm going to be submissive to you." We don't like that, right? So, thumb up. I think—I can't remember where I learned it—but I learned that if you cup,

then it's signaling warmth. So, ably, I was going to cup earlier on, but I was holding some stuff. I remember thinking, "I sat there and uncuffed; why didn't I get my cup? Because I was holding all your books." So, I was holding your books; I was like, "I can't imagine if I tried to cup with your books." It was just so strange! No, so cupping is really warm; it's double the warmth, it's double the oxytocin—it's like a hand hug, so it's super high in warmth. It's also called the politician's handshake, so you only want to

do it if you are truly and genuinely trying to show warmth; otherwise, it can come across as forced. Okay, I also—speaking of like weird signals—I've heard this about men: that men to men have two different kinds of nods. Tell me if you think this is true. So if you walk down the hallway and you see a man you know, you go, "Hey," nodding up. If you see a man you don’t know, you go, "Morning," and you nod down. Oh, that’s interesting! Supposedly it’s because a person you know, you’re willing to expose this part of your

neck, but if you don’t know someone, you want to keep your chin down. But you're still acknowledging them— is that true? Well, do you know what's funny? The way that I think about it is if I see a black guy out and about, pretty much anywhere, and they know me, whatever, they’ll typically do that. Up there, there's something about—I don't know if I'm just making this up—but there's something about being part of a group. I can see them from across the room; I have no idea who they are, and in a group, it's like, "I

see you; me and you are connected, and I trust you." It's a way of being like, "I'm willing to expose this; I trust you." Oh, okay, so interesting! I've noticed that women don't do that. Okay, so that's... oh yes, "I see you, stranger." Okay, morning. So interesting! Got it—so interesting, so very interesting. I'm a CEO; I do speaking on stage. You speak on stage as well; you're very, very good at it. Is there anything that I should know if I'm a leader in a business or a public speaker that I should be thinking most about

when I'm up on stage, to signal—whatever I want to signal, to get whatever I want? Yes, purposeful movement! A big mistake I see CEOs make on stage is that they either don't have purposeful movement, so they pace the stage back and forth, or they're stuck in one spot and don't move from that point, which makes them look very stiff. I believe you should block your speeches very subtly. For example, when I deliver a talk, I always start in the middle of the stage—always! So when I'm being introduced, right? Your first few seconds on stage are

the most important for your entire talk. As you're being introduced, you walk on stage, pick a point, and walk purposefully to it. Don't meander on the stage; you're walking right to the middle of the stage or to the left side of the stage, however you've chosen to position yourself, and you're delivering your first opening lines or opening story from that middle point. That's where I like to start. That intention when walking on stage is going to make you look so much more confident and organized—not disorganized or ambiguous—than if you just wandered around. Now, this is

for the advanced speaker, and I think you want to help your audience with your stage movement. In my presentations, when I'm sharing science, facts, or research, I'm on the left-hand side of the stage. When I'm moving to personal stories, gifts, anecdotes, or a funny video, I'm on the right side of the stage. That is a way of helping my audience organize and categorize my talks. I've also noticed in the audience that there are highly warm people and there are highly competent people. I've noticed that if I train them that way during a 60-minute keynote, they

begin to subconsciously recognize it: my highly competent folks perk right up when I get to the left side of the stage—“Oh, this is for me!”—while my highly warm folks are like, “Aha, my turn!” It really helps them know when to pay the most attention. So you should think about this for your talks; you can also do this chronologically. Some of my students are TED speakers, and they're telling more of a chronological story as opposed to just making points. I often teach them to start—like you know, in Western cultures, we read from left to right. I

like them to actually start on the left-hand side of the stage or the audience's left, because the beginning of their story starts there. They share a picture of their childhood on the slide and slowly begin to move over to the middle when the significant part of their journey happens. They finally get to their arc—their knowledge, their "aha!"—and they make it over to the far side of the stage, the far right side. In terms of content, we talked a little bit about what I'm saying because this applies not just to when I'm on stage but also

to emails and WhatsApp messages. I think most of our communication these days is on a screen, so if I’m trying to master the art of structuring a sentence on a screen to set people up for success, what do I need to think about? What emotion do you want your recipient to feel when they see your name in their inbox, on stage, or on LinkedIn? That is the emotion you want to layer yourself with. For example, in my talks, I'm trying to acknowledge the pain of awkwardness. I don’t want people to feel like they are unseen,

so when I say, "You're overlooked, you're misunderstood, you're underestimated," I want them to feel like "you feel awkward, out of control, anxious, and overwhelmed. I hear you; you're not alone. I've been there." Then the solution to that feeling—the place where it gets better—is confidence, presence, and memorability. The mechanism is blueprints, formulas, and hard skills that I help gift to the audience as a solution to their emotions. So for you, I would say: what are the pain points you want your audience to resonate with, so they feel heard, seen, and understood by you? What's the goal

emotion that you want to give them from your talk, your podcast, or the email that they're subscribing to? Then, what's your mechanism? What’s your way of doing that? Now, imperfection—I was watching a video of yours from ten years ago, where you sat with two lovely people talking about charisma. One of the things you said earlier in the video was that there was a situation on a TV shopping channel where a lady made a mistake; she like spilled a... "Milkshake or something," and she did more sales because she spilled a milkshake. Yes, that's it. Explain this

to me. Yes, another study by Dr. Richard Wiseman, who wanted to know: do you have to be perfect? For many years, I wanted to be perfect, and then I realized, oh, there is no such thing as perfect, and I don't want to be that way. Very simple. He had a model selling a blender in a mall, and in one version, she had the perfect pitch: "Now take your strawberries and your bananas, and just push the button, and here you have perfect smoothies." In the second version, he had the same smoothie, same pitch, same verbal, but

she spills the smoothie on the table as she's pouring it. People bought more of the blender when she spilled the smoothie. Now, does this mean I want you to perfectly spill your smoothies? No. I did have a piece of kale in my teeth earlier, and I really considered coming in with it just to see what would happen. I did think about it, but I didn't do it. However, I do think there's something about stopping trying to be perfect; own your authentic vulnerabilities. Don't purposely spill a smoothie, and don't purposely spill your coffee. By the way,

