STEVE BARTLETT:
Vanessa Van Edwards Vanessa Van Edwards. For someone that’s just clicked on this conversation now and they’re wondering why they should stay and listen to what we’re going to talk about, what would you say to them?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Very highly successful people speak a hidden language, and that is the language of cues. If you don’t know how to read the cues people are sending to you, if you don’t know how to control the cues you’re sending to others, you are missing a crucial element of success.
STEVE BARTLETT:
How do you… quantify that in a way that I know that it’s true. Are there studies or stats that reinforce what you’ve just said?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
82% of our impressions of people are based on warmth and competence. That means that if we can control our warmth cues and our competence cues, we know we are taking care of 82% of our impression. And that is critical to being more memorable, to being more confident, to having clearer communication.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And taking that a bit further, what areas of my life will that impact? So if I’m warm and I’m competent, which you’re telling me are things that I can control, what are the downstream consequences of that?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So I think my mission is to tackle a big lie. And that is that smart people will translate their book smarts into people smarts. But actually, no matter how smart you are, if you do not know how to communicate with people, you can’t connect with people, you can’t have good relationships, you can’t have supportive friendships, you get looped into difficult people or toxic people, you have trouble getting raises or promotions. When you are able to control your communication, it helps you not be overlooked, not be misunderstood, and that affects your friendships, your partner, your career, and also helps you feel more confident walking into a room.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And what is your research based on? Are you a researcher? Have you done sort of first party research yourself? Where were you drawing from?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So I’m a recovering awkward person. So I used to believe that you were either born with charisma or you weren’t, that charisma was genetic. And in 2002, I discovered a study that changed my life, which said that charisma can be learned. This is when I started to tackle, to figure out, OK, if charisma can be learned, how do we learn it? How can we learn blueprints for conversation? How can we learn frameworks for how we connect and how we socialize? That’s when I started doing my own research. So I’m a behavioral researcher and a best-selling author on communication. And I specialize in helping very brilliant, very smart, awkward folks not be overlooked.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And give me some sort of depth as to the amount of research and the quantity of research that you’ve done, how many people you’ve studied, how many hours of footage, et cetera.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yep. So I developed my first framework about 12 years ago, and we’ve helped 400,000 students learn that framework, master it, and conquer awkwardness or feel more confident. Some of those folks had very professional goals like getting raised or promotion. Other folks were so socially anxious and so awkward they couldn’t make friends. Other people were looking for their soulmate or their partner. And so 400,000 students have told me that this framework works.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Nobody teaches us this stuff, do they? Mm-mm.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Or actually, extroverts tend to teach it. So I read the quintessential How to Win Friends and Influence People back in the day, and that’s a wonderful book, but it’s a book written by an extrovert. If you are not naturally extroverted, I am not naturally extroverted, I’m more ambiverted, it is very hard to learn how to communicate if you don’t naturally gravitate towards people. I was like, there has to be a way to teach introverts and ambiverts to be able to feel confident without having to fake it till you make it. Without having to pretend to be extroverted or outgoing to be taken seriously or to be charismatic. What’s an ambivert? So ambiverts get energy from the right people in the right places. So for example, in this interview, I love one-on-one conversations. I feel myself. But if we were to go to a loud bar or a nightclub, I would completely shut down and want to be alone. Ambiverts can dial up extroversion to hit their goals. So if they know they have to be friendly and meet people for an interview or a position, they can do it. But they need lots of recharge time. The reason why it’s important to know if you’re an ambivert is because you should know What are the people and places that drain you? There are certain people when you open your calendar and you look at it and you’re like, oh, I have to be with that person. That is someone that drains you. They do not bring out your extroversion or your natural love of people. There are also certain people who you feel you could talk to for hours. They give you social energy. They charge your social battery. So the very first thing I have students do is sit and make a list. Who are the people who give you energy, who charge you up? Who are the people who take from you? Those are people that we want to put boundaries around, we want to say no to, we want to limit as much as possible, and then also the places. Where do you thrive? Is it conferences, one-on-one business, or is it friends socializing parties? Knowing those places helps you optimize your social battery.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And when you say cues, which you said at the start of this conversation, people think of just body language. Is that the sort of full extent of areas that you focus on?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes. So cues come into four different channels. There is body language, that’s facial expressions, gestures, posture. But there’s also vocal. So vocal cues are the tone of our voice, our pace, our volume, our cadence. There’s also the words we use, obviously, verbal cues. The types of words that I’m choosing to use are signaling my warmth and competence to you. And the last, the smallest channel is our ornaments. The colors we wear, the jewelry we wear, the way we wear our hair, the way we wear your facial hair, those are also signaling different things or cuing people to feel a certain way about you.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And what about what we say? Because I know you’re writing a book about, I don’t know if I can leak this, but here we go. You’re writing a book about conversation, so what we say.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So I did not realize how powerful our words are. And here’s a study that really changed the way I think about this. Very simple study. They brought people into the lab, and they split them up into two different groups. In one group, they said, today, you’re going to play the community game. And they played kind of a prisoner’s dilemma type of game. The second group, they came into the same room, the same researcher, and they said, good morning. Today, you’re going to play the Wall Street game. The trick was the games were exactly the same. There was no difference between the two games. What they found was everyone who was told they were playing the Wall Street game shared an average of one third of their profits. Everyone who was told they were playing the community game shared an average of two-thirds of their profits. This means that that one word, community game, community, made people think and feel more about community. It made them act more collaboratively. This means that the words we’re using in our emails, our subjects, our texts, our LinkedIn profile headlines, are cuing people for how they should treat us. One really simple way to think about this is your calendar. I send out calendar invites multiple times a week to clients, to friends. When we have meeting, one-on-one, call, video, interview, I am being cued for nothing. Those words are so overused, they’re sterile. If you add cues that prime people to feel or think a certain way, you’re actually setting them up for success. So 2025 wins, collaborative session, strategy meeting, goal meeting, goal overview, teamwork collab session. Those words are actually cuing that person’s brain every single time they open their calendar, that when we read a word like collaborate, we are literally more likely to be collaborative. So the words that we use, even one single word can actually change the way people think.
STEVE BARTLETT:
It’s funny because our entire lives are people. Like the difference between me being a president, prime minister, superb salesperson, exceptional entrepreneur is probably just my understanding of other people and how I show up in my words and my cues. And so when you think about it like that, this could be for many people, the most important subject for them to improve upon.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I would even go further and say, if you don’t have people skills, you cannot succeed. You cannot succeed in life, you cannot succeed in love, you cannot succeed in business. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, you need people to have success. So this is, I think, the most fundamental skill that people can invest in.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And how many people did you say you’ve taught people skills to?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
400,000 students.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And is there a particular case study that stands out to you as being the most extreme in terms of He’s studying the fact that someone can go from zero to a wonderful place.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes, and it’s my very brilliant but stoic students. So I’ve noticed, especially over the last 10 years, because I’ve been doing this for about 17 years, in the last 10 years especially, my most extreme students are the students who are very, very smart, very talented and good at what they do, but they don’t know what cues to send, and so they completely shut down. They try to become stoic, unreadable. They try to have no facial expressions. They literally try to poker face all the time. And as they try to make connections, meet a partner, make friends, people don’t like them, people don’t trust them, they can’t get by into their ideas. And those are the students where I see the biggest transformation. They don’t realize that muting, muting your cues is a danger zone cue. If you try to be stoic and unreadable, people literally cannot get a read on you. And so my biggest transformations have happened when I can say, you don’t need to hide your true feelings. It’s about amplifying them with the right cues. There’s a famous example of this, Jamie Siminoff, founder of Ring. So I don’t know if you ever watched Shark Tank. So in this episode, for those who haven’t seen it, Jamie Siminoff entered the tank and he pitched a billion dollar idea. Literally a billion dollar idea, because it went on to raise funding from Shaq and Richard Branson. But in the tank, he pitches the idea, and he gets so much pushback and so much negotiation, and he walks out of the tank without a deal. In fact, the Sharks did not like him. What happened? He had the billion dollar idea, but he did not know how to share it. This is the biggest transformation I see, is people who have brilliant ideas. They’re good people, they’re hardworking people, and they cannot get buy-in. They cannot make friends, they cannot find partners.
STEVE BARTLETT:
How do they feel? So if you had to say words that make them feel seen right now, how are they feeling as they’re listening to this?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Overwhelmed, getting into interaction, just social overthinking, not knowing what to do, not knowing what to feel. Underestimated, like people don’t see you or the real potential that you have. A lack of confidence and fear. Afraid that if you are your true self or you try any of the things we’re talking about, people won’t like you. And I want to teach you that you can be yourself and you can be liked and you can find your people. And that doesn’t mean everyone’s going to like you, but it means if you signal the right things, cues tell others how to treat you. If you signal the right cues, you will find your people.
STEVE BARTLETT:
One of the things that I was sort of inferring from what you said is the importance of understanding your resting bitch face. That’s like the term we use in the UK, resting bitch face, which is like when you’re just listening or doing nothing. Like how does your face look? And you’re telling me that’s really, really important.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
It’s real. So I call it resting bothered face. I probably shouldn’t use that word. Resting bothered face. RBF, same thing. Okay, this is a real phenomenon, which is that all of us have different faces at rest. Now I want you to look at my face for a second. My face at rest, I’m going to rest it for a second. My mouth angles down and sort of an upside down U, so it looks like this. You see how these are going down?
SPEAKER_04:
Yeah.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Are you laughing at my you?
SPEAKER_04:
A little bit.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay. So at rest, I look a little sad.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Yeah.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
That is just my mouth at rest. Yours goes pretty straight across.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I just, I just.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
You have a lot of hood. That’s what that’s called. I have a lot of hood. A lot of hood. Yes. This is hood. Yes. Yes. So that probably makes you, do people think you’re angry or tired? Both. Both. Okay. People never call me angry, they call me sad. You need to look in the mirror and figure out what is the default of your face. If your mouth angles down into a frown, people are going to think you’re sad. You’re going to have to be counteracting that with your cues. If you have a lot of hood above your eyes or you have these two vertical lines that appear between your eyebrows, you actually don’t have them, but if some people at rest even have those two lines, people are going to think you’re angry or frustrated. If you have down eyes, so I don’t know if you noticed, but my, I have cat, I’ve added cat makeup to my eye. Ah, yes. Yes, that actually makes me look less sad. Because also my eyes slope a little bit down at the end, which makes me look sad.
SPEAKER_05:
Okay.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So people often are like, are you okay? Are you tired? I’m like, no, that’s just my face. So, I have ways that I counteract it. One, I get to use makeup, which is a great thing. But second, I know that I need to make my face a little bit more up, right? So when I am interacting with someone, when I’m on video, when I’m in an interview, I typically rest my face in an upward position. I’ve activated these muscles, so don’t I look happier?
STEVE BARTLETT:
You do, but have you got to consciously tell yourself to do that, or do you just always remember?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
No, I have to consciously tell myself to do that. Now, I only need to do that with people with a first impression or when I’m trying to make a good impression. My team knows that I’m not sad, right? Like, my team, they see me all the time. They see me without makeup. They know that I’m not sad. They know that’s just my face. So here’s what’s critical. One, you should know what is your resting default. Are you looking sad, angry, or afraid? Oh, afraid I didn’t do. So if you have, you actually have some, I’m so sorry. Oh, you’re joking. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. You have these lines.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I just heard someone laugh in the back. One of my team just laughed in the back.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So you have them just right here, these light lines here. So when we’re afraid, we go, and we raise our eyebrows up and our, you can’t see it because I have Botox in my forehead, but if you, yeah, there you go, there you go, that’s for, now open your eyes and go, that’s afraid. So the more you have those lines and the whites of your eyes appear, like have you ever seen someone kind of walk around like a deer in the headlights? They make you feel anxious. Like if I were to do my entire interview a little bit wide-eyed, you would not only feel anxious, but you wouldn’t believe what I was saying. So you all should see if you have this default lined or if the whites of your eyes show. Look at your profile pictures. In your profile pictures, here are the three biggest mistakes people make. One, they’re showing fewer eyes.
SPEAKER_04:
Yeah. Yeah.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So people, you’re signaling, accidentally, anxiety. So try to make sure you’re not showing the upper whites. Second mistake people do is they make a contempt micro-expression, so. That’s a one-sided mouth raise. So just do a one-sided mouth raise for me. Does it make you kind of feel like, better?
SPEAKER_08:
Don’t do it for too long.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So if you do it at home, there’s a facial feedback hypothesis. When you make these faces, it actually triggers the emotion. Just like when you have the emotion, it triggers the face. There’s a loop that happens. So if people make the contempt expression, one-sided mouth raise, Not only do they look scornful, kind of disdained, they actually begin to feel better then and scornful. So do not do an asymmetrical smile in your profile picture. You are accidentally signaling negativity. The third biggest mistake you will make is they do an inauthentic smile in their picture. The only true indicator of happiness is when these cheek muscles are activated. Anyone can fake smile. This is what mine looks like. But you’ve seen people do it, right?
STEVE BARTLETT:
Yeah, I do it.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah, and people know. I would rather you not.
STEVE BARTLETT:
No, because I just don’t have a good smile.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
What?
STEVE BARTLETT:
Look.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
What am I going to say? No, it’s horrible?
STEVE BARTLETT:
That’s not your real smile. I literally have to do this when I take photos. That’s my smile. I can’t do the teeth thing. What am I going to do?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Well, you can smile without your teeth as long as it hits your upper cheek muscles. So just try this for me. Put your hand or your finger in between your mouth like this. And smile as high as you can go. Oh, that’s better. That reaches all the way up into your eyes. Do you see?
SPEAKER_04:
Oh, that’s not…
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
That looks so much better. If you can activate these muscles in your profile picture, you don’t have to walk around like that, but if you can activate, not the fear, not the fear, just here, just here. If you can activate these muscles in your profile picture, it shows authentic happiness or don’t smile at all. I hate the advice. Just smile more. Fake smiles do not work. Dr. Barbara Wild studied this. She took pictures of people thinking of something they were authentically happy about, took a picture of them smiling, then she told them to fake smile and took a picture of them. On the surface, you really couldn’t tell the difference between the two smiles. They looked very similar. But she had participants take mood tests. Then look at one picture or the other, group A, group B. People who saw the positive picture had an improved mood. They caught the happiness from the photo. People who looked at the fake smile had no mood change. This means I would rather you have no smile at all or be neutral than fake smile. But if you can smile in your picture, it is so great for authentic happiness.
STEVE BARTLETT:
It sounds like it might be quite exhausting for some people, because I think some people, although they’re happy, they feel good, they’re nice people, they do have that resting bothered face, I think you called it. And there’s other people that I know that just kind of walk through life with this like resting smile. Like we can all think of that person that’s just like always happy. And then there’s these other people who are like objectively happy too, but they just have that resting bothered face. So it feels like life is going to be more exhausting for those people.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
You know, I think it’s about choosing your heart, right? It is hard, it is exhausting for me to show up to a meeting when I’m in a good mood and have someone be like, are you sad and tired? Are you okay? I’m like, I’m fine. I find that exhausting. Is it also a little exhausting to make sure that in my first impression, I’m being a little bit more up with my face, open eyes wide and open mouth? A little less exhausting than that. So I think you have to choose what are the cues you’re going to purposefully add. There are 97 cues. I’ve narrowed down 97 that I think are the most important. You get to make your own recipe. You don’t have to do all the cues. If smiling is not your thing, smiling is not essential for being charismatic. When we talk about being charismatic, it’s about being warm and competent. And you have 97 cues to choose from to make that warmth and competence recipe. And so you don’t have to be a bubbly extrovert to be charismatic. You can be a quiet, powerful introvert. You can be a compassionate, empathetic healer. Those look different. And so I think it’s less exhausting to find your recipe and to use those cues a lot. There’s certain cues in my book that I teach that I don’t use. They just don’t feel natural to me. But there are other cues where I’m like,
STEVE BARTLETT:
Has anyone ever done any really compelling studies on this idea of resting bitch face or resting bothered face, as you call it?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
There is research on resting bothered face, and there are certain people who, when people see pictures of their face at rest, they assume a mood change. In other words, when there are certain people at rest, where you look at them, they look neutral. But there are a certain percent of the population, when you look at them, they look angry, sad, or afraid. So it’s real. It’s a real phenomenon.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And there’s certain people you look at and they look happy and make you happy.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Very few people have happy resting face, though.
STEVE BARTLETT:
You either look neutral or bothered. So you said you were a recovering awkward person. Yes. Take me into what you were like.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Oh goodness.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And what do you mean when you say awkward person?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I really wanted to go it alone. I was really overwhelmed by people and interactions. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I didn’t know what to say. I felt like I missed a memo that everyone got on conversation. I always felt like I was saying the wrong things. I had all these awkward silences. And then what would happen is I would try to overcompensate by sharing a ridiculous story or talking too much or completely shutting down. And I kind of like wavered between completely shutting down and being overwhelmed and talking too much and saying too much and just verbal vomiting all over everyone. And so I shut down. And in college, especially, I just felt so left out. I just felt so lonely. And I don’t know if anyone watching is feeling lonely, I thought it was all my fault. I was like, I missed the memo. I don’t know how to have conversations. I don’t even know how to have friends. That’s what it felt like, that I desperately wanted to make connections, but I had no idea how to level up a new person to a friendship. I had no idea how that path happened. I had no idea how to have a conversation with someone, share something real, and then have a real interaction back. And so it was really lonely and overwhelming.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And what was the catalyst for you to go on this journey?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I was in college and there was a group paper assigned. And you had like five people and everyone had to do five pages. And I went to the professor and I said, I will write double the amount of pages if I can work by myself. And he was like, Vanessa, the point of the paper is not the paper. It’s working with the people. And I was like, and I started to cry in his office. I was like that student. I was like, I, I don’t know how. And he was like, Vanessa, you’re very good at science. You’re very good at breaking things down. What if you studied for people like you study for chemistry? That was like an aha moment for me. He said, why don’t you study good conversation? Why don’t you study the popular kids? Why don’t you look at what are they doing in conversation that’s working? Study it like it’s a science. Hence, my brand was called Science of People. That’s when I realized, OK, it didn’t come naturally to me, but maybe there’s research. on actual things I can do with my body, things I can do, I can say verbally, questions that work that will help me learn this the other way, turning soft skills into hard skills. That’s when I started creating my first conversational blueprints. That’s when I started creating my conversation formula, and it started to work. I started to try out these kind of tiny experiments, and I actually started to feel like myself, make more friends. It was tools. I had to use tools to be able to connect because it just did not come naturally to me.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Was it fixed from day one?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
No.
