Vanessa Van Edwards on How to Become More Charismatic and the Body Language Cues You Need to Avoid

[Music] vanessa welcome to the podcast thank you so much for having me oh it's it's great so i want to start here i think your bio or one of them that i read says you're a behavioral investigator how do you become a behavioral investigator basically i love people watching and that's just a more formal title for me so so you know i'm a recovering awkward person which is probably a little bit more accurate in my bio and because of that i am a social overthinker so growing up i would tend to misinterpret cues being sent to me and that was actually the cause of my awkwardness where i would walk into a room and i wasn't sure did i say something wrong oh did i do something weird are they angry at me i always leave dinner parties and i'd ask my husband is she mad at me he'd be like what why what are you talking about of course not and that is because and this is a fundamental problem that i had i was misinterpreting neutral cues as negative and that is that is actually a uh something that happens in our brain where it's almost like a lens or a filter and so i began observing people and really critically taking notes simply because i was misreading all the cues little did i know that there are other people who have the same problem i thought this was i thought i was like the only one i was like am i dyslexic for people like i literally thought that that was that was a weird filter that i had turns out actually this is a very common problem because people who get social anxiety social overwhelm or even folks who are very smart and very charismatic who get too much in their head or too much about their idea they can also misinterpret cues so that is how i became a behavioral investigator was could we code behavior can we look at this this whole journey started about 17 years ago where i noticed that highly charismatic people and it didn't matter where they were in the world it didn't matter if they were an athlete or a celebrity or a politician or a business leader or a pastor if they were highly charismatic they showed a strikingly set of similar cues nonverbal verbal and vocal and i wondered i'm not naturally charismatic but maybe i could code the cues they were using and maybe we can learn them okay this is really interesting so a little bit of free therapy here that's why we do podcasts right so um okay this is gonna i don't know how to say this in a way that i'm excited doesn't sound like i'm about to say it but tell me okay i i was always told i had a lot of charisma from a very young age however i always thought of myself as awkward because i do not know how to read people i was oblivious so i would go in i would get it wrong i would think they were really excited when they were upset i would think they were upset when they were actually really happy i'm like i don't even know how to read it and i have learned because i have great people around me i will have people who read the situation for me and then tell me like so i'm not alone you are not alone and here's what's really funny is charisma is a very peculiar trait and i'm not a cool kid right i was not a cool kid right like i was out i was always on the fringe i wasn't a cool kid i was just like they were standing in the corner and i was allowed to stand right behind we were in the same group you and i would have been great friends in school you know i had great friends in school although i went to all girls school so that would have been interesting for you oh there you go yeah so what's really interesting is i used to think that charisma wasn't an eight-trait right the cool kids they were born with those great hand gestures they were born with a great fashion sense i thought there's no way you could learn it but actually what research finds is that we absolutely can cultivate charisma and it's a very interesting trait because being charismatic does not preclude you from being awkward in fact there are many very charismatic people and they take the stage and they know all the cues they know the energy to put out there but inside or afterwards they have to like lay down on the bed they're like i am so exhausted that's me and so here's the good thing is if this is you if you feel both charismatic and awkward or if you're awkward and wish to be charismatic you can have both at the same time and the other good news and this is really important for me is i am not an extrovert i'm actually an ambivert i'm somewhere in between introvert and extrovert most of the soft skills books out there even like you know dale carnegie had when friends and twins people they're written by extroverts and so their advice is be more extroverted yeah for an ambivert or an introvert is exhausting right it is so hard to be authentic and i think that to be charismatic truly long-lasting charismatic you have to be authentic which we can talk about where that how that shows up if you're an introvert trying to fake being outgoing it will not last long enough and so my goal is how can we learn to be charismatic and still honor our introversion or our ambiverted moments and also know that we're going to have awkward moments and that's okay yeah that didn't mean there's so much in just that i can think of people i know and i think listeners would be able to identify a few who are very charismatic authentic genuine on stage but when you meet them in real life they're kind of awkward it's like they've got this thing that happens when they walk out and they put on and it's real like this is not oh i studied but they're so good and then you meet him in the hallway and you're like ooh that was a little underwhelming okay so you just put your finger on something very important which i think we off we used to hide it i want to kind of bust that myth no highly charismatic people they use their charisma like a dial when they need to be on stage when they're presenting an idea when they're trying to raise funds when they're you know speaking about something they're passionate about they can dial up that charisma and they can tap into a very authentic place that's high energy but they also have a one-to-one quiet contemplative power that might be much more introverted when they're one-to-one or when they're in a small group meeting or when they're with their colleagues and then