PSYCHOLOGICAL TRICKS To Boost Your Influence, Income, and Impact TODAY! | The Mel Robbins Podcast

foreign guess what we're talking about today you and me baby we're talking about the it Factor some people just have it don't they and based on the research when people have the it Factor it means they have Charisma so today you're going to meet one of the world's leading researchers and experts on Charisma and Body Language Vanessa van Edwards and she's here to prove to you that you have the it Factor yes I'm talking to you and the skill of Charisma that is how you are going to bring your it factor to life let's go man classes in session hey it's your friend Mel and welcome to an amazing buckle up your seatbelt episode of the Mel Robbins podcast guess what we're talking about today you and me baby we're talking about the it Factor that's right the it factor I don't know how to say it but we're talking about it some people just have it don't they just think about who you admire that has the it Factor I'll give you my list Oprah The Rock The Dalai Lama Taylor Swift oh in the late Robin Williams and Dr Martin Luther King Jr those folks they have the it Factor Why well because they have this ability to make me lean in and care about what they're saying we not only admire folks like this but we like them and we trust them that is the heart of having the it factor and based on the research when people have the it Factor you know what it means it means they have charisma Charisma is a really cool thing because Charisma will make you more influential it'll help you make a bigger impact and Charisma absolutely is going to help you make some more money because according to the research 82 percent of people's impression of you is based on whether or not you display charisma did you hear that 82 percent of someone's impression of you based on whether or not you got Charisma I know I said it twice that's how important it is and here's the coolest thing about Charisma it's really easy to hack when you know the simple things you need to do so today here's what we're doing on the show you're going to meet one of the world's leading researchers and experts on Charisma and Body Language Vanessa van Edwards she's a behavioral investigator the founder of the research group science of people the author of the best-selling books on these topics Captivate and cues and she's here to prove to you that you have the it Factor yes I'm talking to you and the skill of Charisma that is how you are going to bring your it factor to life so you can make an impact you can influence people and you can make more income let's go man classes in session I am so excited for this so let's dial up the skill of Charisma let's bring the it factor to life let's increase our influence impact and income people and let's welcome Vanessa to the Mel Robbins podcast I'm so excited for this Vanessa I'm so glad you're here well welcome I'm so psyched you're here I'm so happy to be here I can't even tell you well let's just jump right into it because you have written the book on both Charisma and body language and so I want to start with what is charisma and why does it matter what people don't realize is that Charisma more than any other attribute is the single most important aspect of you being successful it helps in your relationships it helps you professionally helps people take you seriously it helps you also feel more confident and purposeful in your interactions so Charisma is that missing ingredient that we need to trigger or activate our success wow I mean you hear so much about confidence you hear about extroverts versus introverts but how is it that Charisma impacts all those things more than your personality or confidence when research looks at highly charismatic people they find that we are looking for people who are signaling High Charisma because it shows all those other things highly charismatic people are confident they are competent they are warm they are likable and so the most amazing aspect of Charisma is it can be learned it is not an innate trait you don't have to be born with it or not that anyone can be can learn how to be more charismatic through a very specific set of cues that's crazy and you you say that you were very awkward before you leveraged all the cues you're about to teach us will you tell us a little bit about what you struggled with so what's funny about Charisma I've always been fascinated by this trait I'm a recovering awkward person Charisma does not come naturally to me I've always been fascinated by the cool kids you know I watch them and I'm like ah how do they know what to do and so I was for many years trapped by this mistaken belief that to be charismatic you have to be extroverted you have to be bubbly you have to be life of the party and I am not an extrovert and so I always thought well I guess I can't have it it's an innate trait you have to be extroverted but research actually finds is that Charisma has nothing to do with your extroversion your attractiveness your athleticism even your intelligence the actual definition of Highly charismatic people what makes them different is they set send a very specific set of social signals specifically they are constantly signaling High warmth so trust likability friendliness along with this is the key a balance of high competence capability power effect and what's magical about this is if you're with someone and you are drawn into them you immediately are able to answer two questions I can trust you and I can rely on you and so highly charismatic people that's what they're signaling warmth and competence at all times wow okay so let me see if I just can bottom line this yes so charisma if you have Charisma or you display Charisma I guess is what I should say yes if you display Charisma other people are left with the impression that they can trust you and that they can count on you is that right that is exactly right and the funny the hard part about this is you can be the warmest most competent person in the world but if you don't show those signals the world does not believe you and this comes from amazing research out of Princeton University which found that under signaling so not signaling enough and this is what happens I think with very smart people so most of my students are off the charts intelligence High Achievers and they think oh my smarts will speak for me right I'm really smart I can make it through anything I'm super prepared I have great answers and the problem is they under signal the warmth and competence cues and when Dr Fisk found the creator of This research she found that without enough warmth people do not believe your competence so the problem of smart people is they think their smarts work for them but if they're not using the right signals the world literally cannot believe them wow that's so so is this why Charisma matters so I think of Charisma like a lubricant right so when we're in Social exactly that is not exactly the word I was that I thought that or the metaphor I thought you were going to use okay so Charisma is a social lubricant everything okay it's a move you know because listen my interactions my social interactions before I learn this science were like the Opposites mood they were crunchy like not in a good way right okay so you said you were awkward give us an example come on Vanessa I'm a recovering other person so awkwardness let's talk awkwardness is one of my favorite topics awkwardness dresses up in different ways so my awkwardness and everyone has a different thing so I'm curious now if you have any awkwardness how it dresses up some people they feel awkward because of fear their fear of being rejected fear of being criticized fear of saying something silly or sounding stupid and so their awkwardness will dress up as shutting down so for me my awkwardness I'm an overthinker I'm the person who I get in bed at the end of the night and I literally rethink every conversation I've had the whole day right or like I I over analyze my answers before I even say anything which makes me a terrible conversational listener so my awkwardness would make me Shut in shut down and so my introverts listening this is often what happens when you feel awkward you're afraid of a silence or being judged you shut and you close down you stop talking other people my extroverts their awkwardness dresses up as something else their awkwardness dresses up as showing off over the top being a drama queen talking too much so my extroverted awkward friends they'll say sometimes I can't I just can't stop talking literally my mouth just keeps going and so awkwardness is this really interesting way that we try to cover our fear and so when I say I'm a recovering awkward person I've had to conquer a lot of internal fear to be able to have interactions that I desperately desperately want to have that could be in a professional setting sharing my ideas but it also could be just trying to make good friends trying to be open with my partner and so I think that Charisma is this lubricant because awkwardness makes our relationships our conversations our communication crunchy awkward halty we talk too much we talk too little there's an awkward silence we don't know what to do with our hands right we're like what do I do with my body language we make weird faces we awkwardly nervous laugh so my my goal with Charisma what I've found is that it's a smoother it's a lubricant which I just I we have to stick with that metaphor well it's hilarious and it also makes it it you when you use the word crunchy about those moments when you feel awkward that makes a lot of sense to me yeah yeah because whether you're an over talker overshare nervous laugh interrupting people because you're extroverted but you feel afraid of how people are gonna view you or whether you withdraw because you're afraid that crunchiness is that sort of disruption you feel internally and so I love this idea that Charisma which you say is a skill that anybody can develop that charisma helps you be yourself and it helps you be more influential and it helps you enjoy social settings whether you're introverted or extroverted that's what that's what I'm kind of getting from this oh that's it and so I think that what we're looking for here is a lot of people talk about confidence and I love confidence but I am not naturally confident so what would happen is I would say just be more confident like I would you know I'd be like trying to Mantra myself into it and if you tell someone who's awkward to just stop being awkward it doesn't work so it just makes you more Awkward I think because then you're now focused on the fact that you're awkward it's like a Meta Meta right like I worry that I'm a warrior and that makes me worry so right so like it's like a horrible meta so what I say is okay I like confidence but let's put it to the side for a second let's talk about being purposeful purposeful is much more impactful and active it's an active emotion okay so I say I want to show up in this interaction as highly charismatic I want to be my warmest self and my most confident self and I want to clearly signal with purpose the other person I am trustworthy and likable but I can also get it done I'm powerful and capable the key here is the balance most of us have an imbalance so there's four segments of the population this is what the research finds there's The Sweet Spot of Highly charismatic people high warmth High competence that's the rare birds Among Us Now can you give us an example of somebody who is highly charismatic let's do the classic Oprah okay Oprah is highly charismatic and here's why she can be in an interview and she can make the other person feel so comfortable they share their darkest secrets that's warmth that's trust she can cry with the other person she can mimic their facial expressions she her warmth