STEVE BARTLETT:
So it was a journey?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
It was a real journey, yeah.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I think that’s important because often people think, you know, read the book, get the tips and tricks and you’re changed and you’re fixed. You talk about, I think, later in your life where you went to a dinner party and your husband was there with you and you went home and told him that you thought everyone was angry at you.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah.
STEVE BARTLETT:
When was that?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
That was probably maybe four or five years later. So I started mostly with conversation. That was sort of my first tool I needed. Questions I wanted to ask, first impressions, and how to close a conversation very practically. I also realized about five years later, I married my college sweetheart. So I’ve been with my husband for a long time. And he said to me, you always think everyone’s angry at you. I was like, isn’t everyone angry at me? And I realized there are certain people who misinterpret neutral facial expressions as negative. I have this problem. So I will see a neutral expression on someone and assume they are angry or afraid or stressed or don’t like me. And that was creating this really bad loop because when you think someone doesn’t like you, you shut down and become more unlikable. There was a study I discovered right around this time. This is done by Dr. Van Sloan. He wanted to know what makes popular kids popular. Very clever study. He studied thousands of high school students across a variety of high schools looking for patterns. Why is it that some kids across these grades and ages are really popular? He had all the kids ranked across all these schools. He had them looked at traits, and then he guessed what made the popular kids popular. Were they more athletic? Were they more attractive? Were they funnier? Were they smarter? What was it? Can you guess what it was?
STEVE BARTLETT:
So I’m just basing this on the kids that were popular in my school. They were funnier, they were self-deprecating to some degree, they were remotely good at some sports maybe. They were funny, happy, I don’t know.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, so he found that the most popular kids, the one single variable that was held true across all the different students, was the most popular kids had the longest list of people they liked. So when he asked, one of the questions of the survey was, who do you like? They had the longest lists. And when he looked at their day-to-day, they had micro moments of liking. They would go down the hallway and be like, hey, Chan. Hey, Chelsea. Hey, Sarah. They liked so many people, and that, in turn, made them more likable. This showed me that being likable is in our control. Being likable means you have to be first liker. If you set out to like more people, you become more likable. And that was a really big shift for me because for so long, I thought it was all about me. It’s a very selfish way to be, right? I was like, I better be impressive. I better be funny. But actually, what makes us likable is just liking as many people as possible.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I was laughing as you were speaking because I was just playing out all the different sort of personas of people listening right now. Yeah. And I just had this one persona of a person sat at home who just like slumped over because they realized they hate everybody. Like, when you said that, they’re just like, fuck, I hate everybody.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Look, I get it. I get it. I get it. And I also think that if you hate everyone, if that’s you, let me try to convince you for a second. It could be because you’re asking the wrong questions. I think I fell into that camp. I don’t need people. I don’t like people. I was very much in that camp for the first couple of years. Why? Because I had terrible interactions and terrible conversations. It was awkward. Of course I didn’t like people. But I was also asking the wrong questions and I was telling the wrong stories. I was trying to be impressive. The best way to be impressive, to be likable, is to help people impress you. is to make them feel so liked that they begin to like you back. It’s aggressively liking. So that means that when you’re with someone, you should be constantly giving them verbal and nonverbal assurances of how much you want to like them. Watch them change. Watch your relationships transform. So I make it a policy of aggressively liking people. So I have three magic phrases for likability. Can I teach them to you?
SPEAKER_05:
Please.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, so I want you to use these as many times as you can. Three magic phrases for likeability. One, I was just thinking of you. Okay, so here’s how you use this authentically, right? You think of a lot of people in your life all the time. If you are thinking of someone and you can text them, text them, I was just thinking of you, how are you? I was just thinking of you, how’d that project go? I was just thinking of you, it has been a while since we talked. Or, and better, you see a movie, you see a documentary, you see a matcha latte, you see a mug, you see a ceramic candle, and you’re like, oh, this made me think of you. So my text messages, my conversations are full of actual moments where I was triggered to think of that person, actually, that this thing made me think of you. Or I was just thinking of you, I wanted to ask you about. If you don’t think of someone, they’re not a person you need to have in your life.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Okay, so that’s number one. That’s number one. I want to pause on number one because I’ve got some sort of questions to ask here. Yes. It sounds exhausting. It sounds like it’s going to cost me a lot of time that I don’t necessarily have. And this is just my like my surface level reaction was, oh God, another job. You know what I mean? If I’ve got to set aside an hour to text everyone I know and go, I was just thinking of you, it’s going to be exhausting. I’ve got like six friends and I’ve got my partner and I’ve got my family and my team. It’s a lot. It’s a lot.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Then just them. And also, it doesn’t take an hour when you’re like, oh, stainless steel mug. This made me think of you. Like, you’re only doing it when it’s actually naturally occurring to you. I don’t want you to sit at your desk and be like, I’m due for some I was just thinking of yous. No, this happens in the wild. You’re watching a documentary. You’re at a restaurant. You’re on the bus. You’re like, oh, that reminds me of this person. Quick text. That is less work than missing an old friend and not knowing what to say. It is less work to see something in real life or have a thought of like, I wonder how Sarah is? And reaching out to them then, I miss Sarah, but I’m not going to reach out to her. It’s also less work when you see someone and you haven’t seen them in a while or they’re a friend of a friend or they’re that casual co-worker relationship and you’re like, what do I say? I think it’s a lot of work to go up to that person and be like, How was your weekend? I think that’s a lot of work. I think boring small talk’s a lot of work. If you actually thought of them to say, you know, I know you love dolphins. I saw this dolphin documentary on Netflix. Have you seen it? I was just thinking of you, made me think of you.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I want another concern. So if I… If I start firing out these WhatsApp messages telling people when I’m thinking of them, it’s just going to be, it’s going to be opening up loads of conversations that I then have to deal with. Do you know what I mean? Like, it’s going to be like, Hey, I was just thinking of you. And then they reply, they go, Oh, how, how are you? And I go, I’m good. Thanks. And then they go, I go, how are you? They go, I’m good. Thanks. And then, do you know what I mean?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I don’t believe in asking, how are you? That’s a whole nother thing. This is a good test. If you are worried that they’re going to start a conversation that’s going to bore you and feel like work, they’re not a close friend.
STEVE BARTLETT:
So don’t text them. Okay.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
It’s a very good test. If there’s someone where you’re like, oh, I don’t really want to hear how they are.
SPEAKER_07:
Yeah. Okay.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
This is for the people who you want to level up with. There are three levels of intimacy. People who you kind of know, you know their personal, you know their general traits, where they work, where they live, what they do, that’s it. You don’t want to go any deeper with them. Level two people are people where they know your personal concerns. You know their goals, their motivations, their personality traits, their worries. Those are people you want to invest in. And there’s a last level, which is the most deep level, which is called self-narrative, which is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. If you categorize your relationships, another activity I love for my students to do is make those three levels on a piece of paper. Write down the 20 people you can think of, the top 20 people you spend the most time with, where they fall.
STEVE BARTLETT:
So we have acquaintances, we have- Acquaintances who just kind of know where you’re from, what do you do, the basics.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And by the way, some of the people who you’re close with, you might not be deep with.
SPEAKER_05:
Yeah, true.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Right? Level two, personal concerns. Could they tell you what is your, Stephen’s, biggest goal right now?
STEVE BARTLETT:
OK, and then the middle layer I didn’t understand.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
That’s the middle layer. That’s the middle layer. So it’s general traits, personal concerns, self-narrative.
STEVE BARTLETT:
What’s self-narrative?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So this is what my next book is about. I’m doing research on it right now. Self-narrative is the story you tell yourself about yourself.
STEVE BARTLETT:
So is this a group of people?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
It’s the levels of intimacy you are with someone. So would your partner know the story you tell yourself about yourself? I’ll give you an example. 100% she would. I think so. So I think that there are basically three main types of narratives and you should know what these are for the closest people in your life. Maybe only two or three and you should also know what it is for yourself. The best one is a hero narrative. This is I’ve worked really hard. I’ve had some challenges and mistakes, but I’ve overcome with hard work and smarts, and now I am where I am. Every version of their story, their career, their life, their relationships is that same narrative over and over again. Then there’s what I think is called the healer narrative. Again, I’m doing research on this for my next book. The healer narrative, their story is all about helping others. They typically are in careers of service, of helping others, physical therapists, nurses, healthcare. Their story is, how can I be more helpful? They tend to have a problem, though, if you’re in a relationship with a healer, is they always put other people’s needs before them, themselves.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Do they have some kind of historic trauma?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
They can. And a lot of the times they were put in a position of caretaking too early. Like they were told that you are of value if you can caretake. You’re of value if you put your needs last. So they tend to be people pleasers. They tend to say yes to everything. You have to be careful if you work with a healer because they’re great to work with. They help, help, help, but they say yes to too much. So a healer is the middle one. The last one is victim narrative. Victim narrative, no matter what, personal, professional, love life, taxes, they have the same narrative. I experienced challenges and mistakes and I didn’t overcome. No matter how hard I work, no matter how smart I am, the world is against me. So a question I ask people to begin to uncover their self-narratives. Do you feel lucky? Do you feel lucky?
SPEAKER_07:
I feel very lucky.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I also feel very lucky. People who have a resounding yes to I feel lucky are more likely heroes or healers. People who say I don’t feel lucky, I feel very unlucky, are typically victims. Dr. Richard Wiseman did a study. He asked people to perceive their own luck. How lucky do you feel? Then he gave them a challenge. He gave them a newspaper. And he said, I want you to count the amount of images in this newspaper. They sat with the newspaper and they counted all the images, but there was a trick. There’s always a trick in these studies. On the second page of the newspaper, in big print, it said, stop counting. There are 42 images in this newspaper. Almost all of the people who perceived themselves as lucky saw the ad, closed the paper, and gave it back, so there are 42 images. Almost none of the unlucky people did. The unlucky people missed the ad and kept counting, spent a lot of time, and made more mistakes. This means that if you think of yourself as lucky, you literally see more opportunities. If you think of yourself as unlucky, you miss them.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Is it possible to change how you see yourself?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I do believe in a growth mindset, so I do believe that if this is resonating with you and you’re like, uh-oh, I feel unlucky. I might have this victim self-narrative. I do believe it’s possible to change your perception of yourself, and that’s starting with small moments of heroism. I think that changing your people skills, saying, I don’t like people, and saying, I’m going to find a way to like people. Saying, I’m bad at conversation, I’m going to find a way to be good at conversation. To say I’m an awkward person, no, I’m a recovering awkward person. If we can begin to take those tiny experiments and change them one by one, we begin to have small moments of heroism, and that’s how we change our self-narrative.
STEVE BARTLETT:
As an employer I think about this a lot, these sort of verbal and non-verbal cues. I actually had an interview some time ago and I think I came out of the interview and I think objectively the person might have been qualified but there was something about their energy or cues or something that signaled something else to me that they were an unhappy person or they were tired or they didn’t really want to be here or something like that. Are there any studies that confirm that our hidden communication is driving our success in the working environment?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes. So this study blew my mind. It’s 58,000 working hours over 11 different companies. So a huge amount of data. They wanted to know if low performers infect the people around them and if high performers infect the people around them. What they found was if you sit within 25 feet of a high performer, your own performance improves by 15%. Here’s the kicker. If you sit within 25 feet of a low performer, your own performance decreases by 30%. This means that our negative emotions are more contagious, that if you’re around people who are low performers, whatever that means to you, who have negative cues, who are feeling anxious or tired or low confident, you could catch those cues and that affects your own performance. This is why it is incredibly critical to invest in the five people who you spend the most time with. You want to make sure those five people are the cues you want to catch. Do you like the cues they’re sending? Do they give you the right motivation, feelings? Do they make you feel liked? Do they make you a better version of yourself? There’s just one more chemical aspect of this which we have to do more research on. This is a very gross study, but it’s one of my favorites. It’s a little gross. You ready? Okay. So they brought people into their lab. They split them up into two different groups. And they made the first group wear a sweatsuit where they catch their sweat and run on the treadmill. So they sweat a lot on the treadmill. The second group, they wore sweatsuits and they took them skydiving for the first time. Both groups sweat a lot. Treadmill sweat and skydiving sweat. They took these sweat samples and they had unsuspecting participants go into fMRI machines and scan their brains. And they gave them both sweat samples to smell. These poor people didn’t know what they were smelling. They went, Everyone who smelled the skydiving sweat had an activation in their own amygdala, their own fear response triggered. In other words, when they smelled fear sweat, they didn’t know why, they began to feel afraid. Everyone who smelled the treadmill sweat had no change at all. This means that, yes, we can talk about facial expressions and body language and vocal cues and words, but there’s also something chemically happening with the people around us that we can literally smell fear and we catch it. And that is also why it’s really important to follow our gut. Oh, dear.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Well, I was going to say, well, then we’re all screwed, aren’t we? We can’t do anything because there’s, if we’re giving off these chemicals which are impacting those around us, it doesn’t matter if I smile and do the whole like, er.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
No, because I think intention is the backdoor into confidence. It’s very hard to fake confidence. I don’t believe in fake it till you make it, I don’t really. But if I say, I have a conversational tool for you that’s gonna make your conversations better, you become less nervous, you become more excited, you ask a better question, they give you a really good answer, you feel super charismatic, they feel really liked, you feel really likable, ooh, we have a good little cycle. So I think that intention, going in with really purposeful cues, helps you feel more confident and triggers these beautiful cycles.
STEVE BARTLETT:
The cycle, is this the cycle you’re talking about?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
The cue cycle.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I’ll put it on the screen and in the description for anyone that wants to see it. But when I saw this, the reason I printed this off is because it really hit close to home. Because I’m someone that meets a lot of people and when I meet people, on the very rare occasion, something about someone will just kind of throw my energy and it throws my energy to the point that I realise I’m then acting a little bit in terms of my interaction with them. And it’s almost like I can’t control it, like something about the person has unnerved me or just made it, and it’s nothing that I could consciously tell you, like say it was the way they shook my hand, just something about them throws me into this different state. And when I saw this, I almost figured out why, because the first step in this cue, you explain it, I mean it’s your cue cycle.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes, okay, so we often mistakenly think that we send a signal to someone else, they send a signal back to us, and that’s it. What we don’t realize is there’s a cycle happening within us, which is that if you send me a negative cue, I internalize it, and that changes the cues I’m sending back to you. Here’s a very simple experiment that showed this. They put a participant in a room, and they had an actor in the room flash them a social rejection cue that could be, an eye roll, a scoff, a distancing and blocking behavior. So the participants in the room and this person across from them, they don’t know it was an actor, sends them a social rejection cue. What they found was the moment that participant saw the social rejection cue, their own pupils dilated and their field of vision increased. This means that somebody saw, uh-oh, that person doesn’t like me, and their body reacted to fight or flight. Does anyone else feel this way about me? Are there any escape routes for me? And that then changed what cues they sent back to that person. They were more anxious. They were more nervous. If you walk into a room with someone and you’re feeling bad, you probably caught a cue. Here’s the good news. You can stop the cue cycle from being negative. There’s also positive cues, right? We can catch positive cues. That can be good for us. But we can stop the negative cycle if we label the cue we see. Dr. Matthew Lieberman at UCLA studied this very clearly. He put people in fMRI machines, and he flashed them a fear microexpression, the one that you showed us earlier, with your eyes really wide. When people saw the fear microexpression, they caught the fear. They began to feel afraid, and their amygdala lit up. But when he taught them, say, fear, or think, fear, he taught them the micro-expression, it stopped activating their amygdala. Meaning, if you know how to read the 97 Qs, and you see contempt, or social rejection, or a mouth shrug, or a lip purse, all not great Qs, you can in your head say, lip purse, I’m good, or clocked, noted. That intel is actually empowering. So that backdoor into confidence is also, you can label it, name it, tame it, and you’re in control of it. That is a much better way to interact and also can help you like people, for all my people who don’t like people.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Okay, so in those moments I should, in my head, just say what I’m… Clocked.
SPEAKER_02:
Label it.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Clocked.
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, that’s what I say to myself. Or like, red flag. Or noted.
STEVE BARTLETT:
You’re particularly famous for a TED Talk that you did. Yeah. Which did very, very well. It was called You Are Contagious. And it really opened my eyes to the importance of hand gestures. Which I didn’t really think were that important before, but it’s funny because going through this election cycle, and obviously Trump has now been elected as the next president of the United States, he is someone in particular that uses a lot of hand gestures. And in your TED Talk, you make the case that hand gestures matter.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Oh, so much. I think the hands are the windows into the soul. I think what we underestimate is the power of our gestures. Love it, just love it. Just those jazz hands, just those jazz hands. So here’s, I’m gonna do a little experiment with you. So I’m gonna put my hands on my lap. I’ve been very careful to leave my hands on the table for the entire interview. That’s on purpose. Now, something funny happens in your brain when you can’t see my hands. And the longer my hands are underneath the table, the more your amygdala will begin to fire. And the more distracted you become with, where are her hands? Why are her hands under the table? And then when I bring my hands back out again, your brain goes, And that is because hands show intention, and this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. So if we go back to caveman days, if we were approached by a stranger caveman and they went, friend, friend, friend, friend, friend, friend, friend, we saw they weren’t carrying a rock or a spear, and they were probably a friend. In fact, when we go, so nice to meet you, we can see someone’s hand, we know that they’re literally not gonna harm us. So our brain still keeps this mechanism that if we’re on video and we can’t see someone’s hand, or they walk into an office with their hands in their pockets or behind their back, we feel a little bit uneasy. So there’s two things for this. First, is the moment someone first sees you, you want to be friend, friend, friend. Good to see you. Oh, so nice to meet you. What put your hand up for people that can’t see you? The moment I walk into a room, hey, nice to see you. Even before I handshake, even an old friend, I’ll be like, oh my gosh, so good to see you. On Zoom. Morning.