they can dial into that a charismatic introversion that powerful contemplative quiet space both of those are charismatic there is not one flavor of charisma yes there's the bubbly extrovert that can be important on stage but there's also the empathetic nurturing healer there's also the quiet contemplative introvert there's also the wise sage all of those are charismatic the key is knowing what feels authentic to you so if you're more introverted trying to dial up into being the life of the party is not going to work for you right i think that that's the problem that we have is can we identify that specific flavor our flavor of charisma and how can we hone it yeah you know and the ambivert part is really interesting i've talked to a number of leaders about this my wife says i'm an um ambivert with extrovert memory and what happened was after two decades in leadership leading people people rapidly growing you know we start with a handful then you have thousands of people i kind of got peopled out and what i find now is i can go into a party and my extroverted nature comes out but then afterwards i'm like where's the nearest sofa i'm gonna lie down um you know which is which is weird so just a note to leaders that's not strange vanessa there's so much i want to cover with you okay go ahead see what you're going to say and then we'll drill down it's so important for leaders i think that leaders are exactly what you're saying is they know how to turn it on they know how to work it this is i want you to think of your social energy like a muscle it's it's just like going to the gym right when we are when we are practicing for years growing our leadership learning how to communicate with people it's like we're doing bicep curls we're doing our squats and we get better and better at it that's why leaders who maybe start with small groups and all of a sudden they're leading big groups or speaking to big organizations they're literally strengthening their social muscle the problem is is just like a muscle it can get fatigued it can get overworked and so your key is figuring out okay what's my ideal social social energy right okay maybe i can deliver a sermon or i can deliver a presentation i have about an hour or two left in me but after that i need some quiet time honoring that and not being ashamed of it or feeling like you're bad or wrong that is actually what charismatic people are doing they are cultivating and using their social energy so purposefully that they can fine tune it no that is super helpful because you're right it's not i'm sure it is sometimes but you know for me and a lot of my friends it's not a question of being inauthentic it's not like oh i turned on something fake in the room it's just like you know the the power went out and uh i got to go relax and that is a part of your gift as well okay so you hint at it in your new book uh which by the way i left on a trip somewhere so i had to buy the kindle so two copies very happy to buy two um but it's called q right uh and yeah so yeah cues thank you cues anyway long story short you hint at it in queues but you have a whole ted talk on this uh and because we have so many public speakers listening to this let's talk about the study you did on ted talk so you gave a ted talk on ted talks and i thought every point is worth mentioning because it is so true i evaluate communicators for friends when they're hiring and i'll be like he doesn't have it or she has it and i don't know what it is but i think you stumbled on the secret sauce i know what it is i think i know what it is so it and this is a perfect tie-in for both cues and my ted talk it is the perfect sweet spot of warmth and competence we are extremely drawn to people who specifically rank high in these two traits this is research from princeton university which found that people leaders who are high in warmth collaboration trust likability but at the very same time and an equal measure high incompetence power capability intelligence we are drawn to them because they answer two of our most basic human questions can i trust you and can i rely on you so when a ted speaker walks onto stage when a business leader hops on a video call when someone walks into a room and they are cueing or signaling to everyone high warmth high competence high warmth and competence we are drawn to them because their cues are contagious and this is where the research gets really interesting i think that the reason we love highly charismatic leaders is we want to catch their charisma research has found that when someone shows up signaling or broadcasting warmth and competence we are more likely to be more warm and competent ourselves and so what i share with my leaders most of my leaders are our servant leaders they are incredibly compassionate they are doing what they do to help others and what i say is charisma is not just an investment in yourself yes i want you to be your most charismatic self but actually if you want to inspire others the best thing you can do is be charismatic yourself because that is going to trigger other people's inner charisma as well we measured this we started this with this major ted talk experiment i love ted talks and i wondered it's a very interesting group of data here you have really smart people if you get asked to do a ted talk you are smart right you know that you have a good idea you're successful but some ted talks go viral millions and millions of views other talks don't they have thousands of views and even with people who are relatively unknown right a bunch of professors all from the same university some ted talks have millions of views some have a couple thousand and i wondered why why some people can enter the stage stand on that red dot and within the first 10 so we coded all these different variables looking for patterns and there was one striking pattern and it was that the most popular ted talks this is just based on view count the most popular ted talks use more gestures specifically competent gestures and we counted these the least popular ted talkers use an average of 272 gestures in 18 minutes the most popular ted talkers use an average of 465. almost in 18 minutes gestures so you're talking about hands yes and so what's so funny is there's even a sound a vocal sound that really good ted talkers hit it's this perfect balance of warmth and confidence