The PSYCHOLOGICAL TRICKS To Overcome Insecurity & Self-Doubt | Vanessa Van Edwards
In this extensive interview, Vanessa Van Edwards and Lewis discuss how non‑verbal behavior, language choices, and psychological triggers shape confidence, persuasion, and success in pitches, emails, and everyday interactions. They explore research on hand gestures as a confidence‑building tool, the role of dopamine‑sparking surprises in Shark Tank pitches, and how specific word choices (achievement‑oriented language) prime performance. The conversation moves into personality science, emphasizing the Big Five over typologies like MBTI, and how mismatched conscientiousness can cause relationship friction. They differentiate genuine charisma from narcissistic manipulation, detailing observable danger‑zone cues (lip‑purse, blink rate, contempt expression) and lie‑detection strategies. Vocal power, including pitch, volume, and avoiding question inflection, is presented as crucial for perceived competence, especially in negotiations and medical settings. Practical tactics such as non‑verbal bridges, email framing, and authentic warmth‑competence balance are offered, alongside personal anecdotes and actionable challenges for listeners. Additional insights cover how crossing arms hampers creativity, using replacement objects to curb bad non‑verbal habits, the steeple finger gesture as a competence cue, the impact of volume dynamism, and the symbolic meaning of palm up versus palm down gestures illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper.
Chapters
It's going to be harder for you to get your confidence because gestures are a way that we underline or highlight our words. And so if you are inhibiting your own gestures, you will have a hard time.
What happens if we don't use our hand gestures at all in a conversation, in a pitch, whatever.
Two things. One is it's harder for you to process. They've literally-- If the person is speaking.
It'S harder to process. Correct.
It's going to be harder for you to get your confidence because gestures are a way that we underline or highlight our words. And so if you are inhibiting your own gestures, you will have have a hard time explaining things. They actually did a study where they had people explain two versions of a story. Notice two versions of the story. One they could use their hands and one they couldn't. The one where they could use their hands, they had less pauses, they spoke more quickly, they used bigger words. The one where they just couldn't, their.
Hands were just underneath their legs. You know what's interesting? I was just reading some intros for the podcast right before you came in. I had another interview this morning and I did podcast intros and ads. And I use my hands in order to do it because I feel like it's coming across as like I'm really engaging.
Yes, yes.
And I remember when I was reading my first audiobook, the School of Greatness, I tried to read it like just kind of like with my hands down for a while and I was like, I can't read. I can't read. I've forgotten how to read my own words. Being like dyslexic growing up anyways is I'm a little slower when I read in general. But when I started to be like, okay, I just need to get in this with my body, my hands, I I felt more confident. I felt like I could flow. I wasn't messing up as much. I wasn't having to stop and restart as much.
It was powerful. Yes, okay, that's an incredible story about gesture because if you watch the best cartoon voiceover folks, they are using their whole bodies. Animated, right?
Yes, they are using their whole bodies.
They're in a room by themselves, like recording on a mic, right?
But they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, if we just did the same thing, yes.
That'S what they're doing. That's not how I remember it. That's probably how I'm doing it. But like Susan Goldwasser Meadows research is called Hearing Gesture. And that is because I am using my hands right now, not only for people watching, but also for my folks who are listening. Because I know that the more I use my gestures, the more charisma I have vocally, and I would love to talk about vocal charisma.
Interesting.
So that helps me, but it also helps you. So anyone who's watching, you're getting so much information. They say 12.5 times more information from our gestures. Come on. Yes.
Even when you can't see it?
No, you have to be able to see it. So we can hear charisma, but if someone can see our gestures, it adds more weight to what I'm saying. So when I say weight, I'm like, it's heavy. Look how heavy that is, right? But if I were to be like, heavy, it's so heavy. And I kind of shoo it away.
You're like, no, it's not heavy.
You can feel it. The emphasis of the words. Yes, so it's like a highlighter. Now, I have to have a caveat here, 'cause I've created A problem in the past. I love a gesture, but I don't like jazz hands. So gestures are great. Hey, good to see you. Hey, Louis.
This is not credible or trustworthy. This is weird over here.
I created a problem where I had people who were entering their Zoom meetings and they were like, hello, Vanessa. And I was like, oh no. I'll do that. Oh no, no. So it's like a highlighter. You wouldn't want to highlight the whole page. You just want to highlight the concepts that matter.
So let's go back to hands for a second because you said there were 400 videos I think you guys researched on shark tank.
495 pitches.
And one of the main factors was waving as you were walking in or as you were getting- Planting. Planting.
Yes.
Not all the way back, like waving.
Some of them did.
But also once you sat there and said, Hey, sharks.
Yes. Hey sharks, good morning. Happy to be here, even this happy to be here, like an open palm gesture. Interesting.
Okay, what are a few other things that you notice?
Okay, yes. Okay, so we love gestures. And by the way, this is super easy on a video call in person. Hey, nice to see you.
Good morning.
The biggest mistake we make, someone walks in and we go, Hey, we give them a nod. Right? Give them a hand. You like them enough to give them a hand, right? So that's really easy. It's like every YouTube video, I'm like, Hey friends, that's literally how I start every video. Okay, that's the first thing.
So the second thing is where things get more interesting.
So Remember that these sharks were in pitch after pitch after pitch.
They're tired.
They're like, They are so tired.
I've been on set there. I've seen like the whole day, it's just like, it's a lot.
It's a grind. It's a grind. Okay, so the most successful pitches, the next thing we found, this was very, very clear, is that the more that the pitchers could spark dopamine, the more likely they were to get a deal. Now, dopamine is a very complicated chemical.
So just for our purposes, Food, eating something. Giving them like, I'll try my-- Yes, yes, yes.
I was like, Food!
And if they're eating like taste testing, like opening something.
Try it, taste it, smell it, lick it, touch it, feel it, wear it, play it. Any of those senses, we love. So when we are doing something that's different, that's tactile, so yeah, touch, smell, taste, wear, play, do try. that was going to wake the sharks up. Dopamine is a little bit, it's a very complicated chemical, but I want to talk about it a little differently. It does feel good, right? So if they were to say to the sharks, sharks, today I have a gift for you, the brain goes, Ooh, a gift, a gift, a gift, a gift. Oh, give me a gift. Right, dopamine is like that feeling of, I want it, I want it, I want it. It's a excitement, but it's also motivation. So what they found is that when people have a lot of dopamine, they are more motivated to do things. They are more motivated to figure out a deal. They are more motivated to ask questions. So when a pitcher went in and not only had some kind of interactivity, some kind of a surprise for them, and sometimes it was a surprise, and they would literally say, and guess what, sharks?
Right. What? Right?
We want to know what that is because we're like, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. So it doesn't have to be like, you don't have to walk in every meeting and hand out and like throw out Snickers bars.
Right.
Love a Snickers bar, and that will work really well. It'll work, it will work every time. But it's also verbal surprise. So it's also saying, Today I have something really special to share. Anticipation. It doesn't even have to be something major. It can be throwing in those little elements of surprise that people can look forward to. And here's the biggest one. So this is research that blew my mind. It changed the way that I write emails. So if you write a lot of emails, this study is for you. So I'm gonna break it down. It's kind of a complicated study. So here's what they did. So researchers had participants come into their lab and do like a little quiz, a little math test. One group of participants read a set of directions that was very simple. Please take the following quiz, take your time, use a pencil, tell us when you're done. Very simple set of directions. The other participants got the same set of directions, but they sprinkled in A couple of achievement-oriented words. So achievement-oriented words are words like win, succeed, master, greatness. Okay? Those are achievement-oriented words. There's a reason why this is so powerful. In the directions, they would say something like, Please master all these questions. Take as much time as you can to win the right answer.
Right?
So they just sprinkled in a couple of these words, two or three of these words. They found that participants who had the achievement-oriented words performed better. They actually got more answers correct. Now this is incredible. If you're a manager or a boss or you're working with people and you want them to perform at their best, just a couple of word swaps can help set them up for success. The second thing they found is that it also doubled, doubled participants' desire to keep working.
They could win, succeed, achieve.
They worked on it longer, they worked on it harder, and they enjoyed it more. And the last one is that reading achievement-oriented words can change our own dopamine and testosterone.
That's fascinating. It's interesting because for years in high school and college, there was this store called Successions, I think it was called. I don't know if you remember this. It was like a motivational, inspirational store that had I don't know, a poster of like an ego soaring with a quote, right? Or like, something that's just like, it was like Ted Lasso, you know, store. It was just like, believe in yourself with like this mug.
Where is the store?
I want it, okay. I think it's called Successions. I can't remember the name of it. I don't even know if it's around anymore, but my dad bought me a lot of stuff and I had all this sports type of inspirational quotes and, you know, you know, Rocky posters and all these things of just people achieving. And I would stare in these walls and I should be like, I want to be that. Let me go take the actions every morning to work a little bit harder to reach the goals. And I was just consumed in a success, you know, word.
You were literally priming yourself with those cues. Another study, I promise I won't do too many more, they put a picture of an athlete winning a race on top of telemarketers' scripts. The people who had the picture of the athlete winning, come on, earned more money.
Come on.
Yes.
Like just in front of them, you're.
Like, literally a printed picture on their script. Oh, wow. So why I share this is because we do not realize that we are queuing people incorrectly or we are missing opportunities in every single email that we send. So if you send an email out to your team on Monday morning, Hey everyone, today is going to be a busy day. We have a lot of challenges. Let's make sure we're not late. Research has found that when people read words like busy, challenge, or late, it literally primes them to be busier and later and more challenged. You are literally making it harder for them to help you. So if instead you think about, and this is a challenge, I would love to, if you're brave enough to take it, Open up your email sent folder and pull up five emails you've sent to important people. Boss, partner, colleague, whatever, client. I want you to print those emails and I want you to count the number of priming words you use.
Good or bad?
Mm-.
Yeah.
And even more, are they warm or are they competent? So this is where the next level happens.
Ooh, give it to me.
Highly charismatic people. prime others with warmth and competence. This is what I was gonna say.
Is one of the spark dopamine. A simple compliment or acknowledgement sparks dopamine from my experience. Just by seeing someone and acknowledging something you appreciate about them or you like about them or great shoes or whatever it is, I'm gonna assure you've got a great smile today, you've got good energy today.
That sparks dopamine, right? Oh, 100%. Actually, this leads me to my next third point, my shark tank point. We also noticed that when pitchers specifically acknowledged things from the sharks, and specific sharks, they were more likely to get a deal from that shark. I really like this thing about you.
You did this one time.
Lori, I've been so looking forward to working with you. Robert, I love all your deals with all those athletes. Mark, I've been a huge fan of yours for years. Or this was the winning phrase. In a pitch, if we heard this phrase, it was a high likelihood that someone was going to get a deal, which is, You remind me of myself. That could have been one of the sharks, that could have been one of the entrepreneurs. But the biggest compliment we can give someone is, you remind me of me. You're my role model. I put you in, so this is what we're talking about as kind of the next level here is I think that, yes, I want you to be your most charismatic self. I want everyone, hopefully who's listening, to be inspired to be their warmest, most competent self. But what a bigger gift what a better way to be great, to gift other people to be their warmest and most competent self. So that when you're sending an email and you say, Hey, I'm introing Sarah, or we have Sarah on the call, or here's that quick email intro I have promised to Sarah, no priming words. What if instead you thought, what's the warmest and most competent thing about both Sarah and the person I'm introducing to? And you say, Hey, I'd love you to meet Sarah. She's been leading our marketing team for 10 years. We are so lucky to have her. She's a gem. Lucky, gem, leader. That is the perfect balance of warmth and competence and you are gifting that to both Sarah, the person you're trying to and yourself. And so I think our words are gifts and this doesn't have to be every email but in your most important emails that audit that you send count how many warm words are you using. So warm words are words that trigger connection, trust, words that make you feel the warm and fuzzies. They're very oxytocin words. Count the number of competent words. Efficient, productive, brainstorm, leverage, lead, streamline. Those are all great competence words. A funny note here is emojis.