STEVE BARTLETT:
For people that can’t see, she’s basically putting her hand in the air.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Which is like a little wave, a little wave. We love a palm. As humans, we love seeing someone’s palm. There’s something about it that makes us feel like, ah, they’re literally open-palmed. So that’s the first. In the first few seconds of someone seeing you, in person, on video, try to flash your palm. Very, very simply. Second, we understand competence in two ways. Very highly competent people know their content so well, they can speak to you on two tracks. They can speak to you verbally, but they also can speak to you with their hands. This is why we loved picture books as kids. And so when someone is speaking, we’re listening to their words. But second, we’re looking, are their hands outlining their words? So for example, all the best TED Talks start the same way. And this is what got me my TED Talk, is we studied all the TED Talks from 2010, looking for patterns. And my team and I coded every TED Talk we can find, looking for differences between the most viral TED Talks and the least viral TED Talks. We found the most viral TED speakers used an average of 465 hand gestures in 18 minutes, whereas the least popular TED talkers used an average of 271 gestures, so not quite half. Meaning, if someone walks on stage, here’s a really good TED talk, they all start this way, you ready? Today, I wanna talk to you about a big idea. We’re gonna share three different things that are gonna change your life. So for people listening, I was outlining with my hands along with my words. If I were to get on stage and say, today I have a really big idea. It’s huge. And hold up my hands in a really small way. Your brain is 12.5 times more likely to believe my gesture over my words. And so what we can do as speakers, as very highly charismatic speakers, is think about how can I outline, very basically, not modern dance, what I’m saying or how can I emphasize things with my gestures. If something is big, show me. Is a beach ball big? Is it What is this big? Donkey big? Is this a donkey? I don’t even know. A goat? A goat? This is a goat big. If you have something that’s really small and no big deal, doing this actually helps you think that it’s not a big deal. I’m making a little kind of dismissive gesture with my hand. This also works with emphasizing points you want people to remember. If you have three ideas, tell someone you have three ideas. It is very hard to lie with our gestures. For example, you want to do a little experiment with me? Sure. Okay, I want you to say five, but hold up the number three. Five. Hard, right? Yeah. So it’s really hard.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I have to think about them separately.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah, it’s really hard. Our brain is not meant to lie with gesture, which is why humans pay so close attention to gestures. Because we’re looking to see, are they congruent? It is so hard to be incongruent with gestures. Liars typically use less gestures. So we’re also drawn to people who are using gestures, who are congruent with their gestures, because it makes us feel like, oh, they know their stuff and they’re being honest.
STEVE BARTLETT:
So it made me reflect, how do we establish causation here in terms of these hand gestures? Could it be the case that the more confident TED speakers are doing more gestures because they’re less nervous. So is it about nerves? And the less confident, more nervous TED speakers are doing less gestures just because they’re self-soothing a lot and they’re kind of closing off their body. Is confidence the thing here? Is it nerves?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I don’t think so. I think it’s about engagement. So I think most TED speakers, I watch these TED Talks, they’re all good. All of them are good, and some of them are experts in their field. The difference is, do I want to watch their good? It is hard for me as a viewer to pay attention for 18 minutes with someone who didn’t use enough gestures. It was like physically hard for my brain to pay attention. I think those speakers, whether good or not, had over-rehearsed and rehearsed out their hand gestures, or were holding a podium, or were holding a clicker too hard. So I actually think that It’s less to do with the speaker’s nerves or confidence, and it’s more to do with are they going to let themselves use their hands to explain their points, and that becomes more engaging.
STEVE BARTLETT:
One of the things I’ve noticed on this podcast is people who are using their hands are more expressive. And if they’re more expressive, there’s likely to be more sort of intonations in their voice. And if there’s more intonations, it’s more engaging. And if it’s more engaging, then it’s more attentive for the algorithm. And if it’s more attentive for the algorithm, it’s suggested more. If it’s suggested more, there’s more views. Yes, yes, yes. So I would like to tell my guests, all the past and particularly future guests, that if you have more expression in what you’re saying and more intonations in your voice, then our show will grow.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, let’s talk about two things here. One is we did a test on my YouTube channel and found that if we used a thumbnail of me doing any hand gesture, it didn’t even matter what it was. It could be this, it could be this. Any hand gesture, that got more clicks. People even in a thumbnail like to see the hand gesture even more than my crazy facial expressions. We tried both. So yes, we are—because if you see a thumbnail of me, you know, holding up two, you’re like, well, what two things is she talking about? What is it? So we like it. It shows competence. And the second thing is that vocal variety is an incredibly important aspect of charisma. We’re talking about gestures, but there is a feedback loop here. If I were going to sit on my hands for this interview, you would notice my facial expression would get less charismatic, my vocal tone would be less charismatic. It’s really hard to be charismatic without movement. Vocal variety is a critical aspect of both warmth and competence. That is because when we hear someone who’s able to, for example, give us the TED Talk voice. So I’m going to give you the TED Talk voice. You ready? This point is going to change the way that we think about the world. And if we don’t analyze this point, we will be in huge trouble. Like that is a voice that is telling you, ooh, this is important. You also hear that really good speakers will use like a numbers voice. So a numbers voice sounds like this. Did you know that 43% of humans all believe in the same thing?
None:
43%.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And if you’re telling a story, it changes again. So a story tone would go like this. You’re never going to believe what happened to me. So last week, I’m walking down the street and I saw this guy. It’s a totally different vocal variety. That is a gift to your listener that makes you more engaging because they’re able to clock, oh, we’re doing a number now. We have a story now. Oh, this is an important point. I better write it down. Really good TED speakers are outlining their talk for you in many different ways, and that’s the best speakers I see on stage.
STEVE BARTLETT:
It’s so interesting because in this podcast, we had quite a long conversation a couple of months ago about arms on the chair, the chair that you’re in now. And it was just this observation we had when we first flew out here to New York. The chairs that we ordered were pretty similar to this, but they just happened to have arms on them. And what I noticed was that guests would lean and it would take out their arms. So it took out their arms and they became less expressive and the conversations were less interesting. So we’ve removed the arms again.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, so let’s talk about this just very briefly. I actually do recommend chairs with arms, not in this setup, because look at the difference. So actually, right before this interview, you asked me to scoot my chair in, right? Your amazing team asked me to scoot my chair in. Thank you for that, because it makes it so that I want to put my hands up. If I were to be sitting farther back, I’m just going to lean back for a second, I would be tempted to put my hands in my lap.
SPEAKER_04:
Yes.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So the critical piece of this is you’re having me scoot up to the table. It would be really hard if I had arms, because then I would want to go like this, and it would make me look like a duck.
SPEAKER_04:
Yes.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Right. So you want to use a chair with arms to be broader. It actually does broaden your arms out unless you’re really close to the table and you can put your hands on the table. But it’s amazing how the physical environment can change how we are perceived and how we move.
STEVE BARTLETT:
But even we’re very intentional about the sort of mirroring of our body language and just making sure that we’re head on because this conversation is entirely different if we’re side on.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Very much.
STEVE BARTLETT:
It’s not going to be the same.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Very much.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And there’s not going to be the same level of intimacy. Yes. We also thought a lot about how big the table was. This is quite a big table.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
What’s the distance?
STEVE BARTLETT:
I’m going to say it’s about just shy of two meters.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Wait, can you hold your arm up? Okay, so this is perfect distance. The perfect distance between two people having a good conversation is that we could shake hands if we wanted to. And that is because there are four different proxemic zones. So the fancy word for space is proxemics. I don’t know if you have that beautiful graphic. I printed out this. Oh, yes, that’s it. Yes. So there are four different space zones, and these are really good to know if you’re trying to set yourself up for success. The public zone is about 5 to 8 feet away. I don’t know, not feet, but 5 to 8 feet away. Then you have the social zone, which is where we like to socialize with people. That is, depending on who you ask, 3 to 5 feet away. Then there’s the personal zone. That’s our favorite zone. That is about arm’s distance apart, right? So we could shake hands if we wanted to. That’s where our best conversations happen. And then there’s the intimate zone. big mistake people make is they place their video camera too close to their face, which means they’re accidentally signaling intimacy cues with their colleagues and their co-workers. Have you ever been on a Zoom with someone where their face is the entire camera? Yeah, I was on one earlier on. And you’re like, please back up. And that is because your brain is going too close, even though they’re across the camera. So what I would really recommend, measure the distance between your nose and your camera. It should be one arm length. So it should be the tip of your nose to the tip of your fingers or a foot and a half to three feet away. That is the ideal zone for having good conversation over Zoom.
STEVE BARTLETT:
That’s really interesting as well because I was thinking about the conversation I had actually on the way here in the car with a colleague of mine and they had called me on FaceTime. Now the thing with FaceTime is it’s going to be close. It’s going to be close. And it did feel a little bit intimate. It does. Because they called me on FaceTime. Yes. Obviously, if I was on my laptop, they would call me on Zoom or something else, and there would be a meter.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, so I think that that’s why we can sometimes, at least introverts, feel like, don’t FaceTime me, it’s way too personal. It’s because there’s a setup there that it’s actually accidentally tricking you into being in the intimate zone with someone. This is also why loud bars and nightclubs work so well for facilitating romantic relationships. What happens in a loud bar or a loud nightclub is you can’t hear someone. So you go, what? And then you get a little bit closer, and all of a sudden, you’re accidentally standing in someone’s intimate zone, which then that cue cycle begins to kick in where you’re like, well, if I’m standing within a foot and a half from this person, maybe I should feel intimate with them, which then makes you lean more, makes you want to touch more. That is why people go to bars and nightclubs to facilitate these romantic relationships. It’s accidentally going into the intimate zone.
STEVE BARTLETT:
When I was younger, I’ve said this a few times on the podcast before, but it feels very relevant. My brother, my older brother Jason, he ordered this book called The Game by Neil Strauss. And he ordered it to university, but he accidentally put the wrong address in, so it came to home. This sounds like an elaborate story for me, like buying a pick-up artist book. But it came to home, and I read the book, and it was my first time understanding that body language was, A, important, but even something you could learn. And when I say body language, I mean everything. And it’s interesting because now after reading your work, I actually think maybe what I should have been aiming at was how to be more charismatic. And you talk about these five science-based habits for being more charismatic. I guess the first question is what is charisma? And then what are these five science-based habits that can make me more charismatic as a person? Like, how do I know if I’m charismatic?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
You are charismatic, but you lean higher on competence. So let’s break it down, okay? So this is not my work. This is the work of Dr. Susan Fisk. This is an instrumental study. It’s been repeated many times back in 2002 that found that to be charismatic, you have to be both highly warm and highly competent. or more importantly, you have to signal high warmth and high competence. And this makes up 82% of impressions of people. Warmth, trust, likability, friendliness, competence, power, reliability, capability. So very highly charismatic people, you meet them, you see them, and they are signaling, you can trust me, you like me, and boy, am I reliable and competent at the very same time. So when I say you are charismatic, but you lean very high in competence, which means that people can see you as cold or stoic if you’re not showing enough warmth cues. Have you been told that? Intimidating?
STEVE BARTLETT:
Indirectly. People are too scared to say it to me and I’m joking. But no, I do get that. I do. I do. I think I have like some degree of self-awareness as to how I come across. And I think how you described it is exactly how I come across.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And that’s not a bad thing, right? Like you get to pick your own recipe. Like I lean a little higher on the warm side. I’m also female. There are differences between men and women. So typically, not always, men default to higher incompetence. Women are defaulted to higher in warmth, typically not always. This isn’t a bad thing, but you should know that if you are trying to come across as warmer on your team, you’re trying to inspire more collaboration, you’re trying to make more friends, you want to dial up your warmth cues. If you’re someone who’s interrupted a lot, not taken seriously, people forget meeting you, you need to dial up competence. This is like a thermostat. You can dial up warmth cues and dial up competence cues and this changes the way people treat you. So I have five power cues for competence and I have five warm cues for warmth.
STEVE BARTLETT:
We’re gonna go through all of those. I saw this wonderful graph which kind of explains it, which I’ll put on the screen for anyone that’s watching. And this was really, really interesting. There’s a danger zone. The danger zone, I’m guessing, is when you’re low warmth and low competence. That’s it.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Those are those folks that are stoic. If you don’t send enough warmth cues, if you don’t send enough competence cues, people cannot trust you. They have trouble working with you. They have trouble talking to you. This is the curse of very smart people. Very smart people think, my ideas will stand alone. My book smarts are great. I don’t need to communicate these cues. My ideas are enough. That’s what happened to Jamie Siminoff in the tank. He did not show enough warmth or competence cues. He relied solely on his ideas and his numbers, and he could not get a deal. So people who want to be taken seriously, you have to show warmth and competence. The other problem with highly competent folks, and you lean higher in competence, this is for you too, which is directly from the research, too much competence without enough warmth leaves people feeling suspicious. So no matter how competent you are, no matter how good your ideas are, if you are not showcasing that with warmth, people are skeptical of you. And this is what happens with a lot of my students is they’re like, people don’t trust me. They don’t believe my ideas. They’re skeptical. I get pushback or their, I do sales trainings. They can’t close. You’ll push back on their numbers. And that is because some part of them is saying, I hear your competence, but you’re not giving me enough warmth.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Can you be too warm?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
You can be absolutely too warm. You can be too warm and too competent. Too warm, you know what that looks like? That’s too warm.
SPEAKER_05:
Okay.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay? Too warm is… So, we’ll talk about the five warmth cues. Too much of any cue is dangerous, right? So, too much nodding, too much laughing, too much vocalizations. Those are all too warm and they make us think this person is a bimbo or a ditz or not competent. That’s what happens. We have too much warmth that takes away from our competence.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Where should we start?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Let’s start with the power cues.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Okay, the power cues. So this is competence?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes, power cues. Let me get some more power cues. Okay, so we talked about the importance of hand gestures. There is a very good, competent hand gesture, which everyone should know if you want to be perceived as higher in competence. It’s called the steeple.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Oh, this.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Oh, yes. It’s on the cover of my book if you want to see it. Yes, this is when your hands look like a little steeple. They’re kind of relaxed and open. It’s a triangle for anyone that can’t see. Kind of like a triangle. Yeah, a triangle. It’s a power pose for the hands. Why? If you are doing this pose, you’re showing I’m not hiding anything from you. You can still see my palms, but I am very Relaxed and poised, enough so that I’m keeping my hands together. Now be careful, don’t drum. This is evil fingers. This is Mr. Burns, for those of you who know, right? So it’s a nice, still steeple. They raided hand gestures in a study and they found that this was the single The highest rated hand gesture that leaders made was when they made this gesture. Now, personally, I don’t use this a lot in my interpersonal interactions because it doesn’t feel super natural to me. It’s funny because we took one picture for my cover photos, and every single picture of me for my cover photos, I was smiling. And my wonderful photographer, Maggie Kirkland, said, Vanessa, can we just do one of you serious? I was like, but I’m not serious. She’s like, just one. Just do your most powerful power cue. And this is the only picture And that was the one that we chose for it. So it’s just funny because it’s a very high competence cue. So you can try the steeple, just be careful not to do evil fingers with it. That’s a high competence cue.
STEVE BARTLETT:
That picture of you on the front, what is that signaling?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So it’s a perfect balance, right? So one, I have the steeple cue, competence gesture. Two, I’m angled towards you. My body is angled towards you, which is a warmth cue that’s fronting. My toes are angled towards you, which is warmth. I also have a smoldering eye contact look, which is high competence, which we can talk about. And I have an up face, right? I’m not in my resting, bothered face. So that’s a slight warmth cue.
STEVE BARTLETT:
That is actually how it makes me feel. There’s an element of power, but it’s not an intimidating level of power.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Because I balanced it with that warmth.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Yeah, it’s like a welcoming element of power.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Well, yay. Woo, we did it. Now I’ve got to do it with the next one. Okay, steeple. Okay, steeple, yeah. Second, this is a weird one. The most important measurement on your entire body is the distance between your earlobe and your shoulder. This distance right here. Watch. If I were to do this in the interview the entire time, I would have a very small distance between my earlobe and my shoulder. I would look anxious. I would also have a really hard time giving you vocal power. You would have a hard—do you trust me?
STEVE BARTLETT:
Now you look nervous.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Right. I look nervous. There’s a direct correlation between confidence and anxiety and the distance between our shoulder and our earlobe. And very quickly, we’re trying to just assess someone in the first few seconds of seeing them. We’re trying to assess how confident are you? Can I catch it? We don’t like people who are anxious. We don’t want to talk to someone like this because we don’t want to catch that anxiety, but we do want to talk to someone who has the max distance between their earlobes and their shoulder. So when you’re in a first impression, also in your profile pictures, I want a relaxed distance, shoulders down, earlobes out, which is another reason why I like that this is how your table is set up, because it pushes my shoulders down, so I have a max distance. That makes me look more confident, but it also makes me feel more confident. There’s a look here, so when you do the steeple, and then you roll your shoulders down and back, you will begin to feel more confident. Don’t you feel that?
