- Is there a way to productively end conversations? - Yes. - Work or friends? - One of my favorite topics is leaving a lasting first impression. So I think that we talk a lot about how to make a good first impression, but a lasting impression is just as important.

You can have a great meeting, but if it ends a slow, awkward death, just like you're saying like, so yeah, okay, great, talking to you. Yep, mm-hmm, oh, yep, okay, good, and bye. Like that's a horrible, right, last impression. So this can work in person, this can work on video, this can work on the phone.

The very first thing that you wanna do if you know that you're heading towards the end of interaction is you can use a future mention. So typically when someone mentions a future, something in the future, we know that we're about to wrap up. So that could be, great, I'll follow up with you on XYZ that we talked about.

So we kind of instinctively know, ah, okay, we're getting to wrap up. It could be, I hope you have a great time this weekend. I loved hearing about your daughter Safa. I hope that's wonderful. - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel.

I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am excited you're here today. Now, last September, I flew out to Austin for one of my favorite conferences, FinCon. And while I was there, I managed to catch a keynote from Vanessa Van Edwards. Now, I'd never heard of her before, but I was totally captivated.

So we spoke after the talk, and she agreed to come on the show as soon as she finished writing her next book. Well, that book came out yesterday, March 1st, and here she is today. So who is Vanessa? Well, she's the lead investigator at Science of People, a human behavior research lab.

She's the best-selling author of "Captivate," "The Science of Succeeding with People." She's taught over half a million people worldwide on how to succeed in business and life by understanding the hidden dynamics of people. And she just published her latest book, "Cues," "Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication." We're gonna talk about how to control and leverage those tiny signals you're sending, from your stance or your facial expression, to your word choice or your vocal tone, to improve your personal and professional relationships.

We'll also talk about the science behind becoming charismatic, how to optimize even your video call background, and so much more, including her top picks for your next trip to Austin. That is a lot to cover, so let's jump in. (upbeat music) - Vanessa, thank you so much for being here, and congrats on the book launch.

- Oh my goodness, thank you so much for having me. It's like we're celebrating. Thank you for having me. - So I read the title of the book at first, "Cues," "Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication." I had two reactions. First-- - Tell me. - Yes, please, I wanna master that secret language.

But second, and this is my first question for you, what is a cue? - I know, I know, so a cue, very easy, is the social signal we send to each other. So these can be nonverbal, body language, facial expressions, gestures. They can be vocal. That's the one people mostly forget.

How we sound, our volume, our pace, our cadence, our accent. Verbal, the words we use. Those are the cues we're most familiar with. And lastly, imagery, colors, fonts, props, what's behind me in my background. Those are all imagery cues. - Wow, and what is the tie between cues and this kind of charisma or charismatic communication?

- Yeah, so I have always been fascinated by charismatic people. That's probably because I do not feel very naturally charismatic. I joke that I'm a recovering awkward person, still very much in recovery. And I was the kid on the playground who would kind of watch the cool kids and be like, "Wow, they have that image of cool kids," and be like, "Wow, they have that it factor." And for many years, and I think this is a myth that I'm hoping to bust with this book, is I thought you either were born with it or you weren't.

You were either born charismatic or you weren't. And what I've come to learn, and what the research also says is no. Actually, charisma absolutely can be learned. And there is a small percent of the population who are born charismatic. Like out of the womb, they're just entertaining parties and name dropping, and they're super charismatic.

But most charismatic people actually develop it over time. And the way that we do this is through our cues. So what I didn't realize is that about 17 years ago, I started to catalog the cues that I was seeing. And at the very beginning, I had no idea this would end up being a book, by the way.

I started a little folder on my desktop called Curious Cues. And these were just cues that I was noticing across business, politics, athletics, that very highly charismatic people were using the same cues over and over again. It didn't matter their industry, it didn't matter their talent, they were using these cues over and over.

And I thought, what are they doing? How is it they captivate us? How is it they can pop onto an interview or come on video and we immediately wanna watch them? So a cue is how charismatic people socially signal their charisma to others. - That's, yes. And I know you've talked in your previous book and a lot about what charisma is.

Could you kind of break it down? Because like you've said in the past, it's something that we all know, but we don't actually have a way to describe. And I think that might be a good starting point. - This is exactly it. We feel like charisma is like this mysterious behavior, but actually it's not mysterious at all.