Are they good or bad?
Highly warm.
Right.
Not good or bad.
More likability. You can have likability connection.
Right, high, high warmth, right? So emojis and exclamation points count as one warm word.
Wow.
So if you have someone, and this happens a lot where people send A highly warm email to an important person. Hi friend, friend, warm word, exclamation point, two warm words. I loved talking to you yesterday, three warm words. It was so exciting to catch up, exciting, catch up, five warm words. Heart emoji, heart smiley face. Now we're at seven warm words and we're one sentence in. They wonder why they're not taken seriously. They wonder why they didn't get a follow-up interview. They wonder why that person takes four days to reply. It's because it's too much warmth. you have to balance it out with the competence. So I want you to count and see what kind of signals are you sending to the people who matter to you.
That's interesting.
Do you want to?
You know, you're bringing up something I used to do years ago when no one knew who I was. I was just getting started 2007, 2008. I used LinkedIn as a tool to create connection with people that were, you know, successful business leaders and people that had done things that I wanted to do in the future, right? And for a while, none of them would reply to me because I started off saying like, Hey, I'm just getting started. I'm brand new and I'm looking for some advice. Can you help me?
Those types of Warm, warm, warm, warm, warm, warm. Languages, right?
Yeah, all those words you just said are all warm.
Yeah.
And I started switching it and getting a reply almost every time from anyone. Like anyone I'd reach out to, I was like, They're gonna reply to this. And I started doing a few things. In the first sentence, I would just try to find You know, sparked dopamine essentially is what I was doing. I was looking for a mutual connection.
We had, and I'd speak about the mutual connection. Mutual connection is highly competent.
It's saying, you know this person, I know them too. I'm in the know.
Trust and warmth.
Trust and warmth. Warmth and competence. This person likes me, if you like them, yeah, trust. Perfect balance, yeah. I didn't even know that, and I was just doing it, right? And it was working. I was like, okay, let me keep doing this. Let me find someone that we know in common. And I would always try to have a conversation to get some intel on them. For sure. To tell me something about so-and-so. and I would speak about that information, and I would speak into them. I would also look for a couple other areas of interest that we have in common, and I would try to have three different things in common in the first sentence or two.
Wow.
You know, something that they did that I'd experienced before, or a place they're from, or whatever. Some mutual interest.
Warmth and competence.
Maybe that's competence, maybe, or it's both.
Both. It's beautifully both, yeah.
So I would do that, and then I would just, and then I would say something like, I'm really inspired by what you created. I'd love to learn your story of success.
Ooh, ooh, ooh.
As opposed to, say it again, say it again.
I'm really inspired by what you've created.
I'd love to learn your story of success. Oh man, that just gave me the chill.
That's essentially what I did almost every email. That sentence. Could we just like talk about that sentence? So that sentence is the perfect blend of warmth and competence. There you go. Right? You have love, you have learn, you have success. And so that didn't take a lot of words.
It's not like you were writing them.
A six paragraph email. But it's so much better than, Let me know if you have any questions.
Right.
Or Can I pick your brain for coffee?
Yeah, exactly.
So I think what we have to do is there are hidden opportunities waiting for you in your texts, in your emails, in your profiles, if you choose to take them. And all it takes is a couple of word swaps. Like, I'm not talking about 15, in that direction sheet, they sprinkled in like two or three words.
When.
Even reading the word win makes the other person think more like a winner. What a gift to give.
That's cool. The quote that I heard in high school from Roosevelt is people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Saves my life literally because of that.
That's worth the competence right there.
Because I didn't feel competent my entire school life, right? In school, I was at the bottom of my class. I just graded poorly, which confirm like I'm not smart enough or like I'll never be able to be as intelligent as my classmates or anyone in the world. So why would anyone like me or trust me because I didn't feel competent? Then when I heard that quote, I go, I have a chance. Like I can build competence in another area of life. I can be emotionally intelligent and I can show people how much I care. And by doing that, that's been pretty much my whole life.
Everyone who's listening, I hope what this shows you is that caring about someone, there's multiple ways to do that. Yes, it's emotionally intelligent, but it's also honoring someone's cues or gifting them the right cues. Yes. When you make someone feel more like a winner, what a gift you just gave them. Huge gift.
You're putting confidence into them. You're speaking joy, confidence into that person.
Yes, you're literally gifting them the chemical dopamine so that they themselves have more motivation. Yes. And don't we all need more motivation? Absolutely, yeah. Since you shared a vulnerability, can I share a vulnerability and a --Sure. --Okay. Okay. Okay. So I've been so excited to tell you this. So your book, School of Greatness, I love the COVID I just thought it was so inspiring. And when I was taking my cover shoot for Captivate, this is six years ago now, it was not going well. I was super awkward. My photographer, amazing Maggie Kirkland, was like, Listen, this isn't working. You're really awkward. I need you to relax. I can't relax. The worst thing you can do for someone who's anxious is tell them to relax. So we weren't getting the shot, we weren't getting the pictures, and she's like, okay, just think about your role models. Who's your role model? And I was like, Lewis Howes. So she pulls up your book, and she goes, okay. And she said, Look at Lewis. Channel him. And so in the shoot, I channeled you, and I did your pose of my hands over my stomach with your face, and crazily enough, that is the captivate pose.
I'm gonna send you the photo.
How many books do you sell?
How many copies do you get? A lot, a lot, a lot. I better send you some royalties. So, anyway, I channeled you because even that cue, there was something about it. So, I thank you for even the cues that you send out because that gifted me confidence. You didn't even know about it.
There you go.
I appreciate it.
I'm glad it worked. You said you wanted to talk about something in the beginning, about personalities.
I did.
Now, what is this specifically?
Yes.
So, you're like, I don't know about this stuff.
Let's hear it.
When we talk about signs of personality, there's a lot of things out there, DISC and Enneagram and Myers-Briggs and all these things. The only one that is scientifically based.
Is the Big Five.
And it's five personality traits.
Five love languages. We talk about the five love languages, actually. That's a good one, too.
So there's like special five, five love languages and the five big five.
Yes, I know that's not scientific, the love languages. Actually, it seems-- although it seems-- there is some science. Very practical. There is some science behind it. Yeah. Yeah, there is.
And the Big Five Haves has a lot. And so everyone has these Big Five.
Personality traits and there are other high or low in them.
There's one or the other.
It's high low.
There's no middle.
There is middle. It is a spectrum. This is the biggest difference between Myers-Briggs that labels you like an extrovert or introvert. A lot of people really struggle with that label. Well, I'm kind of both or I'm in the middle. Exactly. So it's all, every trait is a spectrum and we have a nice spectrum and you kind of place yourself on it. A lot of these personality traits are not our choice. So that is why I brought up the serotonin thing for neuroticism. The greatest understanding that we can have about ourselves is to know that our reactions, our emotional reactions, are part of how we are wired. So a lot of the times you feel guilty or jealous or all these dirty emotions, right? The negative emotions that we don't like to feel. And then we judge ourselves for them.
Yes.
Like, oh, I'm so not gracious right now. I'm so not feeling my gratitude, right? But actually, your optimism or your negativity is wired within you. So you're better off trying to figure out What are my triggers? How am I naturally wired and how can I optimize that? So we talked about openness, right? Figuring out how you can balance routine versus something new. Talked a little bit about neuroticism. The other one that I wanted to bring up was conscientiousness. So conscientiousness in a relationship, studies have found that this is the biggest one, that if you have a difference in your partner's conscientiousness, you have the most relationship problems. Say it again. So if you are different than your partner's conscientiousness, Scientifically speaking, you're more likely to have more relationship problems. Okay, so conscientiousness. Yeah, conscientiousness is how you approach detail. So high conscientious people, this would be me, we love to do this. Details, alphabetizing, steps, routine. We love lots of things.
If your partner is like, I could care less about it, and is like, oh, loosey-goosey. So, hey, we'll get to it someday.
Low conscientiousness is exactly what you just said. Big ideas, strategy, doesn't want to get bogged down in the details. This is you, right? It's not me.
I like the detail, but I just see where you're coming from.
It's funny, yeah. Right, and so what happens is, is you have people who are like, Hey, let's plan a vacation. I have a color-coded spreadsheet with all the different possible locations and approximate weather in those locations. And then you have the low open, low conscientious person who's like, Let's just.
Fly to a place and figure it.
Out when we get there.
Yeah.
I like that too. So I think you're in the middle.
I think I'm in the middle. Here's the thing, because I love big ideas and I love strategizing about them, but I know as an athlete you've.
Got to execute on a daily basis.
If you want to make them happen. Ooh, that's a different thing what you just said there.
Okay, so here's what I do now. Tell me what you're gonna say. Okay. So I come up with the ideas and then I hire the people who are very detailed and say, Run with it, so I can come up with more big ideas. and then bring them back to you and say, now we're going to do this, now run with that. So I hire people with those strengths to work with me on that.
The way that, I don't know if you guys heard what Louis just said, which is that is so free trade theory. So what you said is, basically I optimize. I know the details are important as an athlete. I know the details are important in my business. So either I work those details out in a workout routine or I hire those people. So that is a great example of how you can take what you naturally are and then free trade there, optimize it so that you leverage it up. So I would say that you're probably medium low, but you know how to turn it up in the areas that it's needed, which is probably one of the reasons why you're so successful.
In depends too, as an athlete, I couldn't hire anyone to do the work for me. It was like I had to train all day, I had to do the research, I was constantly studying game film, I was practicing, I was doing everything myself. So I had to export it. Yeah, you can't do it yourself as an athlete. So I understood it, but now that I have more resources and different part of my life, I can optimize the thing that I like doing the most.
And I think that that is the key to happiness. I did a whole two-year study on happiness, and we can get into it if you'd like to.
Did you write a book about it?
I didn't yet. I have an online course on it, but I didn't write a book on it yet. And I wrote it from the place of, I'm also not a naturally happy person. Like, I'm a worrier.
Yeah.
And so I really have to work at it.
Yeah.
And what I learned was is that it's actually not the big things that make you happy, it's the little things, including...
The cup of coffee you're gonna get later is a treat.
Yeah, like the smell of the coffee, like the amazing juice at creation, whatever, right? Like, oh, the smoothness of it. By the way, everyone, I went to creation with Lewis and you downed your juice faster than I could drink. It was impressive.
I was like, where did it come from?
Oh, it was magic. So yes, so saving those things and also those moments where you have optimized your natural personality instead of changing it. That is where happiness comes from. When you can say, I'm a big idea person. I love creativity. I love strategizing. I love big ideas and big pictures. Getting to bog down the details is necessary, but I don't like it. So therefore, I'm going to find a way to either outsource it or minimize it so I can focus on those things. that feeling of capability, that feeling of control is incredibly happiness making. Control is a very happy making emotion. We think about happiness as pleasure and joy and ecstasy, but actually the words for happiness are control, capability, feeling like.