STEVE BARTLETT:
What if you like raise your head though? Because if I’m trying to get my ears away from my shoulders, I might go like this.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Actually, they’re the same distance. So you want to actually keep your chin level. And if you can help it, you don’t want to actually look down your nose at someone. It’s quite a scornful judgmental. Exactly. So you just noticed it even when I did it. So it’s not this, it’s just this. So maximizing this difference. Third one, I love eye contact. We all know good eye contact is important, but here’s what you might not know about good eye contact. Eye contact is a power move when you look at someone at the end of your sentence. So we’re very used to if someone’s thinking about something and they’re processing something in their head and I’m telling you that there are 465 gestures in a TED Talk, that is the most important way that I want to showcase something to you. We like it when someone is actually accessing different memories or areas of their brain, but then when I end my sentence looking right at you, you’re like, So highly competent people make eye contact specifically at the end of their sentences, to drill a point, and ideally when the other person is saying something important.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Okay, interesting. I just did it then. I do that when I’m doing interviews because I kind of like look off into the distance to think a little bit and then I come back to ask.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
The worst advice I hear people give, body language experts give, make more eye contact. Make 100% eye contact. It’s awkward. Actually, in Western culture, as they’ve studied this, the ideal amount of eye contact is between 60 and 70% of the conversation. If you make over 70% eye contact, it’s actually considered a territorial gesture. So if I were to be making 100% eye contact with you, it’d feel very invasive, very awkward. We like it when someone is processing or gathering information from around. Like if I’m processing something or I’m thinking about something or I’m accessing, all that matters is at the end of my point, I’m looking right at you. And that feels so much more powerful.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Okay, so that’s number three.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah, that’s number three. Yeah. Fourth one, one of my favorites. It’s called a lower lid flex. Lower lid flex is one of the least utilized, but one of my favorite cues. So biologically speaking, when we are trying to see something far away, we harden our lower lids. I’m trying to read the titles on your bookshelf. I harden my lower lids. That is because when our eye is trying to see far, it squints to block out the light. So you’ll see more details in my face when you harden your lower lid at me. So harden your lower lid. If you look at people’s sexiest men alive, almost every man in that magazine is, It’s Zoolander, right? Blue Steel is actually just a lower lid flex. That is because when someone is trying to really focus on something and really understand something, their lower lid is flexed as you’re doing right now. And boy, oh boy, do we like it when someone is lower lid flexing at us. Because it means you are really trying to understand and see me. So a lower lid flex is a great power cue to use in moderation, right? Nothing too much. That when someone is saying something on a date or in a meeting or a colleague is saying something really important and you want to show them, I am really listening. that lower lid flex shows them, I am super focused and intense on you. That is why women find men who do the lower lid flex very sexy, because they feel like, ooh, he’s really focusing on me. Now, there’s a little side note to the lower lid flex. Lower lid flex is not, it’s inherently in itself a positive cue. It’s a cue of focus, right? If you are in a presentation or a meeting and you say something and someone suddenly lid flexes at you, you might’ve just said something there like, really? So for me, this was a game changing moment as I was giving a presentation to a bunch of executives. And I said something about oxytocin, which is the hormone of love and cuddle and connection. And he goes, I saw him lower lid flex at me.
STEVE BARTLETT:
But he’s also turned his head there.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I don’t know if he, I don’t remember if he turned his head, but all I noticed is that distinctly he went from mm-hmm, mm-hmm to.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Ah, yes.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And I went, does that make sense? Any questions? So if you see a lower lid flex, your best choice is to try to gather more information. That makes sense? All good? Any questions for me? How we feel about this? So I said, any questions for me? And he goes, and I looked right at him. I said, any questions for me? He said, you know, I think they gave my wife oxytocin in labor. Is that the same thing? And it’s true that they give a form of oxytocin to induce women in labor. That’s how strong oxytocin is. In high doses, it will put women into labor. It’s a form that’s called pitocin. I said, you’re absolutely right. In medical settings, they can give synthetic forms of oxytocin to push women into labor. That was a moment for me because, one, as I realized, I was able to stop the skepticism and the confusion right there. before we moved on to anything else. And now when I teach oxytocin, I say, in social settings, oxytocin means this. Because in medical settings, it means something different. So noticing that lower lid flex is incredibly important for you to understand where you might have a hint of skepticism or a hint of confusion. If you’re in a sales meeting or a presentation, you want to make sure you have addressed whatever that person is flexing about before you move on.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Super interesting and that example you give there as well, had you not investigated that lower lid flex, you might have also thought something you said was wrong and lost your confidence and that can spiral into, you know, closing off and becoming a worse presenter.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
This is why I thought people hated me and I hated people. So for my folks that are listening who are like, I hate people and I get it. I was misreading cues as skeptical or negative of me when it could have been neutral or curiosity or trying to understand something better. If you can give these a try, it will help you more deeply understand people, which might help you like them more. Ready for the fifth one?
SPEAKER_05:
I’m ready for the fifth.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, the fifth one. This is a vocal cue. So we talked a lot about body language cues, but vocal cues are incredibly important. Vocal cues. Tell someone how you are feeling about them and how you feel about yourself. One of the biggest ones is an accidental question inflection. A question inflection is when we go up at the end of our sentence. So it sounds like we’re asking a question, even if we’re actually using a statement. The brain—research has actually looked at what the brain does when it hears an accidental question inflection. If we are listening to someone and we hear them accidentally use the question inflection, our brain goes from listening to scrutinizing. Why? Our brain wonders, why did you ask me that? Liars typically accidentally use the question inflection. If I say to my daughter, did you take the cookie from the cookie jar? And she goes, no. Oh, yeah. Liars are asking, do you believe this? So we have noticed, we did a massive experiment in our lab where we had people play two truths and a lie with us. So share two truths about themselves and a lie. And we found overwhelmingly one of the biggest patterns, there was a couple of different patterns, but one of the biggest ones was that liars asked their lie statement. So it would sound like this. Here, you can play with me and I’ll add the question inflection to one. I love dogs, I live in Austin, Texas, and I love cilantro.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Oh, yeah. You don’t like cilantro?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
No. It’s like a crime against humanity. Why do people put cilantro on anything? So we notice people ask the lie because they were asking, do you believe this? So our brain is very adept at this. If we hear the accidental question inflection used, we go, wait a minute, is someone lying to me? The biggest mistake that salespeople make is they get to their entire pitch and they ask their number. So it sounds like this. Hi, we’d love to do business with you. We’d love to have your project and the cost of this service is $5,000. If you ask your number, you are begging people to negotiate with you. If you are asking for a raise or you are asking for a certain salary and you ask it, you are signaling to the other person, I don’t really believe this number and you shouldn’t either. So the power cue, number five power cue, is using the downward inflection. Highly competent people, they do not mistakenly use the question inflection. They actually go down at the end of their sentences. President Obama was very good at—is very good at slinging down his words, which makes you want to listen. So it sounds like this. I’m going to say nothing so you can hear it. The problem in this country is that we don’t take seriously enough the issues of our people. And if we don’t take those issues seriously, we will be in grave trouble. So he tends to go down at the end of his sentences. He also has a lot of space in the bottom of his mouth. That makes us—gives us him more resonance, but it also makes us think, oh, he really believes his word, because it’s the opposite of question inflection. If you have a boundary, if you’re setting a limit, if you’re telling someone something really important about you, say it. Don’t ask it. That is the biggest thing you can do to get people to take you seriously.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Interesting.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And don’t ask your name. Most often I hear people ask their own name and it destroys their vocal charisma. So that would be, my name is Vanessa Van Edwards. Not my name is Vanessa Van Edwards. Your perceptions of my confidence in those two introductions are radically different. There’s a study that looked at this, and they looked at the vocal statements of surgeons. They had surgeons come into their lab and record 10-second voice tone clips, the clips that are most important when they’re meeting patients, their name, their specialty, and where they worked, something like this. Hi, my name is Dr. Edwards. I specialize in oncology, and I work at Children’s Presbyterian Hospital. They took these clips and they warbled the words. So you could hear the volume, the pace, the cadence, but not the actual words being said. So it sounded like this. I worked very hard on practicing that, by the way. That’s amazing. Because it has to sound like me, but nothing. They took these clips and they had people rate these surgeons on warmth and competence. The two things that we know are most important for charisma. The doctors who had the lowest ratings of warmth and competence had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits. In other words, we don’t sue doctors based on their skills. We sue doctors based on our perception of their skills, and that happens within the first few seconds of hearing them. So if you give the question inflection on your name, on your specialty, on what you do, people begin to doubt you. So the bad doctors sound like this. Hi, my name is Dr. Edwards. I specialize in oncology, and I work at Children’s Presbyterian Hospital. those doctors got rated as low in both warmth and competence because their brains were going, why are they asking? Are they not sure? I’m not sure either.
STEVE BARTLETT:
So it’s really signaling conviction in who you are, what you’re about and what you do. Interesting.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So practice your name, your price.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Hello, my name is Stephen. No, that was up. That was a little off. Hi, my name is Stephen.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
That’s it.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Okay. Yeah. Okay. I literally asked that like a question, didn’t I, the first one? I was like, hello, my name is Stephen. I was actually asking, I was trying to ask you if it was a good pronunciation. That’s so funny. That was the upward inflection.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And didn’t it feel different?
STEVE BARTLETT:
Totally different. The second one was me. So the first one was like seeking validation.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And you use a lot of downward inflection, except when you’re asking questions, which we like.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Okay.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Right. That’s why you lean higher in competence is you use already a lot of downward inflection.
STEVE BARTLETT:
It’s so interesting, because as you were speaking, something came to mind, which I was reading about in your work, which is you’re really good at what you do. You’re very good as a guest on a podcast and just as a professional generally. And as I was thinking this, I was saying to myself, I’m sure she knows, and I’m sure she can tell from my face that I think she’s good. But it’s funny because in your work you say that we’re actually, we over assume people can read us. So like when I was thinking, oh, she’s so good. And in your work, it says like, it says that I was doing it, I was assuming you knew how I felt about you. But in your work, you also make the case that I’ve actually, I should say it.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes, yes. There’s an effect where we think that people know how we feel. Specifically, it’s called signal amplification bias. It’s a name for this study, which is that we think our signals are obvious, that if we like someone or if we’re having a good time, we think, oh, they for sure know it. They don’t. Oh, the three magic phrases, we never finish them. That’s why you say, I was just thinking of you. That’s a way of assuring someone, I do think of you, only if it’s true. The second one is, you’re always so, So if you’re with someone and you’re impressed by them or they’re interesting or they’re funny, saying, oh, you always make me laugh. You’re always so interesting. You’re always so great to interview. You’re always so great at interviews. Giving them a label that is a positive label is the best gift you can give someone because it’s fighting that signal amplification bias. And the last one is, last time we talked, you mentioned.
SPEAKER_07:
Yeah.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
We are so honored when we get brain space that you remembered and you’re going to bring it up. And you specifically bring up something that they lit up with. Something they were like, oh, it was great. It was exciting. It was wonderful. Those are my three magic phrases. And it’s because they are fighting that signal application bias. I have no idea if you like this interview. I have no idea if you like my work. I have no idea. And the more that you can broadcast those symbols, those signals, the more people actually like you.
STEVE BARTLETT:
So what advice would you give me then as an interview I guess I’m an interview host of the show. What is, because people come here, sometimes they’re nervous, you know, we have people come in there, they, some people come in there nervous a little bit. And I always try, I always want to make them feel comfortable. But I, you know, as you said, I probably don’t rank that high on warmth. So it doesn’t come that natural to me. I’m not the kind of person that comes out and is like, hiya! Welcome! And like, hey.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And that would be off-brand for you.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Yeah, and it wouldn’t be authentic.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
No, no, it would be off-brand for you. Right, it’s too much. Okay, so five warmth cues. So for those of you who are listening, the five power cues I just shared, those are if you think you are really high in warmth, but you worry that people don’t take you seriously, you’re worried that people ignore you, you get interrupted in meetings. I want you to use those five power cues if that’s you. Now I’m going to teach you five warmth cues. If you have ever been told you’re intimidating, Hard to talk to. Cold. If you often feel like people are holding back or not opening up to you, I want you to use these five warmth cues. This is dialing up your thermostat. Okay, these are for you too. First, we love a triple nod. Research has found that if we do a slow triple nod, the other person speaks 67% longer. So as an interview, this is a great cue. Watch. So here’s my triple nod is, mm, mm, mm. We love it. It’s like a nonverbal dot, dot, dot. It’s like, tell me more. Tell me more. Now, be careful. Don’t bobblehead. So you don’t want to do it too much. Right. That’s too high and warm. And second, you don’t want to do it too fast. Too fast of a triple nod is impatience.
SPEAKER_05:
It means shut up.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah. So if you want someone to rap, if you want someone to rap a question, yeah, that, that.
SPEAKER_07:
That’s it.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Right? So here’s for everyone watching, here’s good. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Here’s please hurry up. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s shut the fuck up. Yeah. I’ve seen that before. And it works. It’s a really nice way of saying, please rap. Please end. So I love a warm triple nod, but you have to be careful with it. Okay, so that’s cue number one. Second. A head tilt. So universally, if we’re trying to hear something, we tilt our head up and we expose our ear, right? As if we’re saying, what was that? Like dogs do this when they’re like, you know, and they expose their ear. Humans also do this across cultures because it’s kind of a way that we’re like, oh, I’m listening to this. Research has found that if you deliver bad news with a head tilt, you are more likable. So people take the news better if you deliver bad news with a slight head tilt, because it literally makes you look more warm. It literally makes you look like you’re listening. Now, I only want you to do this when you’re actually listening, but a head tilt is also a way that you can slightly add warmth to your conversation or to your interview or to your date. Okay, so we’re gonna go back to that. So we don’t want to go too far. That looks weird. It looks a little weird, but not too much. And I also like to teach a head tilt to my highly warm folks who are bobbleheaders. So if anyone, if you’re like, oh, I do this a lot. I’m a bobbleheader. I’m a recovering bobbleheader because I like to—people like me, right? So I’ll nod too much. If you are a bobbleheader, you can train yourself to replace it with the head tilt because it’s physically impossible to head tilt while you nod. So if you’re a bobbleheader, just head tilt.
STEVE BARTLETT:
There’s something about the head tilt which signals they care and they’re empathetic. I don’t know what it is about someone’s head tilt. Because if someone was firing me and they were doing it like this, I feel like they don’t care. There’s something griefless. But if they do it like this, it’s like… They really care about me. That’s so crazy.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Just such a small… That one little thing. You know that you mentioned the book, The Game.
SPEAKER_05:
Yes.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I know a lot about that world. And there’s a funny trick they teach, which I’ll teach you. It’s not part of my warmth cues, but I’m gonna teach it to you because I think it’s interesting. Don’t let anyone use this on you, okay?
STEVE BARTLETT:
And nobody at home use this on anyone else?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Don’t use this on anyone else. So there’s this thing that NLP people will do, or pickup artists will do, where they move their hand like this, and the other person will begin to nod. Because typically when we do this with our hand, the other person starts to nod, which makes you think, I agree, I agree, I agree.
STEVE BARTLETT:
What are you doing for anyone that is watching?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I’m moving my hand up and down in a nodding yes motion. And so what I’ve noticed very manipulative people will do is they’ll be doing this, they speak like, don’t you understand what I’m saying? Do you get this? And then the person will start to nod. And I’ve seen audiences, entire audiences will start nodding. And then you think to yourself, well, I’m nodding, so I must agree with this person. It’s a secret way to get someone to secretly agree with you. So just be careful and make sure no one uses that on you.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And you’re doing it in a bit of a circular motion. Right.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Circular motion.
STEVE BARTLETT:
It’s not straight up and down. You’re just kind of like, for anyone that can’t see, she’s… Like we’re rolling something forward.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And then you’re like, I want to… It’s really hard to not nod your head when someone’s doing this, which then makes you feel like you agree with them.
STEVE BARTLETT:
That’s so crazy. It’s like you’ve got like a string on my head.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
A string in your head. It’s very weird. So don’t let anyone do that to you. And don’t use it.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Don’t use it on anyone.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I don’t teach it in my books because it’s like I’m worried that people… It’s too powerful. It’s too powerful. Okay, triple nod, head tilt. One and two. Okay. Third, we already talked about this one. Authentic smile. Right? A smile that reaches all the way up into your eyes. Highly warm people typically do do that authentic smile more. Now, I don’t like a fake smile, so I only want you to do it when you’re authentic. What’s wrong with that?
STEVE BARTLETT:
That was my authentic smile. You laughed. This is why I don’t smile. This is why people think I’m intimidating, because people laugh at my smile. Look.
SPEAKER_05:
That’s good.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
That was better. That was better.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I can tell you’re lying, Mrs. Body Language. I can tell you’re lying.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
That was better. That was better than the first one.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Better than the first one? That doesn’t mean it’s good. I’m looking for good.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Anyway, number four is… That’s authentic smiles number three. Authentic smiles number three. Number four. We love a lean. Ooh, we love a lean. When in the proxemic zones, right, we’re in those four zones, if someone’s leaning into you, it shows they’re literally trying to cross from that zone very, very subtly. And so you’ll notice very highly charismatic people who you want to be friends with, they’ll be like, tell me more. Tell me everything. and they lean in really close to you, and that makes you also feel closer. So if you want to be seen as higher in warmth, you can do this as a speaker. So you can lean in as you bold an important point. Like when I make an important point for you, I lean into it. I’m like, listen to this. This is good. But if I’m listening to you and you say something good, I’ll be like, what? Really? So you can do it as a speaker and as a listener, and it immediately adds more warmth.
STEVE BARTLETT:
It’s funny, okay, this might be a little bit of a tangent, but it just came to mind as you were speaking. There are, like, the odd person in my life who I’ve known for many, many years, but whenever I’m around them, it kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier, my body is just off. And, like, I just don’t know what it is. Like, I’m thinking of one particular person, by shant name, where I could be in a room full of people, and I’m relaxed, I’m calm, whatever. And this person who I’ve known for many, many years, the minute they arrived in the room, I wouldn’t be able to be the same person, and I don’t know what it is. I’d suddenly start overthinking my body language, and I’d start thinking, how’s my legs, and what’s my body, and I’d start covering, blocking a little bit. What is that trying to tell me? Do I need to cut this person out of my life? Is there words unspoken? What is it?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I would say it means do more research. I think that gut feelings are incredibly important because, you know, the best cue reading machine we have is our subconscious. Our subconscious or unconscious is picking up on lots of cues that we can’t consciously know. We can’t consciously know that we’re smelling adrenaline, but we are smelling it. So I think that’s a very important thing to pay attention to. It doesn’t mean you should cut them out, but I think it’s time to do more research. Are they truly happy for you? Are they truly rooting for you? Are they secretly angry or jealous?