There is a formula for charisma. And this, by the way, when I read this in the research, it was like relief. So what the research finds is that highly charismatic people, this is research out of Princeton University from Dr. Susan Fisk, is that highly charismatic people rank off the charts in two specific traits.

They have to be both warm and competent. So when you meet a highly charismatic person, at the same time, they're signaling likability, trust, warmth, collaboration, openness. And at the very same time, they're signaling competence, power, capability, efficiency, productivity. And the reason why highly charismatic people are so captivating is they're always hitting that balance.

We both wanna be around them and wanna work with them. We both trust them and also take them seriously. That is the formula for charisma. - And is there a way someone listening could kind of evaluate where they are? I mean, is it a spectrum? Could you not even be on the spectrum?

- Yes, it's very much a spectrum. I think that, I like to think of it as sort of a scale. So this is what I talk about in the book, is that you can either be highly warm leaning or highly competent leaning. And this is why there's different flavors of charisma.

So when you think about warmth and competence, a way to sort of self-assess or give yourself a little audit is, which sounds more like you? Ready for a little test? Okay, so is it column A. Would people describe you as collaborative, a team player, patient, compassionate, friendly? That's column A.

Column B, would people describe you as competent, impressive, powerful, efficient, memorable? So which column had more like, yes, people would describe me as that. So usually people have kind of a leaning, right? They have like more warm, more competent, or if you have a mixture of both, amazing. You're one of those very rare birds, highly charismatic.

If I read those two lists, I think this is actually more common if we're really honest with ourselves, this was me. If I had said those two lists and none of those sounded like you, you're like, I don't think I can genuinely say that anyone would describe me as those things.

That is okay. That's where I was when I first started this research. I call that the danger zone. You're in the danger zone if you don't feel that you are signaling or cueing either warmth or competence. And this is the problem of very smart people. Most of my students, like I think most of your listeners, are high-achieving, high-earning, high-performance, smart, talented, capable individuals.

The problem is is that very smart people often rely too much on their ideas. They know they have really good ideas. They know they have really good training. They know they have really good skills. So they double down on that. But the problem is is they don't think about how to communicate those ideas.

So they walk into a boardroom, or they go in a presentation, or they're asking to raise their rates with clients, or they're asking for a raise from their boss, and they don't understand why the other person doesn't see their smarts. Cues are how we communicate the warmth and competence of our ideas.

- Yeah, so I wanna get into getting out of the danger zone, and for people who are on either spectrum, how to fix it. But I thought a good place to start is could you tell me about the cues you brought to this conversation? And I'm hoping that by the time this happens, we'll start putting things out on YouTube.

Maybe someone could watch the video. If not, stay tuned, it'll happen. But what did you bring to set kind of an example of how you wanted to be conveyed? - Sure, so actually, let's start with vocal. So for people who are listening or watching, this would be helpful. So I know, and the research shows, that the way that we say our words, our vocal power is a very important aspect of how people judge our charisma.

Our vocal cues are really essential for communicating both competence and warmth. And so a study that I share in the book, which I'll share here 'cause I just think it's mind-blowing, is they had doctors record 10-second voice tone clips. So these are short clips where they said their name, where they worked, and their specialty.

So it sounded like this. Hi, my name is Dr. Edwards. I specialize in oncology, and I work at the Children's Hospital. Very simple. They took these clips, and they warbled the words. So you could hear the volume, the pace, the cadence, all the vocal cues, but none of the actual words.

Then they asked participants to listen to these clips and rate the doctors on warmth and competence, the two things that we know are essential for charisma. What's incredible is, imagine this for a second, you're given a clip of Gobbledygook, right? (speaking gibberish) Like that's how the clips kind of sound, like womp, womp, womp, womp, a little bit, like totally distorted.

And you're asked, how smart is this person? How friendly is this person? Like this is based on almost nothing. What they found, incredibly, is the doctors who had the lowest ratings of warmth and competence had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits. Now, this indicates, yeah, wow. We don't just sue doctors based on their skills.

We sue doctors based on our perception of their skills, and that happens within the first 10 seconds of hearing them. So, what I brought to this interview, I know that the first 10 words out of my mouth, not only what the verbal cues are, but also how I share those first 10 words are going to set me up for warmth and competence for the entire interview.

