Vanessa Van Edwards - Bestselling Author, Speaker & Creator of People School | Mastering Charismatic & Confident Communication

If you feel that you are faking it or forcing it, you are not with the right people, you are not in the right places. Vanessa Van Edwards. Vanessa Van Edwards. Vanessa Van Edwards. The brilliant mind behind captivating cues. As the lead investigator at Science of People, Vanessa has helped millions, from entrepreneurs to global companies like Google and Microsoft, master the art of communication. And I mean true extroverts and get energy from people and they lose energy when they are alone through introverts. Do not get energy from people, they only get energy when they are alone. You do not have to pretend to be an extrovert to be like. In this episode, she shares her science-backed insights on understanding people, improving leadership and boosting interpersonal skills. You can use your authentic brand of charisma to find your people. If you have too much competence, without a form, people are suspicious of you and their suspicious of your ideas. 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. I know that if I want to be a better teacher, I better make my content both warm and competent, so it's hitting everyone for their purpose. Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. I am a huge fan of HubSpot because they support entrepreneurs. A lot of entrepreneurs, founders, executives, listen to this show, and for entrepreneurs that are trying to build, I have a question for you. Does it feel like your teams are getting pulled in a million different directions? When everyone's digging in on different projects with different platforms and different places, it can be tough to stay focused on a common goal. And that throws a wrench into things. That's why HubSpot brings everything your team needs into one easy to use and easy to love customer platform. With it, they have everything they need to scale the business at their fingertips. So your marketers can write blog posts in a snap with AI and build better leads with in-depth campaigns, sales, can build connections, and close deals faster with tracking tools. And real-time performance insights and service can get a hand from AI-powered chatbots for better support and more five-star reviews. And everyone can deliver killer results and grow revenue faster than ever before. Because when your teams work better, your business grows faster. Visit HubSpot.com to get started for free today. Vanessa, thank you for coming on and I'm very excited to do this. I want to start off with something you said repeatedly, but I think it's an interesting point just to dissect for the audience if they haven't consumed your work. And I know that you've done tons of podcasts, you have a massive TED Talk, you've spoken all over the place. But for people that are just sort of coming into your world right now, you've described yourself as a recovering awkward person. How does that sort of feed the work you do now? What does that actually mean? What is recovering awkward person and how did this sort of set you on your journey? Well, thank you for that. Yes, I always thought that I missed a memo when it came to people. I was like, did I miss the class where everyone learned chit chat and how to talk to people and like what to do with my hands and how to stand. And so I always just felt so awkward. And my awkwardness dresses up like I think that everyone has an element of awkwardness and it can dress up differently. So people can be awkward and that makes them overly dramatic and loud. People's awkwardness can dress up and it can make them shut down and be quiet. That's mine. So what would happen would be I would be in a situation where I really, really wanted to get along with people. But I had no idea what to say. I had no idea how to read the room that I did not know what to do with my body language with my gestures. And so I would just completely shut down and go into social overthinking. If you're a social overthinker, I'm so sorry. It's so painful where you just overthink everything that you could say and then you rethink everything you did say. It's a very painful place to be. And so I think that I started my career by accident where I was like, is there a rule book for non extroverts to interact? Because most of the books out there, including some wonderful ones like how to impress influence people, great book written by an extrovert. If you are not naturally extroverted, it is hard to take some of his tips. And so I set out to say, okay, I'll can introverts and ambiverts. Actually, most people are in between introvert expert. How can they make good conversation without feeling inauthentic? How can they show up in a room without having to take a room? How can they sound smart without being loud? How can they lead with a kind of quiet power as opposed to that bombastic extroverted personality? That's where it all came from. I'm curious if you went through all the coping mechanisms that I feel like just even personally, I've gone through. And I want to sort of describe a situation so that I can even understand where I sit on the spectrum and it will help me ask a better question. But when I go out with people, I feel like I enjoy being home more. And I feel like sometimes going out with people just draw, it sucks my energy away. And I can do it and it's funny because I'm a podcast host and I speak on stage. And like I have to be extroverted to a degree. But I wonder if I've learned how to be extroverted through some sort of coping mechanisms or if I'm more ambivert or if these are sort of similar feelings that you felt over your career because again, you sort of have the playbook on, I started off introvert ambivert whatever now. You do all the same things. I mean, you've spoken that. What's out by? So that's not a small crowd. So. And actually the bigger, the bigger the crowd, the less the awkwardness oddly. That's so funny. Okay, so you and so glad you brought this up the