literally draws out other people's warmth however you also take her very seriously you know she is smart she knows her answers you can't sneak something by her and that's her signaling I'm competent I'm gonna make sure that I get to the truth here you can rely on me to ask the hard questions that's the perfect example what Oprah does and what most Charizard people do which I want to teach everyone who's listening how to do is you can use Charisma like a dial it's just like a thermostat so in some situations when you want to dial up a little bit extra warmth you can use more warmth cues and Oprah does this exceptionally well and her hard-hitting interviews she'll dial up competence she'll hit them with the hard questions go watch her interview with Lance Armstrong I talk about Lance Armstrong a lot in the book I pick on him a lot her interview with Lance Armstrong she is high competence she has just enough warmth to make him feel comfortable but she asks hard questions versus some for other interviews she's dialing up warmth she wants to make the other person feel comfortable so that's an example of someone who's very a nice balance and kind of uses her warmth and competence as a dial let's look at for example Steve Jobs so Steve Jobs is zero warmth am I no zero warmth zero jobs what a the guy's a jerk zero warrant so he is the perfect example of high high high competence he has he's constantly signaling take me seriously I'm powerful and most importantly what highly smart people don't realize is if they over signal competence people see them as cold intimidating not a collaborator not a team player hard to talk to so yes he he was brilliant but his lack of warmth made people feel like he wasn't a collaborator he wasn't a good team player and his legacy is changing the world but also being not kind so that's an example of high competence my highly smart people my Engineers my really technically brilliant folks they often get trapped in high competence because they don't know how to signal warmth by the way they might have all the intention to be a collaborator but we are not taught how to signal warmth and so they go well I guess I don't know how to do that so that's wow okay competence that's one bucket by the way so if you're as you're listening I want you to think about what sounds like you what feels like you so do you feel like you have the balance do you feel like no you're off the charts and competence you know you're high incompetence if people always think you're in charge you know your high incompetence if people have ever told you that you're intimidating or hard to talk to you know that you're in a relationship or have a partner who's high in competence if they constantly Google fact check you so highly competent folks their mission is to get it right they are very uh dominated by the idea of get it right get the facts and so they'll be in a conversation with you and be like let me Google fact check that let me just see if that's that's right do they share their emotions if they're high competent usually less they're much less comfortable sharing their emotions because vulnerability sharing emotions is an aspect of warmth so that is one way that competent people can hack warmth is sharing more of their emotions but usually they don't like that as much because emotions aren't correct right it's hard to be right with emotions so they'll often the reason why a highly compensated partner I have one of those is I'm going to use the word afraid of emotions or uncomfortable with emotions is because it can't be fact checked right if someone says as a partner I feel upset with you how do you verify that how do you fix it where's the solution a highly competent partner they love solving things right you come to them and you're like I'm just having a bad day and they're like let me fix that for you and you're like I don't want you to fix it I just want you to listen they're like or no I don't know how to do that because they're fixers got it so highly accomplished people you have that super strength of of getting it right being fixers warm folks my warm folks so my highly warm folks you are filled with empathy your cheerleaders your supporters your mission so if competent people want to get it right highly warm people want to be liked they want everyone to feel good they want everyone to feel comfortable typically highly warm folks their super strength is empathy nurturing making you feel loved and warm but they often give too much of themselves in sacrifice of being liked got it so like people pleasing doormats is what you're talking about that's the far end people think is what they struggle with and so I think that highly warm folks in the workplace this is the other really important thing to understand is if you're highly warm you are fighting a battle in yourself which is your desire to be liked gets in the way of your need to be respected okay stop I need everybody to hear that if you default and you are too warm especially at work your need to be liked is getting in the way of your need to be respected yeah and when you are too focused on getting it right and too focused on being smart and too focused on dominating the conversation or the knowledge Bank your need to be right is dominate how did you say you need to be right right is getting in the way of your need to be liked yes yes your need to be right is getting in the way of your need to be liked that even Rhymes that's amazing I want to go back to Something in the very beginning that we were talking about yes so when I asked you what is charisma yeah and you said it has nothing to do with personality it has nothing to do with introversion or extroversion it is not about being confident that Charisma is something that you display to other people correct yes and Charisma matters because if you have charisma people trust you they like you they count on you which I would think means it makes you in more influential it makes you more successful it makes you have greater influence is that what the benefits of Charisma are influence impact and income so the reason why hold on hold on so Charisma impacts the three eyes the three eyes all three of them why if you are warm and competent you are less likely to be underestimated you're less likely to be dismissed and doubted why we are attracted to highly charismatic people because Charisma is contagious and they have actually proven Us in the lab the more charismatic you are the more you clearly and purposefully I keep using the word purposeful on purpose the more clearly you signal warmth and competence the more contagious you are we like to be around warm competent people because they make us more warm and competent and so non-verbal signals vocal signals verbal signals we are constantly aware of because we want to catch them so the reason why we're drawn to people who are the in that influence piece that influencer impact piece is because we are influenced by people who we want to be contagious with we also want to be more warm and competent so if we're around someone who's warm and competent it makes us feel like our best selves if you think about the most the most charismatic person you know so just think about them for a second they make you feel better they make you feel like your best self that's the difference I think between for example a highly charismatic person and a narcissist right like this is not just about confidence it's about someone who actually is positively infectious and they've proven this with both negative and positive cues so for example um Dr Matthew Lieberman at UCLA he flashed people a fear micro expression so fear micro expression is when we raise our eyebrows up our forehead we widen our eyes to our white show and we take in a deep breath we go yes so that expression if he flashes that expression to someone in a fmri their amygdala where they process fear it begins to activate we catch the fear literally just seeing someone with a fear face makes us feel afraid the most important part of this experiment though is the moment that someone labeled the fear so in their head or out loud said fear it deactivated their amygdala in other words being aware of the cues that are being sent to us both negative and positive makes us aware of who is infecting us so that influence that impact is that highly charismatic people are so clear with their signals they're it's like they're gifting another Oprah reference they're gifting warmth for you competence for you Charisma for you and not charismatic people people who are anxious afraid awkward they are signaling negative cues that's why we don't want to be around them we don't want to catch that fear right like we don't want that fear and so we're like whoa I don't like those signals and so we avoid them as much as we possibly can you know what I love about your research what I love is that first of all you're about to teach us all how to become more charismatic you're also about to give us hacks related to body language and getting intentional about what we're displaying and signaling but what I also love about your research is that I need everybody listening to understand something right now you are unintentionally sending signals and cues to people that's it you are walking around and whether it's a negative mood or it's anxiety or it's insecurity or it's awkwardness or you're so focused on being right that you don't realize that you're sending signals and cues that make people not like you and not trust you or you're so focused on being liked and that you're sending these signals of being a warm pushover which is why you're never respected and why you're passed over at work and so what I love about this research is that you're helping us focus on two factors that you can display that will increase influence impact and income and it doesn't matter whether you're shy or whether you're bossy these strategies are going to work for all of us one thing I would love for you to talk about before we talk about the cues is this so in that study that you cited from Princeton they also found that Charisma accounts for 82 percent of how people evaluate you so can you unpack that because I think it's really important for us to understand this is not only a good idea because you're going to make more money be more influential and make a bigger impact based on the science this is how people view you and so can you unpack this for us so I was also shocked by that number by the way it's very rare to see a number that big in science right especially because if I were to ask someone how do you want to be perceived you're going to get a list of 100 adjectives funny extroverted bubbly attractive whatever actually when someone is interacting with us and by the way this is not just in person this is on your LinkedIn profile and zoom on the phone in chats in slack in DMS in your email inbox people are using warmth and competent signals to make up 82 of their judgment to view okay stop everybody did you just hear that people are using warmth and confidence which are the two things that make up your charisma 82 percent of how people judge you evaluate you size you up decide to hire or date you has to do with whether or not you're warm or competent that's bananas it's bananas and it's not just your first impression it's actually every single impression so yes your first impression is important but even if you don't feel you've had a good first impression that's okay we are re-evaluating this on every Zoom call if someone sees your name pop up in their inbox they're also wondering is a is this a warm and competent email in other words can I trust this email can I rely on this email the more warm and competent your email is the faster response rates you're gonna get we as humans have a really hard time responding to connecting with building rapport with being impacted