that experiment was repeated with coffee and job interviews, if I remember correctly. They had an audio clip, and interviewers were rating job candidates on performance. In one of the audio clips, they had him spill his coffee: "Oh, whoops! Oops! Sorry about that, spill my coffee. Let's get that and then go back to the interview." They rated that candidate as a better candidate even though he spilled his coffee. Why? It's called the "other shoe effect." We know that no one's perfect; we know this. It's impossible. So, when we're interacting with someone—even in a commercial or an

interview—we're like, "What's wrong with you? What is your imperfection?" It kind of distracts us. This research, the "other shoe effect," found that the longer the interview goes on without something dropped—like without the other shoe dropping—the more the interviewer is like, "What's going on here?" The more they'll try to ask questions to try to find it. You are better off in an interview or on a date dropping your shoe—so sharing whatever that vulnerability or imperfection is—closer to the start of the interview or the date. Because it helps the other person, A, get to know you better,

but also, B, not be so worried that they're not seeing your true imperfections. "Captivate," when I first wrote it, my intro was really, really boring. My publisher, I love her, Nikki, my editor, wrote back and said, "Vanessa, your intro doesn't sound like you. It sounds like you're trying to be something you're not." And she was right! I was trying to sound like an academic researcher. I'm not an academic researcher; I'm a behavior researcher. I'm a pop scientist. I'm a recovering awkward person! She's like, "Start with that." So the opening line of "Captivate" is, "Hi, I'm

Vanessa. I'm a recovering awkward person." That is why that book hit the bestseller list—I dropped the shoe. Yes, I teach charisma; yes, I teach body language. I am still in recovery. I am still constantly worried that people hate me. I have a small and wonderful group of friends, but otherwise, people make me still nervous. I know how to deal with it; I know how to make conversation. But I want you to know there's still awkwardness here. No matter how many of these you learn, you're probably still going to face awkwardness and overwhelm. But at least

it will be a little bit easier. So I think it's really important that we plan to share our imperfections and not try to hide it. Personal branding is a big thing now because we have social media; we have LinkedIn. It's a big part of what gets you a job and gets you opportunities and gets you speaking appointments and book deals, etc. So everybody is—well, most people are—playing the game of personal branding to some degree. As you were saying about being perfect and showing imperfections, again, it feels like there’s like a—uh, like a—is "gradient" the right

word? Like a spectrum. That’s a nice word! For sure, you can go too far with imperfection. Oh yeah, my friends and I call this "deficiency promotion." And then on the other end of the spectrum, you've got "ideas promotion," which is like when you're all about: "Look how smart I am, and these are my ideas." Deficiency promotion is: "Look how traumatized, broken, sick, ill I am," and you build a whole brand around that. Yeah, and you can, like, you know, you're probably still going to get speaking appointments on either side because, you know, they're going to

want people to speak about this stuff. But also this stuff. But I think you have to be quite intentional about how you show up on this spectrum. Well, first of all, what's true, right? Like, the very first question is, like, don't purposely spill the smoothie. But you know what's interesting is when you build a brand, it becomes self-reinforcing. So I see people on both sides of the spectrum; maybe they started in the middle, and then they got likes and followers that are like, "Go further! What else is wrong with you? That's why we love you!"

You're so... Bren? Totally! I think that there are people who are locked into being broken and being messy, and people don't want to see them triumph. However, I think it is important to show people if you are very broken and in a..." A bad point in a bad stage in your life, like, show it, and then show them how you're a hero out of it that can inspire other heroes. I agree, but is there such a thing as spending too long in either camp? Do you know what I mean? Because we like a little bit

of, “Oh, you had a bad day, great,” but you have a bad life. It's different strokes for different folks. I think there are people who would stay all over there forever. Yeah, but if you're there for ten years, where you're just showing up every day, like another day for me for ten years, do you think they would still get likes? I think they would. Of course, they would. I mean, it would be miserable for you as a person, but if that's your brand, that's your brand, I guess. I guess you said that the most important

thing, which is, like, who are you? Yeah, like, if that's the truth, if you're having a decade of it, then be honest; you got a decade of it. It's interesting with social media that I think social media started in a place where it was, you know, the marguerite on the beach, and that was in such high supply that something else became in greater supply, which was being a bit more honest—stretch marks on the beach. Yeah, exactly! Stretch marks on the beach—that's exactly what happened, and those are people who have gone viral from those kinds of

posts. I do want to say something about personal branding. I think about it a little bit differently. Um, so in the very last section of cues, I talk about visual. We have to remember that the cues in our brand—the colors we wear, what's behind you in your background, the props you're holding in your picture, what's back behind you in your videos—they are triggering neural networks. So, for example, they've researched this: if I say, "free associate to fire," you might say, "red, engine, dog," and you might start to associate different words. There are really common neural

networks. So what you want to think about is what neural networks are you triggering in your personal brand? For example, I like to create strong neural networks. All my single students, my students who are dating, I say your profile picture should be triggering all kinds of neural networks that you like. So if you love skiing, you should be on a slope holding skis, because for some people, that will trigger a fierce fear neural network. Right? Like, I'm not a skier; I see skis, and I'm like, cold, scared, alone. Right? Like, knees hurting—that's what I think

when I see skis. I would not be a good partner for them, but someone else is going to be like, "Adventure, family, fun, vacations." That’s your person! Every picture on your profile should be creating allegiances and attractors. It should be activating neural networks for your person; you want them to have similar neural networks to you. My husband and I, I think if you were to show us both pictures of the same things, we would have very similar neural networks for different vacations, different props, different foods, different activities—and that's because we have similar ways of thinking.