situation. So let's define introvert, ambivert extrovert. And let's talk about the strengths and weaknesses of each so that wherever you are in the spectrum, you can honor your social strengths. And the problem is, most of us who feel awkward are taught one type of social strength, which is the life of the party extrovert, right? Tell great stories, be funny, include everyone. And that is one as one kind of social strength, but it's certainly not every kind of social strength. So extroverts. And I mean true extroverts. Get energy from people. And they lose energy when they're alone. So extrovert, a true extrovert. On a bad day, they won't come robbery. They want to be around people. They want to top. On a good day, they want to be around people to celebrate and be cheerful because they seek people whenever they're trying to recharge or fill up. Introverts, true introverts, do not get energy from people. They only get energy when they're alone. Ambiverts can get energy from some people in certain situations, but others drain them. This is the key, I think, I think about 82% of people are ambiverts. And the research is hard on this, but most people are actually not true introvert or extroverts. That is the essential thing for ambiverts to do is to understand who drains you. I bet if you were to think about a Scott, there would be people who you could have coffee and talk for hours with. You could spend all weekend with them. No problem. Long car ride. Great. Where there's other people where you're after 15 minutes, you're like, I got it. Yeah. I gotta go. So who is the first one? It's really clarifying and horrifying. This is my first challenge if you're listening, you're willing. I want you to make two left. A list of people who take away energy. When you see their name on your calendar, you're like, like a little bit of drive, like, should I, could I cancel? Like if they cancel on you, you are delighted, right? So like, that is the list. They're not toxic. They're just, you don't get energy from them. And the other of those, which is usually shorter, are the people that you could go on a very long road trip with them. And it would be totally great. Or you could spend all day with them. And it would be great. Who? Next is where? So we're really affects how we get social energy. For example, I go to conferences all the time. When I am on stage, it's great. I have energy. I get energy from the audience. The bigger the audience, the better. A happy hour after the speaking event. I would rather lay on a bed of nails. Like, that's how she'll pump happy hours. And so I have learned, oh, big, loud rooms with lots of small talk and lots of rotation. Really not good for me. Like, I get really drained. Whereas like one to one. So like a podcast or like, if I'm on stage, I'm teaching something. Or if I'm in a very small intimate dinner group. Right. I get energy. So you're wears. Again, you're making tulis. Where are the places that drain you that you drive going to that after 10 minutes? You're like, do I go home and watch Netflix? And where are the places with the situations where you're like, love this. Like, I'm a true self. That can even be in your workplace. But I have people tell me like they're cubicle versus the boardroom or like the boardroom versus the break room. Right. So like that. And then the last one is what? So what topics or what activities give you energy versus drain you? Like, I love hiking or walking or working out with someone when I'm chatting with them. I like that motion, that movement. I love classes with people. Versus like just having a coffee is not necessarily my favorite. In fact, whenever people say, oh, I'm in Austin. And I picked your brain or could we go out? I'm always like, want to get tacos and go on a walk? It's like a quick thing. You know, and then we go out. We go walk. So the what is also really important, what topics excite you? And to me, it's exciting. And that's going to help you clarify where your real social strengths are. That's a very short answer to hopefully a big concept. It's a great answer because I think that people feel like they have to be everything in every situation. Yeah. And also, I want to be so clear, you do not have to pretend to be an extrovert to be like. If you feel that you are faking it or forcing it, you are not with the right people. You are not in the right places. You can use your authentic brand of charisma to find your people. You just have to know what your authentic brand of charisma is. So this is the firstvert and maybe describe for the audience charisma. Because we just talked about introvert, extrovert, ambivert. How does charisma tie into that? Okay. Wonderful. So about nine years ago, I discovered a study that literally changed the way I interact. And I'm hoping now we'll shift your perspective as well. So this is a research study that was done in 2002. It's been replicated a number of times. It's a very, very good set of research by Dr. Susan Viss. Now, what she discovered is that highly charismatic people, like the definition of charisma, should all these hypotheses of what charisma 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, 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. Wormt and competence. That these two traits make up 82% of our impressions of people. That funny 82% of people are amberbirds and 82% of our impressions. I better make sure those are mature. Let's say the low 80s. Let's say the low 80s. That we tend to focus when we're going into a boardroom or a presentation or a party or a networking event or a date. We're focused on like 10 things. I gotta be funny. I gotta be interesting. I gotta be impressive. I gotta be smart. 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. War 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're very quickly answering two questions. 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 or charisma. It's simple and interesting. And because it actually seems like those two characteristics of charisma could almost be competing at some point. 