Life-Changing Books Podcast Episode 82. Vanessa Van Edwards: Author of Cues

Vanessa, welcome to your second episode of the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm so honored. I feel like there's a lot of pressure. I'm going to deliver. It's going to be an amazing second episode. I'm so happy to be back.

Well, you wrote an amazing second book, so it won't be so hard. But for those that didn't have a chance to watch our recent Instagram Live, maybe they don't follow you on social media, maybe they didn't listen to our first podcast episode, I'd love to have you introduce yourself to everybody.

Yes. So my name is Vanessa Van Edwards. I am a recovering awkward person. So I teach communication, relationships, people skills to my fellow recovering awkward people. I think that people skills and social skills can be taught like math or science. We can learn formulas, we can have blueprints. And even if you're not charismatic, you can learn to be charismatic.

I agree 1,000%. I think we all want to be more charismatic. It helps every area of our lives. And we'll jump into some of my personal stories in a few minutes. But one of my new favorite questions is, when did the process of writing this book begin? And how did the original ideas for this book come to be?

Yeah, so it's— what's so interesting about this particular book is there was a moment, like a lightbulb moment I had, where I thought, whoa, there's there's something here. And it was very specifically, it was in 2005. And I was like most of the nation watching Lance Armstrong on Larry King Live, live. Basically, Larry King was like, have you ever doped? He was like, I've never doped. And then he did a really weird little cue called a lip purse, where he pressed his lips into a hard line. We mashed our lips together. And I remember watching it. And at the time, I didn't even have the language for cue. You know, cue is a social signal humans said to each other. I didn't even know that language, but I saw that and I thought, hmm, that was weird. And immediately I thought, this guy cannot be telling the truth. There's just no way. My spidey sense, my intuition was like, there's no way this is true. And it sent me on this journey of, okay, what was that cue? And I looked into the research and I found that a lip purse is something that humans do when they're trying to withhold something. It's literally like our body's way of saying, keep it together. Keep it in, don't get in trouble. And so liars will often, but not always, do this cue. People who are withholding something will do this cue. And I wondered— it was so specific, it was so easy to see. Once I knew it, I could see it everywhere. And I wondered if we could catalog our social signals like we do a foreign language. At the time, I was learning Spanish and Mandarin, so I was doing a lot of language learning, and I had flashcards, and it was syntax, formulas. And I wondered, what if I could make a code or catalog all the social signals people send? At the time, this started off in 2 buckets. I created a little folder on my desktop called Curious Cues, which I think was the first moment where maybe I thought— had an inkling this could be something one day. I don't know if I deigned to think it would be a book. But, um, in there it was the positive cues. So the positive cues, I noticed that very highly charismatic people used a very similar set of cues. And there's also the negative cues, the liars, the duping politicians, uh, deceitful athletes. I noticed that they were using a very similar set of cues. So that was the moment where I began to catalog these 2 different types of cues and wondered, could we study them like a language?

That's a pretty big undertaking, though. How do you go from, I'm interested in cataloging these cues and learning more about them, to actually studying them and hosting— like you talked about data collection as an example. How in the world do you tackle a big problem, something that really hasn't been studied before?