by people who under signal or people who signal in an imbalanced way so what we're talking about here that 82 percent is making it easier for people to interact with you I believe that you're warmth and competence tells the world how they should treat you Vanessa you want to hear what I believe Vanessa I believe we all have a huge blind spot when it comes to what we're signaling other people that you may think you know how you come across and what you're displaying but I have a feeling that we are about to learn from Vanessa that we have a massive blind spot when it comes to warmth and confidence and how you're displaying Charisma or not so how can we number one figure out how charismatic we are what do we do all right so first we're the first kind of diagnostic that I talked about was just which one sounds more like you that's where we start right so where do you think you fall you hire in warmth higher incompetence you have a balance or are you under signaling right do you shut down and not signal enough the next thing you can do is you can actually do our diagnostic it's totally free and I love this because there's two ways you want I want you to do this you can take this as many times as you want the whole point the reason I put it up from the research is because I want people to be able to take a diagnostic see how they come across so they're going to be very simple questions does that mean a test yes it's a test okay really simple test science people.com Charisma wait hold on what's it called what what is what is the URL scienceofpeople.com Charisma scienceofpeople.com wait is that the New York Times science of people no just my science of people oh that's your side okay scienceofpeople.com Charisma we will put that in the show notes so you can take this test as many times as you want and so first I'm going to take it as you I'm going to take it as you and I want you to take it not on your ideal self your real self okay okay so on a normal day I want you to screenshot your results then what I want you to do is I want you to do a 360 review I want you to send the quiz to a partner a friend a colleague and ask them to take it as you this is the key because it's going to show you how other people see you and have them screenshot the results and then go to dinner and get a lot of wine because it'll be a great conversation so do you find that most people have no idea how they're showing up with other people you were right most of us have a blind spot we think we hope we think of ourselves as our ideal selves and there are days of course we are a little closer to that sweet spot of warmth incompetence but what's really key what we find is that not only are people giving them different results but they even might even have different results for home and work so they're showing up as two cells and that's a very important thing to know about yourself if you're going to work and you're dreading it you're burnt out you're drained it could be that you are not honoring who you truly are because you're either under signaling competence or under signaling warmth or trying to fake it till we make it I have a little problem with that phrase I don't love that phrase because I think that the problem is if you're gonna fake warmth it's exhausting right and so this is also a way to sort of get a very quick snapshot in how are people perceiving you and is it what you think you're showing um you also have a suggestion that we record our Zoom calls in order to read how charismatic we are that sounds horrible it's horrible I'm not gonna lie it is horrible and not only do I want you to record a zoom call I want you to record a zoom call that you worked hard on presentation an important client meeting a call and then I want you to code it so when we talk what does code it mean okay so when we talk about cues so cues are the social signals humans send to each other okay there are four different modes of cues verbal the one we talk about the most so our words this is what we most of us think about all the time we want to prepare the perfect answer share the perfect presentation we practice our stories so verbal is only one mode of cues second is non-verbal our body language our gestures our facial expressions the third the most important one that's overlooked is voice tone our vocal power our volume our Pace our Cadence our tone and the last smallest one is ornaments the jewelry we wear what's behind us in our background uh the color of our nails how we wear our hair our glasses those are the ornaments what I want you to do is I want you to code yourself for every cue that you're showing everything from how many gestures you're using to what your facial expressions are doing to your movement to your fidgeting to your vocal power to the kinds of words you're using that's also going to give you a snapshot because what we've found in our research is that there are certain very clear signals of warmth cues of warmth and cues of competence and the last one are danger zone cues cues that are negative my goal this is a way that you can see is how are you signaling warmth and competence what are you doing with your body and your your voice and your face that's making people treat you the way that they're treating you Okay so I I feel like everybody needs to grab a pen and a piece of paper and this is definitely one of those podcast episodes that I know every single parent is going to be forwarding to their kids who have interviews because we are about to get the cheat sheet everybody for how to nail Charisma whether you're in a virtual meeting whether you're in an interview whether you're sending an email and so let's go through the cues all right what is the easiest way to walk through these all right you want to go buy warmth do you want to go by like do you want to go like how do you want to do this because there's a lot to cover yes let's do it by time so what I want to do is actually under the first 10 seconds of your your video the first minute of your video that actually helps us break it down because actually the first 10 seconds are really important the first 10 seconds of you being on camera really yeah because um it sets you up for the rest of the time so if you can nail your first 10 seconds it makes the next hour easier wow so what do we have to do what are we doing so so you're about to tell us in the first 10 seconds yes of a zoom meeting you must do this in order to be influential what do you do okay first 10 seconds and you I want you to code this if you did this on your last video so here's what you should do in your Risha code number one in the first second you should try to show your hands I know this sounds really weird but they use eye tracking studies and they found that one of the first places the brain looks when they're trying to gauge someone's warmth is hands why this is actually a survival mechanism back in our caveman days if we were approached by a stranger caveman we wanted to see if they were carrying a rock or a spear right so this Still Remains something interesting happens I'll do a little experiment for you so if you're watching the video um I'm gonna hide my hands if you're listening I'm hiding my hands right now yeah the moment you can't see someone's hands so if I were to give this entire interview with my hands behind my back something interesting would happen in your brain and Mel's brain which is that your amygdala would begin to activate and that's because when you can't see someone's hands you wonder what what is she holding what what's her intention and so the longer I keep my hands behind my back the more distracted you should become with the fact that my hands are behind the back you want them to come back out right yes okay they're back right okay they're there hello so much better so this is a survival mechanism the moment you hop on video walk on stage walk into a boardroom like walking your hands up like hey everybody hey good morning nice to see you okay so the first 10 seconds we turn on the cameras coming on we put the hands up hi everybody or just one right like a little way nice to see you you walk into a crowded restaurant to see your date hey good to see you that hand gesture immediately deactivates Their Fear processing easy okay so I want them visible second little bonus tip here is the space the distance I literally want you to measure this the distance between your nose and the camera the reason for this is because in person we are very aware of what's called proxemics zones proxemic zones are the space between people so we know and this is a little bit different culture to culture so hand gestures universally we like to see hands but culture to culture we also like to know how what's the distance between people so I highly recommend make sure your camera is at least a foot and a half away from your face Okay the reason for this is because imagine if I were to give no I'm gonna get really close to the camera imagine if I were to give my entire interview really close you'd be like Vanessa back up back up oh my God I totally like lean into the camera I I I I have no space above my head I like my whole face right in there so maybe I gotta back off a little bit on the camera let's talk about this for a second okay there are no bad cues in the sense of they're all purposeful when you were really glad I love your videos I've seen your close-up videos you should know on purpose if you you are very close to the camera right up in your face you are signaling intimacy you are signaling I'm right up in it and that's because as humans we are four different proxemic zones the public Zone the social Zone the personal zone of the intimate Zone we reserve the intimate Zone which is zero to 18 inches away zero to a foot and a half away for people we feel really close with so our partners our parents so does our best friends and so actually when I watch your videos where you're really close I feel like we're besties Mel tell me tell me everything so I would say reserve those videos for your intimate moments okay you're literally singling that so in a normal Zoom call I want you at least a foot and a half away it also helps you show your hands right it happens gestures so smart Okay so the first 10 the first 10 seconds everybody we got the hands up and we got to be about a foot and a half away because this is oh and there's more oh there's more okay okay second vocal so that was a non-verbal cue I want you to make sure you are not accidentally using the question inflection on your name or an important information the question Reflections when we go up at the end of our sentence so it sounds like we're asking a question and so often we found in our lab that people would use the question reflection in the first 10 seconds which made people doubt them so I'm gonna I want to share this study because this study gave me the chills when I first heard it and I think it's so incredibly important for people who are listening who want to be taken seriously so what they did in the study I promise I won't get two into the science chance very simply they brought doctors into their lab and they wanted to know if people would change their perceptions of Charisma based on their voice tone so they asked the doctors to record 10 second voice tone clips so these clips they had to say their name where they worked and their Specialties it sounded like this I'll use my lipstick as an example 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 that pace the Cadence but not the actual words being said so that sounded like this okay they asked participants to then rate these doctors on warmth and competence based on the warbled thing that you just did yes so imagine that I just did that then I asked you do you like this person is this person smart so participants raided these gobbledygook Clips on do they like this