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 ideas. They have great ideas, but they don't get a lot of buy on their ideas. Here's the problem of 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 leaves people feeling suspicious. And that is directly from the research. The research is found is that you have too much competence. Without enough warmth, people are suspicious of you and they're 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. Hey guys, Scott here. I just wanted to take a quick moment to say a heartfelt thanks to every single one of you. Six years of this show and it's really all because of you. Your listens, your support, your shares, it's what keeps this thing going. When I started, I had no idea how big this would get, how many lives we touch. The stories we share, the lessons that we learn together, it's truly humbling. And I believe that we're building something really special here. A community where no one has to reinvent the wheel. We're all in this together, learning and growing. And here's my ask. If you love this show, it's made a difference for you. Please share it with somebody who needs it. Hella friend, host on social, whatever works. It's the best way to keep this thing going strong, bring on even better guests, and share more life changing wisdom. And you can find us on all the spots. So you can go to successstorypodcast.com. If you like listening to podcasts, if you like video, you can go to YouTube. It's youtube.com slash c slash Scott DeClaire or the newsletter newsletter dot Scott DeClaire.com. Just spread the word. I'm eternally grateful for each and every one of you. Let's keep learning. Let's keep growing and let's keep making this world a little bit better together. Alright, let's get back to the show. I'm just taking this in. It's very fascinating. 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 has 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 component. And I'm just thinking again, 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 I have this idea. And so what I always say is actually you have warmth. So we're not manufactured anything. Are you passionate about your idea? Do you really want it to work? Do you think the people can trust you? Great. So that's warm. Warm 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 people? 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 gives people confidence that reliability or confidence. 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 confidence. How do you signal both? 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 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 backgrounds. The signals of 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 side of engagement across cultures, genders, races. When you ask someone, do you hear that? They expose their ear. It's literally a sign of, I'm listening. So there is studies that show that even in a LinkedIn profile picture, if I were to have a slight head tilt, people rate me as would work. Right? So a highly warm person or highly charismatic person might have a head tilt in their profile picture. Let's even sit 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 hip and their toes toward the camera. We also like people who are full-fronting with them if they 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 competence cues you like. So when, I mean, 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 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? Sort of like step zero. Okay, step zero is actually words. And 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 email. We're on LinkedIn. So actually words is one that we can focus on. That's the easiest. So here's step zero is in your LinkedIn profile picture. Do you have a balance of warmth and competence, verbal cues? 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 researchers said, 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? That same people 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 profit. 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 a behavior cue and then they act more communally. For people who were told they're playing a Wall Street game acted more competitively. I share this because the word that are in your LinkedIn profile if they're 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 worth 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 war in fuzzies. They make us want to connect and communicate their words like happy together best both our collaborate communal their words like that. Whereas competent words activate a part of our pre-frontal cortex that makes us want to get it done. So their words like power, efficient, brain storm, checklist, feed, achieve, master, their words like that. Well, we hear that our brain goes, oh, we better get to work. We better get things done. Those words are literally behavior cues. And so the very first crowd zero is starting to think about how can you add more of them? Not a lot. Remember, we always have one word to have a massive behavior change to 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 competence cues in my bio. I have questions about how you set yourself up now because I know that you put so much thought into this thought. I'm curious about your background. I'm curious about everything. Yeah. So everything most, everything I do is purposefully not wait 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 too, very warm, right? Yes. She's your best selling author. Very competent, right? That I have recovered awkward person, funny, warm, vulnerable, right? That I have like career people school, super competent, right? So you can balance us out your profile. And then in my grid, I try to have a balance of a warm and competent post over the course of a month so that because I know this is where I get advanced. So like super advanced, 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 posts appeal to them. I have certain followers that are super