STEVE BARTLETT:
Maybe I’m doing it to them.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
It’s possible that you’re in a loop with them, right? Like you’re expecting that bad thing and that expectation becomes reality. Like they’ve studied this, that the Pygmalion effect is real. If you expect not to like someone, you send off more unlikable cues. They feel unliked and so they don’t like you either. And so it could be that you’re in a loop with this person that maybe you make them feel the same way.
STEVE BARTLETT:
What do I have to do then next time I see them? Because I want to dial up, I don’t know, some warmth with this person or something or break that cycle.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, if I were you, they’re important to you?
STEVE BARTLETT:
Yeah, they’re important to me.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, so I would recommend asking questions that will level you up with them to level two. So my guess is you might be stuck in level one with them because you’re obviously uncomfortable with them. Research shows that the more commonalities we have someone, the more that we understand them, the more compassion we have with them, the more that we like someone. So I wonder if we could level up your relationship with them so you get to know them better, which means you’ll like them more. And if you make it through these six or seven questions and you still don’t like them, then maybe they’re not your person.
SPEAKER_05:
Okay.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, can I give you some questions for them?
SPEAKER_05:
Please. Okay.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Please. So here are my favorite, I call these level one, level two, level three questions. In the framework that I’m researching right now, it’s not done yet, I have four questions for each level and I’m working through these questions. But here are the questions that I think are the shortcut to connection.
SPEAKER_07:
Okay.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
That if you ask these questions with your partner, your friend, your colleagues, you’re going to level up with them. Okay, first. Are you working on anything exciting recently? So stop asking, what do you do? Stop asking, how are you? Stop asking, how’s it going? That’s why you hate people. If you’re asking those questions, of course you’re gonna hate people. Those are the most boring questions anyone’s ever asked. Can I give you a challenge?
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
A challenge. Here’s one challenge from this podcast. Stop asking, what do you do? For 30 days, I want you to go on a what do you do diet. Asking what do you do is telling the person’s brain, stay on autopilot. Damn, I lost that last night. No, no more. We’re on a diet.
SPEAKER_05:
Okay.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Also asking someone what do you do is asking what are you worth? And if someone’s not defined by what they do, it’s actually a rude question.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Do you know what? You’re so right. It’s so funny you say this because yesterday I went to this thing in New York, right? And I was introducing myself to some people and there was one particular person who I went over to and we’re having a conversation and halfway through the conversation I went, So what do you do?” And do you know what they replied? They went, this. And I just, I went home thinking about it, like I was like, I was like, of course, we’re fucking at one. What I’ve done there is I’ve just belittled what we’re doing right now, as if it couldn’t possibly have been what they do. And I just—honestly, I got in bed last night thinking about it. I thought, God, I don’t— Do you know what it was? I think I was so impressed by them that I was a bit awkward. Yeah. And then that just came out mid-sentence.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
What did you do? Yeah. Okay, so we’re going on a diet. Everyone for the next 30 days, we’re going on a diet. No more, what do you do? You’re going to replace it with working on anything exciting these days or working on anything exciting recently. This is permission connection. You ask someone that question, you are giving them permission. If they want to tell you about what they do, oh, they will. If they are not defined by what they do, they’ll tell you something better. And that also gives you really good nuggets for the next time you see them when you can say, hey, how was that thing you were working on that was really exciting going? So start with working on anything exciting these days, working on anything exciting right now. Second, what’s your biggest goal right now? So if you can, especially as we go into the new year, in the new year, right, being part of the year, I love, I ask this question in December, January, and February. I ask everyone, what’s your biggest goal right now? What’s your big goal for 2025? When you ask this question, you’re going to get one of two responses. One, someone shuts you down. I don’t believe in goals. Not my person. Not my person. I’m a growth-minded person. If someone says that, I’m like, cool, peace. We’re not going to get along very well because I have a lot of goals. Or they’re going to be like, oh, And they’re going to tell you all about goals. That’s also a great thing you can follow up on because then when you see them a month later or a week later or a year later you can be like, hey, how did that go?
STEVE BARTLETT:
It’s a great interview question. I was just thinking that. I should ask people that in the interview. Because you’re right. Someone that can’t articulate some kind of goal is probably not my kind of person. Those kind of people that go, actually those kind of people don’t listen to this podcast anyway. They just leave hate comments and fuck up.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah, exactly. So like it’s a very, I call those allergy questions.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Interesting.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
It’s a way to see, are we going to have an allergic reaction to each other? It creates an allergy. Like I know there’s a type of person, it susses them out really quickly and that’s not my kind of person. Okay, so working on anything exciting, what’s your goal right now? And then this is harder. This is a self-narrative question. Do we want to go deeper for a self-narrative question?
STEVE BARTLETT:
Of course we want to go deeper.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So if we’re getting into self-narrative and you’re trying to figure out yourself or someone else’s narrative, you want to ask the question. It sounds innocuous, but it’s not. What book, movie, or TV character is most like you and why? It’s kind of a silly, like, dinner party question that sort of sounds casual, but the answer to this question is so incredibly important. And here’s an example. How someone relates to characters, their values or personality, is how they see themselves. And people’s answers will shock you. I’ll give you one example. I was friends with someone for six years. One of my closest friends saw them all the time. Weekends. We went on outings together. We went on weekend trips together. I thought I knew her so well. I was like, I know her. I asked her this question, and I hypothesize, this is all my research for my next book, I was like, I hypothesize she’s a mom of three, super funny, super savvy. I was like, she’s gonna pick a great TV mom character that’s super savvy and funny. Asked her. She thinks about it for maybe one second and goes, Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games. I was like, the one who’s fighting for her life? She’s like, yeah, that’s how I feel every day. And we, for the first time in six years, had a conversation about how she feels about her day that was totally different than anything I had ever known, that she feels scared and lonely, and that she is fighting for survival. And it was the first time that I truly connected with her. I cannot tell you how many times the answer to this question has changed for people in my life, and I’m like careful which examples to use because I’m worried that they’re gonna be watching, but has changed my relationship with people in my life based on how they see themselves. Not how I see them, but how they see themselves.
STEVE BARTLETT:
It’s really interesting because there’s so many people listening right now that are now doing that. And they’re discovering, maybe for the first time, even how they see themselves. Because it’s funny, because when you said that, obviously I did it in my head. And I was like, fuck.
SPEAKER_07:
Well, now I want to know what it is.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Have you told me after? No, I’ll tell you now. I was thinking, it’s funny because the first person I thought of was Will Smith because people say I look like him sometimes, right? Yes. And you have to correct someone.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
If someone says who they look like, you say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, you look like values, personality.
STEVE BARTLETT:
But then when I thought about TV characters, I actually thought about Will Smith in the pursuit of happiness. And if you think about his journey, he was broke. And he was fighting really hard to get out of that situation. And he got out of that situation. So it goes back to the personality type you described at the beginning where like, you think you’re a hero of your own journey, like, well, you’ve overcome something.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And do you feel you’ve found it? Found the… Found it? Happiness? Are you at the end of the movie?
STEVE BARTLETT:
I’m at the end of the movie. I don’t know if you can ever get to the end of the movie. That’s why I’m struggling with that question. Because there’s…
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Like, I think I found it.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And I’ve always… I don’t know.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Like, not the end of your movie. It’s not the end of your life movie. But like, in that example, we could have a long discussion about like, what is… Have you made it?
STEVE BARTLETT:
So the reason why I think I’m hesitating is because I think to myself, if I say I’ve made it or if I’m at the end of the movie, then I’m like, it kind of robs me of the future in a weird way. In my head, it’s like robbing me of like doing anything else with my future. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, yes, yes.
SPEAKER_04:
If you feel like you’re at the end of the movie, I’m like, oh my god.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes, no, that’s true. You’re never at the end of the movie. But like, if you feel that you’ve made it, it means you have freedom to pursue things and do work for meaning as opposed to hitting it.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Yeah, of course. Yeah, like I used to work in call centers at night time selling hotel rooms and car insurance and artificial grass. And now I get to sit here and have conversations with people like you and like people tune in and stuff. It’s like, if I don’t realize at this moment how much, how much privilege I have, I think I’d be, I’d be pretty fucked up. So yeah, I do feel like disproportionate, like unbelievably fortunate in a way that I actually don’t think I can understand. I think maybe I dreamed of this, but to be here feels, feels suspicious. Yeah, that’s a strange word that came to mind. It feels suspicious because it, I don’t know, you just think, you just think sometimes you think. Are you worried? It’s maybe it is worried, but it’s also just like, But surely not. Like, it’s so interesting, because I had the dream of like being successful in business, but I didn’t have a dream of or ever imagine that my life would be like this, where like people know who you are. I never had that dream. Never imagined it being possible. That was other people. For sure.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And so also, I, that’s a very accurate Like, that’s how I think of Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happiness, a little bit. It’s like, you never really see him truly happy in that movie.
STEVE BARTLETT:
No, he’s always just, yeah, running.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Like, that’s something that I, that’s why I ask, like, did you get it? You know, you pursued it, you’re here.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Of course, I’m still chasing after something, aren’t I? That’s what I think. I don’t know what I’m chasing after.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I wonder what you’re chasing after. I don’t know.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I actually don’t know.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
But I think that you’re interviewing for something. Like, when I watch your interviews, which are amazing, I’m like, he’s trying to find the answer to something. What is it?
STEVE BARTLETT:
always like with every person is a different thing. And actually, most of the answers I’m looking for my own answers. And my general belief is that if I check, like authentically go in search of my own answers, which requires some level of like, being open and willing to be open, even though there’s a lot of people watching, then there’ll be lots of other people out there that are struggling with the same things or searching for the same answers as well. Yes. This is interesting. I do ask myself a lot, what am I, like, what’s the point? Like, what am I, like, what am I? But is it not, this is a bit of a tangent obviously, is it not the case that we should all be searching forever? Like we should all be in pursuit of something forever.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I do love a quest, and I love pursuing, and I think humans are built to pursue things. But I also think, I hope, and I’m not here yet, I’m getting there, that there’s a point in our life where we can stop the grind. I think I’m grinding a little bit in my career. I don’t know if you feel like that. Like I’ve made it. I feel like I’ve made it. I’m luckier than I ever, I can’t believe I get paid to do what I do, but I’m still pursuing, pursuing. I hope there’s a point in my life where I can just be sharing wisdom. where I’m not pursuing anything, it’s not a number or a list or a, it’s just like all I’m doing is sharing wisdom and giving out public education. Like, I think that I’m hopeful that there is a stage of our life where it’s just that.
STEVE BARTLETT:
It’s number five on the one.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Oh my gosh.
STEVE BARTLETT:
We did lean, which was number four. Number five is… Actually I have to pause and lean because I wanted to ask you about something I read in a book about peacocking.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes.
STEVE BARTLETT:
So I read in this pick-up artist book that I read when I was 18 and some of the videos that I watched thereafter and some of the other books that I read thereafter and some of the other videos I watched thereafter. about this concept of peacocking where you can, if you’re like on a date or you’re interested in a girl or a guy in a bar, if you lean in too much, you’re signaling low value and like over interest. And ever since I learned that, I’ve seen it everywhere. And I’ve seen it in my friends. Me and my friends went to like Marbella or somewhere, I can’t remember. It was many, many years ago. And there was this beautiful girl there. And we were all pursuing her. Yes, like that, like a Labrador. And I was saying to my boys, there’s actually a photo of it on my phone, as me, Dom, and my friend Ash sat there, and we’re looking over at some of our other friends, and we’re saying, they’re peacocking, they got no chance. And that’s how the story transpired. And then when this beautiful girl came over to my other friend, he was aware of this peacocking thing, he kept his neck back, he kept his chest back, all these kinds of things. He didn’t lean in, even though it was loud. Closed. Closed.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
OK. Here’s why. Too much of a lean is a bad thing. It’s called a bow. Right? If you lean too far over, you get very quickly into bowing or submissive behavior. We don’t like people who are submissive to us. We want equals. And so you’re absolutely right. What triggers in the brain if you’re leaning too much is literally, I am subservient to you. And that makes someone who does not want to be or in an unequal relationship feel very uneasy. So that is why too much of a lean, always with these nonverbal accusers, too much of a good thing. You lean too much, it’s considered a bow. You also don’t want to lean the entire time because then you look like a hunchback, right?
STEVE BARTLETT:
I’m lowering my value by leaning in too much.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And it’s distracting. Like, I want to lean in as a bold or a highlight. If I were to be reading a book and highlight the entire page, the highlight means nothing. If you lean in when someone’s like, Really? And then I lean back, then it’s powerful. Every single one of these cues we are using as a bold or an emphasis or a highlight. Just enough of a good thing.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Okay, not too much leaning. Just use it as a party trick. No, no, I mean, just use it like as a highlighter.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
As a highlighter. You’re highlighting. Yes, yes, yes.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Number five.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, five. Nonverbal bridge. So this is a concept that I learned on the road. So I saw this in action in a lot of our experiments. did a big speed networking experiment in our lab where we had 500 speed networkers try out different conversation starters. We recorded them, we coded their conversations, and we looked for patterns of good and bad conversations. And we found there were certain questions that worked better than others, and there were certain questions that did terribly. And one thing we found is that when people rated a conversation on a five scale, like five amazing best conversations I had, we’re going to connect on LinkedIn, I think I like them, the best ones, they used a lot of nonverbal bridges. Nonverbal bridges are when someone is trying to bridge the distance between you. So that could be a lean. Lean is one of them. But it also could be a reach out. We noticed that in the good conversations, people were trying to physically close the distance between them with hand gestures, with leans, with nods, with foot movement, with drinks. And when they were close enough, they would often do very light touches on the arms, on the shoulder. So have you seen this like on a really good date? Have you ever been in a restaurant? Like my husband, I like to play this game where we look and we try to guess if a couple is very like new couple, old couple, how they’re doing. In a very good date, they are looking for as many opportunities to touch as they possibly can. That’s nonverbal bridge. Even if I were to be like, oh, let me tell you something, like that slight reach out, tap of the knuckles, tap of the arm. That’s a quick saying, I’m going to reach into your intimate zone, but I’m not going into your intimate zone. And really good relationships, really warm people, they are bridging all the time. They walk by you, they touch your shoulder, they say, how’s it going? Hey, I was thinking about you. They’re constantly doing these very small bridges and that might not be actual physical touch, it could even be the look of a touch. Like one thing that I teach my students who are uncomfortable with touch is you can even touch without touching. That sounds really weird, but like put your arm closer to me so I can demo it for you. So let’s pretend that we’re at dinner. I could be like, oh my gosh, really?
STEVE BARTLETT:
Okay, so you didn’t touch me.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I didn’t touch, but it did the same thing.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Yeah.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Not quite oxytocin. No, but it kind of did. Yeah, but kind of, you’re like, oh, I get it.
SPEAKER_07:
Yeah.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
She’s trying to close the intimacy of the distance. So nonverbal bridges, trying to reach out, reach into someone’s face very briefly and come back, trying to lean into someone’s face very briefly. This is why giving people things or serving people is such a warm thing. You hand someone a drink, like you come to my office, I offer you hot chocolate, I offer you tacos, I want to break the social scripts, I want to give you something different, and I’m looking for reasons to serve you.
STEVE BARTLETT:
You give people tacos at your office.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah. I’m in Austin, Texas. You would like it. You would like it. If you were hungry, you’d be like, give me that taco. Give me that taco.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I don’t know if that’s office food, but each to their own. So hugging and stuff like that, you know, there’s this thing that people talk a lot about, which is awkward hugging. And sometimes you hug someone and you just feel like, oh God, they didn’t like that. I didn’t like that. That was bad for both of us.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah, horrible. Can we address the hug issue? Please. Okay. You need to signal what kind of greeting you want from the moment someone first sees you. You can stop awkward greetings from happening with simple nonverbal cues. Here’s what they are. You want a handshake? So good to see you. I want you to be doing this from 10 feet away. So good to see you.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Oh, come in with it.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah, you’re literally signaling to someone, so good to see you, right? This immediately signals their brain, don’t try to give me an awkward hug. Don’t side hug me. Don’t hug me. We’re handshaking. It is a very clear way to be like, it’s called blading. So we angle our body a little bit forward and we put one hand out. You know I’m coming in for a handshake. If you want a hug and you’re a hugger, it’s so good to see you. It’s so good to see you.
SPEAKER_04:
Okay, arms out.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Arms out, and that’s also going to prevent the awkward side hug. The worst thing you can do is like this.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Which is a kind of butt.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
One arm up. People are like, do I shake it? Do I side hug? Are we going to hug? Are we going to high five? Are we going to fist bump? If you want a fist bump, you’re coming in with a fist bump.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Should I be a hugger? Because I don’t, it always, it’s context dependent.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I do not like hugging people when I first meet them. I was pitching a TV show about recovering awkward people. I had a very big network, and I walk into the pitch room, and at that point, I was a hugger, or I was, I thought I should hug, because that was one of the things in LA. LA people are huggers and cheek kissers a lot. And so I was like, I walk in and I say, oh, it’s so nice to meet you. I’m a hugger. Oh, yeah. And the exec goes, I’m not.
None:
Oh.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Just cringe.
SPEAKER_05:
Oh, God.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Just, I died inside. I died inside. And you know what? That pitch went terribly. Do I have a TV show called Recovering Awkward Person? No, I don’t. That’s because I think I hugged him. And I went forward with it.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Too much warmth. Too much warmth. Not enough competence.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And so I will never do that again. So now I never, ever say I’m a hugger, and I always offer my hand. Now, if someone says to me, oh, but I’m a hugger, and they wave my hand away, no problem.
STEVE BARTLETT:
No problem. That’s interesting. If we take that back to the charisma framework of warmth and competence, it is signaling a little bit too much. A lot of warmth.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
It’s a lot of warmth. And I know a lot about a person when they tell me, I’m a hugger.