We are very different, but we activate the same similar neural networks for pain and pleasure. Okay, I had a conversation with a really good friend of mine about this. Okay, um, they are looking for a partner, okay? And they are approaching their 40s, and they were asking me about their Instagram. The first thing I noticed about their Instagram is I would say 80% of the pictures they're holding a cocktail or a drink of alcohol. Now, as I looked at the Instagram, I go, "Oh, party girl," I don't think like "settle down and let's have a

family." Absolutely. Does she want to have a family? Yes! Okay, wrong pictures. She is activating the wrong neural networks for men. She's dating men, yeah. She's dating the wrong men. They are going to look at that and be like, "Party girl, fun out, not the mother of my children." So those are creating allegiances for the ideal man. So what does she need to change? She needs, okay, so what kind of husband and father does she want? Does she want an outdoor lover, a good one that can—she said to me, “I want a good one that

can help me with some of these overhead bills.” She doesn't want him to pay all the bills; she just wants some help with the bills. Okay, so a hard worker. She earns a lot of money. Okay, so that’s pictures of her, you know, working hard at a conference. What kind of way does she spend her weekend? She's hiking, or she's biking, or she's running across the Brooklyn Bridge, or she's running a marathon, or she loves dogs, or she loves cats, or she’s eating big waffles and pancakes. Like, she should be taking pictures of what she

wants to do with her partner so that they look at that and they're like, "I want to join her for that." And you also want to create allegiances; you don't want to appeal to everyone because you're going to go on bad dates. The other thing I know about this person is something you said earlier: their body language, as I think about it, is just so... it's like trying to take up less space, is any way I can describe it. Contracted. Exactly like that, right? So when we talk about distance between, like, ear, ear, ear, L,

and shoulder distance, number one, second distance is important. Between your arm and your torso in a good conversation, we have distance that's fluctuating a lot. Like, right, I'm talking, my arms are going out; you're seeing distance between my torso and my arm. People who are very anxious, yeah, like in, like, just like a pencil or like penguin—I call it penguin—where they like don't ever release their arms from their torso, and they're very contracted. They have very minimal hand gestures, and they'll often clutch something to their chest. Now, if I were to give the entire interview

like this, you would think, "Oh man, she is nervous," or she's, you know, afraid or she's anxious because I don't have that space. The moment I release that space, it makes me look more confident. So that's the other distance you can play with. Hand gestures really help with that; hands help with space, with vocal variety, with comprehension. That's why I like them so much. So if I'm trying to get her a husband, I'd like to— we've been friends for a long time, almost a decade, and I have sat in the passenger seat of her life

and tried to be a supportive friend in any way. But if I tried to give her advice in terms of cues and body language and sentences on how to get a partner, where do we start? Okay, so one, let's get her some pictures that are going to attract the right person and create allergies for the wrong person. Okay, two, her main profile pictures should be showing warm and competent body language—an authentic smile, maybe a head tilt, maybe you have a hand gesture. Maybe that's too much warmth. I want to see a lot of space between

your earlobe and your shoulder. Make sure it's a symmetrical smile; make sure we're not contempt. Make sure we're not accidentally fear smiling, right? So the profile picture is number one, most important. Yes? Okay, you're laughing; it's a lot. Okay, oh, we—it's going to be hard. We've got to find her husband; we haven't got much time yet. That, okay, we've got— we've got to find her husband. The interpersonal body language is really hard as a friend to correct on someone. May I ask you, does she use vocal fry? What's that? Does she ever talk like this,

where it's kind of like a frying pan, where she's not using her full voice? Typically, people who use contracted small body language often have that kind of vocal power, and so they go into a pattern like this. And then, and like, "Oh, like, I mean, I just like watered the plants this weekend." And like, also, the inton— the, um, the end of this sentence goes up, right? So that's the first thing I would actually try to help her with, is making sure that she does not accidentally use vocal fry. It's usually an accident. Here's the

fastest way to get rid of vocal fry: if you are using it, you hear yourself using it, or someone else is using it, just speak louder. Vocal fry happens from a lack of breath. What actually is happening is you're speaking and your vocal cords are rattling. It's a terrible noise, but that's my vocal cords rattling together. The moment that I speak louder, it goes away. It goes away. So oftentimes when we're lacking confidence or we have tight body, we have less breath, and we create vocal fry. So just ask her to speak up a little

bit. Okay, it's hard to get someone to stand more broadly, because if they're uncomfortable with it, they don't like it. So what I would recommend is she should do activity dates. When you're at dinner with someone or at brunch or at coffee at a bar, you're like this, so what do you do? And you're like shriveled, and you're like clutching your drink, and you're in your patterns, you're in those patterns. Go on hikes, go play pickleball, go learn pickleball, go play ping pong—like do something physical because then it's much easier to be broad. Interesting, okay,

that makes a lot of sense, actually. Yeah, because if it's in a context you're super familiar with, the old patterns are going to be triggered in you. Yes, and I've tried to get people to stand more broadly just by telling them, and it can, it helps. The awareness helps, but it's much easier when you're actually in a context that helps you be that way. I read a study from your work that said in a study to see how men and women look at body language differently, they put people in an MRI machine and had them

try and read body language from just pictures alone. What happened? What did they find out? So I believe women activated 14 to 16 areas of their brain while trying to read those body language pictures, and men, I believe, it was half of that. In other words, when women were looking at pictures of body language, lots of connections were happening. They were making predictions, they were thinking about personality, they were thinking about emotions, they were looking at their clothes, they were looking at their facial structure. Women were taking a much broader picture of the body language,

whereas men were, I think, much more cue focused—ah, broad shoulders, feet apart, hands visible. Neither of these are right or wrong, actually; in fact, men can sometimes be easier to teach. Like my students are 50/50 men and women, but sometimes men can focus in on the cue that I'm trying to teach them. They can understand it; they can comprehend it. Got it, it's decoded. Women tend to create a whole narrative. So I play games sometimes with my students. Where I say, "Okay, tell me about someone." He has a mohawk, and men will often say, "I

don't let them hear." The women first; men will often be like, "He has a mohawk, he's a man, he's not bald." Women will be like, "Okay, he's a bad boy, and he probably has earrings, and I bet you he drives a motorcycle, and I bet he'd be really fun on a date, but probably a drinker." And they will just go, "Interesting." So this is good and bad, right? Like, that also can hinder women. And by the way, I'm making big generalizations on this; this is not the generalization part; we have to make sure we're careful.