when you analyze their vocal power it sounds like this and usually there's gestures to go along with it okay so this is what almost all the best ted talks sound like different from the least popular okay here it goes today i want to talk to you about a big idea i'm going to break it down into three different areas that are going to change your life they have this power and i've also noticed as i've gone and coded more i didn't even include this um in my ted talk that ted talkers will also cue you for your emotion so you'll notice that when a ted talker or a really good business speaker when they're getting into a story they want you to feel like it's heartwarming they'll use a specific heartwarming vocal tone it sounds like this when i saw her i knew that i was going to change my life and when i saw that i decided she was the one for me in the audience same thing with data so they'll even use like a data tone of voice they'll say you know this data is incredible and what we found is that over 56 percent of people and you're like wow 56 they even cue you and that is warmth incompetence that's saying i know my content so well i can speak to you verbally but also with my nonverbal and my vocal cues i think that that's the definition of charisma i think that when we talk about being congruent being authentic what we're talking about is actually someone who is so aligned that their words their gestures and their vocal are all on the same track so if a ted speaker and this is a this is a problem of the of the least popular ted speakers the least popular ted speakers often rehearse the emotion out of their talk so they come on image and this and they sound like this and this is this is where our brain turns off they go uh so happy to be here um today i'm going to talk to you about a big idea on how to change climate and they they say they're so happy to be here but they don't sound happy to be here right if i were to say i'm so happy to be here and that's because they've rehearsed that line so many times that the emotion has literally drained out of it and so i think that the so gestures aligning them with our words is one piece that's the beginner and if anyone is a speaker thinking about how you can highlight your words with your gestures is incredibly important but second is how do you make sure that you are aligning the right emotion with what you're trying to convey hmm yeah the findings were so interesting there's something about the first seven seconds too right like you you make the argument which is very precise you're not saying five you're not saying 10 seven seconds what's so magic about the first seven seconds vanessa our first impressions are incredibly important and this is because in a weird way our brains are kind of lazy what i mean by that is when we're meeting people or seeing speakers or clicking on youtube videos or we have speakers or even different meetings we're trying to very quickly decide can i trust you and can i rely on you right we have to answer those two questions if we had to consistently do that for an entire meeting our brain would be so exhausted from trying to read those cues and it wouldn't be able to focus on the ideas so what our brain has done it's very efficient is it says okay i'm going to make my judgment about this person if they're trustworthy and if they're smart in the first seven seconds once i decide that i'm gonna move on to trying to hear their ideas and so those first seven seconds are almost like a lever if you can get them right the next hour the next five hours are going to be way easier if you get them wrong it makes the next hour or five hours pretty miserable and this is happening a lot especially as we do more and more virtually a lot of us are giving away our charisma in the first seven seconds by starting every video like this can you hear me okay can you see me hi hi hi done [Laughter] you're out all right it's done and so i think that that's the other reason why um it's really hard so it's not just on stage but even the first seven seconds of someone seeing you is your first impression and this is a mistake that a lot of business leaders make is they've prepared a perfect presentation and they think their impression starts the moment they start their their start their presentation but actually your first impression happens the moment someone first sees you that might be you walking on the taking a piece of paper and shaking hands with your introducer that was it that was your first impression and so it's not just the first seven seconds of your talk or your presentation which is very important it's actually how you take the stage how you start your video how you walk into the conference room the business room the negotiation those are the first seven seconds i think are most forgotten so i'm getting ready to give a presentation in front of leaders in houston in a week so tell me what to do in the next the first seven seconds because i'm replaying every talk i've ever done in my mind going i hope i did okay you did okay you did great so okay coming up i want you to think about so do you know if someone's introducing you uh that's a good question usually for me i you find out when you're at the event it's either a bumper or someone's going to introduce you but most of the time these days it's a bumper they introduce you then they play the bumper and then you walk out on okay so i now in my like you know little pre-speech form um i always ask i ask how am i going to be introduced and where will i be oh great it's a little life hack because it's not the worst thing in the world when you get there and you realize that you have to stand next to someone while they read your bio horrible i mean that is terrible so one you want to be prepared for that if that's going to be you and second i also want you prepared for are you coming off stage are you sitting on stage are you sitting in the audience are you going to have a bumper i love a bumper by the way because it allows the video to speak for you and then you your first impression happens the moment the lights turn on right like that's like a great great one so that's my favorite if i had to choose but if you and then whenever the lights turn on and this could be before your bumper while someone's reading your intro the very first thing you want to do is make sure your hands are