competent like data analyst, researchers, my competent posts appeal to them. So I think it is my job as a creator and as a teacher to meet everyone where they are. And so I'm going to give my warm people their content. I'm going to give my comfortable 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 warm slides and competent slides. Warm slides. Yes. Means stories. Social proof. Funny example. Cops and slides. Any kind of data. Chart, graph, research, science. And like competent signals like a credibility marker like Wall Street 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 preference. Now, I want to just tie two thoughts that we sort of touched on together because I think this is very important. So people are now understanding the sort of the fundamental building blocks of charisma. But this, again, it can bridge the gap from being a recovering awkward person if you understand that how you act is based in science. However, I'm sure that it is much easier said than done to just start adopting these cues in how you present yourself and how you put yourself out into the world and all of a sudden your confidence overnight is fixed and you're no longer recovering but just no longer an awkward person. So I think it's important to bridge these two things because I think everybody who's understanding these different cues are going to understand how there is a potential positive outcome from adopting them. So I will better be able to speak to a crowd based on science and data. I'll be able to raise money or I'll be probably a little bit better well received on a date because I don't come across as too warm or too competent. But still, there's a lot of internal work that we have to do. Yes, the benefits are both external internal and they're kind of a cycle, right? So like, it's totally when you are more charismatic, when you are, again, clearly signaling you can trust me and you can rely on me at all times. That is what charisma is. So you're on stage, you're on video, you're on date, you're clearly signaling these things. Externally, people are going to stop underestimating you. You're going to stop being passed over. You're going to be perceived as more memorable. You're going to have a more confident presence. You're going to get better feedback from the people you're with. You're going to get more buy-in on your ideas. That is a very external thing and you get immediately rewarded on that. Internally, what that does is one, before you even get into the room and get the positive feedback, I feel better because I'm like not socially overthinking. I know exactly what my question is going to be. I know exactly what to do with my body, my hands, my face, my gestures. I know how to deliver in a vocal con, in a vocal range that is serving me, that is sounds vocally competent and vocal competence. It's a very important aspect of how our perceives. So I feel better going in, which again has a ripple effect of making it. It's almost like a flywheel that we start to build. Yes, and then I get the good feedback and I'm like, ah, people are listening to me. They're connecting with me. They're bonding with me. This is so much better conversation. And that also feeds your internal. So it's like a beautiful, at least what I see with my students is it, it gets her either way, internal for a direct external, but either way, it's a loop. I just want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot. Now, HubSpot has an incredible podcast network. Success stories part of it. And if you like success story, you're going to love other podcasts and their network. One of my favorites is iDigress, it's hosted by Troy Sandage. What Troy does exceptionally well is in under 30 minutes. He helps eliminate complexity, complications, confusion in your business. He talks about frameworks, strategies that really work to help you achieve scalable and sustainable success. So you need to go listen to iDigress, one of the most useful podcasts for entrepreneurs and founders, part of the HubSpot podcast network, wherever you get your podcasts. You mentioned this research and all the passion for everything you study. It sort of started with one particular, I can't remember the name of the researcher, but there's one major study that you first dove into. And then since then, you've done a ton of your own work in your own studies. Has there been just curious an evolution in how these social dynamics or charisma has it evolved over the years? Is it something that has always been the same for the for history or does, you know, COVID and AI and any kind of, any kind of new injection into culture impact, how these things play out. I think that COVID had an effect. I think social media has had an effect. I think Zoom meetings are had an effect. And it's maybe better than you think, which is the bar is low. Explain, what do you mean bar is lower for being charismatic? Yeah, I think. Oh no, this is not good. Yeah, it's, well, I think we are. We're more okay with less eye contacts. We're more okay with kind of an awkward presence because we're so not used to being in person as much anymore. And it's become more socially acceptable to be awkward, which I think can be a good thing too. But if you look, if you interact, especially even with Gen Z, they have a different way of interacting than millennials or Gen X or boomers. And what's acceptable is different. And so I think that there's actually in a way, I want to use the bars lower, it's more that more flavors of charisma are okay. And that also could be the rise of awkward CEOs. Right. The rise of awkward founders who are now on YouTube and on interviews and we watch them and we say, what how? You know, he or she does does not look very confident, but boy, they're saying smart things. And so our, because we're seeing this, our, our framework has more openness to being a little bit more awkward. Which I think it's actually been maybe more helpful overall because it, it means you don't have to pretend to be the bubbly extrovert. I