SPEAKER_05:
What do you know?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
High warmth, probably a people pleaser, over eager, really want to connect, probably feel lonely, a little bit afraid, and I want to make them feel as liked as possible.
STEVE BARTLETT:
That’s a lot just from that one sentence.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I’ve hugged a lot of people. Also, you know, I have amazing students. You know, we have millions of views on our YouTube channel and they feel like they know me. And so if they want to hug me, I’m totally okay with it. Because I’ve been in their bed, I’ve been in their living room, I’ve been in their kitchen TV, I’ve been on their phone. I’ve shared my stories with them and I understand why they want to hug me because we feel like friends. And that actually is a compliment.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And you like it?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I do like it. Like when a student says, oh my gosh, I love you. I love Captivate. I’m like, come here.
STEVE BARTLETT:
It feels like a friend. So on the hugging point then as well, is there a great way to hug someone? I mean, yeah. How is that?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Have you been told you’re a good hugger?
STEVE BARTLETT:
I’ve tried to work on it. So I think I am now. I actually have been told I am. But it’s part of the reason why is because I’ve learned a lot from doing this podcast and someone told me don’t tap on the back. Don’t tap on the back.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And they told me to like… We don’t like being tapped on the head. We don’t like being tapped on the back. It’s a submissive cue, right? It’s like you’ll notice on power players and politics will sometimes demean someone by going, hey, bud. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely don’t hug. So you’re going to want to approach equally. You don’t want any kind of asymmetry in your hug, right? So that’s why you want to approach someone like this, like no asymmetry, none of this, straight on. So this is hard. If you are taller than the person, you typically want to go up, but you want to avoid like the, who’s going up, right? So the taller person should always try to go up and you want to like literally angle up. The lower person is going to angle down and you’re going to try to go torso to torso.
SPEAKER_05:
Okay.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And I like a two-second hug. By the way, there is research on the length of handshakes. I haven’t seen research on the length of hugs. But a handshake should be between one and three pumps, or one and three seconds. So, for example, we’re shaking at one, two, three. That’s good. And typically, they found that if we do a three-second shake, it’s with a new person. So our first shake was about three seconds, because we didn’t know each other. But if I were to see you again, like, oh, it’s so good to see you. Okay, you do okay, so typically if you already know someone you’re just like doing a quick reading It’s a one second and if you don’t know someone it’s a three second.
SPEAKER_05:
What if I
SPEAKER_04:
Your face, as I got to four seconds, you were like offended. You’re like, not my person. You were like, you like cussed me out with your eyes.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah, I was like, horrible! That’s how I feel. I was giving my arm back. You also want to make sure that when you’re doing a handshake, you’re offering thumb up. Thumb up is really important. You’ll notice that certain political power players will hear if, yeah, so they’ll flip you.
SPEAKER_05:
Oh, Donald Trump.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes. And he really pulls. And he’ll pull you. He’ll pull you off. I’ve never shaken hands with him, so I don’t know, but I’ve watched many, many a video, and he’ll shake your hand, turn you up. This is a very vulnerable place to be. We don’t like it as humans to have these arteries up. So he’ll flip, so he’ll flip, and he’ll pull you off there.
STEVE BARTLETT:
It doesn’t feel good, does it? But what does that signal? Does that signal competence and strength?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
No, I don’t think it’s either. I actually think it’s a danger zone.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Okay.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Because it’s purposely, I don’t, none of the cues I teach are manipulative in that way. Like that is purposely trying to get someone off balance, like to give them disequilibrium. I like relationships to be equal. That’s why I want you to offer thumb up. I also don’t want you to open, you know, offer your hand like, you know, up where you’re saying I’m going to be submissive to you. We don’t like that. Right. So thumb up.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I think, I can’t remember where I learned it, but I learned that if you cup, then it’s signaling warmth. So I was going to cup earlier on, but I was holding some stuff. I remember thinking I’ll walk out there and I’ll cup. Why didn’t I get my cup? Because I was holding all your books. It is warm. I was holding your books. I was like, I can’t. Imagine if I tried to cup with your books. It would be so strange.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
No, so cupping is really warm. It’s double the warmth. It’s double the oxytocin. It’s like a hand hug. So it’s super high and warm. It’s also called the politician’s handshake. So you only want to do it if you are truly and genuinely trying to show warmth. Otherwise, it can come across as forced. I also, speaking of like weird signals, I’ve heard this about men, that men to men have two different kinds of nods. Tell me if you think this is true. So if you walk down the hallway and you see a man you know, you go, hey, nod up. If you see a man you don’t know, you go, morning. and you’re not down.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Oh, that’s interesting.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And supposedly it’s because a person you know you’re willing to expose this part of your neck, but if you don’t know someone, you want to keep your chin down, but you’re still acknowledging them. Is that true?
STEVE BARTLETT:
Well, do you know what’s funny? The way that I think about it is if I see a black guy out and about, pretty much anywhere, and they know me, whatever, they’ll typically do that. There’s something about, I don’t know if I’m just making this up, but there’s something about, like being part of, I can see them from across the room, have no idea who they are, and it’s like a, me and you.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And I trust you. It’s a way of being like, I’m willing to expose this, I trust you.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Oh, okay. So interesting. Interesting.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So I’ve noticed that women don’t do that.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Okay, so, oh yes, not down is stranger. I see you.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Morning.
STEVE BARTLETT:
So interesting. Got noted. So interesting. So, so interesting. I’m a CEO. I do speaking on stage. You speak on stage as well. You’re very, very good at it. Is there anything that I should know if I’m a leader in a business or I’m a public speaker that I should be thinking most about when I’m up on stage to signal, I don’t know, whatever I want to signal to get whatever I want?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes. Purposeful movement. A big mistake I see CEOs make on stage is they either don’t have purposeful movements, they pace the stage back and forth, or they’re stuck in one point and they don’t move from that point and it makes them look very stiff. I believe you should block your speeches, just very subtly. So for example, I always, when I deliver, I start in the middle of the stage, always, always. So when I’m being introduced, right, your first few seconds on stage is the most important for your entire talk. So as you’re being introduced, you walk on stage, pick a point and walk purposely to it. Don’t meander onto stage. You’re walking right to the middle of the stage or the left of the stage, however you pick, and you’re delivering your first opening line, opening story in that middle point. That’s where I like it. And that intention walking on stage is going to make you look so much more confident and not disorganized or ambiguous. Then, if you can, this is for the advanced speaker and this is you, I think. You want to help your audience with your stage movement. So in my presentations, when I’m sharing science or fact or research, I’m on the left-hand side of the stage. When I’m moving to personal story, gifs, anecdotes, or a funny video, I’m on the right side of the stage. That is a way I’m helping my audience organize and categorize my talks. I’ve also noticed in the audience there are highly warm people and there are highly competent people. I’ve noticed if I train them that way, I’m doing a 60-minute keynote, they begin to subconsciously recognize it. My highly competent folks perk right up. When I get to the left side of the stage, oh, this is for me. And my highly warm folks are like, ha, my turn. And it really helps them know when to pay the most attention. So you should think about for your talks, you also can do this chronologically. Some of my students are like TED speakers and they’re telling more of a chronological story as opposed to like making points. I will often teach them to start, like we like to, you know, in Western cultures we read from left to right. I like them to actually start on the left-hand side of the stage or the audience’s left. Because the beginning of their story starts here. And they share their childhood. There’s a picture of their childhood on the slide. And they slowly begin to move over to the middle when the middle part of their journey happens. And they finally get to their arc, their knowledge, their aha moment. They’re finally, they’ve made it over to the far side of the stage, the far right side of the stage.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And in terms of what I’m saying, we talked a little bit about the actual content of what I’m saying, because this applies not just to when I’m on stage, but also to emails and WhatsApps. And I think most of our communication these days is on a screen. So if I’m trying to be a master of structuring a sentence on a screen to set people up for success, what have I got to be thinking about?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
What emotion do you want your person to feel when they see your name in their inbox, on stage, in LinkedIn? That is the emotion that you want to label yourself. So for example, in your talks, like for example, in my talks, I am trying to acknowledge the pain of awkwardness. I don’t want people to feel like they are unseen. So when I say you’re overlooked, you’re misunderstood, you’re underestimated, you feel awkward and out of control and anxious and overwhelmed, I hear you. You’re not alone. I’ve been there. And then the solution to that feeling, the where it gets better, is confidence and presence and memorability. And the mechanism is blueprints and formula and hard skills. That helps me gift to the audience a solution emotion. So for you, I would say, what are the pain points you want your audience to resonate with so they feel heard by you, seen by you, understood by you? What’s the goal emotion that you want to give them from your talk, from your podcast, from the email that they’re subscribing to? And then what’s your mechanism? What’s your way that you do that?
STEVE BARTLETT:
Imperfection. So imperfection. I was watching a video of yours, I think from 10 years ago, where you sat with two lovely people talking about charisma. And one of the things you said earlier in the video is that I think it was like TV shopping or something like that where like a lady made a mistake. She spilled a milkshake or something. Yes. And she did more sales because she spilled a milkshake.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes, that’s it.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Explain this to me.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes. Another study by Dr. Richard Wiseman who wanted to know, do you have to be perfect? which for many years, I wanted to be perfect. And then I realized, oh, there is no such thing as perfect, and I don’t want to be that way. Very simple. He had a model selling a blender in a mall. And in one version, she had the perfect pitch. And I’ll take your strawberries and your bananas and just hit the button and here you have perfect smoothies. And the second one, he had same smoothie, same pitch, same verbal, but she spills the smoothie on the table as she’s pouring it. People bought more of the blender when she spilled the smoothie. Now, does this mean I want you to purposely spill your smoothies? No. I did have a piece of kale in my teeth earlier, and I really considered coming in with it just to see what would happen. I didn’t. I did. I did think about it, but I didn’t do it. But I do think there’s like, stop trying to be perfect. Own your authentic vulnerabilities. Don’t purposely smell a smoothie. Don’t purposely smell your coffee. By the way, that experiment was repeated with coffee and job interviews. If I remember correctly, they had an audio clip, and hirers were rating job candidates on performance. And in one of the audio clips, they had him spill his coffee. Oh, whoops, oops, oops, oops. Sorry about that. I spilled my coffee. Let’s cut that. And then go back to the interview. And they rated that candidate as a better candidate, even though he spilled his coffee. Why? It’s called the other shoe effect. We know that every—no one’s perfect. We know this. It’s impossible. And so when we’re interacting with someone, even on a commercial, even interview, we’re like, what’s wrong with you? What is your imperfection? And it kind of distracts us. This research, The Other Shoe Effect, found the longer the interview goes on without something dropped, like without the other shoe to drop, the more the interviewer is like, Hmm, what’s going on here? And the more they’ll try to ask questions to try to find it. You are better off in an interview or on a date dropping your shoe. So sharing whatever that vulnerability or imperfection is closer to the start of the interview or the date, because it helps other person A, get to know you better, but also not be so worried that they’re not seeing your true imperfection. Captivate, when I first wrote it, my intro was really, really boring. And my publisher, I love her, Nikki, my editor, wrote back and she’s like, Vanessa, your intro doesn’t sound like you. It sounds like you’re trying to be something you’re not. And she was right. I was trying to sound like an academic researcher. I’m not an academic researcher. I’m a behavior researcher. I’m a pop scientist. I’m a recovering awkward person. She’s like, start with that. So the opening line of Captivate is, hi, I’m Vanessa. I’m a recovering awkward person. That is why that book hit the bestseller list. I dropped the shoe. Yes, I teach charisma. Yes, I teach body language. I am still in recovery. I am still constantly worried that people hate me. I have a small and wonderful group of friends. But otherwise, people make me still nervous. I know how to deal with it. I know how to make conversation. But I want you to know there’s still awkwardness here. No matter how many of these you learn, you’re probably still going to face awkwardness and overwhelm, but at least it will be a little bit easier. So I think it’s really important that we plan to share our inner perfections and not try to hide it.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Personal branding is a big thing now because we have social media, we have LinkedIn, it’s a big part of what gets you a job and gets you opportunities and gets you speaking appointments and book deals etc. So everybody is, well most people are playing the game of personal branding to some degree. So as you were saying about being perfect and showing imperfections, again it feels like there’s a there’s like a Is gradient the right word? It’s like a spectrum. That’s a nice word. For sure. You can go too far with imperfection.
SPEAKER_07:
Oh, yeah.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Me and my friends call this deficiency promotion.
SPEAKER_07:
What?
STEVE BARTLETT:
And then on the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got ideas promotion, which is like when you’re all about like, look how smart I am and these are my ideas. And deficiency promotion is look how traumatized, broken, sick, ill I am. And you build a whole brand around that. And you can like, you know, so You’re probably still going to get speaking appointments either side because, you know, they’re going to want people to speak about this stuff, but also this stuff. But I think you have to be quite intentional about how you show up on this spectrum.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Well, first of all, what’s true? The very first question is like, don’t purposely spill the smoothie.
STEVE BARTLETT:
But you know what’s interesting is when you build a brand, it becomes self-reinforcing. So I see people on both sides of the spectrum. Maybe they started in the middle and then they got likes and followers.
SPEAKER_04:
And they had to get toxic.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Like, what else is wrong with you? That’s why we love you.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
You’re so broken. Totally. I think that there are people who are locked into being broken and being messy and people don’t want to see them triumph. However, I think it is important to show people if you are very broken and in a bad point and a bad stage in your life, like, show it and then show them how you’re a hero out of it. That can inspire other heroes.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I agree. But is there such a thing as spending too long in either camp? Do you know what I mean? Because we like a little bit of, oh, you had a bad day, great, but you have a bad life.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Different strokes for different folks. I think there are people who would stay over there forever.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Yeah, but if you’re there for 10 years where you’re just every day you’re showing up like another shit day for me for 10 years.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I think they would still get likes. I think they would. They would. Of course they would. I mean, it would be miserable for you as a person, but if that’s your brand, that’s your brand.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I guess you said the most important thing, which is like, who are you?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah, like if that’s the truth, if you’re having a decade of
STEVE BARTLETT:
then be honest.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
You’ve got a decade of it.
STEVE BARTLETT:
It’s interesting with social media that I think social media started in a place where it was, you know, the margarita on the beach, and that was in such high supply that something else became in greater supply, which was being a bit more honest and open.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Stretch marks on the beach.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Yeah, exactly. Stretch marks on the beach.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
That’s exactly what happened. And those are people who’ve gone viral from those kind of posts. I do want to say something about personal branding. I think about it a little bit differently. So in the very last section of cues, I talk about visual cues. We have to remember that the cues in our brand, the colors we wear, what’s behind you in your background, the props you’re holding in your picture, what’s behind you in your videos, they’re triggering neural networks. So for example, they’ve researched this, if I say free associate to fire truck, you might say red. engine, dog, and you might start to associate different words. There are really common neural networks. So what you want to think about is what neural networks are you triggering in your personal brand? For example, I like you to create strong neural networks. All of my single students, my students who are dating, I say your profile picture should be triggering all kinds of neural networks that you like. So if you love skiing, you should be on a slope holding skis because for some people that will trigger a fierce fear neural network, right? Like I’m not a skier. I see skis. I’m like cold, scared, alone or like knees hurting. Like that’s what I think when I see skis. I would not be a good partner for them. But someone else is going to be like adventure, family, fun, vacations. That’s your person. Every picture on your profile should be creating allergies and attractors. should be activating neural networks for your person. You want them to have similar neural networks to you. My husband and I, I think, if you were to show us both pictures of the same things, we would have very similar neural networks for different vacations, different props, different foods, different activities. And that’s because we have similar ways of thinking. We are very different, but we activate the same similar neural networks for pain and pleasure.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Okay. I had a conversation with a really good friend of mine about this. Okay. They are looking for a partner and they are approaching their 40s and they were asking me about their Instagram and the first thing I noticed about their Instagram is I would say 80% of pictures they’re holding a cocktail or a drink of alcohol. Now, as I looked at the Instagram, I go, oh, party girl. I don’t think like settle down and let’s have a family.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Absolutely. Does she want to have a family? Yes. Okay. Wrong pictures. Okay. She is activating the wrong neural networks for men. She’s dating men.
SPEAKER_07:
Yeah.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
She’s dating the wrong, men are going to look at that and be like, party girl, fun, out, not the mother of my children. So those are creating allergies for the ideal man.
SPEAKER_05:
So what does she need to change?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
She needs, okay, so what kind of husband and father does she want? Does she want an outdoor lover?
STEVE BARTLETT:
A good one that can, she said to me, I want a good one that can help me with some of these overheads. Overheads? Bills. She doesn’t want him to pay all the bills. She just wants some help with the fucking bills.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, so a hard worker. She earns a lot of money. Okay, so that’s pictures of her, you know, working hard at a conference. What kind of way does she spend her weekend? She’s hiking, or she’s biking, or she’s running across the Brooklyn Bridge, or she’s running a marathon, or she loves dogs, or she loves cats, or she’s eating big waffles and pancakes. Like, she should be taking pictures of what she wants to do with her partner so that they look at that and they’re like, I want to join her for that. And you also want to, create allergies. You don’t want to appeal to everyone because you’re going to go on bad dates.
STEVE BARTLETT:
The other thing I know about this person is something you said about earlier. It’s just that their body language, as I think about it, is just so, it’s like trying to take up less space, is the only way I can describe it.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Contracted. Exactly like that. Right, so when we talk about distance between, like, so earlobe and shoulder, distance number one. Second distance that’s important, between your arm and your torso. In a good conversation, we have distance that’s fluctuating a lot. Like, right, I’m talking, my arms are going out, you’re seeing distance between my torso and my arm. People who are very anxious,
STEVE BARTLETT:
Yeah, like in, like just like a pencil.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Or like Penguin, I call it Penguin, where they like don’t ever release their arms from their torso and they’re very contracted. They have very minimal hand gestures and they’ll often clutch something to their chest. Now, if I were to give the entire interview like this, you would think, oh man, she is nervous or she’s, you know, afraid or she’s anxious because I don’t have that space. The moment I release that space, it makes me look more confident. That’s the other distance you can play with. Hand gestures really help with that. Hand gestures help with space, with vocal variety, with comprehension. That’s why I like them so much.