visible i know that's a very weird one i know that sounds crazy but our hands are a really integral part of our first impression the reason for this is because our hands show intention so our brains when we can't see someone's hands we are less likely to trust them and that is because our hands show explanation they show intention they show if we're going to be greeted or not my favorite thing to do the moment i hop on video the moment i walk on stage if i am off stage my bio is being read the very first thing i do is i give a little wave to the audience little wave giants morning when i hop on video i don't remember when i hopped on video with you i was like hello morning how are you good yeah you did that that's right and it's so funny because that doesn't feel like it feels i don't know but but when i see it okay what i'm trying to say is i think in my head that if i did that it would be cheesy but i'll give you a great example of of your theory in action so there's a guy named rick warren he pastors one of the largest churches in america been there four decades he's in his 60s uh it's a church of like 30 000 people so my wife and i are there a few months ago and i've never seen him live i'm getting ready to interview him for this podcast he hasn't been well so he's not actually preaching that day he shot it on video earlier he walks out on stage he smiles he waves at this church he's known for four decades and he goes hey everybody just wanted to show up and see in person today and then he went into it and i was won over i was completely won over that's it so a wave is a subconscious cue we don't even realize it by the way you might go back if you were to go back and watch your favorite speeches or favorite sermons of all time you might not even realize you got a little bit of a gesture at the very beginning even a wave yes but even just a good morning with my hands yeah any kind of palm acknowledgement i think the palm is the most underrated part of the body our palm is incredibly important for trust why it shows i'm not hiding anything i'm not consuming anything it's also a very very subtle winter cue what i mean by this is when we win when we feel pride we want to take up as much space as possible and typically if you look at winners who win races they expand their arms and their hands usually their hands are big and they are towards the sky this is a universal symbol of pride and winning and we like to hear from be around and listen to winners we just like it because we want to catch it and so in a weird way a wave or if a wave feels uncomfortable to you even just opening with a broad palm gesture good morning good morning see you right even that is very subtly saying i feel proud and i want you to catch it i feel confident what i'm about to say and you should feel confident too i am open i'm not concealing anything and most importantly you belong here what really really towns leaders do is they are constantly cueing for belonging and we need this now more than ever so many people feel so disconnected and so alone and if they're in an audience or in a room and you're not specifically cueing them to feel a sense of you're here with me and i want you here with me and you're accepted and you belong when i do this with my hand so i'm bringing you in i'm showing my poem it is literally a universal way of saying come with me come to me you belong here i accept you i am open to you that is a gift if we can do that in the first seven seconds just show a poem wow so easy the other thing that surprised me and i've heard you talk about this and you write about it is one of the reasons to show your hands don't walk out with your hands in your pocket your hands behind your back is apparently this goes back to prehistoric times we wonder are you carrying a weapon which sounds crazy in the 21st century but if you think about it right if i can't see your hands what are you doing you have a knife do you have a weapon do you have a club yeah so what they found was and this was a terrifying study that when so in court cases in courtrooms if defendants put their hands under the table on their lap and by the way my mom taught me to put my hands in my lap okay when i was going through the table it was no elbows on the table and hands in your lap unless you were eating that was the rule at the dinner table so i i joke with her now i'm like mom like that's not very charismatic you should have told me to like leave my palms up she's like okay honey okay so um when defendants put their hands in their lap under the table jurors rate them as more sneaky and untrustworthy this is real really bad news because our jurors are supposed to be listening to the verbal content but we cannot help but look for subtle signals of openness subtle signals of trust and so just like you said if we can't see someone's hands we wonder what are they hiding and losers so when we lose a race when we're in shame or defeat or guilt we close our hands you'll see that losing athletes will often grip their hands into fists they they might even tuck their hands their their chest or hide them or cross them over their body so we recognize shame as a closed concealed hand now one of the things i didn't cues is i analyzed the cues hidden in the last supper and you know the last supper was a painting i grew up looking at right leonardo da vinci is one of those most famous paintings in the world and what i thought was so interesting if you look at the hidden body language cues in that painting da vinci depicted judas as having a closed fist he is the only apostle with a closed fist why that was a subtle cue that davinci was using to show concealment shame guilt fists a fist is also a sign of anger right so if we tightly grip our hands together or tightly grip our fist uh we this is this is how we protect ourselves our knuckles our hands have evolved into being uh fiscally the most protective gesture so here even in the painting we see judas with a fist whereas christ is depicted with open hands in fact christ is the only figure we can see with both palms showing if you actually look at the last supper and i i did not catch this when i first looked at it the first 100 times when i started reading cues and i break this down in the book christ is depicted with one palm up and one palm down but you can see both of his palms even in the last