You'Re in control, right? Not like controlling people or something, but feeling like you're in control of your results or your life.
Yes. And one example of this that I like thinking about is there's this thing called the Tetris effect. I don't know if you've ever heard of this. So these researchers had students.
Touchers. They said the touchers. I was like, touchers effect.
But the touchers effect.
Tetris effect.
But I like that one too. That's very high.
Touching effect is good too.
That's good too. Yes, we can hand hug later. Hand hug.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this, This is not as fun as the Tetris effect, yes. So what researchers did, this was not a study on happiness, but they brought students in, they had them play Tetris.
For like four hours. Sounds fun. I haven't played Tetris in probably 20.
Years, but I used to love playing.
Games all the time.
It is addictive, yeah. So they were testing something about the brain, and an unexpected result of this study is that students left the lab and were literally seeing their entire life like a Tetris board. They wanted to rearrange their furniture like Tetris. They wanted to stand in line like Tetris. They wanted to reorganize their shelving like Tetris. And they realized it in a weird way. They had primed the brain to think in a Tetris-like pattern. So what happens is, is typically humans have a negativity bias. We are trained to see the negative things in the world, the bad things. This is a survival mechanism, right? As cavemen, we had to go, Hmm, it might rain. I better get ahead. I should really forage for the winter. we are trained to see all the problems and potential things that could go wrong so we could prepare ourselves. So our bias, our training is negative, negative, negative. We open our email and go, what's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong?
Right?
We walk into a room and we're like, who don't I know? Why don't I belong? I'm not saying everyone has this, but there's certain extremes. I think that we can retrain our brain, just like the Tetris effect, to see in happiness patterns. So instead of walking into a room and being like, I don't belong. I don't know anyone. Thinking about why do I belong? Who can I know? That's a very different kind of framework to see the world. And so I think that that's about control. That's bringing control into a negative mindset and flipping it so that it's not necessarily positive. You just know where your frame is coming from.
Yeah, okay. Control. What was the other thing?
Control, capability, and optimization.
That'S the key to happiness.
Those three things are, I think, are the key to happiness.
Yes.
Wow.
Okay, cool.
And I think that they're under underappreciated. I got it. Especially with capability.
Okay, so where else did I get us off track?
I think I got us off track. I got, like, down the happiness.
You were gonna say we're talking about personality something, right?
Yes. So the last thing I was gonna say was with conscientiousness is thinking about if your partner is a big idea person. Yes. Or a detail person.
Same with you. Yeah, you said in most conflict of.
This is the most conflicts where you have, why didn't you clean up? I did clean up. This isn't cleanliness.
Exactly.
So do you guys, you and your partner, your husband, are you guys complete opposites in that space then?
He is much lower conscientious than I am. So how does that work? So we figured it out. So for example, we figured out what needs to be changed and what doesn't. So like, for example, I like an organized sock drawer. My husband doesn't care if he's wearing whatever on his feet, right? So we have, after many months of being like, did you get your socks? Did you fold your socks? Your socks are everywhere. You know what? Like that is his drawer. We do not share a drawer any longer. He has his side of the closet. That's what he wants.
He has his side.
So instead of trying to change him and teach him how to have a better sock drawer, I was like, no, that's a waste of both of our, it's not real to who we are. I'd rather have us optimize and say, that's his, this is mine. That's a really small example, a very like concrete example, but there's bigger ones as well. For example, if you are talking about a friendship or how you want to raise children, Someone who is high conscientious is going to want to break down all the details and plan for every eventuality. Or someone who's a big picture person is going to be like, let's meet the kid and let's see what we think.
Right?
And those can be major value differences. So instead of getting angry at them or trying to convince them to be more like you, big idea or detailed, the better conversation is, why don't you want to pre-plan? or why do you think that going by the seat of your pants is better? Like, where is the value there? How can we pick this based on actual strengths and not how we're wired? So I think that's a very different kind of conversation to have. So those three things, the ones I would focus on is how organized someone is, how big of an open adventurous someone is, and how much of a warrior someone is.
And it's okay if they're opposite on both those things. Totally okay. All those things with you, but you.
Just have to figure out how to optimize them. And by the way, if you're single, I think that one of the things to think about is like, what is your ideal personality match? I know this is a crazy way to think about dating. Like most people are like, they don't think about this. But like, I think that if you're in stress comes from.
A lot.
A lot of pain and suffering in a relationship comes from. Yes.
And I think that like a really fun, maybe this is me, this is my idea of fun, I think a really fun conversation you could have in the beginning of a relationship, the first few dates is like, so like I read this book or I listened to this podcast on personality. Are you a big idea person or a detail person? Are you a morning person or a night person? Those kinds of conversations early are so much better than when they normally come out, which is on the first fight.
As opposed to just having this chemical attraction and being like, oh, we love each other. And it's like, we'll figure it out.
We'll get constantly.
Yeah.
Right.
And remember that people will free trade there. They'll optimize during the lust phase so that you don't actually know how much they are. This happened to me recently. I hired a developer and in his interview process, he came across cross as very high conscientious. Send phases, sent the proposal. I was like, great, this is wonderful because I work well with other high conscientious people. But he optimized for me during the interview process. Of course.
I did not, of course.
Put his best foot forward. Of course. So I didn't ask the right questions, which should have been. So over the course of this eight-month project, how do you like to work? Are you a weekly check-in kind of a person? Are you a- I kind of like to check in once in a while. And then I would have immediately found out. Like, oh, it's not a good fit. And then I would have been like, shoot. He's a kind of do it as you do it kind of guy. Yeah, yeah. But I didn't know to ask those questions. So I think in the beginning of all relationships, the best thing we can do is don't let the lust overcome us.
Right?
So that line is so tough.
And personal relationships and business relationships, all that. And I've seen in dating profiles, people will put their MBTI in dating profiles sometimes.
MBTI?
The Myers-Briggs, like ENFJ or INFJ.
In dating profiles?
I've seen it. I have seen it in dating profiles.
People are obsessed with that stuff.
I forget what I always Someone always tells me what I am when I forget it. I can't remember.
The NFJ?
I think so, maybe.
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe. Myers-Briggs, remember, is not scientifically based. Because also we do change over time slightly, and it's hard if you have one label, like if you're just E, it gives you very little wiggle room.
I don't like that. There's another personality test with four quadrants. Have you seen this? DISC. Is that what it is? Where it's promoter, Supporter, analyzer, controller.
Yes. Have you seen that? I think that's disc, but I've seen that one, yes.
Promoter, supporter, analyzer, controller. And you kind of like, you rank, you go through a quiz of figuring out which quadrant you're the highest at. Yeah. So you'd be, you know, I'm a promoter controller.
Yeah.
First off, a promoter, I'm like a big idea. I'm passionate. I'm like excited. Let's go. Let's do this.
Yeah.
I like to be in control.
I like to, you know, have all those things. And then it's support, analyze. It's kind of like the top four, but really I'm like very close to almost all of them. Like all of them are pretty high. So I'm almost like very spread out.
Yeah.
Like the true leaders I hear is what they say is like you want to be able to tap into each quadrant to connect to an analyze. If they're an analyzer, you want to be able to be analytical with them. If they're a promoter, you want to be promoting with them. If they're a supporter, you want to.
Be in support with them.
Yeah.
So you're always meeting someone where they're at.
Yes.
Not trying to have them meet you where you're at. So it's like a flexible leadership style.
Flexible leadership.
That is the same thing with emotional intelligence.
This is emotional intelligence.
That's what it is. And it's the exact same thing with that and also expressiveness. For example, from a non-verbal perspective, if someone shows up and they're super bubbly and super excited and the other person's kind of calm, it's a mismatch.
You gotta meet them where they're at. Yeah, you gotta meet them where they're at.
You gotta be a little bit ahead and try to get them to that space. I think that matching and mirroring is an interesting way to think about interactions, especially phone calls. We're doing a bunch of research right now on vocal power. which you think about vocal power probably all the time because a lot of people are listening. So what we found was, well, there's an interesting anchor study here where they looked at doctors and they found that doctors who record 10-second voice tone clips. So, hello, my name is Dr. Edwards. I work at Children's Presbyterian Hospital and I specialize in oncology, something like that. They took those clips and they warbled the words so you couldn't understand the words that were being said. So it was, They asked people to rate those clips on intelligence, warmth, competence. Now imagine this for a second. Like you hear a clip of like gobbledygook, like.
How could you rate it? Yeah, yeah.
Exactly. How could you, but people do. They found that the doctors who got rated the lowest in intelligence and warmth also had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits.
Yeah.
Just based on confidence and voice.
Somehow we don't sue people, we don't sue doctors based on their actual skills. We sue doctors based on our perception of their skills. So in your case, how they show up, how they sound, it does not have to do with the verbal. Remember how at the very beginning I was like, whatever you say in those first few seconds is actually not as important as what you're showing up as. We even catch that on the phone. So your vocal power, you know how you say hello, And like what's interesting is the biggest mistake people make.
Hello.
Hello.
Oh my gosh. Hello.
What?
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So tone, cadence, and pitch. Also another one is like people will hold their breath while they answer. So they go, hello. That's the highest end of my vocal range. I'm working very hard right now to keep my vocal range in the lowest possible range.
That's more calm and relaxed.
Much more calm. It has a better resonance. Yeah, right. Better resonance. so if you hear yourself and you hear yourself going a little bit higher in your range, the best thing you can do is actually speak on the out breath. So if you hear the difference, so I'm gonna make myself go tense. So if I get really excited and I tense my vocal cord, I sound a little bit nervous, a little bit.
More like a child.
Now if I speak on the out breath, it forces the words out, it relaxes my vocal cords and it makes me sound more resonant. So the best thing you can do is actually answer on the out breath. So not hello versus hello. A very, very different guy. All these careers, I can tell you.
It's funny, I heard my brother told me that he read some science project or something where research on when he's on the phone, he smiles when he's like saying goodbye.
Yes.
Like smiling in the last like 30 seconds and he says people can Feel that on the other side.
Yes. Okay, so that is absolutely right. There are 16 different kinds of smiles that can be detected from voice tone alone.
Wow.
16. 16 different kinds of smiles. What's interesting is we're on our vocal study that we're doing right now, we haven't published this research yet, but it's super interesting. We found preliminary results. We had the same people record hello with different body language expressions.
Like, hello.
Exactly.
Yeah, like slouches over.
Well, we can do it right now, actually.
Let's try it.
See if you can guess what we're doing. So, like, let's do, like, this one.
Like, really.
Yeah.
Hello.
Hello. Right. Versus.
Hello.
Hello.
Right.
So, like, that's low power versus high power.
Right?
It's like, it's supposed to change our voice. Now, we make them do it for a little bit longer because it's very quick. And we also have them do microexpressions. So, happiness microexpression. Anger micro expressions is when you pull your eyebrows together, harden your lips, versus sadness micro expressions, that's when you pinch your inner corners together. Yep. And we had them record hellos. And then we had people in our lab or participants, and you can go play if you want, listen to these clips and rate them on warmth, competence, and charisma. The same person will get totally different ratings based on how they are holding their face and their body.
So how you hold yourself on the phone matters. This is the same thing we were.
Talking about earlier, which is like, what do you want to infect?
Right?
If you answer the phone sad and anxious and distracted, not only do people perceive you as sad, anxious, distracted, they catch those emotions too.
So what's the best thing people should do before they answer the phone? Out breath.