person this person's smart they found the doctors who had the lowest warmth and competence ratings had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits what the doctors with the lowest warmth and confidence ratings simply based on their voice tone had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits this implies that we don't just dislike People based on their skills we dislike People based on our perception of their skills and that happens in the first few seconds of hearing them the biggest pattern it's it was such a it's such a shock wave to the community because these are these are doctors who are very well trained what they found was patterns there were certain doctors who across the board were rated as highly charismatic from gobbledygook and there were certain doctors over and over again they were rated as not very smart not very likable here was the biggest pattern up talk the doctors who had an introduction like this hi my name is Dr Edwards I specialize in oncology and I work in Children's Hospital right what it did is it changes the way that we listen they found that when we hear the question inflection accidentally used on a statement our prefrontal cortex shifts from listening to scrutinizing we think why did they just question themselves I guess I should question them we hear this all the time in sales calls where someone is killing it in a pitch this is what this is the income the last I or in a salary negotiation I'd love to work for your company I I think I'd be a great fit for you I love your mission and I'm really looking for a salary range of over a hundred thousand dollars everybody did you hear that question I'm really looking for a salary range of uh a hundred thousand dollars when you ask your price you are begging people to negotiate with you you're telling people I don't really believe this number and you shouldn't believe it either so what happens in the first 10 seconds is we're nervous right we're really nervous we've been holding our breath we're waiting for some call and so we accidentally give away all of our vocal power in the first 10 seconds we say hey everyone uh my name is Vanessa we'll get started in a few whoa okay I just this is why it's important to tape a zoom call you're on everybody yeah because now you have three research back incredibly subtle but profound Behavior changes that you need to make immediately immediately hands up you got to have the right distance which is a foot to a foot and a half nose to camera no up talk everybody and I I would imagine that most people don't realize that they do it no idea that's why coding is so important that's why seeing yourself that's why we don't realize when we walk into a salary negotiation or we walk into a pitch meeting with a client or we go on a date and we think it went well right how often have people been sideswiped and they think yeah I think that went great but I didn't get a call back or I didn't get a second date it's because you are accidentally telling the world how to treat you and if you under signal warmth people don't like you if you under signal competence people don't take you seriously and the up talking everyone is when you're under signaling competence you might be the most competent and and qualified person but if you walk into that interview and you don't you know not sure like my last job was great I think I'd do great here I you know a hundred thousand that would be that'd be great like a a you just shot yourself in the foot yeah and you don't even realize it because you don't hear it I bet people do this with dating all the time all the time and the problem is it's a it's a permission seeking Behavior so if we really get down to the root cause of it which is one thing that fascinates me is this is appeasement body language right so this is do you like me do you agree with me so oftentimes highly warm people who really really desperately want to be liked use more up talk because they're asking do you agree do you like me the crazy thing is it's annoying opposite effect right so that I also want you to get really to the root cause of if you hear yourself do up talk and by the way please go listen to your voicemail so go listen to your voicemail or any voice recordings if you've sent any voice recordings or voice memos in the past few days go re-listen to them and see if you accidentally use up talk and go re-record so how do you coach somebody who has a style of speaking where they naturally end sentences with this up talk so it's almost like you've got a statement and and as you speak it it sounds like a question at the end yes and do women do this more than men yes so women do this more than men also the research finds that women typically but not always are seen as higher in warmth and that's because from a very young age women are often taught to be liked and so they tend to dial up their warmth earlier typically but not always men are seen as higher incompetence and that's because often men are told to be right um so we also have to be aware of those gender differences so yes women typically more often use up talk or high warmth so luckily this is actually a very easy thing to fix so we're going to do it we're going to do it with breath and pausing so one of the things that can happen with uptalk is we're nervous and we're speaking very quickly and so what I want you to think about is what do you want to say with purpose and how can you deliver it with purpose so there's three kinds of inflection there's up talk so going up at the end of our sentence there's neutral going up going stay neutral at the end of our sentence and there's the downward inflection which is very commanding which is going down at the end of our sentence okay so all three of those things signal something very very different what I want you to pay attention to is the tension in your vocal cords so when we are tense when we're nervous we tend to take in a breath and talk at the top of our breath it's really really hard to sound confident when we're up here so what I want you to do is when you say hello or your first few words I want you to speak on the out breath okay what most people do is they hold their breath before they get a zoom call or a phone call so they go hello all the way up here oh gosh you're right because you're like hi hi hi oh so good to see you so we did this experiment where we had people submit recordings of important phone calls and we found the highest part of the entire call up talk and vocal tone was the first 10 seconds literally people would go hey it's so good to see you so how's it going that's a thousand percent right so this is really easy to fix what do you do instead of holding your breath I want you to speak on the out breath so let's do a little experiment I want you to hear the highest end of your range so the highest end of your range is when you speak at the top of your breast on the count of three I want us to say and wherever you are you can do this in your car tell your kids to do it with you so I want you to take in a deep breath and say hello at the top of your breath so it's going to sound like this one two three hello so you want to try it with me Mel yeah I do one two three hello hello yeah hi it's very high that's the highest end of your breath if you hear your rain going up there you are speaking too high you hear yourself go there what I want you to do is try to relax your vocal cords by speaking on the out breath so this time there you go that was it so you just heard the difference so here's my difference ready hello hello those are both me but they sound totally different so this time what we're going to do is we're going to take a deep breath in on the count of three and I want you to say hello on the out breath I want you to see it in a downward reflection okay one two three hello um yes okay so signaling competence uh we now have a bunch of things that you can do including and probably one of the most important is learning how to take a breath and then talk on the out breath out can I add one more competence cue that I think is really easy yeah really easy okay so hand gestures there's two sides of hand gestures one is visible right so we mentioned having a little you know wave hello greeting at the top of a video call or in person the next thing we look for in hand gestures is purpose what highly competent people did so we did a research study where we analyzed thousands of hours of TED Talks I was curious why do some TED Talks go viral and some don't so in our lab we analyze thousands of hours counting cues coding literally coded TED talks and looked at the view count we found that the most viral TED Talks use an average of 465 gestures in 18 minutes whereas the least popular TED Talks use an average of 272 gestures it's almost half what happens here is the best Ted talkers they get on stage and they typically go good morning so they have a visible hand out of their pockets right in front and then what they do I'm going to demo this for you um and by the way if you're just listening I'm gonna show some hand gestures along with my words Mel see if this looks familiar to you this is every popular TED Talk today I want to talk to you about a big idea it's going to change your life in three different ways that is cueing the brain to say wow this person knows their content so well they can speak to me on two tracks they can speak to me with their verbal but they can also demo their Concepts along with their words so if I were to say today I have a really big idea and hold up my hands like I'm holding a penny you're like Vanessa looks so small your brain is more likely to believe my gesture than my word wow wow okay so let me just say if you want to watch this go to youtube.com melrobbins this entire episode The unabridged version we put them up there you can check it out and it was very interesting because when you said big idea what she did everybody is she held up her fingers like making that gesture when like imagine if I were like it's really puny and now I'm making that tiny little like my fingers are like a quarter inch apart when she said it's a big idea and she showed me the hand signal for puny Vanessa's dead right my brain went right to the hand gesture and I was like wait a minute that doesn't match why the heck is she saying puny like why is she not saying puny because clearly it's a puny idea if she's making it that's really interesting so that this is where I think inauthenticity comes from so people who are inauthentic are saying one thing with their words but they're non-verbal their vocal doesn't match and our brain does not like this our brain is like wait a minute that was incongruent right like that didn't work so and by the way this is very hard to do so everyone has a thing I want to do a little experiment with you what I want you to do in a second is I want you to say five but I want you to hold up the number three okay ready yeah five five oh that's weird my brain literally went that's the wrong hand gesture Mel your brain was like stop stop that is because our brains also like to be congruent so our brains use our gestures as truth-telling and so what happens is it's this really interesting cycle of if you want to be shown up show up as competent the other thing you can think about in the first 10 seconds and then throughout is how can you demo a concept with your hands now this is not interpretive dance I don't need to like good morning I'm so happy to be here you know I love you you're hilarious okay we don't have to do that but there is a difference of you know I'm so happy to be here I want to talk about two different things in the meeting today when someone holds up two and they say two not only does it make you look competent they think wow it really is too you're also hooking the other person's brain to think I better remember