And the biggest mistake that I used to make that I hear a lot of people make on their video calls or on their interviews is they hold their breath, and they wait to start, and then they say their hello on the highest end of their range. And they go, "Hello?

Oh, hi. Hi. How are ya?" And then they go down into their lowest range. So, one is when we analyzed video calls and the vocal power behind video calls, often people's highest note was the first word. So, make sure, number one, just as I try to do right when I hopped on, is as you were saying hello, I made sure to speak on the out-breath.

So, instead of, "Hey, I'm happy to be here," all the way up here, I was, "Hey, I'm so happy to be here." Those sound totally different, but they both come from me, and that is simply an effect of breath. So, one is I made sure I was in the lowest end of my range.

And then second, I also made sure that, and that's vocal competence. So, we are always sitting for lower end of range for competence to hear, competence to hear is someone feeling good about what they're going to say? Are they holding their breath? Are they nervous? And the second thing is I also try to bring vocal warmth.

So, I truly am grateful to be here. I feel very, very supported by you in supporting this book launch, and I need your help. The only way that I can reach your listeners is with you. So, I was keeping that gratitude at the very front of my brain, so that when I said, "I'm so happy to be here," you could actually, so if you listen, just if you close your eyes for a second, or if you're listening, just listen to the vocal power, smiles change the timber of our voice.

They've actually detected that a smile can change the way that your voice sounds. We can hear a smile. So, if I were to say, and this is a mistake that a lot of speakers make, they say verbal words that are good, but they sound bad. So, they'll say, "Yeah, I'm so happy to be here." Now, verbally, I said, "I'm so happy to be here," but I don't sound very happy.

And someone will hop on a video call and be like, "Hey, everyone, so happy to have you all here." That doesn't sound very happy. Instinctively, we're like, "No, that doesn't sound "very happy," whereas I'm gonna smile so you can hear it, and I'm gonna smile all the way up into my eyes, so an authentic smile reaches all the way up into these upper cheek muscles.

So, if I smile all the way with my face, all the way up into my upper cheek muscles, and I say, "I'm so happy to be here," it sounds different. We can literally hear the warmth. And so, I wanna start to pair, and that's what I try to do in my interviews, is how can we pair our intentions with our cues?

That was a long answer. - No, no, it was great. That's part of what you brought to this. And you said the first 10 words are important, and you talked a lot about how to deliver them with your breath, with your intonation, with all that, with smiling. What about the actual words?

- Yes, okay, so once you have the nonverbal and vocal down, and that's sort of like a foundation. That's how I kinda like to think about it, is if you have your nonverbal foundation, your vocal foundation down, that's a much easier way to deliver almost any kind of verbal content.

However, your verbal cues matter. And so, when we look at verbal cues, we instinctively all know that our words matter, right? Everyone listening can be like, "Of course our words matter." But what I don't think we realize is that our words are cues for behavior. In other words, especially as we're doing more and more virtual communication, our brains are constantly hunting, searching for, listening for, how should I act?

How should I behave? How should I feel? And what research has found, and this is across a lot of different studies, and this is kind of a fun one that I'll share. So Brian Wansink wanted to know if a verbal cue could change someone's attitude. What he did was he blindfolded people in his lab so they couldn't see anything, and then he gave them a bowl of strawberry yogurt.

So I actually don't even talk about this study in the book 'cause I think it's so fun. He gave them a bowl of strawberry yogurt and they're blindfolded, and he has them eat the strawberry yogurt. They're blindfolded, they're eating it. They're tasting their strawberry yogurt. And then he asks them to rate the yogurt on its strawberry flavor.

So how strawberry do you feel this yogurt is? 59% of the participants rated the yogurt as having a nice strawberry flavor. There was a catch. The yogurt was chocolate. Totally different flavor profile, right? Like, it wasn't like strawberry and raspberry. It was like strawberry and chocolate, which tastes totally different.

This is the first of many studies that shows that when the brain heard strawberry and then was asked to look for strawberry, the mouth tasted strawberry. Why I think this is important is because, again, the brain is always looking for cues. We're always looking for how should we feel?