So not holding your breath in. So like, if you can take one or two deep breaths before you answer, it will relax your vocal cord, right? You're like picking it up. Who is it? Yeah, a couple deep breaths and then hello. So that's the first thing you can do.
It relaxes your vocal cords. Should you say hello?
Or if it's a friend, you're like, Hey, what's up? Either one. Good looking. Either one. I like that. I like that even better. That's a compliment. I like a compliment.
Yeah, so like, Hey, this is Lewis. Hello. Hey, buddy, what's up?
Right?
So one or two. It doesn't matter what you say. Exactly. It's the energy and how you're saying it. Just like when you're meeting in person. Exactly. So breath.
Yes.
Breath.
Oh, I didn't get an explosion. Yes, breath. I'm not cool.
You are cool.
I cannot do a fist bump like that. Can we just wave at each other?
That's way more comfortable for me. Hey guys. Hey guys.
So out breath is actually the most important one.
If you can do it.
The second one would be to try to actually just be as expressive as they are. So if you hear that, so you say hello, right? And they're like, Hey, what's up? Oh, hey, what's up? Yeah, hey, what's up? Right, like that match is like an instant I'm with you. I'm on the same page.
Sure.
Especially for business.
Yeah, yeah.
Especially for business.
What's another thing in the shark tank? Sparking dopamine, what else?
Okay, so we talked about reading, we talked about dopamine, we talked about interactivity, we talked about complementing in a way that allows someone to see themselves in you or pulling out a similarity. That's good. So like, you know, like you, Lori, we really value. Mr. Wonderful, we love Mr. Wonderful products, right? Like that really helped. I mean, sounds like sucking up, but actually it really worked. It really worked. The other thing that we noticed about the interactivity is what they would do is they would cross space zones. So they would have something to give the sharks and they would go from the carpet to the chairs.
That worked usually.
That worked because they were going into intimate zone very quickly. So this is called a nonverbal bridge. It's kind of an advanced technique. Do you want to talk about it? Yes. Okay. So a nonverbal bridge is a way that we cross into someone's intimate space but safely. So what happens is when we're with someone, we want to connect with them. We want more oxytocin. We want to bond with them. But sometimes it can be hard to break that boundary. A nonverbal bridge is a way that we can create oxytocin with permission. So that could be handing someone something. that could be giving a high five, that could be touching their elbow. And that is exactly what successful pitchers did. They would have a reason or an excuse to, hey, Lori, let me guide you up here. Hey, Kevin, let me zip on this suit for you. Hey, you want to try this amazing cinnamon roll? And when they did that, they created these small little bridges. So what I would think about is, how can you create bridges to people where you're engaging them even physically? Right, and that's harder on video, but in person that was a thing that.
We found in the tank. How do you do it in a way that the person feels comfortable if you touch them on the elbow, because someone may not feel comfortable. You have to be really intuitive to, you know, is this person going to be receptive to me?
Are they already interested enough where I can get closer? Yes, yes, not sure. Are they leaning in? Are they giving eye contact? Are they nodding? Oh, I forgot another one that was really important. So vocal power. So we haven't really talked about vocal power, and this was a big one in the tank. So we hear competence, we hear competence. And the biggest way that we do this is with inflection. So inflection is the biggest mistake that we make is the question inflection. So the question inflection is when we go up at the end of our sentences.
Right?
It's also called uptalk. So if I were to- Don't do uptalk. Don't do uptalk. We're going to talk about why. So when we use the question inflection, it cues the other person's brain to know, ah, we're being asked a question. The problem is, is that when we accidentally use the question reflection, it makes people question you. Right? And they really trust what you're saying. Right. So what happened is, in this study where they looked at doctors, they found that the doctors who had, so I'll break down the study. So what they did is they asked doctors to record 10-second voice tone clips. And they said, like, their name, their specialty where they worked. So it sounded like, hi, my name is Dr. Edwards. I work in oncology. I specialize in children's medicine. something like that. They took the clips and they warbled the words so you couldn't understand the actual words being said. So it sounded like, how do you do it? Right? Then they asked people to rate these clips on warmth and competence.
Right?
Again, this research has been repeated over and over again. Imagine this for a second. You're asked to listen to a clip of gobbledygook.
Yes. To see if they're competent.
Are they smart? Are they more that you like them? And people do it. What they found is the doctors who had the lowest warmth and competence ratings had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits. That implies that we don't just sue doctors based on their skills. We sue doctors based on our perception of their skills. And that happens in the first few seconds of hearing them.
So your communication is everything.
Every thing. It's not just the words you're using. Are they warm and competent? It's even how you're saying the words. So the very first story I break down in the book, and this is in the intro, so if you want to just look at the sample chapter, you could. I analyzed Jamie Siminoff's pitch.
Jamie Siminoff is the founder of Ring.
That didn't get any money. That it sold for a billion dollars.
Yes.
Here is a brilliant guy, right? Jamie Siminoff is brilliant. He had a successful product, right? Ring is a very successful product. Amazon acquired it for over a billion with a B dollars. Yet, he goes into the pitch in a shark tank and he pitches and he doesn't get a deal. Why? That pitch plagued me because I was like, here is a smart guy with a great idea, but his cues were the problem. I think that he lost his pitch. This is a really big statement and if you listen to it, you'll hear it. I think he lost the deal in the first 10 seconds of them hearing him. And the reason is he made the choice to close the doors to the tank. So in his pitch, he doesn't walk down the hallway. You don't see that long first impression. You don't get public to social to personal. He closed the doors. And what he did is he went, he knocked on the door, the shark tank.
Hello, he's there.
They're like, hello. And he goes, it's Jamie. So he asked his own name. And when you're a shark and you're trying to make a very quick first impression of someone without seeing them and you hear the question reflection supposed to be used on a statement, you immediately begin to question, I don't know. And that is also because we know that liars are more likely to use the question reflection. If you've ever played Two Truths and a Lie, have you ever played that game?
Yeah.
Okay. So Two Truths and a Lie, here's a little tip for everyone if you ever play that game. People almost always ask the lie. So they'll be like, oh yeah, two truths and a lie. I have a goldfish. I am a vegetarian. And I love dogs. They almost always go up on their lie. And that's because when we're lying, we don't know if you believe us. So subconsciously we give it away. So Jamie starts his pitch. And he doesn't have a first impression. He doesn't do any greeting in the hallway. He misses that whole walk-up. The very first words out of his mouth doesn't even matter what he says is, Right, up top. And then Mark Cuban says, are you here to pitch? And he says, here to pitch? Again, using the question of flexion. I think that what happened was, is it gave away his competence. Then the doors open, right? And he explains this idea of ring, it's a doorbell. The problem is, is his first impression was very low in competence. And so he had a lot of trouble having the sharks take him seriously.
He was a very competent individual building his business, right? He was very smart, intelligent, knew the technology, how to build product teams, all these things, get sales, whatever it was. But the warmth wasn't there as well, it seems like, right? Like the trustworthy charisma, warmth, confidence.
He undersignaled every step of the way. So he undersignaled warmth, he undersignaled competence, and then was trying to dial up competence.
You hear in the rest of the pitch, he's trying to build it back up.
He's like, Yes. But we've done this, and look, we've got this technology. And this money, and then this. And so he cannot get it back. He could not get it back. And so I think I watched that pitch and I break it down in the book of what happened to this.
Brilliant guy who had one bad day.
And I think that if he, you know, he scripted those answers, he prepared for that pitch, and he had really good verbal answers. There was even a couple times where I think this thing happens for people who over rehearse. So if you have an interview or a presentation, what do you do? You rehearse it.
Right?
You practice the perfect answer. That can get in your way though, because if you practice the perfect answer, this is exactly what happened to Simonoff, and very highly intelligent people do this. He would hear a question from a shark, usually a challenging question, because they were like really pushing him on the deal, and they didn't believe him. No one believed him. They all thought, oh no, it's too crowded of a market. It will never work. They literally said that to him. Okay, I have ring on my front door. And they literally said, He couldn't get them to leave him because what would happen was they would ask him a question, he would start to answer it organically, and then he would switch into his rehearsed answer.
Oh, yeah.
So you would hear, oh yeah, yeah, we do have market track, our market traction has been wonderful. In fact, in the last five years, we've done X numbers, and you would be like, who is this robot?
Yeah, just say what's on your heart. Yeah, yeah, just say it organically.
Right, and so I think you can be the smartest person in the world, you could have the best ideas, but if you don't share them right, you're not helping people help you. And so that's my, it drives me crazy when smart people can't get their ideas heard. And that pitch crushed me. I felt so bad for him and he made it. He's okay now.
He's doing really well.
Then he was like a guest shark or whatever, yeah. Okay, and what's amazing is when you watch him walk into the tank as a shark, you can see the difference. You can feel the difference. The confidence. Oh my, you know, he walks into the tank, he walks down the hallway.
Right?
He walks in the hallway, he's smiling, he gestures, Hey everyone, good to see you. He shakes hands. He does all the things he didn't do in that original pitch. And you can see the difference. And he's the same person, same person, same ideas, similar suits. Yet he looks like a different person.
Fascinating. It's not about what you say, it's how you say it. How you present yourself and your words and your words.
And I knew, no, I was just kidding.
I'm curious about this. There's a big topic out there right now. I just did a recent interview with Dr. Ramani, who is a therapist, psychologist, talking about narcissism a lot today. Can you talk to me the difference between charisma and narcissism? And how can you spot when someone is actually warm and caring and charismatic versus someone who uses the skills or the tools of charisma in their narcissistic approach towards manipulating, controlling, and getting what they want in life.
So this is my biggest fear with this book. This is my single biggest fear. And it was an issue for me when I first started writing it. Is I'll be honest, you can use this book for manipulation.
Yeah, of course.
And that scares me.
And when a smart person who's narcissistic is gonna study everything and then start using it.
It scares me.
So how can you tell the difference The subtle cues. These are very subtle now.
Very subtle, yeah. So we're talking about big to subtle, right? There's like a range of them. So first is, it is my biggest fear with this book that people do not have the right intentions. And my hope is that we can actually use these powers for good and not evil. That is the number one thing is you can if you want to. Here's the good news. There are certain cues that we cannot control. And if you have bad intentions, they will leak. So I call these danger zone cues. So in the book I talk about there's four different types of cues. There's highly warm, non-verbal, verbal, and vocal. So these are things that make you highly warm, highly trustworthy, highly likable. There's highly competent cues, verbal, non-verbal, and vocal. And then there's charismatic, the ones that are just knocking out of the park, like they're just great. And the last one is danger zone cues. Danger zone cues are the cues that get us into trouble. They're the cues that liars use. They're the way that we leak guilt and shame. Actually, shame is not a bad thing. It's only when you have guilt. that you've done something wrong. So, in the danger zone, it is very hard to inhibit those cues. So, I teach them because I want people to be able to spot them.
Okay. What are those cues?
Okay. So, there's a bunch and I'll let's talk about as many as we can.
So... And this might be someone who's very successful, someone who's accomplished a lot potentially, someone that seems very credible, someone that could be in a power position, owning a business or having influence online or something like that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Extremely successful. They could be successful. They could seem credible, trustworthy. Yes.