both you become more memorable with more purposeful gestures people believe your competence when your gestures and your words are congruent a very easy one what are mistakes um that let's start with introverts what are mistakes that introverts make when it comes to body language okay so uh one of the biggest mistakes that we have identified there's there's a lot of them is with our facial expressions so I think with our facial expressions we forget how rich our face is in demonstrating emotions or cueing emotions so a big mistake that I see is people will fake smile I love smiling but there is nothing worse than fake smiling I do not believe in toxic positivity so people have been told smile smile more which I think is like the worst advice right I'm like smile purposefully don't smile more so a really simple mistake is someone will say yeah I'm so happy to be here incongruent angry so what will happen is introvert really wants to show up as their best out there come with the best intention or someone will hop on a video call and they're trying to be positive and so they'll have a lot of incongruent messages by trying to show warmth with a fake smile the problem is Dr Barbara Wilde and her Associates they actually looked at fake smiling and what they did is they showed people pictures of smiling people fake smiling people and neutral people by the way just the science of this a fake smile or a real smile reaches all the way up into these upper cheek muscles so if you were to smile all the way up into your upper cheek muscles they activate your crow's feet right that's not a real smile only one in 10 people can consciously activate those muscles so they really do happen with authentic happiness okay fake Smiles are only on the bottom half of the face so if I was in a face mask you could not see my fake smile right but you could see the smile lines in somebody's eyes if it's real so a real smile you actually make with your eyes exactly exactly okay upper cheek muscles slash eyes exactly so what happens is what happened this research experiment is she showed people pictures of real smiling people and people caught the happiness it actually affected their positive mood they felt happier when people saw the fake Smiles they caught nothing in other words cueing for real happiness actually makes you more contagious fake happiness makes you less and memorable nothing happens so the biggest mistake that will happen with introverts is they want to come across as warm and their only tool in their toolkit is smiling problem is there are the good thing is there are many other warmth cues so what are the other warmth cues that you can okay so I would if you're gonna smile smile for real and okay please please go look at your LinkedIn profile picture please please go look at your dating profile pictures I either want you neutral sexy or smiling all the way no fake Smiles okay so make sure that smile is all the way up into your eyes because if you have a fake smile in your LinkedIn profile picture you are literally signaling fake happiness in authenticity so if you don't want to actually smile that is totally okay that's not your only warmth cue here are your other warmth options One a head nod so a slow triple nod one two three is an immediate warmth wow one two three okay we can do that people yes so and by the way the funny thing about this the research found this just tickles me that when someone does a slow triple knot mm-hmm the other person speaks 67 percent longer wow it's like a non-verbal dot dot dot you're literally saying to someone tell me more I want to listen I want to hear you so a slow triple nod I think they teach that to therapists don't they yeah they teach the therapist triple nod technique right so a slow triple nod very easy you don't have to smile it's just it's a it's a warmth cue the other thing that we found we did this in LinkedIn profile pictures if you add a simple head tilt you are seen as warmer so if I tilt my head to the side this is a universal response if I want to hear something better so if I say Mel do you hear that we automatically tilt our head and expose our ear that's a way that we want to hear better and so when you are on a video call on a date in your LinkedIn profile picture if you want to be seen as warm you can tilt your head to the side as if to say I am deeply listening I am really trying to hear you and it's much more natural than smiling maniacally this is fascinating so we've got the triple knot everybody we've got smile with your eyes we've got tilt your head slightly what are other warm cues okay so other warm cues vocal so let's talk about vocals those were three nonverbal cues vocal remember is the one that we often forget you have a lot of power in your voice so another warmth vocal cue is what I call vocalizations oh do we love a vocalization so vocalization is surround sound listening it's it's showing that you're listening so this is going to immediately make me sound warmer um oh I just did that oh I'm very warm yes so actually you have a very good balance smell of warmth and competence I was going to say you when you asked for an example but I was like that's way too Brown nosy so I didn't but you have you have a very good one with the competence because you will vocalize for me so as a speaker when you nod at me I can see you nodding right now oh yeah I'm just doing it naturally yeah and that encourages me as a speaker I'm doing good that makes my crunchiness smoother oh that's so awesome so your warmth cues are gifts to awkward people when you show someone who's crunchy awkward afraid I'm listening to you um that was interesting oh aha you are gifting them lubricant you are saying you got this girl like I'm listening I am hearing you this is super smooth which then makes me more smooth and so I there's two sides of why I wrote this book yes I want you to be more charismatic but I also want you to be more inspiring I want you to be contagious in a way that's gifting warmth and competence and so adding vocalization is a very easy way especially for my introverts remember my introverts I want you I want to teach you how to be heard about being loud so nonverbal cues vocalizations that's a way for you to participate in conversation without saying a word right so um oh that's fantastic easy all right do that again so what are the what are the other ones other than um oh ah wow what those are all warm globalization in fact doing them to right now should kind of give you the warm and fuzzies like a little bit should be like that feels so good so whatever I I say vocalizations are kind of like a warming blanket it like makes the other person feel like wow I'm doing so good so you're doing better than good you're doing fantastic Vanessa how do you display confidence what are some cues for competence all right so competence um low tone which we talked about already so not using The Accidental question reflection is really important explanatory gestures so being purposeful they're gestures eye contact eye contact is a hard one because I know that eye contact can be different for culture different cultures but what I want us to understand about eye contact is that eye contact produces a chemical so when we mutually gaze and they even found this happens through a screen so if I make eye contact with the camera we also produce this chemical oxytocin oxytocin is a very complicated chemical there's a lot of things in our body but for social purposes oxytocin is the chemical of connection when we are making eye contact when we first meet someone or we hop on video our bodies go oh we're both mutually gazing we must be friend not foe therefore let me produce the chemical that allows me to trust the more oxytocin that's in our bodies when we're communicating the more open we are the more we say yes the more we feel like I'm on the same page of this person so eye contact is one of the fastest ways to get or gift oxytocin now the amount of oxytocin is different I do not believe and I really want to repeat this I do not believe in 100 eye contact oh thank God okay because no for somebody with I have ADHD and I've noticed every time I talk every time I read anything about body language you're lying if you look away and I'm like I have a hard time holding eye contact for a long period of time and I know it has to do with the ADHD that that is correct that is correct so let's talk about this first of all I want to talk about looking up to the left is lying because that's a very a myth I want to bust second the worst advice that bad body language books give is make more eye contact no eye contact is great and it can produce oxytocin but actually we should not be making 100 eye contact or even 80 or 90 eye contact that is a territorial gesture our bodies know that when we're trying to process something mentally we look away so for example if I were to ask you to do some some math with me now if I were to say Mel what's 10 times 10 plus 5 minus wait I'm not gonna make you do it but you immediately break eye contact 105. okay I looked up to do the math yeah you looked up all right and now I never noticed that but you're right I like I looked up to go like I looked up at an imaginary chalkboard and imagine 10 times 10 plus 5 105. and this is a really important thing for humans to do why if I ask you a complicated question a technical question even a memory based question oh tell me about your last job tell me about your last girlfriend you need to look up to access the memory or to access the knowledge you do like is that like a neurological thing yes yes because when think about this from a from a chemical perspective when we are talking we are bonding I want to make eye contact but if you ask me a hard question about my past or a math problem I need to break the eye contact stop producing the oxytocin so I can access that memory so it's our brain's way of saying don't give me too much input I need to access this input in this information over here so that's why it can be so confusing for people who are trying to make more eye contact no right I want you to make eye contact when you want to bond with someone absolutely especially in the first few seconds but when you're processing or accessing information I actually want you to look away because you're going to give a better answer and humans understand this right so if I were to if you were to ask me a very hard question I didn't know the answer to and I went oh that's a great question you are more likely to believe my answer because I looked away to process it that's fascinating so um that's the first thing on a bus about eye contact is do not feel pressure to make more eye contact competent people make purposeful eye contact competent people they know that when they're trying to bond to connect they're right at you but when they're trying to access a competent answer they're accessing it over here or over here or over here so that's actually a mark of competence it's also a way to pause to introduce I am deeply thinking about what you just said so I can give you a really good answer second thing is we have done a ton of lie detection research in our lab in fact I almost almost we have one chapter on lie detection in the book I almost put it into its own book because it's so much research I want to bust a myth looking up to the left or looking up to the right does not mean someone is lying that means someone is accessing different information what I do think that people should do is know their lying tells I think a fundamental piece of information every single person should know about themselves is what they do when they lie so here's what I wait hold on let me just make sure I I'm so you're not saying here's a tell when someone else is lying you're saying what does it tell when you're lying that's it oh why do I need to know that you