How should we taste? How should we act? When you set up a calendar invite, the first 10 words of that meeting are the title of the calendar invite. Like, your meeting started the moment someone invited you to that calendar invite. Your meeting started the moment someone opened the calendar invite or saw your name in their inbox.

That's the first 10 words they heard. When someone sees your email, the subject, and maybe the opening line, that's your verbal first impression. And those matter because people are looking for what's the flavor? Is it strawberry? Is it chocolate? What should I be searching for? And so my argument is, what if we think about how we want someone to feel before, during, and after interacting with us?

Do we want them to be warm? Do we want to inspire openness and collaboration and trust? You should be using verbal cues in the warm category. So if you want a collaborative meeting, call it collab session or team collab. If you want in an email to trigger more warmth, say, "Hi, team," or "Hi, friend," or "Hi, partner." Those labels are actually cuing people to feel, in fact, more collaborative.

It literally prepares their brain for more collaboration. On the other side, if you got to get it done, right, if you're like, "No, no, no. "No warmth today. "I got to get it done. "We got to be competent. "We got to be productive." Okay, set people up to be productive, right?

Call it a goal session. Call it 2022 wins, right? The more that we use, "Let's be productive. "Let's get it done. "I have an agenda attached. "I can't wait to power through this." You're actually helping the other person's brain get ready to win, to power through, to achieve, to be efficient.

And so I think that that's a gift that we can give people, that these verbal cues, especially the first 10 words, not only help you be more charismatic and purposeful, but they're actually setting people up to be more successful themselves. - Yeah, I feel like I'm in a "Choose Your Own Adventure" novel where I'm like, "Gosh, there's six places "I want to go with this conversation." But I'll pick one.

- I kind of love that line too. - Yeah, I'll pick one. - I love it. - And hopefully we'll come back if we need to. But I noticed that nowadays with all these virtual meetings, people show up and the meeting hasn't started and you have this banter back and forth.

And what I hear you saying about verbal cues is they're going to set the tone of the meeting. But I feel like so often the start of it is like, "Ah, you know, it's a long day. "I got a lot on my plate." Is that completely counterproductive to what we should be doing?

- Okay, thank you for bringing this up because here are my least favorite words at the beginning of a meeting. Are you ready? Like when I hear these words, I want to crumple to the floor and go to sleep, okay? Here's what they are. "We're gonna wait while everyone logs on." Oh, oh no.

It's like telling everyone, "Your time isn't valuable. "My time isn't valuable. "We're gonna do nothing for the next few minutes "except worry and check our email." So one is I want you to work as much as you possibly can to make those first few minutes productive. And this doesn't necessarily mean you get started right away although it can, right?

So you can make a rule that when everyone is on, you're starting, like you're not waiting for everyone. So you can go right into it. We don't need to have rapport and chit-chat to be charismatic, absolutely not. In fact, competence is about productivity, it's about getting things done. So if you want to instill competence, if you're leaning towards competence, you gotta get it done, start right away.

Like it doesn't have to include rapport. Another way of being productive is also to have productive rapport. Here's what unproductive rapport looks like. And this is accidentally happening all over the place, especially in COVID. Unproductive rapport building is when we start off the meeting like this, we're gonna wait for everyone to get on, which unproductive, right?

We're all wasting our time. And then, gosh, those COVID numbers. Did you see the terrible storm that's happening on the East Coast? Oh, it's been so busy, huh? We accidentally start negative in some of these meetings and that derails any kind of warmth or competence. That's danger zone, right?

Danger zone is when you're using words like stress, busy, complicated, wait, you're literally triggering people to think about stress, busy, challenging, wait. So what I'd rather you do is if you're gonna have that chit-chat and let people log on, make it productive. Start priming people to get in that right mind space.

So this could be, anyone doing anything exciting this weekend? So at least you're priming for some kind of excitement, right, you're doing something. Or you can say, what's good, guys? Anything good happening today? So in my team calls, every Tuesday we have a team call, every single team call, we start with something good.

And the moment everyone logs on, even if people are straggling in, whoever's on the call starts with something good. And that's been a great exercise because it's taken unproductive waiting time into very purposeful rapport building. It also has changed the nature of waiting in the sense that a lot of our team members have said, instead of checking my email or running through my to-do list before I hop on a call, I'm thinking about my something good.