think that met the good news is we know now not everyone is going to be that booming personality and that's okay. There's more grace almost in, and yeah, there's more grace in everything. And I mean, it's, it's fascinating because I actually don't know a lot of other people that do the research that you do. But I was looking at your numbers like your TED talk got over 4 million views. Your YouTube channel is over 55 million views and these are probably older numbers, so probably even more so since then. But this is such a, a personal popular topic and I think so many people struggle with it. But it almost seems like people are scared to understand this about themselves because then they start to see shortcomings. I mean, this is a business problem, which is sort of a funny social problem. Which is like, I get people and they find people school. And they read my book, I'm a kind of legal school out and their life has changed. Like they literally like they like me. They're so made to get their promotion. We'll go with a thank you so much. Can I use your story as a testimony or Kate study and you're like, oh no, no, I'm embarrassed. But like what? And they're like, I'm embarrassed that I took people school. I'm like, what? So we have this problem where we have like a referral flow. You know, if you graduate in the school, where we ask, hey, did you benefit from the course? Will you refer someone and get a recent off? And all these students, amazing. They're like, actually, they're like, Vanessa, I love your course. But like, I just cannot refer it because I'm embarrassed. Why do you think that is? Why do you think people are so embarrassed about about self development and understanding themselves better? Because I think that's a net positive. That's what I think too. I think it could, I'm going to take blame on it. It could be like a marketing problem. Like I think, for example, Susan Kane came out with quiet and sort of revolutionized. It's not bad to be an introvert and that there's a quiet power there. I think maybe because awkward is my word. Like I think, you know, I like to think of business as everyone should have their word. Like what is your word that you're going to like hammer in? So Susan Kane's word is quiet. Maybe secondary will be introvert. My word is awkward. That's more of a negative word. And so I think it could be a marketing issue on my part that I need to actually say like, you understanding your present, you giving your body language a makeover. Does not mean you're less than or bad. It means you are learning and growing. And you're a better person to be with, work with. They'll be ashamed of that. But that is something literally it's a business problem that we face. So any choice. Yeah. Well, I think that I think that there is a negative stigma associated with awkward, but I think it kind of like you mentioned, there's cultural nuance that sort of evolves this whole field. I think that also the loudest, most extroverted person in a business context, especially that's not really the person that you really trust because of all those reasons that you just mentioned. But I would say that the reasons that you just mentioned do not align with sort of command and control leadership mantra that has really encompassed businesses for the past X amount of years. So you're coming from a science perspective, but then again, the people that we put into leadership positions that were the extroverts, they they scientifically data driven were not the best people for the job, so like now what we understand to be a leader or a manager runs conflict of the research that you're doing, which is actually the right kind of person that should be a leader. Somebody that isn't the most extroverted, somebody that does have a mixture of comp, a balance of competence and warm. And somebody who, I mean, you hope you can actually trust not just the loudest person in the room, the person who thinks through the ideas and takes your ideas into account. And that's probably going to be the more effective person. But this is a whole bunch of pieces combining into, there's business change, there's cultural change, there's more understanding of who we should put our trust and our faith in. And this is, I mean, it's a new field, that's because there's not many people that study this or it's speaking better outside of yourself. It is very new. My goal is to champion the leaders who should be leaders who are getting the leadership positions. Yes. Those are my favorite kind of students, where they're like, I know that I want this investment or I want this promotion and I just, I'm being passed over, I'm being underestimated. Ooh, that's like my favorite kind of person. Like you should be the one in the leadership positions. Yes. I'm curious. If I've, if I've bought into the, the old schools, and I think the 2024 were moving away from this, but I've bought into the concept of, I want my CEO or my C-suite to be loud and I want them to command, control of the room. And then you're talking to one of your students and you're like, well, that's actually not the best way to build yourself up, to evolve as a person. How do you balance that? Okay, go ahead. So actually it's, we do have a segment of students and there's a cellular population who they're extras. I call them, so we have three buckets of suit. Ambitious ambiverts, goal-oriented extrovert and adventurous introverts. So actually, I love our extroverts because they, they are commanding. They typically are loud. They're, they're, they're big storytellers. They like to be the life of the party. And actually they're, they're not using their extroverted extroversion in a goal-oriented way. So they can be told you're intimidating. You take all the oxygen out of the room. You, um, you're, you're too chatty. Like, too much rapport. And so the very extroverted voice person also has to hit warmth and competence. But they should do it in a different way. So very extrovert person. They're warmth. They're already friendly. They're