Women tend to globalize a cue. Like, they'll see a cue and be like, "Oh, that means he's bad," or "That means he's dangerous," or "He's toxic; I'm never going to talk to him." Whereas men will sometimes think, "Oh, it's probably a bad day," or "I'll give her or him a second chance." So we just have to be a little bit aware of our own interpretations, our own lenses. We'll say, "Is there anything else that I should say to my friend in order to help them?" Because sometimes I wonder, you know, there are tips, tricks, tactics

they can lean on; they can do this, whatever. But is there something deeper that is easier? And you know why I say this? That book, "The Game," I went off to university; I lasted for one lecture, but while I was there, I met this guy called Joe—my friend. I won't say his second name because it will identify him, but I met my friend Joe and I said to Joe, "Listen, my friend, I said this book, 'The Game,' is really useful! It taught me a lot about, like, you know, interpersonal dynamics; you should read it." I

gave the book to him; he read it. We went out to the club that day; he messed it up—like he went out there, he started negging people, insulting people, whatever. And I just thought, "God, you know, you just can't teach it." That's what I thought. There are so many— And actually, when I reflect on the people in my life, this guy called Dan, I'll say his name: Dan Capon. Dan Capon in school was always just so, so good with the opposite sex. He was just always—he's one of those people—he's charismatic, he was funny, he's like

that cocky funny. Yeah, yeah, just a natural; no one taught him that. And so I look at my friend Joe, I look at my friend Dan, and I go, "It doesn't matter if you read the book," because I’m not saying your book—your book's amazing; everyone needs to go read your books. No, they really do; it's a great book. But I'm saying, is there something deeper within us? Like for my friend that has the shriveled posture, is it just, like, tactics and tips? I think anyone can learn it. Okay? I really, truly believe that. I have

seen the most awkward, uncomfortable people totally shut down, slowly transform, or completely transform. And remember, they don't—who is your uncharismatic friend? What was the fake first name you used? He's not uncharismatic; he just—I just gave him the book, and he just, like—who is Joe? Joe doesn't need to have a complete transformation to find his soulmate. Joe does not need to have a complete transformation to have friends; you're his friend. So even if he has a couple of tactics—like, stop asking, “What do you do?”—it's boring. Start making eye contact, especially at the end of sentences for

60-70% of the time. Oh, people suddenly feel listened to. Hey, ask better questions to your friends; you'll get to know them better. Those tactics will get him friendships, hopefully a girlfriend, hopefully a job. So I think that everyone can make small or big changes. I don't think there's anyone who's unteachable. Do you think there's a relationship between these tactics and tips and your actual confidence? I.E., does it become like a self-reinforcing? Yes, so much so. That is the only way I found confidence. The only way that I was able to conquer my awkwardness and actually

begin to go out and try to make friends and be less lonely—I mean, I was so lonely—was that I was like, "Okay, I have a goal. I'm going to ask someone: 'What have you been doing that's been exciting recently?'" I'm going to ask that question. That gave me just enough confidence to get out the door and to get to that party. And then when I got a good answer—someone was like, "Oh, yeah, you know, I am working on something exciting"—I was like, "Oh," and then they felt excited, and I felt excited. And so, like that

one tool gave me enough confidence to go out. So these tools give you confidence to try something new and to break your pattern. If you feel stuck—this is for anyone—if you feel stuck, then you have to try something different. If you keep doing the same thing, you're going to keep getting the same thing. So that means you have to ask different kinds of questions; you have to use different kinds of body language cues. And if you're willing to try just something different, something will change for you. Are these cues, this body language, more important for

one gender typically than the other? Not that I've seen; the research has not found that. Good for both. And what's—in terms of attraction, what do you think the most important thing is? Is it competent? Is it strong? Is it—? Okay, so this is not—this is... Research, so I believe it was Monica Moore who did this research. She found that the people who got approached the most at clubs were those who had the biggest signal of availability. They weren't necessarily the most attractive men and women; she did this for both genders. In fact, the most attractive

women in the room, if they had closed body language, did not get approached. They did not get dates, nor did they get their numbers. It was the men and women who signaled, “I'm available.” How do you signal you're available? Okay, so this is really important for dating in the sense of wanting to be approached. Dating one-on-one is a little bit different, right? You don't need to signal this if you're one-on-one, but if you're in a big room or you're speed networking, one is open body language—no blocking. I never want anything in front of your torso.

I don't want this: I don't want arms crossed, I don’t want a cup in front of you, I don’t want you clutching your computer, your iPad, or your phone. I want you to make sure that your torso is open and angled out towards the room. I like croissant feet; you know, parallel feet are like what we're doing right now. In a dating situation, I want you to have croissant feet, which means your feet are angled toward the biggest part of the room, saying, “I'm open, come and approach me.” Okay, that signals to both men and

women, “Oh, maybe that person is literally physically open to someone coming in and breaking this conversation.” It also means small, darting glances to everyone around the room. Everyone. You want to approach, yeah? How many times does someone have to glance to get someone to come over? So, Monica Moore actually studied this. I believe it took eight glances to get someone to approach. Don’t quote me on that; it was way higher than I thought. I was thinking two, maybe three. I think it was something insane like eight. Could you imagine being in a bar and looking

at someone eight times? That’s how many times it took to get that person to come over. And these are quick glances—not like, you know, cat-like. It’s a side glance and a smile, a flip of the hair, and a look over, right? Those are the kinds of glances that we’re talking about. Sometimes it takes eight. So, croissant feet, open body, quick, short glances. I would also try one of my secret tricks for daters, which is generally gesturing in their direction. So, let’s see, like there’s a hot guy right over there that I can see—I’ve been married

for 18 years, just to be clear. If you want to drop something, you called him hot; you called him hot—he’s freaking out. So, there's a hot guy right over there that I want to see, and I'm talking to you. I might make some quick glances over, but I also might, when I’m gesturing, sort of gesture toward him. So, I’m on their line of gesturing. If I’m gesturing out, I’m making a gesture for them to literally come over, like I'm gesturing and talking, but I'm open gesturing. It works! If they are attracted to you at all,

they will come over. If they don’t come over, they’re probably not attracted. Do you try someone else? What about men? How do men signal? Oh, sorry, the same thing. A man can do the same thing. Now, women are less likely to approach men in a crowded environment; culturally, that’s not as accepted. So, it’s going to be harder for a man to get a woman to come over, but it does work very well for men to warm a woman up. She is about to be approached with those things: quick glances, open gestures, croissant feet toward her.