STEVE BARTLETT:
So if I’m trying to get her a husband, I’d like to. We’ve been friends for a long time, almost a decade, and I have sat in the passenger seat of her life and tried to be a supportive friend in any way. But if I tried to give her advice in terms of cues and body language and sentences on how to get a partner, where do we start?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
OK, so one, let’s get her some pictures that are going to attract the right person and create allergies for the wrong person.
SPEAKER_07:
OK.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Two, her main profile pictures should be showing warm and competent body language. Yeah. Authentic smile. Maybe a head tilt. Maybe you have a hand gesture. Maybe that’s too much warmth. I want to see a lot of space between your earlobe and your shoulder. Make sure it’s a symmetrical smile. Make sure we’re not contempt. Make sure we’re not accidentally fear smiling. So the profile picture is number one most important. Yes. Okay. It’s a lot, but okay. It’s going to be hard. We’ve got to find her husband.
SPEAKER_04:
We haven’t got much time either.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
We’ve got to find her husband. The interpersonal body language is really hard as a friend to correct on someone. May I ask you, does she use vocal fry? What’s that?
SPEAKER_00:
Does she ever talk like this where it’s kind of like a frying pan where she’s not using her full voice? Typically, people who use contracted small body language often have that kind of a vocal power. And so they go into a pattern like this and then like, oh, like, I mean, I just like watered the plants this weekend and like,
STEVE BARTLETT:
Ooh. Also, the end of this sentence goes up. Right.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So that’s the first thing I would actually try to help her with, is making sure that she does not accidentally use vocal fry. It’s usually an accident. Here’s the fastest way to get rid of vocal fry. If you are using it, you hear yourself using it, or someone else is using it, just speak louder. Vocal fry happens from a lack of breath. What actually is happening is you’re speaking and your vocal cords are rattling. It’s a terrible noise, but that’s my vocal cords rattling together. And the moment that I speak louder, it goes away. So oftentimes when we’re lacking confidence or we have tight body, we have less breath and we create vocal fry. So just ask her to speak up a little bit. It’s hard to get someone to stand more broadly because if they’re uncomfortable with it, they don’t like it. So what I would recommend is she should do activity dates. When you’re at dinner with someone or at brunch or a coffee at a bar, you’re like this, so what do you do? And you’re like, it’s shriveled and you’re like clutching your drink and you’re in your patterns, you’re in those patterns. Go on hikes, go play pickleball, go learn pickleball, go play ping pong. Like do something physical because then it’s much easier to be broad.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Interesting. Okay. That makes a lot of sense, actually. Yeah, because you’re going to, if it’s in a context you’re super familiar with, the old patterns are going to be triggered.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes, and I’ve tried to get people to stand more broadly just by telling them, and it helps, the awareness helps, but it’s much easier when you’re actually in a context that helps you be that way.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I read a study from your work that said, in a study to see how men and women look at body language differently, they put people in an MRI machine and had them try and read body language from just pictures alone. What happened? What did they find out?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So I believe women activated 14 to 16 areas of their brain activated while trying to read those body language pictures. And men, I believe it was half of that. In other words, when women were looking at pictures of body language, lots of connections were happening. They were making predictions. They were thinking about personality. They were thinking about emotions. They were looking at their clothes. They were looking at their facial structure. Women were taking in a much broader picture of the body language, whereas men were, I think, much more cue-focused. Ah, broad shoulders, feet apart, hands visible. Neither of these are right or wrong. Actually, in fact, men can sometimes be easier to teach. Like my students are 50-50 men and women, but sometimes men can, they can focus in on the cue that I’m trying to teach them. They can understand it. They can comprehend it. Got it. It’s decoded. Women tend to create a whole narrative. So I play games sometimes with my students where I say, okay, tell me about someone. He has a Mohawk. And men will often say, I don’t want them to hear the women first. Men will often be like, he has a Mohawk. He’s a man. He’s not bald. Women will be like, okay, he’s a bad boy, and he probably has earrings, and I bet you he drives a motorcycle, and I bet he’d be really fun on a date, but probably a drinker, and he’ll just go.
SPEAKER_05:
Interesting.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So this is, it’s good and bad, right? Like, that also can hinder women, and by the way, I’m making big generalizations on this. This is not the generalization part we have to make sure we’re careful on. Women tend to globalize. Like, they’ll see a cue and be like, oh, that means he’s bad or that means he’s dangerous. I’m never—he’s toxic. I’m never going to talk to him again. Yeah. Whereas men will sometimes, you know, oh, it’s probably just a bad day or I’ll give her or him a second chance. So we just have to be a little bit aware of our own lenses, we’ll say.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Is there anything else that I should say to my friend in order to help them? Because sometimes I wonder, you know, there’s tips, tricks, tactics, they can lean, they can do this, whatever. But is there something deeper that is easier? Do you know why I say this? That book, The Game, I went off to university, I lasted for one lecture. But while I was there, I met this guy called Joe, my friend, I won’t say his second name because people will identify him, but I met my friend Joe. And I said to Joe, listen, my friend, I said this book, The Game, really useful, taught me a lot about like, you know, interpersonal dynamics, you should read it. Gave the book to him, he read it, we went out to the club that day, he fucked it up. Like he went out there, he started negging people and insulting people. And I just thought, God, you know, you just can’t teach it. That’s what I thought. I thought there’s so many. And actually, when I reflect on the people in my life, this guy called Dan, I’ll say his name, Dan Capon. Dan Capon in school, was always just so good with the opposite sex. He was just always, he’s one of those people, he’s charismatic, he was funny, he’s like that cocky funny. Just a natural. No one taught him that. And so I look at my friend Joe, I look at my friend Dan, I go, it doesn’t matter if you read the book, because I’m not saying your book, your book’s amazing. Everyone needs to go read your book. No, they really do. It’s a great book. But I’m saying, is there something deeper within us? Like for my friend that has the shriveled posture?
SPEAKER_07:
Yeah.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Is it just like tactics and tips?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I think anyone can learn it.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Okay.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I really truly believe that. I have seen the most awkward, uncomfortable people totally shut down, slowly transform or completely transform. And remember, they don’t… Who is your uncharismatic friend? What was the fake first name he used?
STEVE BARTLETT:
He’s not uncharismatic. He just… I just gave him the book and he just like… Who is it? Joe? Joe. Okay.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Joe doesn’t need to have a complete transformation to find his soulmate. Joe does not need to have a complete transformation to have friends. You’re his friend. So even if he has a couple of tactics, like stop asking, what do you do? It’s boring. Like start making eye contact, especially the end of sentences for 60, 70% of the time. Oh, people suddenly feel listened to. Hey, ask better questions to your friends. You’ll get to know them better. Those tactics will get him friendships, hopefully a girlfriend, hopefully a job. So I think that everyone can make small or big changes. I don’t think there’s anyone who’s unteachable.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Do you think there’s a relationship between these tactics and tips and your actual confidence, i.e. does it become like a self-reinforcing?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes, so much so. Like, that is the only way I found confidence. The only way that I was able to conquer my awkwardness and actually begin to go out and try to make friends and be less lonely. I mean, I was so lonely. was that I was like, OK, I have a goal. I’m going to ask someone, what have you been doing that’s been exciting recently? I’m going to ask that question. That gave me just enough confidence to get out the door and to get to that party. And then when I got a good answer, someone’s like, oh, yeah, you know, I am working on something exciting. I was like, oh. And then they felt excited, I felt excited. And so like that one tool gave me enough confidence to go out. So these tools give you confidence to try something new and to break your pattern. If you feel stuck, and this is for anyone, if you feel stuck, then you have to try something different. If you keep doing the same thing, you’re going to keep getting the same thing. So that means you have to ask different kinds of questions. You have to use different kind of body language cues. And if you’re willing to try just something different, something will change for you.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Are these cues, this body language, more important for one gender typically than the other?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Not that I’ve seen. The research has not found that. Good for both.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And what’s, in terms of attraction, is what is do you think the most important thing? Is it competent? Is it strong? Is it?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, so this is not this is research. So I believe it was Monica Moore who did this research. She found that the people who got approached the most at clubs, the people who got approached the most, were just had the biggest signal of availability. So they weren’t the most attractive men and women. She did this for both men and women. They were not the most attractive men and women. In fact, the most attractive women in the room, if they had closed body language, closed off body language, they were not approached, they did not get dates, they did not get out their number. It was the men and women who signaled, I’m available.
STEVE BARTLETT:
How do you signal when I’m available?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, so this is really important for dating in the sense of wanting to be approached. Dating one-to-one is a little bit different, right? You don’t need to signal this if you’re one-to-one. But if you’re in a big room or you’re speed networking, one is open body, no blocking. I never want anything in front of your torso. I don’t want this. So I don’t want arms crossed. I don’t want cup in front of you. I don’t want you clutching your computer or your iPad or your phone. I want you to make sure that your torso is open and angled out towards the room. I like croissant feet. You know, parallel feet are like what we’re doing right now. In a dating situation, I want you to have croissant feet, which is your feet are angled toward the biggest part of the room, saying, I’m open. Come and approach me. That signals to both men and women, oh, maybe that person is literally physically open to someone coming in and breaking this conversation. It also means small, darting glances to everyone around the room.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Everyone. Everyone you want to approach you. Oh, everyone you want to approach you? Yeah. How many times does someone got to do a glance to get someone to come over?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So Monica Moore actually studied this. I believe it took eight glances to get someone to approach. Don’t quote me on that. It was way higher than I thought. Like I was like two, maybe three. I think it was something insane like eight. Could you imagine being in a bar and looking at someone? eight times, that’s how many times it took to get that person to come over. And these are quick glances, not like, you know, it’s a side glance, it’s a side glance and a smile. It’s a flip of the hair and a look over, right? Those are the kind of glances that we’re talking about. And it takes eight sometimes. So croissant feet, open body, quick, short glances. I would also try one of my secret tricks for daters is generally gesturing in their direction. So like, let’s see, like, there’s a hot guy right over there that I can see. I’ve been married for 18 years, just to be clear. Okay. Yeah. If you want… You okay? He dropped something. He’s cold and hot.
SPEAKER_04:
He’s cold and hot. He’s freaking out.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, so there’s a hot guy right over there that I want to see. And I’m talking to you. I might make some quick glances over, but I also might, like, when I’m gesturing, I’m sort of gesturing towards them. So I’m on their line of gesturing. So, like, if I’m gesturing out, I’m making a gesture for them to literally come over. Like, I’m, like, gesturing, and then I’m, like, I want them to, like, literally come over. I’m sort of gesturing, but I’m talking, but I’m open gesturing.
SPEAKER_07:
Ah, interesting.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
It works. It works. If they are attracted to you at all, they will come over. If they don’t come over, they’re probably not attracted to you. Try someone else.
STEVE BARTLETT:
What about men? How do men signal in this?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Same, same. So like a man can do the same thing. Now, women are less likely to approach men in a crowded environment. Culturally, that’s not as accepted. So it’s going to be harder for a man to get a woman to come over. But it does work very well for men to warm a woman up that she is about to be approached with those things. quick glances, open gestures, croissant feet towards her. That way when you do approach, she knows that your attention has been on her. And look at her responses to your gestures and your glances. If she meets your glance, great. If she turns away from you, turns her feet away from you, she’s not probably very receptive to your approach. So it’s a good way to kind of test the waters before you actually approach.
STEVE BARTLETT:
It’s difficult in this day and age, isn’t it, to know if you can roll up on someone because there’s a lot of like, you know. Too cool for school. That’s what I see. And also there’s like a big culture now of inappropriate advances.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yes, but I’m going to be optimistic and say, look, I’m not single, so I know that’s different. But I think people are lonely. And I think people so want to meet their person. So if you are actually in person and you are interested in someone, it is such a gift to go up to someone and be like, hey, I like you. I saw you across the room.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Do you know, I think I said this on one or two podcasts before, but I didn’t really get an answer from anybody. I had this kid at this event that I spoke at.
SPEAKER_03:
Okay.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And he was in the front row. It really moved me because it made me realize that there’s so many people out there, especially in the world we live in now in 2024, 2025 or whatever, who want friends. You just said loneliness, right? They want to make a friend. And it’s so weird, this kid stood up, bless him, in this talk I was doing, and he put his hands up in the air, and there’s a thousand people around him. It was this talk I did in Canary Wharf in London, which is like, it’s like New York of London. It’s like really, really busy. They’re all wearing suits, these kids, because they work in the city. And he stood up and he went, my question is, how do I make friends? And you can imagine the guts it takes to say that in front of a room of a thousand people your age.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Amazing.
STEVE BARTLETT:
You went, how do I make friends?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
What did you say? Do you have any friends?
STEVE BARTLETT:
Do I have any friends? I have a couple. But it’s funny because what I actually said, it took me off guard. But what I ended up saying was, what you just did is how you make friends. You know what I’m saying? So like that willingness to be vulnerable in that way. Because I said, I know what’s going to happen after I finish on stage here and walk off. People are going to come up to you.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah. Yeah, okay, so I have a framework for how to make friends as adults. I think it’s really important. I think it’s somehow unacceptable in our society to approach friendship like dating, but that’s how we should think about it, is meeting two or three amazing people is so important for your health, for your happiness, for your success. It is so important to date your friends. Like that is incredibly important. One of my best friends is Cody Sanchez because she is incredibly inspiring, incredibly smart, incredibly funny. But I dated a lot of people in Austin, a lot of girls in Austin to find her. I know she did too. It was my bachelorette for friends era where I was looking for girlfriends and we just like hit it off and we’ve been able to grow our businesses together. So one is you should change your mindset. Finding friends is like dating. You are looking for your friend’s soulmate. And then you should approach those friends just like you would a potential partner. You want someone with similar values. You want someone who activates the same neural networks as you. They like the same activities. And you want someone who you test it out. You would never move in with a friend or maybe move in with someone who just started dating. Same thing with a friend. You don’t want to get too close too fast. So I highly recommend go on friendship dates and you want them to be different every time. Take them to places that you love and try to make them a little bit allergic. So for example, there’s a place, oh, this is gonna sound crazy, but it works. So there’s a place in Austin called Casa De Luz, if anyone’s been there in Austin, and it’s a vegan hippie spot. It’s been there forever. And you go in and it’s one meal, you can’t customize it, and they plop it down on your tray and you eat it like a cafeteria food. And I love it. And I love taking really high-maintenance women there, just to see what they’re gonna do. Because the women who are like, can I please get a man, a man, not a, I’m like, we’re not going to be friends. We cannot be friends.
STEVE BARTLETT:
You don’t like those people?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Nope.
STEVE BARTLETT:
That modified them.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
That’s why I left LA. I mean, you can modify a little bit, but like, there’s a way that you kind of do it. And here you can’t, you literally cannot modify. And so it’s interesting to see how people deal with that circumstance. And I found my best closest friends are like, cool, let’s go with it. Like that’s a way that I see very into their personality. That’s like a very weird story. People are going to be like, she’s so weird. No wonder she doesn’t have any friends. True. I don’t have a lot of friends, but the friends I have, I love. We go to Casa de Luz all the time. So you should think about activities or places with your friends where you’re going to be able to test out a value or something that you really appreciate in friends.
STEVE BARTLETT:
What if you don’t have friends? I’m thinking about this kid, like, and especially if you’re a man, because men just struggle more. It actually feels awkward sometimes when… I make dates for my husband.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I have to make dates, friend dates for my husband as well. I totally get it. I see it. Activities. So, like, where’s the place you like to hang out? What’s the thing that you do? Is it, you know, axe throwing? Is it going to soccer games? Is it crazy mileage runs? Is it hiking group? Is it pickleball? Like, find the activity you love and then just slowly, just like we’re talking about dating, slowly hit them up. Working on anything exciting these days? What’s your big goal for 2025? Like, those are the questions. The reason I have these questions is they’re dating questions, but they’re also friendship questions. If you live in that activity for long enough, you’ll find your people.
STEVE BARTLETT:
What are you seeing in terms of interpersonal relationship shifts in the sort of 15 years has it been since you’ve been working?
None:
18.
STEVE BARTLETT:
18 years. You must have seen societal level shifts in our interpersonal skills, our friendships, etc. What are you seeing?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
AirPods are killing friendship. AirPods are going to ruin our interpersonal interactions. And here’s the difference I’ve seen, the biggest difference in the last 18 years. 18 years ago, you could maybe wear a Walkman around campus, or around the city, or on a subway, but really your ears were open. And so what would happen is you’d get on the subway, or you’d walk across campus, or you’d walk down the hallway, and someone would be like, hey Steven, how’s it going? You know, pretty good, crazy week. Oh, really? What’s she working on? Like, it was so much easier to have those tiny micro moments of connection. That Van Sloan study was done before AirPods, and I wonder if he were to redo it now, what would happen?
