Lessons - The Science of Charisma & Influence | Vanessa Van Edwards - Human Behavior Expert

In this lessons episode, discover the science behind charisma and the crucial balance of warmth and competence. Learn why showcasing genuine trust and approachability outshines mere extroversion, and understand how mastering verbal, non-verbal, and visual cues can elevate both personal and professional relationships. Maybe describe for the audience charisma because we just talked about introvert, extrovert, ambivert. How does charisma kind of that? Okay, wonderful. So about nine years ago, I discovered a study that literally changed the way I interact, and I'm hoping now will shick your perspective as well. So this is a research study that was done in 2002. It's a replicated number of times. So it's a very, very good set of research by Dr. Susan Fiss. Now what she discovered is that highly charismatic people, with the recognition of charisma, should all these hypotheses of what charismatic people could be? Are they more extroverted? Are they more attractive? Are they taller? Are they smarter? Are they funnier? But all these different variables that we think of when we think of charisma. But actually what it came down to is none of those things mattered. The true indicator of charisma is that highly charismatic individuals rank off the charts in two specific traits. Work and competence. But these two traits make up 82% of our impressions of people. Not only 82% of people are amberbirds and 82% of our impressions. I better make sure those are utter magic number. Let's say the low 80s. Let's say the low 80s. That we tend to focus while we're going into a boardroom or a presentation or a party or a network event or a date. We're focused on like 10 things. I got to be funny. I got to be interesting. I got to be impressive. I got to be smart. I'd be attractive. But actually with the research shows you'd be better off putting all of your energy into showcasing warmth, cues, and competence cues. So it's critical that these are in balance. Warm cues are signals of trust and likeability and affability. Competence cues are cues of reliability, power, and efficiency. What is happening is that highly charismatic people when you first see them on camera, see the LinkedIn profile, meet them in person. They are very quickly answering two questions. And these are the questions that we ask every single person we meet silently. Can I trust you? Can I rely on you? If you can quickly answer those questions with your cues, you are considered more highly charismatic. That is the formula for charisma. And it's still interesting because it actually seems like those two characteristics of charisma could almost be competing at some point. Okay, such a good point. Yes. So what often happens, the reason why charismatic people are so special is because most of us do not have a balance. Most of us are too high and I also want to be clear. This is how you are showcasing your warmth and competence. Not necessarily your actual warmth and competence. So for example, most of my students are high achievers, brilliant, very smart folks who have trouble showcasing their idea. They have great ideas, but they don't get a lot of buy on their ideas. Here's the problem with very smart people. Very smart people are focused on competence. They get really great data, charts, graphs, they have solid background research on their data. They have great slides. But if they forget to showcase or wrap that idea in warmth, it leads people feeling suspicious. And that is directly from the research. The research is found is that you had too much competence. With out of the form, people are suspicious of you and their suspicious of your ideas. So the curse of smart people is they focus so much on their smart. And that's all they're showcasing that no one believes them. So let's, I mean, we're really diving into the weeds of charisma very quickly. So we can keep going down this path. I still want to understand. Actually, let's keep going down this path. I actually really like it a lot. So I want to understand how people can, I think people at least audience members for this particular podcast, they understand competence and they probably over index on that side. And I would assume so. However, when they're listening to you and you're saying, warm past to balance out and there has to be almost this, this, this balance really for lack of a better word of both of both of these components. How does somebody manufacture warmth? Because that's a missing opponent. And I'm just thinking, I get business context, even going on a date, pitching to investors, getting a job, hiring an employee, getting into buy into your company, whatever it is, if you're highly competent, then there's that discord and there's that distrust. And then you're not optimizing the efficiency in that particular engagement. Yes. So this is the number one challenge of all of our students. So in people's school, I have a program where that is exactly what happens. They come in and they're like, how do I manufacture warmth? I feel all the problems that I have this idea. And so what I always say is, actually, you have warmth. So we're not manufacturing anything. Are you passionate about your idea? Do you really want it to work? Do you think the people can trust you? Great. That's warm. Warmth is about passion, trust, and enthusiasm. No. I occasionally get someone who's like, no, I don't love my idea. I'm going to be hard. It is really hard to manufacture fake form. And people, you can do it for a little bit. But you might want to get into other business. And then I say to them, well, are you passionate about making money? Are you passionate about helping? Well, like, where is there some kind of passion here? So one is that, yes, your idea is really important. Get your slide right, get your data right, get your due diligence right. And then remember, how freaking excited you are, how freaking excited you are to help someone? How freaking excited you are to make money? That is true passion. And then remember that you did the due diligence. And that's where the trust comes from. It comes from, right? It trust leaves people competent, but reliability are competent. Okay. Then we come down to the manufacturing part. What I would say is showcasing. You have the passion. You have the trust. And you have the competence. How do you signal both? They, it comes down specifically to the different channels of communication. I simplified about four channels of communication. There's lots of ways we do this. This is a kind of a framework to think about it because me as an awkward person, I was like, I need this simple. I need knowing exactly what to do to showcase warmth. So we showcase warmth before channels. First, our words, the kinds of words we use. I'll give an example of each in a second. Second, our body language, our gestures, our facial expressions, our posture. Third, our voice tone. How we deliver our words, how we sound as we deliver our volume, our pace, our cadence. Last one, smallest one is our ornaments or imagery, the kinds of colors we wear, how we wear our hair, our