supper christ's first impression has a palm showing but i i just think that this we don't even realize subconsciously how often we need to feel this sense of of of openness and that happens that starts with our cues well it also answers the question what do i do with my hands right thank you will farrell so there you go i love an open book so uh let's talk about scripts um and reading from your notes i've had strong opinions about this over the years but i'd love to know what the research says we did this does not help right if you're reading from prepared notes it does not help you people i so nuanced the research a little bit but i always would coach communicators because i train leaders through courses and and i'm like i think the moment you start to read from a prepared script people stop trusting you there you go i don't know what do you think oh this research is real so actually there's a team called quantified communications and they use ai to analyze speeches in history and ted talks looking for patterns between the most persuasive and successful speeches and the least successful um speeches and uh talks and they just they just submitted this research so i always i agree with you that scripts the moment you begin to read something our brain has trouble listening to it right it's it's hard to actually grok someone who's reading something because we don't feel like it's coming from the heart and also in your cadence your tone of voice changes exactly exactly so actually i want to read this research too because it literally just came out so they analyzed they wanted to know because they had the exact same problem as do they tell their do they recommend this is all based on software do they recommend script or notes so here's what they found which i thought was just this is just fascinating this just came out i just presented this yesterday in my webinar okay going off script when does it help and when does it hurt so prepared script versus spoken content for clarity and trust so trust exactly spoken word is better by quite a lot so script you have less clarity and less trust however for persuasion and credibility script does better than spoken now here's what i know so trust you're absolutely right if you want to build trust if you want to have higher warmth speaking from the heart without a script is better but for persuasiveness and credibility according to this software according to the research script is better i think there's a way around this though which is of course if you have a very um a persuasive argument that you want to say perfectly saying it perfectly is going to be a script right so i think that what's critical here is not memorizing everything so for your opener your first seven seconds your stories and your trust building parts of your presentations not scripted if you have a portion that you really want to get right you really want to be very persuasive and have high credibility that's the portion you might be able to read or at least have very detailed notes on that's i think a more nuanced way to think about it and that actually helps me with some of my talks as well yeah i can see it i i use um screen slides if i'm doing it it just it's sort of a cue but it's got very minimal words like 99 of what i say is not there unless it's a quote and then uh the other thing too it's like ted talks they do not allow you to read your ted talks you have to internalize it you have to quote memorize it right so i can see that as being very effective uh and so that's a question really of knowing your material right like you better be clear on it you better know and here's a really uh specific example so if you're thinking about your presentation or a sermon or a talk so making sure that your stories and your openers are not scripted they come from the heart um in my presentations this is exactly what i do my openers my stories are all unscripted but the part of my presentation i want to be most persuasive with is a specific quote from dr susan fisk who did this charisma research that is 82 of judgments of people are based on warmth and competence that is the most persuasive thing my presentation because it's the foundation if you believe in warmth and competence you're gonna like everything else my presentation so that is one of my slides and that is quote unquote scripted because i literally have her quote behind me so if you could think about okay what's the one thing that your audience needs to believe or be persuaded by that would be the one thing to have double down behind you as either a quote or a big statement that way it's maybe three sentences of scripting that's it but that's the one big idea and that's something the beauty of ted talks is they make you think of one idea right like when i pitched my ted talk they were like what's your one big idea and so that's the other thing we can think about is in our presentations and our talks what is the one big idea that might be the one thing that's scripted behind you but everything else should go off script so that you have trust so this fuses your ted talk research with also some of the other things in queues and i want to drill down on that warmth competence where they intersect you get charisma and you cover that theme throughout the book but you also talk about resting face so i am super challenged with my resting face my resting face for real no my resting face for real okay let me stop smiling okay let's see oh i can tell you why i can tell you exactly yeah what's going on okay so i call this resting bothered face so resting bothered your face right that's a very polite way of saying it very polite way of saying i like to play is that at rest you look a little bit bothered tired sad angry upset angry yeah here is why so you and i actually have the exact same problem people who struggle with resting bothered face and this is actually an important thing to know about yourself especially if you're doing a lot of interfacing with people is the shape of your facial features can look like facial expressions so there are universal facial expressions and some of the negative ones are sadness anger and fear which i talked about in the book so if you're a resting face so let's talk about sadness that's what we both have so sadness is when we pull the corners of our mouth down into a frown we pout out our lower lip and we