But might be super narcissistic underneath. Yes. So there's a couple danger zone cues that we can control, which a manipulative person could inhibit, right? So for example, one that I found that I talk about in the book is Lance Armstrong. So Lance Armstrong, for those who don't know, spoiler alert, Lance Armstrong was doping. So someone was like, there was spoilers in the book. And I was like, You haven't heard of that yet? I also talk about Britney Spears in the book, because there's some really interesting cues on her, which I think why we're worried about her, why her fans worry. She shows a lot of danger zone cues. So Lance Armstrong, in one of his early interviews on Larry King Live, he's asked about doping, and he does what's called a lip purse. So lip purse is, okay, when we push our lips into a flat line, we mash our lips together. That is a universal withholding gesture. So when we're literally trying to hold something in or hold something back or we don't like what's being said or heard, we go, and so you'll notice that when someone has been asked something they don't like, when someone had to lie, a lot of the time, so we did a massive experiment in our lab where we asked people to send in videos of themselves lying. Actually, you play in the book. It's called Lie to Me. So I have you lie to me. Play this Lie to Me game. Diagnose your own tells. It's very important. to know your own tells because you should know what your danger zone cues are when you're leaking them. And one of the, you should know those. It's good to know those in the back of your pocket. Do that with your partner, right? You want them to know what those are, too. So one thing that we noticed is on lies, that was one of the biggest indicators. So in Lie to Me game, we ask you to do two things. We ask you to tell us an embarrassing story, your most embarrassing story, and then a fake embarrassing story. And we want to see if we can tell the difference. If we cut the clips, can we know which one is the fake one? Man, that'd be interesting. Yes, and it's amazing. You see the same danger zone cues over and over again, right before someone's about to lie and tell their fake, embarrassing story. They go, okay, and they lip purse right before they're gonna do it, and that's because we don't like lying. Our body knows it's gonna get us into trouble. So we're like, Stop it, stop it, stop it. And we hold ourselves back. You ask a woman, How much do you weigh? And she'll go, Mmm. Like, literally close those lips, 'cause no woman wants to talk about how much she weighs. So it's a withholding gesture, and so, That's the first thing is you want to look for some of the bigger cues with holding gestures. Lip purse is one, a sudden distancing behavior. So we also noticed that liars in our lab, they wanted to get away from the lie as if it smelled. So when they were telling their most embarrassing story, they'd be leaning in, using gestures. Oh, it's so embarrassing. Remember, embarrassing stories are negative. It's not like it's a positive memory. It's like people are like, and they do a shame touch. The universal shame touch is when people Touch their fingers to the side of their forehead.
This happened to me.
Oh, gosh, I'm so embarrassed.
So they usually tell the truth and.
They do like this. Yes, because they're actually embarrassed, right? So these are all good, like congruent, right? We're seeing embarrassment and shame gesture. We're seeing negative, nonverbal, and people shaking their head. I can't believe that happened, right? Like, they, oh, they're so upset that happened. We're seeing cringes. We're seeing fear. We're seeing sadness. Congruent, right? Like, that's all congruent emotions. On the bad stories, we often see people will lip purse and they try to get away from it. So they'll say a statement and then, you know, and then, and they're literally like as far away, I hope I'm not messing up my audio there, as far away from the lie as they can possibly get. They're leaning back, they'll sometimes literally lean their head back in the chair, and that's because physically we want to distance ourselves from things we don't like. So we're looking for Lip purses, sudden distancing. And there's a lot of cues that we can't control. So blink rate is another one. Eye blocking behavior is liars have higher blink rates. They blink more. Yeah, actually, in Britney Spears, she had a really interesting interview that I actually break this down on my YouTube channel, so you don't have to read the book if you want to see it. Where I break down the cues in this early interview. This is right before the conservatorship started. So very, very full of cues because it's right before it happened. And she gets asked, very difficult question. And she, all of a sudden, her blink rate goes from a normal rate to a high rate. So she starts to really quickly blink her eyes like this. And that is because when we're really nervous, we literally want to close out stimuli to not see what's happening so we can process what's happening. So blink rate is something that a lot of manipulative people cannot control. In fact, when I share this, people go, oh, I know a very narcissistic, manipulative person. who has a very high blink rate.
Interesting.
Because they're literally trying to block out the lie or the manipulation, and so they'll sound really good, but they're really processing a lot, and you're like, why are they blinking so much? And it's because they're trying to process.
Oh my goodness.
So just knowing those cues are not all bad on their own, but it's important to know what those cues look like so you can spot them. And I do think, I really think, manipulative people will get caught eventually. It is very hard to fake competence It is very hard to fake warmth. It's hard to keep that up.
Yes.
And so for the long game, yes, you can learn a couple of these cues and try to master your way around them. But for the long game, it's really hard. I mean, look at Theranos, right? So Elizabeth Holmes, so spoiler alert, Theranos did not go well. I always have to say that. So one of her interesting cues is, I don't know if you've ever seen her talk, she has a really, she uses a really deep voice, fakingly deep, like down here. And people used to say, like, is that real? It's because she read in some Q book, it wasn't mine because my book wasn't out then, thank goodness. She read in some book that having a lower tone of voice makes you more competent. And that is true. Research has found that people who use the lower end of their natural voice tone are seen as competent. That's for both men and women. So you have a very deep voice and it serves you really well. When I'm talking right now, I'm trying to use the lowest end of my natural register. When I'm talking to my toddler. Right, right. When I'm talking to my toddler, I'm.
Much more up here, you know, Hey.
Baby, how are you? But if I were to do my entire interview like this, it would drive you crazy. You wouldn't feel competent. No, and it wouldn't, people would go, I can't, I'm not taking her to take her seriously. So, she read that study, obviously. And went an octave lower.
There you go.
And went an octave lower. So, it wasn't her natural voice tone, it was like one step lower than her voice tone. She was always talking like this. And when she did an interview, she would talk like this and you would hear that this just doesn't sound natural. And part of your Spidey sense would be like, why is she talking so low? It sounds really unnatural. And it came out that when she was drunk, her employees noticed that she went back into her natural register.
Wow.
So there are cues that they will eventually... Don't drink alcohol. And that is the point of this story. Don't drink alcohol.
Get caught.
So, like, you can't keep it up for that long, right? Is that she was faking that cue, we think.
I think you're also just. Your body is out of integrity. Like, the more you're. You're keeping back something, you're telling a slight lie or whatever. I mean, I felt this from the past because I've been out of integrity in my life at different times from different stages of childhood to adulthood, right? For little white lies to bigger stuff hiding from my parents or whatever it is. They feel bad. So you're like, oh, like something inside of you feels off, right? And then you gotta, like, keep the lie up, and you're like, eventually you're gonna explode. or you're gonna have a heart attack or something.
It's gonna leak. It's gonna leak.
It's gonna leak.
Like, you leak those cues and like those are the cues that we're looking for. Like, I want you to be on the lookout for them because when something feels bad, like even like something feels bad, even just then when you were saying it felt bad, your voice tone changed. Right. Just then.
Yeah.
Because when you think about, oh, I'm like, think about seeing a toxic person. I know that people probably have toxic people in their lives and this is why toxic people are so challenging. because toxic people put us out of integrity. Toxic people force us to use warm cues where we don't feel like it. Now we can do it.
What do you mean? We gotta be nice to them or something?
Yeah. So like if you have a toxic person and this is the thorn and I think our work is I want everyone to be their best selves. I want them to show up as their warmest, most competent self. But what if you have a toxic person? How do you do that authentically? And this is what's so hard about talking People. You have a colleague or co-worker or family member that you don't like, right? And you have to break out the fake warmth cues. Oh, hi. How are you? Oh, right. And so what do we do? We fake smile, right? So, oh, it's so good to see you.
Right.
I'm like, I don't look like it, right? Or we say, oh, yeah, so how, oh, that sounds good.
Congratulations.
Right. Now your LA roots are coming back to you.
Right. That's why Toxic People challenge us, is because they come into our lives. We know we're supposed to be warm. And so we try to force that warm sound and it comes out sort of forced and it makes us feel bad and then we're trying to overcompensate for it. And so you know what the antidote here is not learning more fake warmth cues. It's time to get rid of toxic people. I think that's like the side effect of the book is like, Don't keep them around. Yeah. Keep those people around because It will leak and so set boundaries around that.
So what do you mean it will leak? Like your integrity will leak because you're constantly trying to be nice but they're actually out of integrity because you don't want to be. Is that right?
Right.
That's exactly right. So your body is like, I'm doing something that's not authentic to me because.
I feel like I have to with this person. That's right. And the more frequently you do that.
You feel out of integrity with yourself.
Yep, exactly. With yourself. That was a question. That was a question. Yes, it was. Yes, yes. It was perfect because you were asking a question I knew. Is if you allow toxic people to come into your life, especially without boundaries, we have to have some of those people we deal with. But if you don't have boundaries around them, they come into your life and you have fake niceness.
Lying.
Yes.
And how you can tell someone's lying. Yes.
Oh, good.
So I, we don't have much of.
This in the book. I don't.
I don't have very much of this in the book.
Why don't you have this in the book? The reason is because I think this is one of those evil superpowers.
Yeah.
It's like, it's like, maha ha. It's like that. Because it is very powerful. The science behind lie detection is very concrete. It's not a guessing game. We do know a lot about what happens to people when they lie. The problem is amateur lie detectors do worse than people who don't know anything about lying. Ah, got it. So always my worry is like, oh my gosh, if I give someone a little bit of information, I actually make them worse. So for example, in the biggest study on lie detection that was done, we can spot lies with 54 accuracy. So flip a coin.
Exactly.
It's terrible.
Like, we're terrible. By the way, like, police officers don't. Oh, so can you guess there's one group that did better on this? It's not police officers, it's not doctors, it's not teachers. Kids.
No, I wish it was.
They actually didn't test kids because that's a whole different IRB process.
Who could test who. Who is more efficient and see if there's a lie. Someone's lying. Is that what you're saying? The group?
Prison inmates.
Wow, that makes sense.
Right, as soon as I read that I was like, oh yeah, and they joked, like the set a lot section is like, it takes one to know one.
Oh yeah, of course.
Right, and so that was like very interesting.
Yeah, BSer.
Exactly.
So, can't steal from a thief.
All those things, yes, exactly. The same thing happens with lying. So the problem is, is that the moment you give an amateur, like a liar, like someone amateur tips, their ability goes below 55%. It gets even worse.
They don't know.
Yeah.
Because it's like you need the whole system. But I think there's a couple things that if you are interested in this thing or in this idea, this topic, there's a couple things that you want to start with and there are things that can immediately help you spot lies in your life. Are you ready?
Let's do it.
Okay.
The first thing that you want to look for are incongruencies. So in interactions, it's very easy to control our words, right? Anyone can say anything. What you're looking for is incongruencies with the body or voice tone. So for example, if I were to show up and be like, I'm so happy to be here today, right? Like you can hear it. Our body language has 12.5 times more weight than our words. So with liars, what you're looking for is leaks. Leaks are incongruencies. A very common one is in Western cultures, an up and down nod, a vertical nod means yes, And a horizontal one means no. So an incongruency would be... Like yes. Right, exactly. And for people who are listening, I'm shaking my head opposite. So it would be... So did you take the cookies from the cookie jar?
No.
Right, right. Shaking my head yes.