That way, when you do approach, she knows that your attention has been on her. Look at her responses to your gestures and your glances. If she meets your glance, great. If she turns away from you or turns her feet away from you, she’s probably not very receptive to your approach. So, it’s a good way to kind of test the waters before you actually approach. It’s difficult in this day and age, isn’t it, to know if you can roll up on someone? Because there’s a lot of, you know, “too cool for school,” that’s what I see.

And also, there’s a big culture now of inappropriate advances. Yes, but I’m going to be optimistic and say, “Look, I’m not single, so I know that's different.” But I think people are lonely, and I think people really want to meet their person. So, if you are actually in person and you are interested in someone, it is such a gift to go up to someone and be like, “Hey, I like you. I saw you across the room.” I think I said this on one or two podcasts before, but I didn’t really get an answer from anybody.

I had this kid at this event that I spoke at. Okay, and he was in the front row. It just really moved me because it made me realize that there are so many people out there, especially in the world we live in now in 2024. For 2025 or whatever, who want friends? You just said loneliness, right? They want to make a friend. And it's so weird—this kid stood up, bless him, in this talk I was doing, and he put his hands up in the air. There were a thousand people around him. It was this talk

I did in Canary Wharf in London, which is like the New York of London. It's really, really busy; they're all wearing suits because they work in the city. He stood up and he went, "My question is, how do I make friends?" Oh, and you can imagine the guts it takes to say that in front of a room of a thousand people. He went, "How do I make friends?" What do you say? Do you have any friends? Do I have any friends? I have a couple— not many. But it's funny because what I actually said took

me off guard. What I ended up saying was, "What you just did is how you make friends." You know what I'm saying? So, like, that willingness to be vulnerable in that way is important because I said, "I know what's going to happen after I finish on stage here and walk off; people are going to come up to you." Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I have a framework for how to make friends as adults. Okay? I think it's really important. I think it's somehow acceptable in our society to approach friendship like dating, but that's how we should

think about it. Meeting two or three amazing people is so important for your health, for your happiness, for your success. It is so important to date your friends! That is incredibly important. One of my best friends is Cody Sanchez because she is incredibly inspiring, incredibly smart, and incredibly funny. But I dated a lot of people in Austin— a lot of girls in Austin— to find her. I know she did too; it was my "bachelorette for friends" era where I was looking for girlfriends. We just hit it off, and we've been able to grow our businesses

together. So one is, you should change your mindset: finding friends is like dating. You are looking for your friend soulmate. And then you should approach those friends just like you would a potential partner. You want someone with similar values; you want someone who activates the same neural networks as you. They like the same activities, and you want someone who you test it out. You would never move in with someone who just started dating, and the same thing goes for a friend. You don't want to get too close too fast. So I highly recommend going on

friendship dates, and you want them to be different every time. Take them to places that you love, and try to make them a little bit "allergic." So for example, there's a place—this is going to sound crazy, but it works. There's a place in Austin called Casa De Luz, if anyone's been there in Austin, and it's a vegan hippie spot. It's been there forever, and you go in and it's one meal. You can't customize it; they plop it down on your tray and you eat it like cafeteria food. And I love it! I love taking really

high-maintenance women there just to see what they're going to do because the women who are like, "Can I please get a not-a-?" I'm like, "We're not going to be friends. We cannot be friends." You don't like those people? Nope, that modified them. That's why I left L.A. I mean, you can modify a little bit, but there's a way that you kind of do it, and here you can't; you literally cannot modify. And so it's interesting to see how people deal with that circumstance, and I found my best, closest friends are like, "Cool! Let's go with

it." That's a way that I see very into their personality. That's like a very weird story. People are going to be like, "She's so weird, no wonder she doesn't have any friends!" True, I don't have a lot of friends, but the friends I have I love. We go to see each other all the time. So you should think about activities or places with your friends where you're going to be able to test out a value or something that you really appreciate in friends. What if you don't have friends? I'm thinking about this kid, especially if

you're a man, because men just struggle more. It actually feels awkward sometimes when I make dates for my husband. I have to make friend dates for my husband as well. No, I totally get it. I see it. Activities—so like, where's the place you like to hang out? What's the thing that you do? Is it, you know, axe throwing? Is it going to soccer games? Is it crazy mileage runs? Is it a hiking group? Is it pickleball? Find the activity you love, and then just slowly—just like we're talking about dating—slowly hit them up. "What's anything exciting

these days? What's your big goal for 2025?" Those are the questions. The reason I have these questions is they're dating questions, but they're also friendship questions. If you live in that activity for long enough, you'll find your people. What are you seeing in terms of interpersonal relationship shifts in the sort of 15 years—has it been since you've been? 18 years? You must have seen societal-level shifts in our interpersonal skills, our friendships, etc. What are you seeing? AirPods are killing friendship! AirPods are going to ruin our interpersonal interactions. And here's the difference I've seen—the biggest difference

in the last... 18 years, 18 years ago, you could maybe wear a Walkman around campus, or around the city, or on a subway, but really your ears were open. And so what would happen is you’d get on the subway, or you’d walk across campus, or you’d walk down the hallway, and someone would be like, “Hey, Stephen! How's it going?” “You know, pretty good, crazy week.” “Oh really? What you working on?” Like, it was so much easier to have those tiny micro moments of connection. That Van Sloan study was done before AirPods, and I wonder if

you were to redo it now, what would happen? Which one? The one where he found the most likable kids had the longest list of people they liked. In the study, the most likable kids, when he observed them, were walking down the hallway, saying hello, chatting next to someone for five seconds at a locker, saying “after class” and sort of talking, sitting at a lunch table, leaning over someone, asking about that. So much micro connection! Very small conversations. Our friendships don’t often happen in these big deep conversations; they happen in these micro moments. AirPods destroy it,