STEVE BARTLETT:
Which one was that?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
The one where he found the most likable kids had the longest list of people they liked. And in this study, the most likable kids, when he observed them, they were walking down the hallway, saying hello, chatting next to someone for five seconds in a locker, saying after class and sort of talking, sitting with a lunch table, leaning over someone, asking about that. So much micro-connection, very small conversations. Our friendships don’t often happen in these big, deep conversations. They happen in these micro-moments. AirPods destroy it. And I see this especially with younger folks because they always have their AirPods in when they’re commuting, when they’re walking, when they’re jogging, when they’re at the gym. I don’t know about—when I was single for five seconds when I was like, you know, 17, the gym was like the place. At the gym, no one really was listening to anything at the gym. At least I can remember, like, the rare person would have their Walkman in, but everyone was AirPod free. And so there was a lot of micro moments of connection happening. It was so much easier to talk to people. Now, if someone’s working out with their out-there AirPods, they’re insane. I’m like, what are they doing? They should go home. It’s weird. It’s weird. Or they’re with a friend working out together, and that’s intimidating. So I’m worried about this because we need weak ties. Weak ties are, in the research, these very casual connections of someone you see at the gym once a week, and you kind of know them. Oh, yeah, you know, Stephen, nice to see you. You recognize their face. If you were to see them at a restaurant later in the week, you’d be like, hey, don’t you go to that gym? Oh, yeah, yeah, we do. So what are you doing this weekend? Like those weak ties are incredibly important for our happiness. That’s how we build big friends. That’s how we can find a soulmate. That’s how we can make good business contacts. And I’m seeing less and less of that because of AirPods and because of hybrid work. So we’re just not in the office that much. So we’re having less of those little micro moments in a hallway or that five minutes before a meeting starts. The five minutes before a meeting start is really critical to your career success. How you talk to your boss, the small talk you make, are you asking boring questions, it’s telling your colleagues and your boss a lot about who you are, and it’s proven likable people make more money. Likable people get more promotions. Likable people have more friends and more friends at work. And so when we have less moments to show how likable we are, it’s really hard to get those things.
STEVE BARTLETT:
At my company, Flight Studio, which is part of my bigger company, Flight Group, we’re constantly looking for ways to build deeper connections with our audiences, whether that’s a new show, a product, or a project. It’s why I launched the conversation cards. I’ve relied on Shopify before, who’s a sponsor of today’s podcast, and I’ll be using them again for the next big launch, which we’ll hear about soon. And I use them because of how easy it is to set up an online store that reaches all of you, no matter where you are in the world. With Shopify, the usual pain points of launching products online disappear completely. No matter the size of your business, Shopify has everything you need to make your business go to the next level and better connect with your customers all over the world. To say thank you to all of you for listening to my show, we’re giving you a trial, which is just $1 a month. You can sign up by going to shopify.com slash Bartlett. That’s shopify.com slash Bartlett, or find the link in the description below. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re probably going to want to listen to this. It’s a message from one of our sponsors on this podcast, which is LinkedIn. If you’ve listened to me on this podcast for a while now, you’ll know that I’ve been on a bit of an evolution as a business owner and entrepreneur. And one of those evolutions that has become clearer and clearer as I’ve matured is that the single most important thing in building a business, in building a company, is hiring. The definition of the word company is actually group of people and that is the first responsibility and job that any entrepreneur has and should focus on, but surprisingly most don’t. About 80% of my team have been hired from LinkedIn. And I think there’s very few platforms, if any, in the world that could give you that diversity of candidate with that much information and data on their profiles. It usually costs money, but for the entrepreneurs that are listening to me, I’ve got you a free job ad post for your company on LinkedIn. Just go to linkedin.com slash DOAC to post your free job ad today. That’s linkedin.com slash DOAC. Terms and conditions apply. What about lying? This is one of the most, um, things people are most interested in is how to, everyone wants to spot a liar. It’s funny because like the rest of our conversation, one could infer that as how to like be a liar. I’m joking, I’m just saying. But it is, it’s like how to show up in a certain way to get success in a certain context, whether it’s dating or work or whatever. But then we want to figure out if someone’s playing us. Is there any, is it possible to spot a liar?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Most people can only spot a lie with 54% accuracy. They’ve actually studied the average person is very bad. But you better off tossing a coin. 54% accuracy. We are very bad at spotting liars. And this is important to know about yourself is we should not overestimate our ability to spot lies. We are usually not good at it. So it is very important to give someone the benefit of the doubt because you don’t know. It’s very hard to spot. It is possible there are certain statistical cues to deceit. There are cues that over and over again research find liars typically do, but not always. Like there’s no Pinocchio’s nose. There’s no one cue that means someone is lying. But there are a couple cues that come up over and over again. One we already talked about, the question inflection. It’s very suspicious if someone is speaking and all of a sudden they ask a question. If they’re not actually asking a question, right? Like if all of a sudden you hear a question inflection using a statement or a number or a boundary or a timeline, that’s when I’m like, let’s double click on that for a second and talk about that budget. So you mentioned the number was 500,000. Where does that number come from? Let’s talk about more. I want to hear if I’m going to hear it again.
SPEAKER_05:
Interesting.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
So that’s a double click for me. That’s like, let’s make sure that I heard that right. Let’s make sure that you feel confident about it. Where does that come from? So that’s just a little red flag that says dive deeper. Nothing is a sign of lying. It’s just a sign that you should dig deeper. So question inflection. A volume drop is another vocal cue of deception. So when we’re anxious or nervous, we will lose volume and we lose breath. So if you hear someone who’s speaking, I hear this a lot in sales calls, so someone will I always know what part of a sales presentation makes my entrepreneurs the most nervous, because they lose volume during that part of their presentation. So it sounds like this. So let’s move on to our team. So our founding partners are me, myself, Joe, Jimmy, and we all met at NYU. And we’re going to now talk about, like I’m obvious, I’m making it obvious for you, but if you’re listening for it, you’ll hear where someone is like, they literally lost fuel. They literally lost breath. So a sudden drop in volume is a very interesting cue to like double click, like What just happened there? How do you feel about your co-founder? How long have you known each other? Anything we should know about that? How’s the relationship? How do you fight? How do you communicate? Right? Like that’s when I would, that’s where I would aim most of my investor questions if I was hearing that volume drop on that specific area. The other, that’s focal. Nonverbal. So nonverbal, what you’re looking for is incongruencies where the verbal does not match the body. The biggest and most obvious one is when someone says yes, but shakes their head no, or says no, but shakes their head yes. So I might say to my daughter, did you clean your room? Yeah, I did. She’s shaking her head no. In Western culture, so there’s a cultural exception to this one, India, Bulgaria, and Pakistan. They nod a little bit differently. The research actually shows that. But in countries outside of India, Bulgaria, and Pakistan, when we agree with someone, say yes, or telling the truth, we typically agree with ourselves and shake our heads yes. When we don’t agree or don’t like something, we’ll often shake our heads no. We can sometimes also do this in disbelief, like, wow, I cannot believe that just happened. So I’m always looking for incongruent nods. This happens a lot if you ask someone, do you like the new girl? Yeah, you know, she’s, um, great. Right? You see that.
SPEAKER_05:
100%, yeah.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
All the time. And people, they don’t realize they’re doing it, but they’re shaking their head, no, they do not like that person. You’ll also see this with mismatched facial expressions. And the biggest one for liars, the research finds, is disgust. So disgust is an expression that people make without even realizing it, and this is across cultures. When we don’t like something or when we smell something bad, we crinkle our nose up and we flash the upper whites of our teeth and we go, ugh, that. So you’ll notice that liars typically feel dirty when they lie. So oftentimes they’ll show disgust with themselves for lying. So you’ll ask someone, so what do you think of the proposal? Yeah, it’s really good. And they might even sniff.
SPEAKER_05:
Really?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:
What’s a sniff? What does it signal?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Oh, it’s a disgust activator. Like when we are disgusted, our nasal cavities want to close because we want to take in less of it. And so even though it’s not about food, it’s about a preference. Liars will often show a little bit of disgust when they are lying because they are look a little bit disgusted with themselves. And so you’ll see this activation here. By the way, no one does that naturally. This is a very unnatural way to hold my face, but we do it and we feel disgusted. The nasal cavities, when we nasal dilate, or nasal wings dilate, that’s what it’s called, like these nasal wings dilate and we begin to scrunch them up, it’s like we don’t like what we’re seeing, smelling, hearing. So what I will do is I will share a proposal to someone, I will talk about something, and I watch for any disgust. So I’ll say, you know, here’s the plan for 2025. Here’s what we’re going to do. And if I see a, I know that that team member or that person is like, not that into it. And that’s why I double click. Any questions? How do you feel, Steven? Do you like this idea? Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:
Yeah.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
No. Horrible. You look like you’re about to throw up, by the way.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I heard you say that the most toxic relationships are the ambivalent relationships. The word ambivalent means… What does it mean?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, so ambivalent is actually not toxic. So toxic is like, we know it’s bad, we don’t want it, we’re creating boundaries around it. Ambivalent means we’re not sure. Ambivalent relationships are the relationships in your life that are the most damaging. They’re the relationships where you wonder, does she like me? Do I like her? Ugh, I wish she would cancel this dinner we have. Am I tired after that? I’m dreading it. Do I have to go? Gosh, I wish I was home. Those are ambivalent relationships where you’re not sure. And they are so energetically draining. Because a toxic person, you know they’re toxic. You’re like, I don’t like that person. They’re not serving me. I’m not going out to dinner. I’m going home. No thanks. Not going to text you. Not going to tell you I’m thinking about you. Or an ambivalent person, you’re like, I should check in with that person. I really should go to this dinner. Oh, it’s been five months since I’ve gone to dinner. Oh man, do I even know what they’re up to these days? Do I even care? And then most importantly, do they like me? Do they support me? That’s why I asked about that friend that you were unsure about. I was like, are they jealous? Do they have a problem with you? Because you might be picking up on they are ambivalent towards you, and you’re picking up on that. There’s a research study that was done with police officers, and they wanted to know what makes for a thriving workplace. So they asked police officers to rank the people in their precinct, and they found that the police officers who had the most ambivalent ties were more unhappy in their job, had less work-life balance, had more workplace stress, more than the people who had toxic relationships. In other words, the police officers who said, all 10 of those people are toxic were happier at work than the police officers who said, I don’t know if I like that person and that person. I don’t know if that person likes me. I don’t know if I want to go out to lunch with that person again. I kind of would rather be alone because it is so mentally draining to have ambivalent relationships. So it’s really important if you’re making that list of people, going back to the very beginning, you know, the people you’re really close, not very close with, kind of close with, really close with. If you’re not sure, put them at the bottom. And in the next 30 days, try to ask them the questions that we shared. Working on anything exciting? What’s your biggest goal right now? And see if you like their answers. It’s important to either move them up or move them out. Don’t let them be ambivalent.
STEVE BARTLETT:
One of the things that is highly searched on Google, I was looking at Google to figure out what the most searched questions are. There’s some tools that I use to figure out what people want to know. And one of them was just, funnily, how do I start a conversation?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
That’s what my next book is about, so I’m happy to hear that. Okay, one is don’t overthink your opener. Starting a conversation is like, hey, I’m Vanessa. Like literally your opener can just be that. My sister, my youngest sister, she was like the best advice I ever gave her ever. And I was like, what is it? She was like, you just told me to say hello to people. And that is it. Your opener is just, hey, I’m Vanessa. Hey, nice to meet you. So don’t overthink the opener because that opener, your body is actually doing a lot of things. Your brain and body are like competence, warmth, facial expressions, voice tone. If you’re like, what’s your biggest goal in life? It’s way too much. And so one is your opener should actually be basic. So the other person’s brain is like, gives them a chance to like safe. Okay, friend, we’re friend. Hey, how are you doing? Right? I did my friend Q, I held up my hand. So don’t overthink your opener. Hey, nice to meet you. Hey, I’m Vanessa. Your first question is where things get more interesting, okay? So if you don’t know their name, you want to say like, oh, what’s your name? Great, I’m Vanessa. Then you have a choice. And I like to take the better route. You can say, so what do you do? But I really don’t like that path. It’s autopilot. So what I like to do instead is ask a version of the excitement question. Do anything fun and exciting this past weekend? If it’s a Monday. So Mondays, I always ask, you do anything fun this past weekend? Fridays, I always ask, have any exciting plans coming up this weekend? And then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I don’t talk to anyone.
STEVE BARTLETT:
What is the most important thing we haven’t talked about that we should have talked about? For the person sat at home, the typical question, the most prolific question. that you get.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
And he did something very interesting at the Democratic National Convention back in, I believe, 1944. He knew he was not a good public speaker, which also is very rare for a U.S. president to become president without being a good public speaker. He knew he could not cut it on stage with the very charismatic people, and he was behind. In the polls, he was not the preferred candidate. So he was like, I’m not going to compete on stage. I’m not going to try to outspeak them. I’m not going to try to go work the floor and shake hands. It’s not my way. What I am going to do is try to find a way to do what I’m best at, which is one-on-one conversations where I can win people over with an argument. So in the Democratic National Convention, it was really hot. It was in Chicago in the middle of summer. He rented the one air-conditioned room in the bottom, in the basement of the convention center, and one by one, his team would invite person by person down into that air-conditioned room, and he would tell them his story. He would tell them his points, and vote by vote, and as the votes were being tallied, he would win over every single person that went to that room. One, it was air-conditioned, so they wanted to stay there as long as possible. Two, he would hear, what are your concerns? Why do you not want to vote for me? And then he would explain to them why they should vote for him. And vote by vote, he ended up winning the National Convention without having to speak on stage barely at all. I share this because stop competing on stages where you can’t be your best. Start creating rooms where you can. Think about what are your social strengths. You have one. What is it? Is it storytelling? Is it being funny? Is it listening? Is it being empathetic? Is it being a decoder? Is it being persuasive? What is your social strength? Create spaces and rooms where you can exercise that strength because no one wants you to pretend to be an extrovert or pretend to be something you’re good at that you’re not. It’s much better to do what you’re actually good at and attract the right people.
STEVE BARTLETT:
And your social strength might not be in person.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Might not be. And that’s okay. Like, there are some people who are great at texting. There are some people who are great at sending voice notes. There are some people who make their friends by broadcasting and then picking out a couple people. That’s how you met your girlfriend. Is you broadcasted. She resonated with something that you said. And you gave her the way to find you. She did. And then you met. So maybe it’s broadcasting. I think we have to think outside the box. It’s not only in person. There’s so many ways you can have social strengths.
STEVE BARTLETT:
I’ve heard it all now. I get it. I believe it. I’m into it. What is step one? I’m going to buy your books. There’s two of them here. So I’m going to buy both of these books. Both of them will be linked below. What else can I do to start on my journey of becoming, you were a recovering awkward person, you were awkward before, now you’re not. What’s step one?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, step number one is begin to break autopilot. So make a commitment for the next 30 days, you are not going to trigger autopilot in your conversation. No more, what do you do? No more, how are you? No more, where are you from? No more, right? Ask better questions. What’s your biggest goal? Working on anything exciting. You’re disgusting me.
STEVE BARTLETT:
No, I’m thinking, I’m just, I was going to tell you you look good.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Okay, so that’s challenge number one. Challenge number two, find out where you fall in the warmth and competence scale. Are you highly warmed? Do you need to dial up competence to be taken more seriously? Are you highly competent? Do you need to dial up warmth to be seen as more likable and friendly and trustworthy? Do that email audit. So take the quiz, then do the email audit. And then if you can, here’s the bonus challenge. Send the charisma quiz to someone who knows you well, someone at work, maybe a partner. Ask them to take it as you. and screenshot their results. Sometimes how we perceive our warmth and competence is not how others perceive our warmth and competence. So if you take it and you say, I’m perfect, I’m a five of five, but they take it and they see you as really high on the warmth scale, that is going to be critical feedback for you.
STEVE BARTLETT:
We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they’re going to be leaving it for. And the question that’s been left for you.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
I always love these.
STEVE BARTLETT:
When in your life did you try to outrun your pain and what was the consequence? When in your life did you turn and face your pain and what was the consequence?
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
There was a really weird moment in my career where everything was taking off. I had a lot of years of a lot of hard struggle. And being a writer, I had a published book, traditionally published book, that completely failed. 2011, we won’t name it. Put it out there, thought my world would change, and it did terribly. I got terrible reviews, it didn’t sell, and I was literally told, you’ll never write a book again. And I was just devastated, devastated. And my husband was like, you’ve got to keep writing. You’re a writer. You’ve got to keep writing. And so I went back to it. I started Signs of People. That was officially when I started the actual website, Signs of People. Kept writing. And then it started taking off. I had videos that went viral. We started having millions of visitors on the website. And I wanted to prove myself very badly. And I wanted to erase that painful memory. And so when I got approached to write Captivate, I was like, no. I can’t write books. I’m a YouTuber and a blogger, but I can’t write books. And she was like, this will be a different kind of book. This will be a book about really what you want to say to people, not the book you think you should write. And I was like, no. I was like, I cannot do it. It’s too painful. I will not survive if that fails. I will not survive if that fails. And it took Nikki months of telling me, this will be different. This will be a different kind of book. You can write the real book that you really want to write. And so I said yes, I started writing it. And that was when I think I, I don’t know how to end the question was, but decided it would be worth the pain. If that failed, it would be worth the pain of at least saying that I tried. That was a very hard choice. Thank goodness it did not fail. He did really well. And I’m eternally grateful for that. When anyone buys a copy, I’m like one click further from that failure. Horrible failure.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Vanessa, thank you. Thank you so much. What you write about and what you educate people on is a subject that’s probably more important now than ever. And I say that because of the sort of macro climate of society where we’re more lonely than ever, we’re struggling with connection. It’s not coming naturally to us as it once probably did, or at least more natural than it does now. and so many the it’s crazy i’ve only been a podcaster really i think for about four years like i think i started in 2017 but really it’s been four years since i’ve been uploading and it’s crazy just in that time alone how many more of the questions i’m getting are about all the things you write about they’re about like how to make a friend and how to show up in a certain way and all these kinds of things so what the work you’re doing is so unbelievably important there’s so much more that needs to be done as well but the contribution you’ve had to the 400,000 people that you’ve taught and the millions of people that have bought these books and consumed your videos and everything is a really, really important one. So thank you. It’s so funny because even me, like people see me on camera and stuff, but I learned so much, so much from your work, so much, so much. So many things as well that I think a lot about and, you know, things you can take or leave. You’ve got to say like, who do I want to be? And like, who am I? you know truly to then apply these things because there’s no point like I just have no interest in building a facade or anything but there’s things about me which I go fucking oh I didn’t even know I was doing that you know.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Yeah and like what kind of friend do I want to be? What kind of partner do I want to be? What kind of way do I want to be in conversation? Like you get to choose.
STEVE BARTLETT:
Thank you Vanessa.
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
Thanks for having me.