pinch the inner corners of our eyebrows together and we droop our lids that's sadness you and i both have the same problem that at rest both of our mouths turn down so here's me at rest they do but i'm at rest i'm not missing now you have the exact same problem so because of that our face our mouth is shaped down so it tends to look like a frowns people think oh are you okay are you sad i get that all the time why are you upset my kids dad are you mad at me i'm not mad at you my wife's like what's wrong i'm like nothing's wrong if you keep asking me something will be wrong but nothing's wrong and then you know i'm like fortunately for two years of solid zoom i've been on video many times before but you kind of look at yourself and now even when i'm doing these interviews vanessa i'm like smile smile you're on for the next hour smile smile so to go to my resting face was a little bit of work but yeah okay so two things for folks well actually three things one is figure out what your face at rest looks like does it look like anger like for example a really common one is anger actually where if you have two vertical lines between your eyebrows even when you're at rest people are going to think you're angry and that's because those two vertical lines that furrow is part of the universal anger micro expression so look at your face and figure out what is what is the default right like what are you most similar to that's probably what people think you are second psa talk to the important people in your life your partner your kids your colleagues the healer you're working with and say hey i listen to this great podcast with carrie and vanessa and they told me i have resting bothered face when you see these two vertical lines i am not angry that's just my face right so that is a very fun little psa to give people in your life so you no longer have to fake it with them right you want them to know that's just the way your face looks and that's exactly what my husband knows he knows i'm not angry at just in my pieces the third thing this is the harder one is exactly what you said is when you're on back-to-back zoom interviews you want to encourage the person who's speaking i think that there is a small difference between smiling all the time which is exhausting and doing what i call up face so what i will do is just very slightly instead of when i'm at rest my mouth turns down i just very slightly engage the corners of my mouth so they're slightly up so this isn't actually so how do i look like this let me see how's that look there you go it's up it just engaged you kept slightly so i'm not smiling but it's up a little bit it shows i'm listening i'm engaged so if you can think about um your resting face is there a way that when you are listening to someone you want to show interesting engagement that you can deactivate that cue that way you can turn it on or off depending on what you're doing good to know and i wish i could get two decades of meetings back before i really understood default rest face i'm like how many closed doors meeting was i in where everybody thought i was mad so honestly i highly recommend cues i'm going to keep it on my shelf uh as a reference book i think it kind of works as a reference book for self-awareness that's the greatest comment you can give me i kind of okay yes because there are 96 cues in the book and the book actually started as a glossary as like what is this cue what what is this mouth shrug what is this lip purse what is an eyebrow raise what is like what is the steeple i had all the different cues and then i realized it actually was too overwhelming you couldn't memorize only six but you could if you thought of them as warmth competence and charisma so in the book i split them up into warmth competence but my goal is for you to use it just like a glossary or a handbook that when you're like i need to show up as warm in this meeting you literally pulled the book you opened the warm chapter you're like right here are the six warmth cues right i need yourself with competent here are my six competent cues yeah well let's talk about the um the frequent flyer problems all right because leaders i mean we have enough problems that's what you do right when you're a leader you solve all the problems nobody else could figure out so there you are so your job's already hard but sometimes we make it harder because we're sending off signals we don't even realize that are compounding the situation and we kind of we touched on it already we talked about it in the context of public speaking but let's talk about everyday life what are some of the top miscues if you can call them that that people will emit just give us a random sampling of a few uh that you're like yeah don't do this okay so the first one might surprise you the biggest mistake that leaders make in day-to-day interactions this is off stage is they under cue they under signal and this is because of a very pervasive myth and i actually think it's gotten worse worse over the last few years that to be powerful you should be stoic you should mute your cues you should hide your cues you should not show your card you should be a blank slate the problem is this is the opposite of charismatic when we have people who mute or who go stoic or who go unreadable it causes anxiety and confusion for the other people you're with why as humans we need to have a cue back and forth right so as humans we are constantly looking to others especially our leaders for how we should think act behave and feel so we're with a leader who is absolutely unreadable they have they have removed all their cues we get a little anxious we're like are they mad at me do they like me what should i do do they trust me mm-hmm can't catch anything right so if leaders go in under signaling you become less contagious so what leaders will do is they'll walk into a room with their hop on a video call with their team and they're under queuing and the team kind of gets a little antsy like a little fidgety and you leave the room either the same as it was or worse than it was i have a belief that true leaders leave every room better right they leave the room better than what they found how do you do it you show up with warm and competent cues you literally are gifting warmth and confidence to your team so for that little bit of face-to-face time with the people