broadcasting warmth. But they're warmth. They're superpower. Could be vulnerability. Imagine if you had like a extroverted voice trist CEO who was like, ooh, I need to actually share what I'm bad at. I actually just share something vulnerable. That war is going to make them so much more relatable. That turns their extroversion in a superpower. And they also have to be competent. They can't be showing all rapport, all rapport, all rapport. All funny stories. Listen to me. I'm so funny. Ha. They should be like, you know what? Here's a little bit of rapport. But let's get down to the three most important. Things are companies right now. So sometimes we have to actually rein them in to be like, you are competent as CEO, but you're not showing it. You're warm in a way that's overbearing and over the top. We have to hone it into vulnerability or hone it into humor. And so it's the same for them. They just have to do it in a different way and introverts. And we have, I would say maybe 15% of our students are bats. Are like actually very extroverted and hasn't been serving them. Well, I would say that I think that they probably will see a massive change in the peers they work with and how they're, and just the relationship they can build with these people when they start to go through this process. Because I think that it's almost like a crutch. It's like a crutch that they use, right? It's like they're scared to act any other way because that's your, that's everyone. That's on any side of the spectrum. If you've always acted a certain way and it's served you to a degree, you're not thinking, why would I change? But the point is, if you do try and upskill yourself, change a little bit, add more into your persona and your personality, it's going to be a massive positive effect. I also would say we are very bad at judging our own warmth and competence. And that is because we only hear ourselves internally. We don't often hear ourselves externally, right? We don't listen to ourselves outside effective. So the very first thing you do and anyone can take this, we took the research on warmth and competence, and we turned it into like a little diagnostic. You put it up for free because what was happening was, this is the other business problem that we solved with, with, with this quiz. I would teach or I would speak or I would talk to when students and everyone in the room would say, oh, I have a valent or you know, but I'm super warm. I don't need to work on competent. And I would be in front of them and I'd be like, I know that's not true. Like I don't see any word or like you could see that people were just not good at understanding how they were coming across because they are thinking of their head. So we developed this diagnostic. I think it's like 15 questions. And I would say, okay, first exercise is we are going to test our perceptions of ourselves. And I have everyone take the quiz. People are shocked at the results they get. And the second thing I have them do is I say, okay, I'm so glad you had your results, screen shot them. Now I want you to send this to someone that you work with and have them take it as you. So pretend that they're you and have them screen shot the results. This is how other people are perceiving your warmth and competence. People like cry. I mean, like it's a very, very difficult exercise because it's comparing how you think you come across to how you actually come across. So it's science of people.com slash charisma. You can take it as many times as you want. The whole goal of this is to begin to allow people to one, I want you to you're listening. Do you think you're higher or more confident? Almost everyone has an imbalance. What do you think you are? Take the quiz and see it's based on the research. Then send it to if you can one or two people who know you try to do someone you work with because typically our partners or our friends, they see us as warmer. Because we're just closer to them. It's your better off sending it to like a business colleague or a client or a customer or an old colleague or an old like, you know, pure. Have them take it as you and see where it compares because that's where I think the real growth. I mean, it's probably it's probably a super, super telling, but also super jarring to go through this exercise. Yeah. You mentioned you mentioned 96. It was 96 cues. Yes. So 96 cues that you've cataloged. What would be some of the more surprising ones that people wouldn't expect? Okay. So I think I'm biased. But I think that the most surprising one is actually a vocal, a vocal cue. And that I like vocal cues a lot because they're very overlooked and they're very below our awareness. Yeah. They are a we are we are able to control them. So here's I think the most overlooked cue and I will teach it to you. And hopefully it will change the way you speak, which is the research experiment where they brought surgeons into their lab. And they had them record 10 second voice tone clips in these clips. They have to say their name where they work and their specialty. So it sounded like this. Hi, my name is Dr Edwards. I specialize in oncology and I work at children's presbyterian hospital. Okay. I hope these clips and they warble the words. So you could hear the volume, the pace, the cadence, but not the actual words being said. The clip sounded like this. I get you. I was like, I don't know. Okay. Maybe a long time. We have that one, right? So you could hear it, but you couldn't hear. They're actually saying. Then they had participants rate these clips on work and competent. This is a follow up study in the original study. Now, keep in mind, these participants had no idea they were listening to surgeon. They could not hear the actual words being said. All they could hear was, well, well, well. And they were asked, do you like this person? Is this person's work? Okay. What they found was the doctors who had the lowest ratings of warmth and competence. Had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits. Meaning, we