So that's like a leak. That's something that we often see where we are seeing some kind of incongruency. The other big kind of incongruency is micro-expressions. This is something that I do talk about in the book. It's sort of the first step to lie detection, is learning how to read faces. I think the most important facial expression to recognize, this is the most powerful one, is the expression of contempt. So contempt is a one-sided mouth raise. Smirk. Dr. John Gottman, he analyzed thousands of couples in his love lab looking for patterns in marriages. He found that couples who showed contempt towards the other, with 93% accuracy would get divorced within 30 years. I mean, you don't hear stats like that very often. So, contempt is a really interesting one. You see it a lot on liars because if someone is truly happy about something or very excited to see or happy to be there, there's no reason they're going to show contempt with a smirk. It often will come out either because they're actually not happy with what they're saying or they hate having to lie.
Liars hate lying.
So oftentimes, and we have, oh, we did a big lie detection experiment. We had people play two truths and a lie with us, and we analyzed their videos. Oh, yes. It was. Wanna play, Louis?
Yeah.
So, like, they. We actually analyze their cues. Liars hate to lie. We don't like the feeling in our body when we lie. It feels really inauthentic. So sometimes you'll see a liar who will make contempt because they're like, I really don't want to have to do this. And they hold their mouth in that side contempt expression because they really don't like it. So the two things that I want you to look out for, and if you're starting to see it, that means you actually have an eye for it, is contempt when there shouldn't be contempt and any kind of incongruencies like that negative head nod or when someone says something but doesn't actually mean it. You start with those two steps and you're already going to increase your abilities.
Your lie detection capabilities.
Yes.
I like it. I like it.
But you use your gut. You use your intuition. You feel it, you know?
You're reading everything. Just kind of like you read in the guy like sweating and smelling in your like, yes, everything combined. Exactly.
So actually that is more important. That's the most important.
Eye contact as well, you know, if someone's like not looking at you and they're, you know.
So liars, if you're lying face to face, not on video. So liars typically look you in the eye more because they want to see if you believe them.
Oh, see if you believe them. No way. Yes. Why don't you want to, like, try to do that so you could try to, like, just act like you're telling the truth? So either one.
So really good Liars actually make more eyes. Like, I don't believe.
Yeah. Right.
So, like, for example, like, a really.
Good liar is like, I'm gonna deliver this to you and hope you. And they're trying to see, does this. Do they believe me? Are they making any weird facial expressions? Can I convince them? So actually, looking away, Shifty eyes is just a sign of nervousness. A truth teller can be nervous too. So there's all these weird myths. Also, if you want to guess the mode of communication that has the highest amount of lies, so your choices are face-to-face, emails, IM, or chat, which do you think has the most amount of lies?
Text? Is that the least amount?
Nope.
It is phone has the most amount of lies. And the reason for this is because, oh.
I think I know why.
Tell me.
Yeah.
Maybe.
Yeah.
I bet you, I bet you have it, right? Well, because one, well, I don't know. I was gonna say anything that's not recorded. Ah, yes, that's it.
But text is like, you've got proof or something. You can go back to it. That's exactly right, though. That's why. So phone has the most because there's no paper trail. Yes. And you don't have to lie to someone's face.
Right?
Like, it's really easy to, like, turn your back and be like, I know. Yeah. So whereas email, text, and face to face, email, text, has a paper trail, and face to face has so there's all these really interesting things about lying that we have misconceptions or we don't think about them. So by the way, if you're doing a lot of business on the phone, if you're doing a lot of coaching on the phone, you really have to be careful. I have a lot of students who are life coaches, they work with a lot of students, and they do a lot of phone consulting. The problem with that is if it has the most amount of lies or we're talking about hidden emotions. If you're working as a coach, you really have to spot those hidden emotions. You have to think about what are ways that we can either bring the video to this, like do video chat or do in person. or at least say, Hey, I'm taking notes on this call. I'm going to send you a summary after we hang up. That actually brings the amount of lies down to email level because you're telling them I'm going to commit this to black and white. I'm going to commit this to paper. Yeah, so they feel like it's trustworthy. Exactly. So whenever I do negotiations, I do a lot of phone negotiations when I'm doing corporate events. I always say, My assistant's on the line, so third person, right, to here. Who's taking notes? Exactly. My assistant's on the line. She's going to be taking some notes for us. And don't worry, she'll send a full summary out afterwards. Please confirm that we got all the details right when you get it.
Amazing.
I have caught so many little lies. People don't mean it. I don't think-- you- take the notes. Yeah, because my assistant will take notes, very good notes, and then we always send it back and we say, Please review these notes and please send us a receipt that they all look good to you that we got everything right.
And what do people say?
Well, the lies that we've caught is they've overestimated amount of people, overestimated a budget, they're not the actual decision maker, and so when we reply back with that email, they have to say, say, you know, I'm so sorry I mentioned 5,000, but I actually think it's gonna be a little bit closer to 3,000.
Right.
Right, because they know that we'll have it in writing if anything has changed.
Of course.
So protect yourself in the business world by adding that in there. I think that's a really important strategy for just getting more honest interactions.
What about negotiations?
Yes. So for negotiations, the biggest thing here is actually vocal power. So going back to vocal, yes, because we sue doctors based on our perception of their skills. The same thing happens in negotiations. We value people on our perceptions of their skills. So I mean, perception of their skills. Perception of their skills. That comes through vocality.
Yes, because when you go to a.
Negotiation, you're not thinking about vocal, you're thinking about what are my assets, what are my value points, what are the things I'm going to do? Those are all important, but the very first impression, especially how you ask your number, is the most important thing. So for example, if you are quoting a price, this is the hardest part of negotiation, someone says, how much do you charge? What do you cost? And you say, question inflection, I charge $10,000.
Yeah, it's not good.
You are begging them to negotiate with you. You're basically telling them, I'm not sure of this number and you shouldn't be either. So first is making sure that you are saying, not asking. So make sure that you're going the downward inflection. So the question inflection is when you go up at the end of your sentences.
That'S very, very, very not asking.
Yes. Versus going down at the end of your sentences. So when you have a number, you have a skill that you're going to share. Think about the verbal ahead of time. But with vocal, you want to deliver that in authoritative voice tone.
So, for example, like President Obama, how.
Would you say ten thousand dollars?
Ah. So.
So here's the bad way first. I always like to do negative practice first. So bad way is it'll be. I'd love to work with you. I think we'd be a great partnership and it will be five thousand dollars. that's the bad way. The good way is I'd love to work with you. I think it would be a great partner and the cost would be $5,000. Right, so it's just adding it at the end. It's a finality, right? It's like saying like, this is my cost and I know how much I'm worth now. If you don't know how much you're worth, we can have others learning to do what you do, so you have to be able to price that.
Your worth is only worth what someone's willing to pay as well.
100%.
If you can't convince or enroll someone or you know, and then back it up with results, then you may get it, but you may not keep it, so you've got to do a lumberscore.
And they don't have a perception of your value that way. So the first thing is the downward inflection, the second thing is volume. So when we're really nervous, we will lose volume. Remember how we are excited? I go up. Yeah. So sales people, I do a lot of sales trainings. They'll do this thing where on the point that they're most nervous about, like their weak point or something they're lying about or a bad number, yeah, we'd love to work with you. I think it'll be really great. Cost will be $5,000.
Right, right.
Again, that's a social signal of, ah, this person doesn't really want to charge that. I'm gonna ask for less.
I think it's when you're like calm and comfortable when you speak about it, that's gonna come across well, right?
And practicing saying your hardest points. So go through that practice sheet, the notes you take before a meeting, and practice saying to another human being, not your mirror.
Here's my rate, yeah.
Here is my rate. There's other things you can be nervous about too in a negotiation, right? Like a timeline or a skill level or maybe other competitors who you think might be able to beat you. Make sure that you are practicing those comments with authoritative voice tone and solid volume.
People feel comfortable and confident and they catch it.
And you infect that feeling.
I love like, for me it's so easy. I get a lot of inbound email requests for speaking. and I never want to jump on the phone with anyone because I'm just like, it's exhausting, you know, like having these conversations. So people say we love to book you and I literally reply with like one sentence that's like, I'm $35,000. Just let me know the dates and I'll see if I'm free.
Yeah.
That's about all I say. Yes. Sometimes I'll ask like, tell me more about like what it is, but you know, it was just like, here it is.
If I'm free, let me, I'll let you know, but tell me the dates. And typically someone who is emailing you should already know that you're going to have a high value. And that's also part of your brand. You're very direct. If people want to know about you, you have a podcast they can listen to. You have a book that they can read. And so it's also about how do you position your numbers? So yes, you can give a lot of information. There's different kinds of proof. There's three different kinds of proof. There's social proof. So that would be, we've had 15 events in the last six months or whatever. There's qualitative testimonial proof. So this is like, a CR person or salesperson says, Lewis was the best speaker I ever had. And there's credibility proof. So media mentions, published book, best-selling author. So you have to think about, now Lewis, you have those. You have all three of them because you have a book that's on your website, you have social proof, you have podcasts. So you don't need to necessarily go and prove that. However, if you don't have a website or if you don't have those obvious buckets filled, you need to make sure that you are hitting all three of those proof in your response. So if you don't have a book or a podcast or anything like that, your email back should be so great to hear from you. First mention of social proof. I've done events for groups like yours in the past. They've done really well. I think we did three different groups last year.
Yeah.
Social proof number one. Second, attached to this email, I have a deck with an overview of topics as well as some testimonials from some of our previous groups that have really enjoyed us. And then here are my rates. Please let me know dates. And then at the bottom, any professional credibility mentions. So are you certified?
Are you a doctor?
Have you been on any media? Those can be at the very bottom. That way you're very subtly hitting those three proof buckets and they're very important in negotiation.
I love it. I love it. Is there anything that you want to share that we haven't shared?
Oh my gosh. I would say that the last thing and this is something that I tried to make a big point in the book. I don't want to hit people over the head with it, but I don't think I got it as well as I wanted, which is I don't think you should ever pretend to be something you're not. Again, I don't believe in fake it till you make it. I think that you're better off spending your time instead of trying to be the bubbly extrovert is trying to find out what is your unique brand of charisma. Like, what is your flavor? I think that the more time you can spend on that, before trying to emulate someone else or trying to dial up something that isn't natural to you is a much better place to be. That's where happiness comes from. I think that's what people mean when they say authentic. And so anything I've said today in this interview or anything that you've read, try to figure out what's your unique take on that. Go make me prove my worth, right? If I said something that sounded interesting to you, go make an experiment, right? Go up to 50 different people in the next 50 days.
Yes.
And see if you can try out a conversation starter if that works for you. If you can find your unique flavor, if you can treat it like an experiment, you can never fail because experiments never fail.
Yeah, that's good. I did an experiment when I moved to New York City as well because I was like, I want to meet some new people. I don't know anyone here.
Yeah.
And I call it the red rose project.
What?
Can you guess what it was?
Did you give red roses to people?
Yes. Every day I bought roses and I would give them out. Yes. This is what I was single. I gave them out to girls.
Yes.
Some were you only trying to meet girls? Uh, yes.
Yes.
You were about to say, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie.
Don't lie, you can't. I was trying to meet guys too, but this specific project was for, like, dating girls. Yeah, take girls on a date. And I, it only lasted like four days because I like met a few different people and... It worked. Yeah, it worked, but a couple times it didn't work.
What happened? I thought it was like six.
You were like, throat to like hit you with those. I was like, you know, oh, I'm a nice guy. Like, I'm disarming. You know, I wasn't, like, this weird.
Like, douchey dude or whatever.