need to know that because you need to know when you are accidentally signaling in authenticity because what can often happen is you should know your online tell because hopefully you're not lying a lot but oftentimes people will do their lying tell when they're not even lying when they're nervous or afraid and it's signaling to the world I'm nervous and Afraid what's your lying tell so my lying tell is I hide my hands so I get my hands get really cold and I usually hide them or I clench them so if you see me ever have like a clenched fist I'm like keep it together keep it together keep it together keep it together so a clenched fist or a white knuckling it or I hide my hands I also um use a little bit of a disgust micro expression so we talked about fear as a micro expression discussed is when we crinkle our nose up and we Flash the whites of our teeth uh this is a like if I were to say oh I smell something bad disgust is a really common lying red flag because Liars including myself we hate lying it makes us feel dirty literally lying makes us feel dirty Liars will often use more Purell afterwards because they it makes them feel physically dirty so you'll see people if you ask someone so uh what do you think of the new girl oh yeah you know she's she's nice yeah you've got a disgust face as you say that and now as I'm watching you I'm like you're lying because you're saying she's nice but your face says disgust yeah so how do you though know your own tell because I'm sitting here trying to think no well I'm gonna give you I'm gonna give you that I know what it is this is a fun Friday night if you're willing to to kind of do this with a couple friends it's really fun to do this I highly recommend doing this with your partner my partner and I know are each other's tells which has made our marriage super honest which I love like radical honesty I'm all about it so here's another way to do okay get ready Chris I got date night get ready one if you can film this also it's helpful to re-watch it together first I want you to open up your camera or your phone one I want you to tell me what you had for breakfast yesterday Okay the reason I can't remember is a recall test you need to know what you look like when you're recalling truth you will notice you'll probably look up to left look up to the right yeah I look towards your left or touch your face I kind of I look to the left and then I looped my head around okay so that's and you also were tapping your foot you're sure was I oh I was okay yes okay cool okay so that's your recall test that's what you look like when you are accessing truthful information you're right you know why I click my foot it's like I'm cranking the brain back up come on I still can't remember what the hell I had for breakfast yesterday even though I'm cranking the foot and I'm looking to the left but okay like what was it what was it what is today yesterday was Sunday I I can't remember what I had for breakfast if I if I made you sit and think about it by the way it's okay if it takes you a couple seconds to think about it we'll see exactly what you look like or what Mel looks like when she's recalling truth oh I'm like scrunching my face up right now yeah I'm not sure I had breakfast yesterday and that could be the answer yeah I don't think I ate breakfast yesterday so we just saw what Mel looks like when she is recalling truth okay okay that's very important to know about someone because if you ask your teenage daughter did you hear about the drug incident at school and they use truthful recall cues you're good okay cool yeah so how do I know when I'm lying it's coming okay okay so the second question I won't get any extra camera and by the way what was it what was what did I have for breakfast I don't think I ate anything okay good okay got it so you can do this All in One take it's even better like I like the pausing we want to see what you do in those moments of like what was it what was it okay second question I want you to tell me your most embarrassing story The more embarrassing the better I want to deliver it right to camera this is how you look when you're recalling something that makes you nervous the biggest mistake that we make in lie detection is we confuse nervousness for Guilt got it they are different so when you recall your most embarrassing story and I want you to like feel it you're like really feel it I want you to see what you do when you're nervous that's your nervous tell and those are also things you don't want to show when you're trying to come across as confident because they're your nervous leaks so common nervous tells are mashing the lips oh I think I just did that yeah we like try to hold it in yeah common nervous tells are uh um touching the stomach the face that's often well like a little nervous do people do this on Zoom calls too you see them doing this all the time all the time all the time it's a great way to I mean I don't want you to like do this to your colleagues without them knowing it it's always good to do it honestly but it's very helpful to know like on my team we do team calls every week oh my God I would hate to be honest when I'm making someone nervous what'd you say it's helpful to know when I'm making a teammate nervous right like I have a wonderful big team and if I share oh we're having a big New Year's launch and how does everyone feel and I know my team members nervous tell and I see it on a zoom call I can say hey Rob are we are we good on that like any any hesitations any Hang-Ups that then gives him permission to say I don't know if the graphics are going to be ready in time so a deeper way to interact I believe is radical honesty where on my team we know each other's nervous tells so I can address them right can you give us the top five signs that somebody is nervous based on their body language yes so uh touching the hands uh touching the face touching the stomach that actually comes out of Cornell University they actually found that when we're nervous We Touch our stomach we cleanse our stomach or we touch our face um third is uh purposeless gestures so ringing the hands cracking the knuckles touching the back of the neck gestures that have no purpose um with the necklace playing with your necklace fidgeting those are also false purposeless gestures uh adding unnecessary pauses or awkward pauses so some of the middle of a talk and they're they're really trying to explain it but they're pop their pausing is mid midward or mid-sentence like that if you call out somebody on a zoom meeting so they're nervous tell do they get more nervous it depends on how you do it right intention is everything here so I don't like being like that gotcha yeah that that's not a good way to interact with cues however if I notice like I'm on a team call and I say hey everyone we're having a big New Year's launch and I noticed one of my team members shows a cluster of three nervous tells one one cue by itself does not usually mean anything right like for example we're going to talk about lying in the last the last question one of the top lying red flags is touching the nose so Liars have um we have a very specific kind of tissue in our nose and research has found that when we lie and learn guilt it uh swells and it causes our nose to itch so Bill Clinton during his Monica Lewinsky testimony when he lied he touched his nose 26 times in his truthful testimony he touched his nose twice so this is a response that we have so uh are you lying right now because you just touched your nose no I'm showing you I'm showing you because but also what if you have allergies what if you have a cold so one Cube by itself is never good it's three cues so if I see someone knows touch and another um uh like interesting lying tell is a shame touch When We Touch the side of our forehead we often do this when we're very embarrassed it's an eye blocking Behavior and I see a lip purse so we press our lips into a hard line that's three very very big red flags in a row that's when I either will pause the zoom call and I'll be like hey everyone I just want to check in Rob does this sound doable to you this launch timeline are we good on this anything that I should know or we should that we're not thinking about that's me not me saying rob I saw you touch your nose which is like terrible but it's me checking in with him or I might afterwards hang up the zoom call text him or call him or email and say hey are you good with the launch I just want to make sure so I believe in that got it okay that's super cool so how do I tell what my lying tell is okay so the last question so we did what you had for breakfast your most embarrassing story the last one is the most important I want you to make up an embarrassing story that did not happen to you and tell it to the camera and try to convince me it happened to you this is an example of what you do when you're trying to make up a completely false story and you will see exactly what you do when you lie wow that's so cool it's fine I want to do some rapid fire questions okay um so what are your top tips for displaying charisma and being more influential on a zoom call okay so on a zoom call specifically there's a couple nonverbal cues that translate really well over camera so one of them you do a lot which is a lean so a lien is a universal Charisma cue the reason for this is because when we're trying to understand something better when we activate our five senses we lean in we hear something better we lean in we want to see something better we lean in we want to smell something we lean in so a lean cue is what you can do on a zoom call when someone says something super interesting or powerful we do this in person but on Zoom we forget that we have that kind of personal reaction so if you were to say something Mel that was super impactful I would go really wow that's so interesting not even a lot just a couple of inches I want to do a little experiment here so you can actually feel this wherever you are right now if you're sitting or standing or running or cooking I want you to lean forward just two inches go ahead and try it with me what research has found is that when you lean forward two inches it actually activates a pre-action part of your brain it literally makes you more motivated and so what can happen is when you lean in it makes you a better listener it also is contagious it tells the other person wow they like what I'm saying so much they're literally trying to lean in to activate what I'm saying so you want to use the lean very purposely when you hear something good or when you're saying something that you want someone to pay attention to so if I for example even on this interview when I'm saying something that I really strongly believe in I will bold it by adding a liens I'll say this is one of the most important things I could share today that is a cue for you bold bold listen to this so leans for you listening and as a speaker I love that easy is there any phrase or something that you suggest particularly somebody who's shy or introverted to say or do during a virtual meeting to be more influential ah okay we didn't even talk about verb verbs we didn't even talk about words so words are incredibly important aspect of our Charisma that we also need to address right so for for verbal power what you want to do especially for my introverts and especially on a video call is use warmth verbal cues we actually did a study with Dr Paul Zach Dr Paul Zak is a big oxytocin researcher he's incredible he's one of my good friends where I wanted to know during the pandemic if saying warm words could stimulate connection so in other words I'm on a video call if we were in person Mel you and I would be hugging we'd you know high five we'd have some sort of touch I wanted to know could you replace that verbally what we found was we had people where