I'm like, what's good, what's good? What happened, what's something fun I can share? And that becomes a way that we can all celebrate. It becomes a way that we can all have a win. I learn about my team members. And so it's only four minutes at the most, but it's taken a sort of like feet dragging, sometimes accidentally negative time into purposeful goodness.

And so whatever that means for you, just make it productive. That can be warm, that can be competent. I just want it to be purposeful. - Yeah, and so that's the beginning of the meeting. I actually think the most awkward time for me, and maybe this is even true on like personal phone calls with friends, is like ending the conversation.

You had a good conversation, whether it's a meeting or a catch up, and you're kind of at the end, and it's like, we don't really have anything to talk about. I feel like, all right, well, that was good, bye. Like, is there a way to productively end conversations? - Yes.

- Work or friends? - Yes, so one of my favorite topics is leaving a lasting first impression. So I think that we talk a lot about how to make a good first impression, but a lasting impression is just as important. You can have a great meeting, but if it ends a slow, awkward death, just like you're saying like, so yeah, okay, great, talking to you.

Yep, mm-hmm, oh, yep, okay, good, and bye. Like, that's a horrible, right, last impression. So this can work in person, this can work on video, this can work on the phone. The very first thing that you wanna do if you know that you're heading towards the end of interaction is you can use a future mention.

So typically when someone mentions a future, something in the future, we know that we're about to wrap up. So that could be, great, I'll follow up with you on X, Y, Z that we talked about. So we kind of instinctively know, ah, okay, we're getting to wrap up. It could be, I hope you have a great time this weekend.

I loved hearing about your daughter's softball. I hope that's wonderful. That could be, well, this has been awesome. I hope you have a really nice rest of your day. Thanks so much for spending your Wednesday morning with me. Right, so it's some kind of future mention there. We instinctively know that that's a wrap up, and then it's using, I don't know if this is an official term, but I call it the end tone, like the end tone of voice.

Right, so the end tone of voice, it's just like what I just said. So I'm using a tone of voice. It's like I'm going off. So if we're in the middle of a conversation, I'm talking like this, but if we're wrapping up, I'm gonna change my tone to sound like this.

Well, this has been great talking. I've absolutely loved it, and I'll follow up with everything that we shared, and thanks so much for your Wednesday morning. - And you're just cueing. - Like I'm signaling. - I'm cueing you with that end tone, and that's a really great way for people to know that we're wrapping, wrapping, wrapping, wrapping, wrapping, and we're out.

- So we talked a lot about meetings in person, conversation, verbal. Does a lot of this also apply to written communication, whether that's emails or text messages? - Yes, so why don't we talk about the four different aspects of the book? Obviously, if we're in person, we can use all four, right?

We can use imagery, the colors we're wearing. We can use vocal, non-verbal, and verbal. In email, we're just limiting the amount of communication modes that we can use to pretty much just verbal and a little bit of imagery. I mention imagery 'cause I think it's also a forgotten one, is even fonts have personality.

There are researchers, real researchers, who have looked at the personality of fonts. For example, Chris, you wanna do a little game? - Yeah, I love games. - What do you think is the least funny font, according to the research? Least funny font. - I'm gonna go with Times New Roman.

- Okay, that was my guess as well. Nope, it is ironically Comic Sans. Comic Sans, called comic least funny font. They found that when people write things in Comic Sans, people do not find it funny, even if the joke's funny. So even our font can come across in our emails, including colors, including images that we might be using in our either graphics or icons.

So sometimes in email, we can have imagery too, not as much as in person or on a Zoom background. I'm very purposeful about the props I use behind me in my videos, but you can have some of those in emails. In emails, you have to be cuing people constantly.

An email is so few, it's only one mode of communication, so you have to be really purposeful with it. You wanna make sure, and this is not just about making your emails longer. The biggest mistake that people make is they try to be charismatic by adding. And I don't think that being verbally charismatic is additive, it's about being purposeful.

So it's using words that trigger something. I think a lot of our verbal communication has become sterilized, right? So we send emails that are like, "Hi, I'm following up the proposal. "I'll send it to you next week. "Thanks for the meeting, bye." Right, like super, super sterile. Can you swap out even a couple of words with something that are gonna change people's perception?