I thought it was a good. This is pretty good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I remember I went up to, like, one girl, and she, like, ran from me, and I was like, oh, my God. I was like, okay, this did not work. But she was also kind of, like, a little Moody and, like, I don't know. Anyways, but most people, they were like, oh, thank you. They were kind of taken back. They thought it was gonna. And I didn't ask for anything either. Just gave it to him. Yes.
I love it.
And I would see what would happen.
And what happened?
I was just like, smile, just say.
I wanted to give you a rose.
Today, and I would, like, walk away. And did you meet people? Did you meet guys? I did. I met a few people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it only lasted for, like, a few days, and then I was like, oh. So here's a challenge to everyone listening. I, like, love that. Is there a project you can do for five days? Yeah. Okay. So for. For my introverts listening, for my lovely introverts, maybe for you, it's something small. Maybe it's as small as Texting a good friend conversation starter that you heard today, right? Like just with your good friends, right? Deepening a relationship you already have. Maybe if you're a little more ambiverted, it's asking a new colleague to lunch or asking a friend to lunch you haven't been to lunch with. And for my extroverts, maybe it's the Lewis challenge, which is go buy roses or go buy lavender. I actually did this in the streets.
Of New York with my.
Lavender? Yeah, we did little bouquets of lavender for everyone. And just told them to have a great day. Maybe it's something like that, like buying lavender, buying a rose. See what happens. See what it's like when you get butterflies in your stomach and you have to approach someone. Take a five-day challenge from today because I think that we can hear all this stuff as knowledge. We can keep it in the back of our head and it makes us feel good. But turning it into action is how.
We actually have behavior change.
Yes.
Let's just say there's a person you don't like.
Yeah.
Maybe they're not toxic. There's someone you don't like and you don't like being nice to because you feel like, Yeah. Why am I spending? I just don't... Nothing wrong with them.
They're just not my person.
Yeah.
Totally. Let's say you're in a work environment.
Yeah.
And you're at a company, you got 5,800 employees that you're working with, you're on a team with, and you're just, okay, I'm here.
Yeah.
Is it better to be inauthentic and lie and act nice around this person? Friendly, fake, how are you interested? Even though you've been around them for six months or a year and you realize you really don't like them.
Or is it better to go right.
Up to the person after six months and say, you know what? I just want to be completely honest and not fake with you. Because I feel like I've been fake. That I don't connect with you, I don't like you. I think you're out of integrity, I think you're inauthentic. And maybe I'm being judgmental, but I'd.
Rather be honest with you and fake nice to you. Okay, that's A and B. Can I give a C? Sure. Okay. So I don't believe in fake it till you make it. So I try not to give fake it. I don't roll that way. I just think it's exhausting. I think it's going to leak. The C option here is to not fake warmth, but is to double down on competence. So if you are working with someone that you don't like, the one thing that you do have to do is get stuff done with them.
Right?
You have to master your tasks. You have to be on it. You have to be responsive to emails. So that is something that you can be authentic about because to do your job, you have to be able to get along with them in a very professional setting. So I would skip all the fake warmth stuff. Don't do that.
Go right into competence.
Yeah, right. Like stick with where you're authentic, which.
Is like, I don't need to hear about your weekend.
I don't need to go to happy hour with you. I don't need a fake sitting with you for coffee. But you know what?
We can get stuff done. You know what we agree on?
We create boundaries around the, Hey, let's go have coffee. Oh, you know, I'm so busy. I'm so busy today, but you know what?
Let's do a brainstorm session tomorrow at the end of the day so we can really kick off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So get back to the mission on the task on hand, the competence, and maybe you've just got to be like, okay, this is someone where 20 seconds a day, I've got to be around someone that's trying to be fake, la-di-da.
With everyone, and I'll just wait and see.
I'm gonna get stuff done.
And then I'll move on to the next one. That's it. Exactly, 'cause at least you're focusing on where you can be authentic. And also, even if that were to come up, you could honestly say that kind of conversation could be, listen, I'm not really into connecting at work, I'm more about getting it done. I want to get home to my kids and my family. I hope that's okay with you. You know, when we're together, if it's all right, I might skip lunch and just have us, like, you know, work it out and be really efficient. I really appreciate how efficient you are because it allows me to get home to my kids faster. Mm. Right, like that's authentic. So what can you appreciate about them that's competent?
Yes. What can you highlight about them that's competent? And that's what I want to know. What if you don't feel like they're warm or competent? You're like, this person on a team.
Is just, they can't get anything done. They're not smart and they fake attitude.
Around me all day.
I mean, this depends on how you feel, but I would say deal with it. Like, you've got, like, go to your boss. Right, and say, Hey, I just look at a different team. Can you put me on a different team? Yeah, you say, like, I don't know how I can work with this person. I don't want to be unauthentic, but I'm telling you that we're not getting stuff done and they are causing issues on the team. Like, I don't like to ignore that stuff. Like, you could hope it gets better, but ask for help. If you have someone on your team or someone in your life who is.
Not warm nor competent and doesn't treat.
You with warmth or competence, Either get them out of your life, set a boundary, or get help.
Give them my number. I don't live with it.
Yeah, don't live with it. Life is too short to feel fakely competent or fake warmth. Right. What's been the, I think I asked.
You this last time, what's been the charisma strategy?
Yeah.
Do you want to call it a strategy? You weren't sure about that.
You weren't sure. I don't know what the word is.
Right, but what is the charisma or social cue that you've learned in the last six months that has brought some new attention to your life where you said, Ah, I wasn't aware of that fully. But now the research is showing that when someone does this, it improves this.
There's a new cue that I snuck into the book in the very last draft because I just learned it. And this is actually brought to me by one of my mail readers. And I'm so curious. Okay, do you agree with this, Lewis? Okay, here's what they said. So in the book, I had a whole section on nodding. So nodding, affirmative nods, upside down, right? Are yes. I nod all the time. Yes, you're a nodder. It's a really high warmth. We love it. We love it. Is it good? Yes, nodding is great because vertical nods, and by the way, this is different in certain cultures where they'll nod, they nod, side to side. Side to side. That's different. Okay, so just vertical nodding in Western cultures is agreement. It's yes. In fact, research has found that when.
You nod at me slowly, I speak three to four times longer. Ah, that's cool.
That's why you're a good interviewer is.
Because you'll not be like, keep going, keep going. I'm just kind of like a bobblehead. I'm just kind of like, yeah, it's.
Going to be very slow. I'll pause and be like, okay, cool. Okay, well actually you're right. Slow nodding is tell me more. Fast nodding is finish up. Yeah, okay, okay, okay. Okay, I got it. I got it, right, right, right. Okay, so that's the difference there. If you want someone to wrap up in a meeting, give them a one, two, three, triple nod. Like, I got it. If you want them to keep going, an introvert, -uh huh. Okay, so that's the difference. That's number one. So I shared about this, I taught it, and then a couple of my male readers said to me, you know, Vanessa, we think that there is a secret non-verbal cue between guys. No, I don't know what this cue is. Here's what they said. If you know a guy and you're trying to acknowledge him, guy to guy, you nod up.
Yeah.
Good to see you. It's literally like an open gesture. You're open.
Amen.
If you don't know a guy, but you're trying to acknowledge his presence, you.
Hey, good to see you. Oh, wow, that's so true. Is it true?
That's so true. Yeah, exactly.
Oh, good to see you.
Yeah, acknowledged. Good to see you.
Hey, what's up, buddy? Okay. That's so true.
Okay, so this was, so I snuck it into the book.
Oh, wow, that's fascinating. I wonder, is that like biology? Is that social? Yes, here's my theory on this.
As soon as I heard this, I.
Was like, and I started looking. I started watching men. I asked my husband, I asked my guy friends, and this is why I think it happened. When we know someone, we expose our jugular. So this is a very vulnerable part of our body and we're saying, I know you, I trust you. Look, I'm opening, I'm acknowledging you and I feel trustworthy. Yes. When you don't know someone but you want to show respect, you nod down.
To protect your jugular.
I don't know you, but I see you.
I got you.
I got you. I'm here for you, kind of. You can't see my jugular, but I'm here for you. I'm gonna protect myself. But I see you, bro. What's up? Exactly. I think that that's where it comes from. It's like, do I know you or do I not know you? So in that sense, this is a high warmth cue. Hey, buddy, what's up? It's high warmth. You're showing your jugular. This is a high confidence cue. Hello. Good to see you. I look ridiculous. I don't do that. I'm like, hi. So I think that that was so surprising to me because there's so much more, I think, to be done. I list 96 cues in the book. That's just the start. we're discovering more and more. I think that's where the excitement comes in. So that was the new one.
That's so cool. And what are the three most powerful cues, body language cues of leaders? Okay, so this is the competence area.
Of the spectrum, right? So when we talk about charisma, we talk about warmth, competence, charisma, and danger. Okay, so three body languages of leaders. The example that I give that I really like to teach from is the Nixon-Kennedy presidential debate. Have you ever heard of this historical debate? We were not around this debate, so.
I'd be shocked if you'd seen it.
So we want to be in the high charisma. There you go. Yes, we want to be doing those cues all the time. That's right, we want to be in the star. So right now you're talking about competence. You just asked me about leaders.
So leaders typically are high competence and they can go into warmth when they want to.
High competence and charisma.
Right.
Are there high competence and high warmth? Yes, exactly. So highly competent cues, if you know that you're warm and you need to dial up competence, to hit the sweet spot. These are some cues that will help you. Give it a shot. And my favorite is from the Nixon Kennedy presidential debate. So have you heard about this debate before? It's kind of- Remind me.
Okay. You're like, actually, yes, I watched it on the History Channel last night.
I mean, maybe you mentioned this before, but isn't one of them was angry or something? I can't remember what happened, but- So this is why I like this story is because it created a puzzle. I like puzzles. So here's what happened. During this part in US history, Nixon and Kennedy were running for president, and about half the population watched the presidential debate on television, and about half the population listened to the debate on the radio. Everyone who watched the debate was sure that Kennedy won, and everyone who listened to the debate was sure that Nixon won.
Wow.
And it was the first time where.
There was discrepancy between the winners, the perceived winners.
'Cause one sounded competent, the other one looked warm.
One sounded like a leader, and one.
Looked like a leader. Ooh.
You match them together, that's the sweet spot.
That's the star.
Okay.
That's the star, exactly.
So one sounded like a leader.
So Nixon sounded like a leader. He had really good vocal power, but he looked like a loser. And I hate to use that word, but he himself said in his memoirs he believes he lost that entire presidential election based on the first few seconds of that debate. First few seconds. He himself said that.
What happened? That's all, it was kind of like the Shark Tank guy trying to buy back competence and warmth at the same time.
He gave away his competence in the first few seconds of the debate. So anyone who saw it went, oh, no, no, no, no. This guy is not a winner. And this was before they even spoke. So in the first 30 seconds of the debate, neither of them speak. You see them on camera. And if you were watching, you saw, wow, Nixon looks so weak. And here's why. What most people don't know is that Nixon had just injured his knee on the campaign trail. He'd been in the hospital for the week. So he came in with a bandaged knee and a fever. Kennedy had been tanning. --Yeah, he was like --He was ready to go. And also a kind of funny thing is the debate was in black and white, and Nixon's suit was too brown. It blended into the background. So I talk about color psychology at the very end of the book, colors. And so that was an issue one that he didn't pop as much on the black and white. Okay, so he shows up and he's sitting what's called the runner's stance. The runner's stance is when someone, so you know runners before they win a race, they like go into the crunch position, one leg back. We know this as a readiness position universally across cultures. If someone's about to run away from us, they will get into this position, right? Like they're literally about to run away. It's why sprinters start a race like that. Well, Nixon spent the first 30 seconds of the debate in that position.