you're interacting with make that time a way to make yourself positively contagious so you're leaving them better so the biggest mistake is actually with holding your cues that i muting is in itself a cue okay that is really helpful to know but that raises a question for me how do i know if that's me whether i'm under cueing so would you like what kinds of things would your team be saying would it be something like um carrie i can't tell what you're thinking or what is your response or what are some of the things that would cue you that you're that person that's a great one so carrie i can't tell what you're thinking or you're so hard to read or you're so serious or i never know what i should say or questions like are you angry are you upset are you okay with this i never know if you like something or not those phrases where you know the other way that you can do it if you're if you don't remember if you get those comments sometimes um leaders they they just don't uh value that feedback because they don't realize it's actually feedback they think it's just a comment is watch yourself on a recorded zoom call so go try to find yourself on a zoom call and i want you to count the number of cues you emit during the meeting so highly charismatic people are constantly cueing very small so how often do you nod how often do you head tilt how often do you smile any of the 96 cubes how can you using a very vocal power how like i want you to actually count the number of cues if you're having trouble counting any movement at all it's probably you are under cueing probably if you are very still and very stoked with very little movement and a very very simple clipped kind of tone of voice and that's another thing that can happen with leaders is they are so over talked right they like they just talked for a half an hour on in the front of the room they don't want to make chit chat they don't want to do small talk they're solving tons of problems and so they will so when they do speak about other things they'll speak short and clipped right just get get done get it out as quickly as possible that's also a sign of under cueing and the danger with that i suppose if i'm reading your research right is you are neither warm nor competent when you do that you're not you're not emitting competence which creates confidence or warmth which is a pro approachability you're just kind of uh flatlined at that okay do you have another like big mistake that you see people make all the time yes okay so this is also one of my scripted slides behind me so uh when i was reading dr susan fisk's research and this about this warmth and confidence this is a landmark study there's been many studies built upon this work so it's not like it's one small one it's a huge game-changing study on warmth and competence so the first one was 82 percent of our judgments of people are one thing competence the majority the second one this is my next scripted slide which shocked me when i read it shocked me is competence cues without warmth cues leave people feeling suspicious this is the next mistake that my brilliant smart leaders make leaders are often off the charts smart right like that's how they got to where they are they are so smart in fact they rely on their smarts they rely on how smart they are and they forget about the warmth part and that is how you can get leaders who are really high incompetence but no one trusts them people don't feel like they can believe them people won't feel like they want to have coffee with them the key is you want to be the kind of leader that people want to take you out to coffee and they also want to listen to a life-changing speech that you give right you want to actually have people do both if you are too high incompetent without enough warmth people will say things like oh i could never go and talk to her i could never hurt her no no no no no she you know he's up there you know like i could never do that that means you're over hitting competence cues which means you must add warmth cues especially with your colleagues especially on stage so a couple warmth cues that are my favorite very easy ways to just slowly tip the scales or dial up in warmth one is a slow triple nod so research finds that a slow triple nod so nod not not gets the other person to speak three to four times longer so if you're on a zoom caller you're in a meeting just going uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh they are like oh here she is really listening i better dig deeper that is a very simple silent warmth cue of i'm with you i'm open i gotcha so a slow triple knot is something to keep in your back pocket now note that is not a bobble head okay so we can go right right we can go too high and warmth when you have someone who's just nodding all the time uh-huh uh-huh it's also not a fast nod so the difference between a slow knob and a fast nod is a slow nod shows engagement a fast nod shows impatience so slower right versus uh-huh yeah all the difference in the world so a fast knot actually makes you more cold that's finish up i got it finish up hurry up hurry up so a slow triple knot keep that in your back pocket you also can try a head tilt so a head tilt right when we expose our our ear up to the side is a a universal sign of i'm listening because when we expose our ear we're literally trying to hear something better if you ask someone can you hear that people will tilt their head so it's a universal listening cue and you can do this quite subtly so if you are told that you're cold and stoic the easiest way to warm yourself up is a very slight head tilt it literally is saying i got it i'm listening i'm open i'm exposing my ear to you that is literally what you're showing so very very small but they really help so what happens if you're warm you're giving off too many warmth cues i think you know business leaders have the stereotype of too competent not enough warmth but pastors a lot of them they're super warm nice people but they're not exuding competence and people don't end up following them absolutely so this is the other side right so by the way some of these cues sound small but i kind of if you play golf i think the a metaphor here is you know tiny tweaks to your golf swing can have all the difference in your game it can massively change your impact cues are the exact same way these small little