facial hair, what's behind us in our Zoom background, the signals, the images on our website. Okay, those are four channels. People are constantly looking through those four channels to try to find warmth and competence signals. So let's look at body language first, for example, very highly charismatic people. When you first see them, they have a perfect balance of non-verbal warm cues. They're signaling you and non-verbal competence cues are signaling you. So for example, a warmth cue might be a head tilt. So a head tilt is the universal sign of engagement across cultures, genders, races. When you ask someone, do you hear that? They expose their ear literally a sign of I'm listening. So there's studies that show that even in a LinkedIn profile picture, if I were to have a slight head tilt, people will rate me as would work. So a highly warm person or highly charismatic person might have a head tilt in their profile picture, it's even sick to static profile picture. They have a head tilt and they're also making direct eye contact with the camera, and they're also fronting with the camera. So they're angling their torso, their hips, and their toes toward the camera. We also like people who are full fronting with them if you like to be aligned with them. Those cues balance each other out. Once you stack all these different cues, I've identified 97 different cues. It's like a recipe. You get to sprinkle in the warm cues that you like and the cops will cues you like. So when you're going through your life, obviously there's 97 different cues. That's a lot of things to remember. What are the main, what are the sort of like the introduction to being charismatic and to integrating these cues into your day to day? What are the things that people should first start to think about? It's sort of like step zero. Okay, step zero is actually words. The reason for that is because as humans typically, we think about what to say. We're less focused on our body language. I always like to start with words. Also, so much of our, so many of our questions are happening over you know, or on LinkedIn. So actually words is one that we can focus on. It's the easiest. So here's step zero is in your LinkedIn profile picture. Do you have a balance of warmth and competence, verbal use? And there's a very interesting study that shows you how powerful this is. So in this research experiment, they brought people into their lab, they split them up into two different groups. The first group came into the lab, greeted the researcher. Hello. The research today, you are going to play the Wall Street game and they had them play a prisoner's dilemma type of game. The second group came into the same lab with the same researcher and they were told, hello, today you're going to play the community game and the trick was the games were exactly the same. Everything was the same except for that one word change. Is it some people were told they were playing the Wall Street game and say we were told they were playing the community game? Everyone who was told they were playing the Wall Street game shared an average of one third of their product. Everyone who was told they were playing the community game shared an average of two thirds of their profits. This is an incredible experiment and it's been showed in different ways that even suggesting to someone they're playing the community game activates a part of their brain that literally thinks communally and they take that as behavior to you and then they act more communally. We're people who were told their playing a Wall Street game acted more competitively. I share this because the word that are in your LinkedIn profile, if they are sterile or overly business like jargon, they don't have any behavior queuing at all. And so what I want you to begin to think about is how can you balance the war verbal cues and the confidence verbal cues in your emails your LinkedIn profiles. So for example, war words, this is a little bit more art than science, but war words make us feel the warmen fuzzies. They make us want to connect and communicate their words like happy together, best, both our, um, uh, collaborate, communal, their words like that. Whereas, competent words activate a part of our pre-foto cortex that makes one to get it done. So their words like power, efficient, brainstorm, um, checklist, feed, achieve, master, their words like that. Oh, we hear that our brain goes, oh, we better get to work, we better, uh, get things done. Those words are literally behavior cues. And so the very first grow zero is starting to think about how can you add more of them? Love a lot. Remember, we always have one word to have a massive behavior change in that experiment. How can you begin to sprinkle these in to your emails, your calendar invites, your marketing materials, your social profiles, even you'll notice like on my Instagram, I have a perfect blend of worth a cop since cues in my bio. I have questions about how you set yourself up now, because I know that you put so much into this lot. I'm curious about your background. I'm curious about everything. Yeah. So everything most, everything I do is purposefully not way, because I'm trying to set myself up for success because I am still a recovering awkward person. The more that I feel like I can control the cues, whether that's on social or in my background or things like that, it helps me feel a calmer, like that's my back door into confidence. And so like in Instagram, in my profile, I have like, you know, mom, mom's too. Very warm, right? Yeah. So that I have, whilst you know, that's all you author, very competent, right? That I have recovered awkward person, funny, warm, vulnerable, right? Then I have like career people school, super competent, right? So you can balance is that your profile? Then in my grid, I try to have a balance of a warm and competent post over the course of a month so that could I know there's a rare event. So like super advanced, but I think we have to go here, which is I want you to have a balance. But I also want you to dial it like a thermostat. And this is what very highly charismatic people do is there are certain people who are warmer, right? Like by default, we typically have an imbalance. My warm post appeal to them. I have certain followers that are super competent, like data analysts, researchers, my competent posts appeal to them. So I think it is my job as a creator and as a teacher to meet everywhere they are. And so I'm going to give my warm people their content. I'm going to give my come to their content when I'm giving a keynote, typically have a 60 minute stage presentation. And I count my slides. They are perfectly balanced between war slides and competent slides. War slides, yes, means stories, social proof, one example, competent slides, any kind of data, chart, graph, research, science, and like competent signals, like a credibility marker like Walls Journal. I know that if I want to be a better teacher, I better make my competent both warm and my content both warm and competent. So it's hitting everyone for their reference. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.