he created a software that people wear that measures their skin conductance their physiology when I say I'm sending a virtual high five I wish I could give you a digital hug I'm uh giving you a warm wave from here when I say those words it actually triggers a physiological response on your skin so one thing that you can do in the very start of a call or the very end of call is oh I wish I could give you a hug a virtual one will have to do oh or you know this has been so lovely talking to you I just feel so much warmth and I just had such a great time connecting with you using warm words connection warmth trust hug handshake they actually trigger a physiological response the other person so if you can use those warm words is a very easy way to trigger more warmth that's fantastic easy okay terrific what about emails how do you display more influence more Charisma in an email what is the pros what's the danger zone okay so remember the good news is by the way I just want to say a big rule here I'm sharing a lot of cues some of these cues you're gonna hear and you're gonna be like oh that one is so good great some of the keys I'm going to say and you're going to be like I don't know about that that's good I actually want you to follow your instincts there are 96 cues in the book it's like a recipe there are some ingredients you're not going to like and I don't want you to do cues that you don't like for example um one of the cues I teach is a steeple right so it's it's when you just touch your fingers together and you make sort of like a church steeple if you watch Shark Tank Kevin O'Leary loves this gesture yes some people love it some people hate it if you love it great if you don't discard it so what I'm about to share Q wise I want you to make sure that you actually like it before you use it like you're able to use different ingredients like that's actually a good thing I totally forgot what the question was no problem actually let me ask you this one what are the danger zone cues on a virtual meeting what you should never do okay so great okay so danger zone key is in a virtual meeting one I always always always always want you to front with the camera so research is very very clear what does that mean front with the credit team okay so when we are aligned on Parallel Lines with someone our brain likes it so fronting is when I angle my toes my torso and my top towards the camera research has found that if I were to give the entire interview with one shoulder angled back and my toes angled out it would actually make it hard for you to believe me it would make it really hard for you to open up to me and so a mistake that I often see on Zoom calls is people will either angle out or the worst of the worst they have their camera on their side and they're typing like this oh yes I hate that I hate it I'm like just turn the damn camera off yes I would rather so one thing I want you to make sure of is your setup not only are you a foot and a half away but you are on Parallel Lines with the other person so you're angling your toes your torso and your head towards them this is both on zoom and in person even in person when someone is kind of angled out and they're trying to talk to you you can literally feel the disengagement the reason for this because our toes are sort of Secret Windows into the soul that's what I like to call them your toes the way that they're pointed usually indicate a secret direction that you want to go so I have noticed anecdotally that when someone is ready to leave a conversation you're at a networking event or at a holiday party and they have to go to the bathroom or they're kind of done they will angle their toes towards the exit wow their body is like we gotta go we want to go so if I'm angled away from you with my toes angled towards the exit you're subconsciously picking up on the fact that part of me is left the conversation you know what I'm realizing that's stage one of me trying to get my husband Chris to leave a party I go up and walk up to him but I'm angled toward the door like let's go and I do that physically without realizing it before I put my hand on my back and they're like let's go so it's so interesting okay so we know danger zone you've got to you gotta face the camera you got to be pointed at the camera toes at the camera otherwise you're signaling lack of interest and not that confident either if you're not getting intention another danger zone cue is a facial cue that I wanna I just want to point out so um resting bothered face right resting bothered face is when at rest our Facebook looks bothered um I have resting bothered face rather badly um and that is important to understand about yourself because sometimes at rest people will say are you angry are you tired you should know what your resting face looks like so for example if your resting face my resting face looks like sadness so sadness is universal micro expression so sadness is when our the corners of our mouth turn down into an upside down U and when our eyelids droop and sometimes even our our eyebrows pinch together when I'm at rest I tend to look a little sad because that's how my mouth points this is important for me to know because if you look sad at rest people are going to assume you're disappointed you're low energy how about anger what if you have anger so anger is a different look I don't have this but I know people who do so people I do have yeah who have anger at rest they pinch their eyebrows with these two vertical lines appear in between their eyebrows they might be concentrating but they look a little irritated a little frustrated a little angry none of these are right or wrong but it's important to know how people might be perceiving you when you're just listening so since I know that I look sad I work hard especially when I'm listening to someone and trying to encourage them to dial up warmth if you know that you look angry at rest it's really important for you to dial up making someone feel reassured making someone feel like they're not frustrating you that you're really happy with them that way verbally you're overcoming that resting face yeah so like the three head nod the um yeah oh wow yeah okay see I just got rid of the face and now I'm sorry I'm taking the cues here this is great all right now what are strategies for dialing up Charisma and influence warmth and competency in emails okay emails yes so I love in an email the most important thing you have to do in email is break social scripts so what happened in email were so overflow overload with email so I love running tests on our email newsletter so we have an email newsletter and I can actually see what's getting open rates what's getting click rates and one thing that we've found is anytime we are we trigger someone's autopilot is when we use a subject like follow-up or information or update or next week's meeting do you want to learn about telling the other person to go to sleep go to sleep so are you saying we can have fun in work emails yes now fun what I mean is use Charisma verbal cues so there is this is Art not science certain words trigger an emotional response okay so one study this is a really interesting study what they did is they wanted to know if achievement oriented words could make people achieve more so achievement Oriental words are words like win success Master achieve compete race even me just saying the word win could actually change the way your brain thinks so here's what they did a very simple experiment they brought people into their lab they settle up into two different groups the first group got an intelligence test with a very simple set of directions these directions were completely autopilot socially scripted sterile please take the following test the best of your ability you have 10 minutes to complete it please use a pencil okay very very basic directions you've read a million times before the second set of directions was the same word count so not longer not shorter but they sprinkled in they swapped in a couple of achievement oriented words so uh please perform well on this achievement test the more answers you can win correctly the better please succeed with a pencil right so they just sprinkled in a couple of achievement are two words they found that just three or four achievement orange Awards not only made them perform better on the intelligence test it doubled doubled the participants desire to keep working on the test wow that's pretty cool it's so cool because it means in your emails you can gift Behavior change okay so for Charisma which impacts influence and income and uh interest or in whatever the heck they are uh impact so for email what words do we want to use are we throwing in emojis and Gifts like how does this work obviously not all caps and tons of explanation points but no no okay so what I like in an email is to have it I have samples of this in the book if you want to like read a template is I want you to have warm words a couple of warm words warm words trigger the warm and fuzzies so so happy to connect with you last week I'm so looking forward to collaborating in our meeting next week when people read words like collaborate they are literally more likely to be collaborative okay so you were actually gifting Behavior what I want you to think about when you're writing an email this is a really weird way to write an email but it works how do I want someone to think feel and behave after reading this email if you want them to be warm and collaborative and open and happy and trustworthy use those words you are literally gifting them that feeling but if you want them to get it done be productive and efficient let's brainstorm let's power through onward let's do it I want you to gift more competent words so the perfect email yes has a balance of let's connect let's collaborate I can't wait for the meeting next week and let's blast through this agenda I can't wait to hit our goals we're gonna do everything together onwards Vanessa you know what I hear is I hear enthusiasm I hear confidence in those words you're displaying that which then signals to me that I'm on a team that wants to do that you want to know one word I don't like in an email oh tell me I hate that Trend that started a couple years ago where people would generically sign everything best best best to me as a sign off is like passive aggressive not interested phony pretending I give a that's what best means to me and it's socially scripted right like yes it doesn't even mean best it doesn't even mean anything a little experiment that we did in our newsletters is I was trying different sign-offs and I wanted to know if I could change like people's perception of Me based on the sign off and so now I use after a series of tests always every setup of my email is to your success Vanessa oh thank you Vanessa it's a good gift it's like success it's gifted I love that and you know what I just noticed hmm I spoke at the end of my breath so I was like oh thank you Vanessa like I went up on that and I don't know if that means that I was not being uh I actually mean it so now I'm going to breathe thank you Vanessa [Laughter] but it but actually that was authentic because you were it was it was a compliment it was appeasement yes so you were encouraging liking so you went really high because you loved it I did we're around babies and puppies we go really high like this because we really really want them to feel good that's good oh that's so nice but but remember all of our all of our uh people Pleasers out there speaking like that around puppies and babies and when you truly mean it because you want to compliment something someone that's great speaking like that all the time because you are seeking reassurance or seeking being liked that's killing your ability to be respected and it's also not authentic and this works with