And the way that they tested this, the reason I know that even just a couple of verbal cues matter, this isn't additive, it's just being purposeful, is what the researchers did is they had people come into their lab and they split them up into two different groups. The first group got a set of basic directions and they had to complete some tasks, like math problems and some basic intelligence tasks.

The second group had the exact same quiz, the exact same questions, but in their directions, they swapped out three or four words with achievement-oriented words. So achievement-oriented words are words like win, succeed, master, achieve, right? Those are achievement-oriented words. They just sprinkled them in, just a couple of swaps, three or four of these words.

They found that the group that read the achievement-oriented words did better on the task, which is insane, if that three or four words can make people do better on an intelligence test. They worked harder and longer on the problem set and they had more motivation, so they actually enjoyed that problem set more.

The reason I share this is because if three or four words swapped out in a subject or your profile, like your LinkedIn profile or your calendar agenda or the slides behind you in a presentation, if that can make your folks, your listeners, feel more motivated, wouldn't we wanna give them that gift?

Like what a gift that we can give to the world with our charisma actually makes them more charismatic. - So what I'm hearing is that you can actually have a charismatic email if you have the right balance of words. Is it the same thing, add a little warmth, add a little competence to an email?

- Exactly, so here's the hack. In your subjects, your greeting and your sign-off, I want you to match the words with your charisma goals. If you wanna be warm, use warm words, right? Hi, partner, good morning, team. So happy to see you all, best, right? Signing off best, best is a very warm word.

If you wanna be competent, use competent words in your opener and your sign-off. Onwards, let's do this, can't wait to work together. Those are competent openers and words. So yes, you can match your charisma goals in your emails. - And if you wanna kind of come off more charismatic, as you say, is the goal to balance what's natural for you with those words?

So if you kind of, at the beginning of this conversation, you reflected and said, wow, I'm probably more the competent person, let's add a little warmth, or is the goal to put both of them out there to kind of have a balance in the email? - Okay, so this is where we get into the advanced tips.

So level one, balance. So if this is all new to you, I want as balanced as possible. So a little bit of warm words, a little bit of competent words. Same thing, a really easy hack that we can use here is like on your LinkedIn profile, look at your headline.

Look at the first two sentences of your LinkedIn profile. Count the number of warm words versus competent words. Now this is more art than science. So we'll get a little bit more creative here, but warm words, when I say warm words, I mean warm words kind of make you feel the warm and fuzzies.

Warm words like collaborate, team, best, both, together, happy, great. Those are warm words. They have more warmth in them. Competent words are words like efficient, streamline, chart, data, science, right? Those are all more competent words. So a little art, not necessarily science. Actually, I have a glossary in the book if you want a more specific list.

I want you to look at your LinkedIn profile and I want you to count how many warm words, how many competent words you're using. And level one goal is to make it a mix. So try to have an equal amount of warm words and competent words. So even when I was writing the book, I tried to have a balance of warm and competent words on the pages that mattered, right?

So in the introduction, in the description behind the book, in the description on Amazon, 'cause I know that I wanna hit both warm readers and competent readers. So I try to have a balance of both in any and all public-facing things, including like my slides. So I give a lot of keynotes.

I have an exact equal balance of warm slides and competent slides. My competent slides are graphs and data and research. And for every single competent slide, I have a warm slide, a personal story, a funny gif, a joke, right? So those balance out. So I try to have that balance.

Level two, and this is for my advanced learners, is if you are with a VIP, if you're with a boss or an important client or important customer, and you really want to respect them charismatically, you can dial up into their warmth or their competence. So for example, I have some VIPs in my life that are super high in competence.

And so to respect and honor them, when I am engaging with them, I also dial up my competence. I still use warmth, but I just sort of edge more into the kind of words and nonverbal that they use to honor and respect where they're at. So that's kind of level two.

That's the ninja level. - I actually, I have a practical application that I'm now gonna apply this. I'm probably more of a warmth writer with an exclamation point at every end of thing, always signing off best, smiling faces and everything. But my takeaway is I'm gonna go read like the LinkedIn profile or the bio on the website and try to figure out, okay, is this person that I'm about to email who I don't know?

It's really easy if it's your boss. You know, is your boss the person that hugs you when you come in the room, that's super, you know, always talking about life or are they very, you know, matter of fact, competent. But I imagine I could go read the tweets, the blog posts, the LinkedIn profile, identify who this person is, and they probably are gonna be less excited about an email filled with exclamation points and smiley faces if their entire writing on the internet is very, you know, charts, percents, data, science.

