The secret to being more likeable… | Body Language Expert Vanessa Van Edwards

you talk about these five science-based habits for being more charismatic yeah I guess the first question is what is charisma yes and then what are these five science-based habits that can make me more charismatic as a person like how do I know if I'm charismatic you are charismatic but you lean higher on competence so so let's break it down okay so this is not my work this is the work of Dr Susan Fisk this is a instrumental study it's been repeated many times back in 2002 that found that to be charismatic you have to be

both highly warm and highly competent or more importantly you have to Signal High warmth and high competence and that this makes up 82% of impressions of people warmth trust likability friendliness competence power reliability capability so very highly charismatic people you meet them you see them and they are signaling you can trust me you like me and boy am I reliable and competent at the very same time so when I say you are charismatic but you lean very high incompetence which means that people can see you as cold or stoic if you're not showing enough warmth

cues have you been told that intimidating indirectly indect people are do scared to say it to me when I'm joking but no I do get that I do I do I think I have like some degree of self-awareness as to 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 like 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 hire incompetence women are defaulted to hire in warmth typically not always this isn't a bad thing but you should know that if you are trying to come across as warmer on your team you're trying to inspire more collaboration 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 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 um and this was really really interesting there's a danger zone the danger zone I'm guessing is when you're low warmth and low competence that's it that those are those folks that are stoic if you don't send enough warmth cues if you don't send enough competence cues people cannot trust you they have trouble working with

you they have TR 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 Simmon off 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 you have to show warmth in competence the other problem with highly competent folks and you lean

higher in competence this is for you too which is is directly from 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 and this is what happens with a lot of my students is they're like people don't trust me they don't believe my ideas they're skeptical I get push back or they're I do sales trainings 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 you can be absolutely 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 cu is dangerous right so too much nodding too much laughing too much uh vocalizations those are all too warm and they make us think this person is a bimbo or a dits or not

competent that's what happens 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 CU so this is competence yes power cues let me get some my power cues M 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 oh this this oh 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 open it's a triangle for anyone that kind of like a triangle yep a triangle it's a power pose for the hands why if you were 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 so that I'm keeping my hands together now be careful don't drum this is evil fingers yeah this is Mr Burns for those of you who know right so it's a nice still steeple uh they

have found they raided 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 tit cover photos and my all every single picture of me from my cover photos I was smiling and my wonderful photographer Maggie Kirin said Vanessa can we just do one of you serious I was like but I'm

not serious she's like just just one just do your most powerful power 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 Quee so you can try the steeple just be careful not to do evil finger evil fingers with it that's a high competence cue that picture of you on the front what is that signaling so it's a it's a perfect balance right so one I have the steeple Q competence gesture two I'm angled towards you my body is angled

towards you which is a warmth CU that's fronting my toes are angled towards you which is warmth I also have a smoldering eye contact look which is high competence which we can talk about and I have an up face right I'm not in my resting bothered face so that's a slight warmth queue that is actually how it makes me feel there's a element of power but it's not an intimidating level of power because I balanced it with that warm yeah it's like a welcoming woo we did it now I got to do it the next

one Ste okay steeple yeah second this is a weird one the most 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 Earl and my shoulder I would look anxious I would also have a really hard time giving you vocal power you would have a hard do you trust me no you look nervous right I look nervous there's a direct correlation between confidence and

anxiety and the distance between our shoulder and our earloop and very quickly we're trying to just assess someone 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 max distance between their earlobes and their shoulder so when you're in a first impression also in your profile pictures I want a relaxed distance shoulders down

Earls 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 max 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 don't what if you like raise your head though like cuz cuz 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 actually keep your yeah you want to keep your chin level and you if you can help it you don't want to actually look down at someone down your nose at someone it's quite a um scornful judgmental exactly so you just noticed it even when I did it so it's not this it's just this is so maximizing this difference third one I love eye contact we all know good eye contact is important but here's what you might not know about good eye contacts 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 and I'm telling you that there were 465 gestures in a TED Talk that is the most important way that I want to showcase something to you that we like it when someone is actually accessing different memories or areas of their brain but then when I end my sentence looking to right at you you're like so highly competent people make eye contact specifically at the end of their

sentences to drill a point and ideally when the other person is saying something important okay interesting I just did it then but I do that when I'm when I'm doing interviews because I kind of like look off into the distance to think a little bit and then I come back to ask the worst advice I hear people give body language experts give make more eye contact make 100% eye contact award 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 making 100% % eye contact with you it 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 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 that's number three yeah okay fourth one one of my favorites it's called a lower lid Flex 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 that is because when someone is trying to really focus on something and really understand something their lower liit is flexx as 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 Q to use in moderation right nothing too much that 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 is really focusing on me now there's a little side note the lower lid Flex lower lid Flex is not it's inherently in s a positive cue it's a cue of Focus right if you are in a presentation or a meeting and you say something and someone's suddenly lid flexes at you

you might have just said something in there like really yeah so for me this was a gamechanging moment as I was giving a presentation to a bunch of Executives and I said something about oxytocin which is a the hormone of um love and cuddle and connection and he goes I saw him lower lid Flex at me but he's also turned his head there I don't know if he I don't remember if he turned his head but all I noticed is that distinctly he went from M to ah yes and I went does that make sense

any questions so if you see a lower lid flex your best choice is to try to gather more information that makes sense all good any questions for me how we feel about this so I said any questions for me and he goes and I looked right at him I said any questions for me he said you know I think they gave my wife oxytocin and labor is that the same thing and it's true that they give a form of oxytocin to induce women in labor That's How Strong oxytocin is that in high doses it will

put women into labor it's a form it's called pin I said you're absolutely right in medical settings they can give synthetic forms of oxy toen to push women into labor that was a moment for me because one is I realized I was able to stop the skepticism and the confusion right there before we moved on anyone else anything else and now when I teach oxytocin I say in Social settings oxytocin means this because 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 super interesting in that example you give there as well had you not investigated that lower lid Flex you might have also thought something you said was wrong and lost your confidence and that consp spiral into you know closing off and becoming a worse presenter this is why I thought people hated me and I hated people so for my folks that

are listening who are like I hate people and I get it I was misreading cu's as skeptical or negative of me when it could have been neutral or 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 this is a vocal cue so 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 using a statement the brain research has actually looked at what the brain does when it hears an accidental question reflection if we are listening to someone and we hear them accidentally use the question reflection 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 I yeah Liars are asking do you believe this so we have noticed we did a massive experiment in our lab where we had people play two truths in a lie with us so share two truths about themselves in a lie and we found overwhelmingly one of the biggest patterns was a couple of different patterns one of the biggest ones was that Liars asked their lie statement so like sound like this here you can

play with me and I'll I'll add the question reflection 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 so we notice people ask the lie because they were asking do you believe this so our brain is very Adept at this if we hear The Accidental question reflection used we go wait a minute is someone lying to me the biggest mistake that sales people make is they get through their entire pitch and

they ask their number so 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 you are asking for 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 CU number five power que is using the downward inflection if you love the dver CEO brand and

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