don't judge people based on their skills. We judge people based on our perception of their skills. And that happens in the first few seconds of hearing them. So the biggest pattern was that the doctors who had the lowest warmth and competence ratings used the question and inflection on their name. So instead of stating something, they go up in their sentences. So everything sounds like a question, even though it's not actually a question. So there are introductions on like this. Hi, my name is Dr. Edward. I specialize in oncology. I work at Children's Presbyterian Hospital. When you ask your name or your number or your timeline or your price or your boundary, you are telling the other person, I don't really believe in this, another should you. So I do tons of sales trainings that I always know which sales associate is going to get the lowest close rate and the most pushback. And it's the sales associate who asks their number. So they're on the phone, they say, we'd love to have your business. We'd love to work with you and the cost of our service is $5,000. You are begging people to negotiate with you if you ask your numbers. So what I would say is if you could walk away with one tip from this podcast, it's never asked your name, your number, your timeline or a boundary. If you have important information, state it, don't ask it. Why would people default to asking, what is the internal mechanisms going on in their brain where they can't even feel confident enough to ask their own name? Okay, so two things happen internally, which I think I think is really interesting. The reason we use an accidental question inflection, there's two reasons. The first one is just like you guessed, doubt, right? Or, sorry, there's two reasons. One is cultural appropriation in the sense of a lot of California women can sometimes use a question inflection because they hear it and we are mirroring. We're mirroring social creatures. So you know, if you watch the Kardashians, everything is like, Kim, Kim, what are you doing? Kim, you know, it's all high up. And so if you're listening to it, that was good, by the way. You nailed this. So one can be just, you're hearing it. That's a smaller one. Second one is actual doubt. And this happens when we are unsure of ourselves or we are unsure of the thing. I hear a lot of people, like, Ellison, their pitches. Like I love listening to like, you know, one to two minute pitches. Then I always know what they're most nervous about because they ask it. Because when we're nervous, we literally are asking, like, do you believe me? Like, is that right? Like we're looking for validation. So it's, we give it a little more nervous. And the last one, this is the most important one is deception. So liars often accidentally use the question inflection because they are asking, do you believe me? But we did a, I love lie detection research. We could talk about it for a whole hour. So we did a big lie detection experience in our lab, where I had people poured, there are two truths in a lie. So two true statements about themselves in the lie. And then we reported them, I looked for patterns. What were the patterns of the lying statements versus the tree statement? The biggest pattern, there were a couple, but the biggest one was that people asked their lie. So it sounded like this. See if you can guess. Got which is my lie. Okay. Go ahead. I love dogs. I have two daughters. I love cilantro. I guess you don't like cilantro. He eats a lot. Right? The cilantro is like an abomination to all our, yeah, I agree. Actually, that's, that's fun. I don't like it either. But yes, you can hear it. You can hear it. So deception. When someone is lying, they will often use the question inflection. And this is the problem. The reason is humans. We don't like accidental inflection. Even if someone's just doing it because of the Kardashian. Our brain is thinking, are they lying? Because we know intuitively that if someone is asking us a number, they could be lying about it. And so what they found is when they put people on FMRI machines and they scan their brain, they play them clips of people using an accidental question inflection. The brain switches from listening to scrutinizing. Literally where you're listening changes in your brain. So if I hear someone say, you know, we'd love to work with you. We think your business is great and the cost of the service is $5,000. My brain goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. And I begin to go into scrutinizing mode, which is a very different place to be the listening. And that is why in sales or in interpersonal relationships, you'll get people who all of a sudden feel turned off, closed, suspicious. It's because you have triggered their spidey sense for lack of a better word. And all these cues, most people are intuitive about like, you know, there's our 96 cues. A lot of people tell me, I knew this was a cue, but I didn't have a name for it. So it's adding a name for your intuitive spidey sense that is usually corrupt. So let's make the assumption that the audience is not a bunch of liars. And they notice that they're doing this. What is the valley girl up to? Is that it? Whatever. I don't know if that's politically correct. I don't know anymore. But regardless, it's the upwards inflection at the end of the sentence. I'll talk. That's it. Yes. So say they're doing this. They're not lying about anything, but they have this tick. So what is the strategy to kill this tick so that, again, you don't trigger that spidey sense portion of your brain? Okay. The good news is, is with most cues, awareness provides immediate resolution. So it's so funny. Like, I have worked with students, where are they're in front of me? And they're literally talking an uptalk the entire time. And then I tell them that they're talking an uptalk. And I show them how to do down top. So we go down at the end of our sentences. So we sling our words down at the end of when we're speaking immediately fix itself. So if