- Exactly. So like watching their YouTube video, watching their Ted talk, looking at their profiles, matching them as a much, it's a way of literally saying, I wanna be on your page. Like I respect you so much that I wanna use your language. You also made a very good point.

So exclamation points, emojis, and words like yay, fab, whoop, those are all warm. So they count as one warm point. In fact, every exclamation point I count as one warm point. So if you have three exclamation points, that's three warm words. And for my data heads, charts, percent, numbers, or data, those count as one competent word.

So just consider that when you're doing your little audit on your profile. - Yeah, you can just score an email, plus one, minus one, and see where you end up. - Yeah, so I love people to do a little audit where I ask them, and you can do this after this call, is print out your last five important emails that you sent out.

Whatever five important emails you sent out, print 'em out, yellow for warm, blue for competent, and count 'em, right? Like how are you coming across? If you have a mostly yellow email, you are coming across as too highly warm, right? If you have a mostly blue email, you are overwhelming them in competence.

And remember, the research shows competence without warmth leaves people feeling suspicious. That is literally what they found, that people who are super smart, but don't have enough warmth, they are less likely to believe your competence. So all blue is too much competence. And if you have none at all, so no yellow, no blue, it means you're under-signaling.

- Okay, I'm gonna do that after this call. But before that, one thing we didn't talk about when it comes to non-verbal cues, what about our hands, what about our backgrounds, what about that kind of stuff? - Oh goodness, okay, there's so many things. So let's talk about backgrounds for a second, is I think that, first of all, there is a little bit of early research, this is kind of a new area, but there's a little bit of early research out of Harvard Business Review that found that virtual backgrounds that are like blurred or fake kind of increase our cognitive load.

Our brain wants to see what's behind you. So if you have a blurred out background or a fake background, it's like the other person can't help but be like, "What's back there? "What's going on back there?" You know what I mean? So one is try not to have a fake background.

Also your hands disappear sometimes. Have you ever noticed that? - Yeah, yeah, I can't, I'm personally not a fan of the blurred, the virtual, it kind of drives me nuts. - It drives me nuts, I'm so glad you said it. It drives me nuts. Like if we could all just stop having virtual backgrounds, and the research is beginning to show that as well.

So that's one is I'd rather have it be real. Two is you can balance your warmth and competence with your background. So remember like awards, degrees, pictures of you with famous people, those are all, or books, those are all competence cues. You wanna balance those out with family photos, a stuffed animal, a game that you put on your desk.

What you put on your desk, what you put on behind you, those are also sending signals about your warmth and competence. Behind me, I have a world map, and this actually is the second way that you can think about props. Teaching aids. So I've experienced it with a lot of different props behind me, and one thing that I learned early on was that I used to have chemicals behind me.

For about two years, I had my favorite social chemicals, so I had oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine behind me. Super high competence, right? Having chemicals behind me, it was super high in competence, but it intimidated people. People were like, "I'm not good at science. "I failed chemistry, I don't wanna see that." So I was accidentally turning people off.

Then I decided to do a world map because I realized the biggest question I was getting was are these universal? The funny thing is the moment I put the map behind me, I stopped getting that question. - This is amazing. What does my background say? Is it neutral? Is it go anywhere?

- Neutral. - Okay. - Neutral. So behind you, you have some black and white images that look abstract. So A, I know that this is kind of neutral. I also see that it's black and white, so you're trying to not signal anything too big. In fact, I would think as an interviewer, that's great, because you're trying to get the focus to be on the person you're interviewing, so I kinda love it.

- Oh, great. This is all just what we had in the house, so that worked out great. And hands, anything? Hands, up, down? - So hands are a really critical part of our charisma. I talk about this in my TED Talk if you're, I do a whole hand gesture demo in my TED Talk if you're curious about watching it.

What I really want people to understand about gestures is they are like a nonverbal highlighter. So gestures add depth of meaning to your words. So like a highlighter, you wouldn't wanna highlight an entire page, right? So I wouldn't wanna just have gestures all the time. If I have constant gestures, it's like having a whole page of highlights.