and I see this especially with younger folks because they always have their AirPods in when they’re commuting, when they’re walking, when they’re jogging, when they’re at the gym. I don’t know about you, but when I was single for five seconds, when I was like 17, the gym was like the place— at the gym, no one really was listening to anything. At the gym, at least I can remember, like the rare person would have their Walkman in, but everyone was AirPod-free, and so there were a lot of micro moments of connection happening. It was so much

easier to talk to people. Now, if someone's working out with their AirPods, they’re insane! I'm like, what are they doing? They should go home; it’s weird! It’s weird! Or they’re with a friend, working out together, and that’s intimidating. So I’m worried about this because we need weak ties. Weak ties are, in the research, these very casual connections of someone you see at the gym once a week, and you kind of know them. “Oh yeah, you know Stephen! Nice to see you.” You recognize their face. That when you were, if you were to see them at

a restaurant later in the week, you’d be like, “Hey, don’t you go to that gym?” “Oh yeah, yeah, we do! So what are you doing this weekend?” Like those weak ties are incredibly important for our happiness. That’s how we build big friends, that’s how we can find a soulmate, that’s how we can make good business contacts, and I’m seeing less and less of that because of AirPods and because of hybrid work. So we’re just not in the office that much, so we’re having less of those little micro moments in a hallway. That five minutes before

a meeting starts— the five minutes before a meeting starts is really critical to your career success. How you talk to your boss, the small talk you make—are you asking boring questions? It’s telling your colleagues and your boss a lot about who you are, and it’s proven likable people make more money, likable people get more promotions, likable people have more friends, and more friends at work. And so when we have fewer moments to show how likable we are, it’s really hard to get those things. At my company, Flight Studio, which is part of my bigger company,

Flight Group, we’re constantly looking for ways to build deeper connections with our audiences, whether that’s a new show, a product, or a project. It’s why I launched the conversation cards. I’ve relied on Shopify before, who’s a sponsor of today’s podcast, and I’ll be using them again for the next big launch, which we’ll hear about soon. I use them because of how easy it is to set up an online store that reaches all of you, no matter where you are in the world. With Shopify, the usual pain points of launching products online disappear completely. No matter

the size of your business, Shopify has everything you need to make your business go to the next level and better with your customers all over the world. To say thank you to all of you for listening to my show, we’re giving you a trial, which is just $1 a month. You can sign up by going to shopify.com/bartlet. That’s shopify.com/bartlet or find the link in the description below. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re probably going to want to listen to this; it’s a message from one of our sponsors on this podcast, which is LinkedIn. If you’ve listened

to me on this podcast for a while now, you’ll know that I’ve been on a bit of an evolution as a business owner and entrepreneur, and one of those evolutions that has become clearer and clearer as I’ve matured is that the single most important thing in building a business, in building a company, is hiring. The definition of the word company is actually a group of people, and that is the first responsibility and job that any entrepreneur has and should focus on. But surprisingly, most don’t. About 80% of my team have been hired from LinkedIn, and

I think there are very few platforms, if any, in the world that could give you that diversity of candidate with that much information and data on their profiles. It usually costs money, but for the entrepreneurs that are listening to me, I’ve got you a free job ad post for your company on LinkedIn. Just go to linkedin.com/doac to post your free job ad today. That’s linkedin.com/doac. Terms and conditions apply. What about lying? This is one of the most—um—things people are most interested in, is how... To everyone who wants to spot a liar, it's funny because, like

the rest of our conversation, one could infer that as how to be a liar. I'm joking. No, but it is. It's like how to show up in a certain way to get success in a certain context, whether it's dating, work, or whatever. Yeah, but then we want to figure out if someone's playing us. Is it possible to spot a liar? Most people can only spot a lie with 54% accuracy. They've actually studied that the average person is very bad at it. You're better off tossing a coin; 54% accuracy. We are very bad at spotting liars,

and this is important to know about yourself. We should not overestimate our ability to spot lies. We are usually not good at it, so it is very important to give someone the benefit of the doubt because you don't know. It's very hard to spot. It is possible; there are certain statistical cues to deceit. There are cues that, over and over again, research finds liars typically do, but not always. Like there's no Pinocchio's nose; there's no one cue that means someone is lying. But there are a couple of cues that come up over and over again.

One we already talked about is the question inflection. It's very suspicious if someone is speaking and all of a sudden they ask a question if they're not actually asking a question, right? Like if all of a sudden you hear the question inflection used on a statement, or a number, or a boundary, or a timeline—that's when I'm like, let’s double-click on that for a second and talk about that. So you mentioned the number was 500,000; where does that number come from? Let's talk about more, and I want to hear if I'm going to hear it again.

Interesting. So that's a double-click for me. That's like, let's make sure that I heard that right. Let's make sure that you feel confident about it. Where does that come from? So that’s just a little red flag that says to dive deeper. Nothing is a sign of lying; it's just a sign that you should dig deeper. So, a question inflection and a volume drop are another vocal cue of deception. When we're anxious or nervous, we lose volume and we lose breath. So if you hear someone speaking, I hear this a lot in sales calls. Someone will—

I always know what part of a sales presentation makes my entrepreneurs the most nervous because they lose volume during that part of their presentation. So it sounds like this: "So let’s move on to our team. So our founding partners are, um, me, myself, uh, Joe, Jimmy, and we all met at NYU and we're going to now talk about…” I'm obviously making it obvious for you, but if you're listening for it, you'll hear where someone is like—they literally lost fuel; they literally lost breath. So a sudden drop in volume is a very interesting cue to double-click

on. Like, what just happened there? How do you feel about your co-under? How long have you known each other? Anything we should know about that? How's the relationship? How do you fight? How do you communicate? Right? Like that’s where I would aim most of my investor questions if I heard that volume drop in that specific area. Now, that's non-verbal. What you're looking for are incongruencies where the verbal does not match the body. The biggest and most obvious one is when someone says yes but shakes their head no, or says no but shakes their head yes.