Because of his knee. Because of his knee. He was in pain.
He was trying to like just- He was nursing it. But it made it look like he was about to run out on us. That's from just a quick non-verbal perspective. The first impression was, where's he going? Even though people didn't consciously realize it, he looked not planted. We don't like leaders who aren't going to stay with us. Whereas Kennedy, on the other hand, he had a really nice relaxed cross and he used what's called humility hands. Research calls it humility hands. Humility hands are when your hands are on your leg and they're resting. Humility, humble. Humble. So he looked relaxed, calm, here to stay, you know, not tense. I'm not in a rush, I'm here. I'm here, I'm your leader, right? So he looked quote unquote presidential. So first the runner's stance. Second is, and this is in the.
First 10 seconds of the debate.
They were sitting.
They were sitting.
They were sitting next to each other. They were on a podium. No, so here's your first snapshot of the debate and you see Kennedy, very humility hands, relaxed, sitting tall, and then you see Nixon, who's like, ready to.
Leave, ready to leave.
And we see these cues and people already made their decision. But people who were listening didn't see any of that. Right, they heard the voice. They heard the voice. Interesting. And so Nixon lost the debate to Kennedy. He lost the election to Kennedy. And he said in his memoirs, that's why, is because of the cues I sent. And so for leaders, here's what we wanna think about. One is relaxed, here to stay. So the more you can settle into your place the distance, this is such a weird measurement, I want to see the biggest distance between your earlobe and your shoulder. The reason-- It's not like this. Yes, yes. Because why? When we are confident, when we are winners, we take up as much space as possible, right? We broaden our shoulders, we tilt our head towards the sky. Winners feel pride. So we look at the distance between someone's ear and shoulder, we're like, oh, she looks confident. When someone hops on a video call, this is the mistake I see. Hi everyone. Shoulders pinched up towards ears. And we wonder why people aren't taking us seriously. We wonder why people are interrupting us. It's because this distance, if I'm like this, Hey everyone, happy Monday.
Well, your tonality as well, but yeah.
Right? Like if I start a video call like this. So today we're gonna talk about some updates and I'm gonna go over some different slides with you. And we're gonna wait a few minutes till people log on.
Right, like, so if I'm on your team, are they, is everyone just like, yes, no one gets, are you just calling each other out on your social media?
Everyone's a winner on my team. They're amazing, right? Like we like play music, yeah, right? Of course you can lean in sometimes, but in that first impression especially, right? It's like, hey, good morning everyone, good to see you. So I want you to think about profile picture. Videos. I love chairs with armrests. Why? It helps our shoulders stay grounded. So that's the biggest one is taking up space. The second thing that happens that also gives you more vocal power. So if I were to do this entire interview with my shoulders up, it would look bizarre, right? I would look scared.
You would be more closed off.
Yeah, it would be. And so if I tense my vocal cords right now, I'll begin to go into vocal fry. So vocal fry, have you heard this before? When your voice sounds like sizzling bacon.
I just don't know. I'm not sure.
But I was just thinking about it and if it's, oh my goodness, it's horrible. And the reason why we'll accidentally go into fry is because we're literally clenching our vocal cords and they cannot get enough breath. Vocal fry, not to be gross, but vocal fry happens when our vocal cords rattle together. And that's what we're hearing is the rattling. That's why we don't like it. And so when you have space, you prevent vocal fry. If you hear yourself in vocal fry, here's the quickest fix you have. Speak louder. So the best way to get rid of vocal fry is to just up your volume. It will push more air through your vocal cords and it makes them hum. If other people on your team are using vocal fry, just ask them to speak up. Speak a little louder. Yeah, that usually gets them out of vocal fry. Little secret, don't blame it on me, but that's a really easy way to If you're interviewing someone and they're in vocal fry and you know it's gonna drive your listeners crazy, just be like, you know, the audio, they just can't hear you.
Could you speak a little bit louder? It will work. Now, what's the difference between the humble.
Hands on a knees or on a.
Table, I guess right here, does this work on a table as well? Yes, yes. Versus hand over top of the other hand, which is relaxed but also is closed body.
Yes.
Versus two hands side by side, relaxed, not like intense but relaxed. side by side. What's the difference between these two?
Perfect question. So your book cover, your book cover is hand over hand.
Yeah.
And they're relaxed.
Yeah.
And it's a closed posture, but it works. Mm-.
Right?
And so it's okay to me. As long as your hands are relaxed, I don't care if they're closed or open. Now, I do care about this. So when we protect our arms. Arms crossed. Yes, I do care about this. And why is because when we are crossing like this, I know it's comfortable for some people. What research finds is two things. One is we look more closed off, so we never want to look closed off. But second, they found that when people are trying to be creative or strategic, they literally cannot generate as much ideas when they are like this.
What's the alternative?
Humility hands, open posture, holding a drink, typing at a computer, taking notes.
Anything else but that?
Anything else. So I love props. So the way that I don't cross my arms, because I actually like to cross my arms, It's kind of relaxing, you know? It's kind of like, I know. But actually, if you're thinking or processing, cross away, right? If you need to take a minute, take a step back, it's a great way to break. So I hold a clicker for presentations and a pen, you know, like for slides. Because every time I think about crossing my arms, I remember, oh, I have the clicker. When we think about getting rid of, I call them bad nonverbal habits, right? So tics, so ums, crossing arms, those are all bad nonverbal habits. Slouching or slouching? Yeah, it's really hard to just say don't do that. So what I'd rather you do is replace it. Displacement tactics. Okay, so you know you cross your arms. Can you hold a coffee mug? Can you hold a pen? Can you hold a clicker? Can you always have a Moleskine notebook? I have a student of mine who always has a Moleskine. He doesn't need it. He just holds it. He has it. He opens it up and he'll write the date and the meeting name and what he had for breakfast, but that's it. He literally used it because if he doesn't, he puts his hands in his pocket or crosses his arms. arms. And so he has it in front of him because it helps him feel very grounded. It's a replacement tool. It's a replacement tool. So I would think about what are some tools you can use that will.
Help you do that. What about the finger crossing? So look at the difference.
Like this, when I'm white knuckling, you can see that I am tense.
I'm trying to keep it together, Vanessa.
Right?
Like this is called a steeple. The fingertip. Oh, I love a steeple. Yeah. So a steeple is when your tips of Fingers touch and like a church steeple.
It's like Mr.
Wonderful just does this the whole time.
Exactly. You will notice that when... Yes, when Mr. Wonderful is contemplating a deal, he'll go like this. Why? Doesn't it make you feel like you're just in control? It's like, Hmm. And so this is a really good power gesture. It's one of our competence cues. That's why I have it on the COVID of the book, is to show high competence because it's about getting in control. The steeple, we love it because it.
Shows our palms, which shows we're not concealing anything. Do you want the steeple pointed at someone?
Either one. Any of those. Any and all.
Whatever.
Yeah, I wouldn't do this. I wouldn't be like, hello, everyone.
Yeah, yeah. Good morning.
So here or pointed out then with fun? Totally fine. You'll notice that, like, Mr. Wonderful does it perfectly. He'll like go like this. He'll tap it. The only thing I would be careful of is drumming fingers. That looks like Mr. Burns' evil, right?
Evil, yeah.
I don't love that one. Okay. So, like, don't look Scheming, like that can look a little bit crazy. But if you're like, oh yes, I'm thinking about it. Now, I want to give a caveat. Please only use cues that you've tried on a few times and feel natural. There are some cues in the book where there's 96 cues in the book.
That I still don't like.
I've tried them every which way and I do not like them. What's the most powerful cue that you don't like, but you know is extremely.
Effective in charisma or connection or trust or leadership volume. So research shows that people who speak in louder volumes literally are taken more seriously, but that makes me a little bit uncomfortable. And so even on stage when I'm like really excited, I still don't want to be like, let me tell you about something very... Oh god, that's horrible.
I don't like it.
But volume dynamism is a cue I teach in the book that I have trouble with.
But the research shows that people are more trustworthy or more competent.
Competent.
It is a competent cue.
Because if you're soft, it's like you don't believe in your words. Volume dynamism. So it's being able to use your volume to match your intention.
So for example, let's-- so tonality and fluctuation at the right moment.
Yes, yes, yes. So like for example, I feel a little ridiculous when I do this. This is what's cue that I struggle with, which is like, let me tell you about something super important. I just feel ridiculous, but some people do it so well.
It works.
Oh, it works so well.
When someone is-- their people are so charismatic. When you can get the tonality, the inflection, is that what it is? Of the tonality. They taught this to us in Toastmasters as one of the 10 initial lessons of being a competent communicator. One of the exercises is to give a five-minute speech using tonality. It's very, you have to like find the cues of when you like pause and slow and then you bring it out. It's like, how do you make it authentic?
Yeah. So some people do it naturally. They're so good at it.
That is not me.
That is why I don't have a podcast. That's why I have a YouTube channel. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right?
Like on YouTube, I can use my gestures and my facial expressions. It's why I don't have a podcast. I feel I am not dynamic enough in my vocal power. And so that's one cue that I work on, but I have a hard.
Time being in control of my volume. Okay, so we have that, these hand gestures.
This is fine on the table also.
Yeah, all good.
Relaxing good. What about hands open on the on the table. Okay, so let's talk about palm down versus palm down. Okay, so when I was researching for the book, I was looking for my favorite are cues hiding in plain sight.
Those are my favorite.
Oh, I just used it. Those are my favorites.
Yeah, you did. That was very organic.
Very natural.
I'm really happy right now.
It's like you're speaking to a girlfriend just naturally flowing through. Let me tell you, I'm using red hair. Yeah, okay, so that was great. It was very exciting. I feel very excited. Okay, so I love cues hiding in plain sight. and so I had a lot of political examples, a lot of celebrity examples, and Britney and Lance Armstrong, but I wanted historical examples, and so I was looking at famous paintings, and I noticed the Last Supper, painted by Leonardo da Vinci, has hidden cues in it. You'll notice that the way that it's positioned, Christ is positioned in the middle, so da Vinci positioned in the middle, okay. Most people do not realize in that picture Christ is doing this, He has one palm up and one palm down. It's hard to see it in that.
Oh yeah, his left palm is up. Yeah, his right palm is down on the table, right?
Now this is very interesting because like most people don't look at this right away, but why? Why is he doing that? Why would he put his hand like that? Why would he put his hand like that? And what do those mean? So let's look at the research. Palms open are universal gestures of openness. When we want something, what do we do? We hold open our hand. Give it to me.
Yeah.
When we're offering something, what do we do? We hold open our hand. When we are open to suggestion, we show our palm and we have it visible. A palm down gesture is a high competence cue. It shows dominance. It shows directiveness. You might think of, I won't mention them by name, some famous dictators of the past who did palm down gestures. Why? That is a very dominant gesture. When you are giving, people are giving directives, they often say, Be quiet. Sit down. Right, I don't wanna hear from you right now. It's a very direct-- Dismissive too in a sense, right? It's kind of-- Especially if you shake it at someone. So, why would we have these two cues? They perfectly balance each other out. Christ is depicted as the highest, most charismatic person in the painting. And so what does he do? He literally balances warmth and competence. He's showing the universal gesture of openness and giving, while at the same time a universal gesture of direct authority.
When was this painting?
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