It's too much. Like our brain can't remember any of them. What I do want you to think about is how can I add a gesture to underline or emphasize my words? So if I'm talking about three things, I'm gonna hold up three fingers. If I'm talking about a big idea, I'm gonna show you how big it is.

I'm gonna hold a big bowling ball big. That's how big it is. If something is no big deal, it's really small, don't worry to my customer or clients, no big deal. I'm gonna hold up a little tiny thing that shows look how small that is. It sounds sort of silly, but that actually is a way that our brain highlights our important points.

So I like to think of gestures as highlighters. - Okay, I hope this video is out and people can watch it. I'll link to the TED Talk in the show notes. In the time we have left, I wanna do kind of like a rapid fire of a few things that I know that you've talked about.

And also you mentioned a glossary of words in the book. I was surprised. A lot of times you look at books and it's just a lot of text. You have like pictures of facial expressions and how to rate how people are looking. And so there's actually a lot of like, it's not just words, it's stuff that you can't convey all the time.

So it's fantastic. Definitely check it out. My rapid fire things. They're kind of like hacks that I picked up from you or want to. What do you do to get someone to stop interrupting you? - You open your mouth like a fish. So you can go up. We know that usually means someone wants to talk.

You can also hold your hand up as like a stop sign. Like people. People usually can recognize, "Oh, they have something they wanna say." - Yeah, and what about where to sit? - So where to sit should match your intentions. So I have a little seating chart in the book where I break down the Last Supper as an example of seating.

'Cause I just think it's like a, basically it's a medieval conference table. Basically it's the Last Supper. If you're in charge, if you want people to pay attention, you wanna be at the head of the table facing the door. Facing the door. That's the big one people mistake. Leaders wanna see faces as they come in and they wanna see who sneaks out early.

That's usually the leadership position if you wanna be noticed. If you want to influence the influencer, but you don't wanna be in charge, you wanna sit to their right or their left. I call those the flanking positions. If you want to challenge the leader or you wanna really be seen as taking a strong stance, you wanna sit opposite the leader or opposite the person who's leading.

And if you don't wanna be noticed, you wanna sit along the side out of eyeline. That was a very, very fast overview of, I wish I had visuals. That was a very fast overview of that section. - Yeah, there are visuals in the book. So check that out. Last, total tangent, you live in Austin.

I got three questions. Best meal? - Loro. - Okay, best place for a drink? - Loro. I don't really drink. - Okay. - So I would say Merritt Coffee. - Okay, perfect. I didn't say what kind of drink. - That's right. - And then an atypical thing that someone should see or do in Austin.

- Oh yeah, stand up paddle boarding along Lady Bird Lake. People forget that we have like a ton of water sports here. I know people think of Texas as dry, but stand up paddle boarding or running along Lady Bird Lake, oh, the best. - Yeah, perfect. So I always like to ask that.

You mentioned that there are some files and scripts related to cues that you wanna give listeners. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? - Yeah, sure. So if you go to scienceofpeople.com/charisma, you can actually take the official Charisma Diagnostic. So we talked about earlier, how do we know if we're warm or competent?

I have a free diagnostic. You can take it as many times as you want. I also have a bunch of the bonus material in there. So if you go to scienceofpeople.com/charisma, take the official quiz and bonus, have someone in your life take it as you. This is a great way to self-check.

You might think you come across as highly warm or highly competent, but what does your colleague say? What does your partner say? So screenshot your results and then have them take it as you and screenshot the results they got for you. It is a super interesting self-check. - I'm literally gonna ask my wife to do that right after this.

- Gotta do it. - And like people I work with. - Yes. - Okay, so the book's out. You can get it wherever books are. Where can people go to learn more about you and everything you're doing online? - Yes, and I also read the Audible and I bring a lot of vocal power to that.

So if you are a listener, please go check that out. And then scienceofpeople.com is where we have all of our articles. And you also can check out my YouTube channel where I break down cues of Justin Bieber, The Rock, Princess Diana, Britney Spears. I have a little fun with what I couldn't get away with in the book.

So if you want some cues breakdowns, that's my YouTube channel at Vanessa Van Edwards. - This has been awesome. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. - Oh, Chris, you're the best. And thanks everyone for listening. - All right. - How was that closed voice?

How was that closed voice? (laughs) I'm gonna loop that in. - Do it. You did it. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)