So I might say to my daughter, “Did you clean your room?” “Um, yeah, I did,” and she's shaking her head no. In Western culture, there’s a cultural exception to this one—India, Bulgaria, and Pakistan; they nod a little bit differently, the research actually shows that. But in countries outside of India, Bulgaria, and Pakistan, when we agree with someone, say yes or tell the truth, we typically agree with ourselves and shake our heads yes. When we don't agree or don’t like something, we often shake our heads no. We can sometimes also do this in disbelief, like, “Wow,

I cannot believe that just happened.” So I'm always looking for incongruent nods. This happens a lot if you ask someone, “Do you like the new girl?” “Yeah, you know, she’s, um, great, right?” You see that 100%, yeah, all the time, and people—they don’t realize they’re doing it, but they’re shaking their head no; they do not like that person. You'll also see this with mismatched facial expressions. The biggest one for liars, the research finds, is disgust. Disgust is an expression that people make without even realizing it, and this is across cultures. When we don't like something

or we smell something bad, we crinkle our nose up and we flash the upper whites of our teeth and we go, “Ugh.” So you'll notice that liars typically feel dirty when they lie, so oftentimes they'll show disgust with themselves for lying. So you'll ask someone, “So what do you think of the proposal?” “Yeah, um, it’s really good,” and they might even sniff. Really? What’s a sniff? What does it signal? Oh, it’s a disgust activator. Like, when we are disgusted, our nasal cavities want to close because we want to take in less of it. And so,

even though it's not about food, it's about a preference. Liars will often show a little bit of disgust when they are lying because they are, like, a little bit disgusted with themselves. And so you'll see this activation here. By the way, no one... Does that naturally? Like, right? This is very unnatural to hold my face, but we do it when we feel disgusted. It's the nasal cavities; when we nasal dilate, our nasal wings dilate. That's what it's called. Like, these nasal wings dilate, and we begin to scrunch them up. It's like we don't like what

we're seeing, smelling, or hearing. So, what I will do is I will share a proposal with someone. I will talk about something, and I watch for any disgust. I'll say, "You know, here's the plan for 2025. Here's what we're going to do," and if I see [Music] a reaction, I know that that team member or that person is not that into it, and that's why I double-click. Any questions? How do you feel, Stephen? Do you like this idea? Yeah, I love it! Yeah, no. Horrible! Horrible! You look like you're about to throw up! By the

way, I heard you say that the most toxic relationships are the ambivalent relationships. The word "ambivalent" means… what does it mean? Okay, so ambivalent is actually not toxic. Toxic is, like, we know it's bad; we don't want it. We're creating boundaries around it. Ambivalent means we're not sure. Ambivalent relationships are the relationships in your life that are the most damaging. They’re the relationships where you wonder: Does she like me? Do I like her? Gosh, I wish she would cancel this dinner we have. Am I tired after that? I'm dreading it. Do I have to go?

Gosh, I wish I was home. Those are ambivalent relationships where you're not sure, and they are so energetically draining. Because with a toxic person, you know they're toxic. You're like, "I don't like that person. They're not serving me. I'm not going out to dinner. I'm going home. No thanks, not going to text you; not going to tell you I'm thinking about you." Whereas with an ambivalent person, you're like, "I should check in with that person. I really should go to the dinner. Oh, it's been five months since I've gone to dinner with—oh man, do I

even know what they're up to these days? Do I even care?" And then, most importantly: Do they like me? Do they support me? That's why I asked about that friend that you were unsure about. I was like, "Are they jealous? Do they have a problem with you?" Because you might be picking up on their ambivalence towards you, and that is what you're picking up on. There's a research study that was done with police officers, and they wanted to know what makes for a thriving workplace. So, they asked police officers to rank the people in their

precinct, and they found that the police officers who had the most ambivalent ties were more unhappy in their jobs, had less work-life balance, and experienced more workplace stress than the people who had toxic relationships. In other words, the police officers who said, "All ten of those people are toxic" were happier at work, while the police officers who said, "I don't know if I like that person, and I don't know if that person likes me; I don't know if I want to go out to lunch with that person again. I kind of would rather be alone,"

found it to be so mentally draining to have ambivalent relationships. So, it's really important if you're making that list of people—going back to the very beginning, you know the people you’re really close to, not very close with, kind of close with, really close with—if you're not sure, put them at the bottom. And in the next 30 days, try to ask them the questions that we shared: "Working on anything exciting? What's your biggest goal right now?" and see if you like their answers. It's important to either move them up or move them out. Don't let them

be ambivalent. One of the things that is highly searched on Google—I was looking at Google to figure out what the most searched questions are—there are some tools that I use to figure out what people want to know, and one of them was just, "How do I start a conversation?" So, my next book is about this, so I'm happy to hear that. Okay, one is: don't overthink your opener. Starting a conversation is like, "Hey, I'm Vanessa." Like, literally, your opener can just be that. My sister, my youngest sister, said, "The best advice I ever got was

from you." And I was like, "What is it?" She was like, "You just told me to say hello to people!" And that is it. Your opener is just, "Hey, I'm Vanessa. Hey, nice to meet you." So, don't overthink the opener because that opener—your body is actually doing a lot of things: your brain and body are projecting competence, warmth, facial expression, voice tone. If you're like, "What's your biggest goal in life?" it's way too much. So, one is: your opener should actually be basic, so the other person's brain is allowed to relax. "Okay, friend, we're friends.

Hey, how are you doing?" Right? I held up my hand. So, don't overthink your opener: "Hey, nice to meet you. Hey, I'm Vanessa." Your first question is where things get more interesting. Okay, so if you don't know their name, you want to say, "Oh, what's your name?" Great! I'm Vanessa. Then, you have a choice. And I like to take the better route. You can say, "So, what do you do?" But I really don't like that path; it's autopilot. So, what I like to do instead is ask a version of the excitement question: "Do anything fun

and exciting this past weekend?" If it's a… Monday. So, Mondays, I always ask you, "Did you do anything fun this past weekend?" Fridays, I always ask, "Do you have any exciting plans coming up this weekend?" And then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I don't talk to anyone. What is the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about? For the personal side at home, the typical question, the most prolific question that you get, there's one story that I love that I try to keep front of mind, which is about Harry S. Truman, former