tweaks can have a massive impact on your charisma so it might sound small to add a head tilt or a nod that is the difference between someone feeling like they were heard in a meeting and not heard like literally yeah so you're not talking about a personality no right no i'm talking about little dials these little tweaks have these massive impacts in your interaction so we talked about competent to warmth how about warm to competent so first is making sure you're not bobble heading right so you want to dial down your nods make sure you're not in a perma head tilt right that makes you look like a dog right you know how dogs constantly okay so no perma head tilt no permanent so not too much those warmth cues and then for competence i think that the biggest one is the amount of space you take up and i don't mean like you should walk into every room with your arms wide and your you know apart that would be absolutely ridiculous that is the biggest misinterpretation i think people get around like power posing quote unquote power pose yeah yeah super woman superman all the rage and in 2010 i i i love that idea but it actually isn't super practical to like walk on stage or walk into a meeting you know in a power pose what i do want you to think about is a very are micro movements and these are going to sound so small but just try them with me okay first the distance between your earlobe and your shoulder so try to shrink that distance so if you pull your shoulders up and you shrink your head down you will literally begin to feel like you are anxious you can't speak as well i notice that sometimes highly warm folks out of competence they will they shrink down so they bow their head they put their shoulders up they can also accidentally do this when they're reading something so if you hold a book on stage or you have a podium i will notice people will creep up where they have very little distance from their earlobes and their shoulder that is the number one way we decide if someone is a winner or not if someone is taking up space their shoulders are rolled down their head is up there's tons of space between their earlobe and their shoulder we think winner their shoulders are relaxed head is up they're not protected you're right i'm seeing different people and that's exactly the impression i have yes and so my local speakers and i work with a lot of students who are like i don't know why people are checking their phones while i'm talking i don't know why i'm not getting good feedback from presentations and i will watch their presentation on silent and i'll measure also how much space do you think is between your ear and your shoulder very little right there they're hunched over a book they have their arms cut into their sides shoulders up like this hand gestures are kind of and they're like a penguin yeah right yeah like a penguin penguin walk and i say you are signaling low competence we don't want to catch that low confidence so people literally will distract themselves thinking about their to-do list checking their email checking social media because they don't want to catch it we don't like to listen to people who are like this because it looks like a loser that's a terrible way of doing it but that is what we're cueing wow well vanessa i'll tell you the book is fantastic it really is and you make it easy it's got pictures by the way and uh for leaders audible too so if you like audiobooks i i do lots of demos and i uh there's a whole section on vocal power and i do all the vocal demos for you so if you're if you're not not a reader you're a listener i got you covered there's a whole section on vocal cues verbal cues etc etc i mean you get into how to write an email to be warmer or more competent too with scripts which is so good uh anyway i just want to thank you for being with us so i know you're going to be at the global leadership summit again this year along with craig rochelle and many others uh but where can people find you if they are interested in learning more yes well by the way i'm so excited for global leadership summit because i'm doing a brand new talk so everything we talked about today none of it's covered in my new talk coming up i'm a little nervous a little nervous got it but i'm super excited it's gonna be a brand new talk um on connection and leaders how you can connect otherwise please come visit me on my youtube channel i do all kinds of cues breakdowns for ted talks and uh even the rock so i have some fun with some keys breakdowns and our website is sciencepeople.com if you want to check out some of our deeper learning resources our newsletter as well as my courses well vanessa i hope we get to do this again thank you so much for being with us oh thank you so much for having me thank you for watching the carey newhop leadership podcast on youtube i hope it's helped you thrive in life and leadership and if you haven't yet checked out the art of leadership academy inside you'll find everything you need to lead grow and run a church and now a word from our sponsor belay if you've ever struggled with bookkeeping watch this video because not only is it gonna increase your peace of mind but you're gonna wonder why you waited so long [Music] then it's tax season i still need all of your vendors w9 forms from last year here that's nice sweetheart but i'm not thirsty whoa a belay bookkeeper really is that where we are now i took care of the forms for dan this morning they are already in your inbox so okay let's go let them enjoy their day never miss a moment modern staffing from ballet please you know there's not even any real tea in there but while she's a young girl let her have fun have fun today sweetie get out go you are being ridiculous

Channel: Carey Nieuwhof

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Keywords: Carey Nieuwhof, Carey Nieuwhof podcast, Carey Nieuwhof leadership podcast, Carey Nieuwhof blog, Carey Nieuwhof content, Carey Nieuwhof YouTube, leadership talks, church growth, burnout, Carey Nieuwhof burnout, Art of Leadership Academy, Carey Nieuwhof Academy, Vanessa Van Edwards, Carey Nieuwhof Vanessa Van Edwards, Vanessa Van Edwards GLS, Vanessa Van Edwards Summit, Vanessa Van Edwards Ted, Vanessa Van Edwards body language, body language cues

Id: mewLD5aMDBo

Length: 50min 39sec (3039 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 21 2022