you hear yourself doing this, it's, you can literally immediately fix it. You just have to be consciously aware of it. I would say for about two or three days of talking. And then it should become muscle memory. And is this something that, um, is this a, is this something that manifests? If you feel you're just not comfortable with the topic at hand, or is there, is there deeper, rooted things that could cause? It's, it depends on one of those three things. And I also, I encourage people to go back and listen to recorded Zoom calls or recorded presentations. Or things that were, you know, a question and answer session or a sales pitch where you were nervous. And then go back and identify where you accidentally use the question reflection. That's what you should practice. So a lot of times, it's some people are using it all the time. They're using it on areas of their presentation where they're sales pitch that they're nervous about. I'm like, that's what you practice. So most of our students are doing lots of presentations all the time. And I'll say, here's what you practice. You're opener. Where you accidentally use the question reflection in a previous presentation. The question is, and topics that make you the most nervous, practicing delivering them down. And your last line. That's actually all you're banged for your buck. Look, if you, if you just do those, those four areas, your, your presentations will be so much better. What would be one thing that I mean, you mentioned several tactics people take away right away. But what would be one thing, even something that I didn't ask you about that you think hides into this that people should know? On your profile picture, do not do a fake smile. People think it is warm and it's actually an authentic. So real smile is when the upper cheek muscles are engaged. The ones right next to your eyes also fall in the call the crow's feet. If you wonder why you're not making good first impression or people aren't reaching out to you as much, it could be because you are showing a fake smile in your profile picture. So I would rather you either have a neutral face, like no smile or a full smile. Don't go somewhere in between. And on that, don't show a half smile or a smirk. So a half smile when one side of your mouth is raised. It's an asymmetrical smile. It's actually a universal content micro expression. Micro expression is a lot of interesting research that are doing on facial expressions. But that one-sided mouth raise is a expression of contempt or scorn or disdain. The profile picture is like, oh no, you're ruining your first impression because it makes you look in a pessimistic, a little bit scornful. So make sure you're either neutral or fully smiling and not accidentally asymmetrical or face piling. That's fast enough. So I don't want people to walk away from this podcast to be concerned because you're mentioning profile pictures on LinkedIn or social and then all these 96 cues. So obviously there's a lot to consider. But we spoke about some of like, go ahead, sorry. I know there's a lot, but remember that these small cues matter. So you change one cue, like you up to your profile picture, you're dating profile picture to have, you know, a smile or a neutral face. That completely changes your first impression. And they've actually proven this that different photos of the same person have radically different first impressions. So while it sounds like a lot, don't think about on these 96. We talked about whatever, maybe eight or nine cues on this call. If you just start with those eight or nine, you are leaps and bounds ahead. It's small signals big impact. Where should people go? If they want to go down the rabbit hole, they've listened to this. They're starting to improve themselves. Social website, where are they going? Yes. So my book is cues and that has 97 cues in it. My first book is Cap Today, which is more about first impressions and conversation. And that if you really want healthy, well, like live, live office hours with me, that's people school. We open classes every three weeks. And so that's at science of people.com. And my books are on Amazon, Audible, and I read them. So pretty good. You did that. You did your own Audible. It's good for you. Oh, yeah. Are you kidding? I teach vocal power in cues. I told my publisher. I was like, I have to read it. Like, it's going to be only once a week. Valid, the valid point. Yeah. So all those will go, all those will go in the show. No, it's sorry. I just wanted to get one last thing out of you. I guess two last quick thoughts. This will help the audience as well. Biggest misconception about charisma or social cues that you just want to like wash right now. A really small silly one. When someone has shifty eyes, it does not mean they're lying. I don't know why that that that myth got out there. I've also heard a myth like if someone looks up to the left, it means they're lying. If someone looks up right, it means for the truth. Nope. Has never been proven. In fact, liars typically look you in the eye more because they want to see if you believe them. Shifty eyes only to sign of nervousness. Good. And the last thing I always like to pull out, you've had a great career. Obviously, I need to know if you would go back and tell yourself you're 20 year old self one thing after all the career and all the lessons that you've learned. What would that thing be? You know, it's funny. I started on YouTube in 2007. So. It's early. Been a minute. And I think goodness for shorting so early because I learned a lot while it didn't matter as much. You know, there's like West eyeballs. I would just tell myself to have more fun with my content. I think I can get very serious and very high competence. So I get very into the research and the data and the side. And like sometimes people just want to like have a little fun. And so I wish I told myself earlier like it's okay to be like vulnerable and have a little humor. Like if you don't talk about the science, it's okay.