U.S. president. Most people don't know about him that he was actually severely introverted. When most people think about U.S. presidents, they do not think about introverts. In fact, most presidents have to be kind of a booming extrovert personality, and he was very introverted. He did something very interesting at the Democratic National Convention back in, I believe, 1944. He knew he was not a good public speaker, which also is very rare for a U.S. president to become president without being a good public speaker. He knew he could not cut it on stage with the very charismatic

people, and he was not; he was behind in the polls. He was not the preferred candidate. So, he was like, "I'm not going to compete on stage. I'm not going to try to outspeak them. I'm not going to try to go work the floor and shake hands; it's not my way. What I am going to do is try to find a way to do what I'm best at, which is one-on-one conversations where I can win people over with an argument." So, in the Democratic National Convention, it was really hot in Chicago in the middle of

summer. He rented the one air-conditioned room in the basement of the convention center, and one by one, his team would invite person by person down into that air-conditioned room, and he would tell them his story. He would tell them his points, and vote by vote, as the votes were being tallied, he would win over every single person that went to that room. One, it was air-conditioned, so they wanted to stay there as long as possible; two, he would hear, "What are your concerns? Why do you not want to vote for me?" And he would explain

to them why they should vote for him. Vote by vote, he ended up winning the National Convention without having to speak on stage barely at all. I share this because stop competing on stages where you can't be your best. Start creating rooms where you can think about what your social strengths are; you have one. What is it? Is it storytelling? Is it being funny? Is it listening? Is it being empathetic? Is it being a decoder? Is it being persuasive? What is your social strength? Create spaces and rooms where you can exercise that strength, because no

one wants you to pretend to be an extrovert or pretend to be something that you're good at that you're not. It's much better to do what you're actually good at and attract the right people. And your social strength might not be in person; it might not be, and that's okay. Like, there are some people who are great at texting, there are some people who are great at sending voice notes, there are some people who make their friends by broadcasting and then picking out a couple of people. That's how you met your girlfriend; you broadcasted, she

resonated with something that you said, and you gave her a way to find you. She did, and then you met. So, maybe it's broadcasting. I think we have to think outside the box; it's not only in person. There are so many ways you can have social strengths. I've heard it all now. Yeah, I get it. I believe it. I'm into it. Yeah, what is step one? I'm going to buy your books; there are two of them here, so I'm going to buy both of these books. Both of them will be linked below. What else can

I do to start on my journey of becoming you? You were a recovering awkward person before; now you're not. Yes, what's step one? Okay, step number one is to begin to break autopilot. So, make a commitment for the next 30 days; you are not going to trigger autopilot in your conversations. No more "What do you do?" No more "How are you?" No more "Where are you from?" No more "Okay, right?" Ask better questions. "Okay, what's your biggest goal?" "Anything exciting?" You're disgusting me. No, I'm thinking; I was telling you, you look good. Okay, so that's

challenge number one. Challenge number two: find out where you fall on the warmth and competence scale. Are you highly warm? Do you need to dial up competence to be taken more seriously? Are you highly confident? Do you need to dial up warmth to be seen as more friendly and trustworthy? Do that email audit; take the quiz, then do the email audit. And then, if you can, here's the bonus challenge: send the charisma quiz to someone who knows you well—someone at work, maybe a partner. Ask them to take it as you and screenshot their results. Sometimes

how we perceive our warmth and competence is not how others perceive our warmth and competence. So if you take it and you say, "I'm perfect; I'm a five out of five," but they take it and see you as really high on the warmth scale, that is going to be critical feedback for you. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. And the question that's been left for you… I always love these. When in your life

did you try to outrun your pain, and what was the consequence? When in your life did you turn and face your pain, and what was the consequence? There was a really weird moment in my career when everything was taking off. I had a lot of years of hard struggle, and as a writer, I had a published book—a traditionally published book—that completely failed in 2011. We won't name it; I put it out there thinking my world would change, and it did terribly. I got terrible reviews; it didn't sell, and I was literally told, "You'll never write

a book again." I was just devastated—devastated! My husband was like, "You got to keep writing; you're a writer; you got to keep writing." So, I went back to it. I started Science of People; that was officially when I started the actual website, Science of People. I kept writing, and then it started taking off! I had videos that went viral; we started having millions of visitors on the website, and I wanted to prove myself very badly. I wanted to erase that painful memory. So when I got approached to write *Captivate*, I was like, "No, I can't

write books; I'm a YouTuber and a blogger, but I can't write books." She was like, "This will be a different kind of book; this will be a book about really what you want to say to people, not the book you think you should write." I was like, "No! I cannot do it; it’s too painful. I will not survive if that fails. I will not survive if that fails." It took Nikki months of telling me, "This will be different; this will be a different kind of book; you can write the real book that you really want

to write." So, I said yes. I started writing it, and that was when I think—I don't know how to end the question—but I decided it would be worth the pain. If that failed, it would be worth the pain of at least saying that I tried. That was a very hard choice. Thank goodness it did not fail; it did really well, and I'm eternally grateful for that. When anyone buys a copy, I'm like one click further from that horrible failure. Vanessa, thank you so much. What you write about and what you educate people on is a

subject that's probably more important now than ever. I say that because of the macro climate of society, where we’re more lonely than ever. We're struggling with connection; it's not coming as naturally to us as it once probably did, or at least it feels less natural than it did before. It's crazy! I've only been a podcaster for about four years—I think I started in 2017—but really it's been four years since I've been uploading. It's crazy just in that time alone how many more of the questions I'm getting are about all the things you write about. They're

about how to make a friend, how to show up in a certain way, and all these kinds of things. The work you're doing is so unbelievably important. There's so much more that needs to be done as well, but the contribution you've made to the 400,000 people that you've taught and the millions of people who have bought your books and consumed your videos is really, really important. Thank you! It’s so funny because even I—people see me on camera and stuff—but I’ve learned so much from your work! So many things that I think a lot about. You

know there are things you can take or leave; you've got to say, “Who do I want to be?” and, “Who am I?”—truly—to then apply these things. Because there's no point; I have no interest in building a facade or anything, but there are things about me which—I didn’t even know I was doing that, you know? Yeah. And like, what kind of friend do I want to be? What kind of partner do I want to be? What kind of way do I want to be in conversation? Like, you get to choose. Thank you, Vanessa. Thanks for having

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