toddlers right I have a toddler four and a half she's not even taller anymore if I'm serious with my toddler I go real low right I'm real I'm like Sienna uh-uh we are not doing that and she hears it so you also can use when you're talking to your baby or your puppy or a toddler and you're like good job wonderful job don't touch that right there's a big difference they hear that too little ones there ever oh do they ever like when Chris lowers his tone of voice everything in this house stops when the three kids are here so another quick question what are the body language cues that somebody that you're dating is into you oh how fun okay so when we really like something we want to get as close as possible we also are trying to produce as much oxytocin we have not talked about haptics which is a fancy word for touch so this is a little bit different culture to culture but universally when we physically touch in any ways that can be an arm touch a hug a cheek kiss a back Pat We produce oxytocin that chemical connection so when we really like someone we are really wanting to produce that oxytocin so if someone's very into you they will look for any and every opportunity to touch right so extra long hug two cheek kiss they reach across the table they touch your hand they touch your back when you're walking by they touch your shoulder when they laugh they touch the side of your arm those are all conscious and subconscious ways of saying I want more chemical I want more oxytocin because oxytocin is what gets us to kiss it's what makes us feel really attractive the more oxytocin that's flowing through our bodies the more we feel like wow this person and I we are just getting each other so looking for lots of opportunities to touch this is also where you can signal that you're very into someone right is taking small opportunities to touch a note here is as you move up the arm the touch becomes more intimate so the least intimate part of the body is the hand right we hand shake that's because we can handshake someone really far away from our torso and our most vulnerable parts of our body right yeah so that's the least intimate if you are not that into someone or you're not sure you'll you'll notice the hand touching so not only handshake but someone might touch your hand or touch the back of your hand that's the least intimate the farther up the arm you go into the Torso into the back the more intimate the touch is so I always say start slow right that's right and you know what happens when you reach the armpit it's ticklish and very intimate and very into it that's right and it activates those pheromones too um let's talk disrespect oh yes how does somebody that is charismatic handle disrespect with warmth and competence so first of all you want to activate reciprocity remember that the more charismatic we are the more contagious we are so the very very first step is what we've been talking about this entire time which is you want to Signal warmth and competence and hope they catch up that's the very first thing right if you are feeling cold disrespect dismissal um one of the things that drives me crazy is like dismissive body language someone who kind of isn't actually engaging with me so the very first thing I try is I gift them a lot of warmth and competence and this is really important our instinct when someone is snubbing us or disrespecting us is to pull away our instinct is to go on offensive or defensive that is actually what I don't want you to do the moment that someone disrespects you if you go on offensive which is it's your fault how dare you I don't like you you are immediately going to trigger more disrespect right and I also don't want you to go on defensive it's not me it's not my problem I I don't you know it's not all about it's all about you not me that also makes you someone disengage so instead I want you to fight your instinct and gift gift warmth gift competence hope that rubs off on them second if it doesn't work if you're if you're gifting it it's not happening to you I believe in direct radical transparency and direct honesty saying exactly what you need and sometimes that's hey I don't know if you're feeling this I don't know if you're into this you seem really frustrated but here's what I need today I will often call out and use words like upset frustrated confused hard difficult to talk to sometimes calling out the emotion allows the person to correct you so in times I've said you know I can see you're a little bit upset or I can see you're a little bit frustrated and they'll say no I'm not frustrated I'm disappointed ah now we're getting somewhere so if you offer a word that you think they're feeling they'll either say yes I am frustrated I don't know why XYZ deadline wasn't meant or they correct you with the right emotion that gives you so much information so hopefully you can move past this respect and actually have a productive conversation as opposed to this back and forth that's not working amazing one final question and this is a gift to my shy introverts out there okay can you give us five surprising silent charismatic cues that will help someone command respect yes so the most important one for introverts silent is mirroring so mirroring is a highly charismatic cue because when we really like someone when we're on the same page with them what research has found is that we subconsciously mirror they're nonverbal so if you're with someone and you don't want to speak you don't want to share a lot verbal is maybe less of your favorite mode of communication one gift you can give them to be highly charismatic yourself is to mirror them very subtly so if they are leaning in you're leaning in if they're um nodding their head a lot you nod your head a lot if they're using less gestures maybe you use less gestures this is a way that highly charismatic people will dial up or dial down Oprah does this exceptionally well watch her interviews with high energy people her high energy interviews she dials up her energy she literally uses more hand gestures more movement more leans more nods she's more expressive with her face in her low energy interviews she doesn't try to convince them or change them she matches she dials down she becomes less expressive yeah she uses more calm hand gestures so mirroring is one okay the second one is an eyebrow raise so an eyebrow raise is a universal gesture of I'm listening I'm open tell me more that the kind of funny one is romantically if I were to you know Mel signal to you across the bar and go you know with my eyebrows it's a signal of Interest right over again all right yeah right so that's a signal of Interest so introverts and do this instead of speaking so if you're in a board room or in a zoo meeting on a date and you want to encourage someone by saying I'm listening tell me more you can literally raise your eyebrows up you can also do this while you're speaking so um Neil deGrasse Tyson uses this queue a lot so he I found this great uh quote with him where he said he writes books based on eyebrow raising things he says so one little test he does is he goes on airplanes by the way I would love to sit next to Neil deGrasse Tyson on an airplane heels in airplanes and he starts talking to the person next to him and he shares a bunch of facts about space he's an astrophysicist Space and Science and he says every time the other person goes really and raises their eyebrows up he writes it down and he says he only puts things in his book that people raise their eyebrows at because it's cool specific Cube curiosity so you can raise your eyebrows we can also look for eyebrow raises okay so that's number two number three yeah I notice when you raise your eyebrows you also cocked your head is that another way to demonstrate so command respect am I allowed to do three and four which is the head tilted nodding because of course they're so good so warming so nodding and head tool thing and then I want to do a different one I'm going to say specifically mirroring empathy and what I mean by this is introverts have a superpower they are so good at observing they are so good at spotting emotions that other people miss and spotting emotional needs that is your superpowers that's what you should use so if you see someone in authentic happiness you should be mirroring that happiness back to them and then capitalizing that happiness that could be mirroring the smile back to them that could be dialing up your gestures but it also could be negative so if you see someone who's in sadness you can mirror that Sadness by showing that empathy so if someone's really sad and they pinch their eyebrows together and they droop the corners of their um their lips down and you can see that they're really struggling you can do that with them and say I hear you or you have to say anything you if you have a friend who's sharing some that makes them sad and you show sadness you are literally saying I care about you so much that I want to take on the emotional burden with you and I think that is beautiful ah you know what else is beautiful all the wisdom and knowledge you just dropped today like a freaking bomb on all of the things that we have been doing that we didn't realize that were lowering our influence our impact and the income that we're making and so I want to take a minute on behalf of absolutely everybody listening to thank you oh because this was so tact this was so Tactical this was so smart and informative and the other reason why I loved this conversation so much is because everything that you shared we can put to use immediately and it tracks back to this research that 82 percent of how somebody sizes you up whether or not you influence them what they think of you has to do with your charisma and how you're displaying warmth and competency and you gave us the gift of teaching us how to do it with specific tools I cannot thank you enough Vanessa we have got to have you back I'm sure we're going to have a gajillion questions about specific situations so just thank you thank you thank you that was three maybe four five head nods in a row because I mean it and I'm going lower on my voice to command the fact that you're a freaking Superstar Vanessa thank you oh my goodness thank you so much for listening and I also want to thank you for the space to talk about this and Empower people that remember you tell the world how it should treat you so the more purposeful you are with your cues the better people will treat you and you deserve that so thank you so much for having me oh my God thank you you're the best wasn't that awesome I mean Vanessa's awesome and you know what else is awesome you you are awesome you have the it factor and now you know how to hack charisma and how to use body language to get what you want and before we take off here I want to tell you something else I love you I really do and I believe in you and I believe in your ability and that it Factor inside of you in the Charisma you're going to bring to the surface and display everywhere you go I believe that you're going to use that to create a better life and that's why I'm here to remind you of that twice a week every week with this podcast oh my God I just love you alrighty you have an awesome day now and I'll talk to you in a few days [Music] [Music] hey it's Mel thank you so much for being here if you enjoyed that video bye God please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing thank you so much for being here we've got so much amazing stuff coming thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family I love you we create these videos for you so make sure you subscribe

Channel: Mel Robbins

Views: 405,360

Keywords: Mel Robbins, Mel Robbins Motivation, Mel Robbins Advice, inspiration

Id: FVmTeH0uK5k

Length: 100min 19sec (6019 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 01 2022