Yeah, that's great. So first, let me talk about the, the why, and I'll talk about the how. The why is social desperation. I do mean social desperation. So not only at the time was I studying Spanish and Mandarin, I was also incredibly awkward. So I was struggling, struggling with my interactions. So it wasn't just that I was like curious, right? I was like, oh, these are interesting. No, I was Constantly misinterpreting cues. So this happened in 2 ways. One, I was misinterpreting neutral cues as negative. So I would see someone or be with someone and be like, is she angry at me? Because I would misinterpret the way she looked at me, the way she sounded, as being angry at me, which actually wasn't true. So I was constantly in survival, social survival mode, right? I was constantly worried that people were angry at me or that I was missing things. The second thing that was happening was I was not showing up as my best self. So I was super prepared with my ideas, my presentation. I was ready to answer those questions perfectly, quote unquote. I use the word perfectly because there is no such thing. But I was showing up showing low confidence, sounding low confident, not giving the impression of full competence and warmth. And so I had this massive problem. And so I was driven. It was very easy to begin to look for all these cues because I was so Desperate for that catalog myself. The second question is also interesting, which is the how. So I thought the way that I could approach this was looking at different channels of cues. So cues, again, the social signals we send to each other. There are kind of 4 different ways we can think about the way that we communicate these cues, our modes. So the first one is the most obvious, our verbal, the words we use. And actually, there's a lot of really robust research on the types of words we use and how they affect our behavior. So you can even tell a lot about a person, the most obvious would be, you know, does someone use an accent or a different word from their culture? Okay, that's gonna tell you a lot about someone. But also, you can tell a lot about someone's mindset by the types of positive words they use versus the types of negative words they use. That's the most obvious channel. The second channel is nonverbal. Nonverbal is about 65 to 90% of our communication. So that's a big range, but it's the majority. That's our gestures, our facial expressions, our positioning, our body movement. Nonverbal was a really easy one because I was very— I could look at all the research and begin to break down all the nonverbal cues by body part. I mean, literally down to like palm gestures, face, eye contact, eyebrows, lower lid flexes. Then is vocal power. So how we say our words, our volume, our pitch, our inflection, our cadence. And there's some beautiful research on that. And the last one, this was the most recent one actually. This took the longest. I actually thought there was 3. For a long time, I thought there was only 3. But there's this 4th one that I simply could not ignore, which was our imagery cues. That's the colors we wear, the fonts we use— even fonts have personality— the props we have in our backgrounds, the props we're holding in our profile pictures. Those are also very important cues for how people perceive us. And so that was the last bucket that I added there. And it was literally spreadsheet upon spreadsheet. Spreadsheet, on spreadsheet, and my amazing research assistants, Jose Piña, Vanessa Newell. We had some great— I had really good help with that on the academic end too.

We're definitely going to dive into the imagery piece in just a few minutes. I think everybody's probably pretty curious as to how they could improve their profile pictures and their Zoom backgrounds now that we're all on Zoom all the time. There's a quote on the inside of the dust jacket here that I wanted to read to everybody listening today. It says, It's not enough to have great ideas. You also need to know how to communicate them. And one of the reasons that I wish I had CUES a few years ago is because, although I'm pretty confident and comfortable behind a microphone or on camera now, just a few years ago, I was very, very uncomfortable. And it took a lot of trial and error for me to go from insecure during door-to-door sales or phone sales or trying to communicate with other human beings to where I am today, which is confident and comfortable. And so a book like this really would have helped me shortcut the ability to communicate.

Me too. I wish, I wish, I know a little too late, but it's okay. We're here now.

Well, before we dive into some more content from the book, I guess my final question during this introductory session is who is the target reader for this book? I know it's you and me prior to learning some of this types of stuff, but like, who's the target reader? Who'd you write it for?

Yeah, so actually this book, very specifically, I am looking for folks who want to be master communicators. And the reason I say that is because Captivate, my first book, was really for recovering awkward people, and Cues is for them too. But more than that, actually, a lot of people who are reading Cues are like us in that we deeply, deeply want to connect with people. We want to be efficient with our communication, so not just effective but efficient. Also, it takes work to learn and read these cues, right? There are 96 of them. Every single one that you add to your toolbox is like getting a new tool and you have to practice with it. And so master communicators are my folks who, you know, that communication could make or break your success. You have relationships that you want to level up. You are tired of the stale, boring interactions, small talk, and you want to do a little bit more. And you also, this is the big one, you want more control. So master communicators— and this could be people who are using it professionally, socially, or romantically— they want to be in control of knowing exactly what cues they are sending to others, and they want to know how to read quickly and effectively the cues that are being sent to them. It is like learning a language. If you memorize all these cues and begin to apply them, you really can speak it fluently, but it takes practice. So this book is for those folks who want advanced I mean, these tips are— some of them we start off kind of easy in the book, and then as we get down the chapters, you're like, whoa, we are getting into it. It's kind of like, um, like a golf swing. I say, like, you know, this book is not for beginner golfers. This is for, like, golfers who want to go pro, in that every minute change you make to your swing, to how you hold it, to how you hit the ball, to your feet position, every single minute change has a very big result.

I think so too. And years ago, when I was in college, and I recognized the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be as far as a communicator, I took a public speaking class or a number of public speaking classes. And one of the things that they did was they recorded our speeches. And then we had to go back and watch the speeches as well as count the number of verbal pauses that we had. And simply by recognizing the number of verbal pauses over time, I started to eliminate them from my language. And You do need to practice. I haven't practiced in a long time or counted my verbal pauses. So I'm sure I have quite a few that sneak in throughout the course of a 50-minute podcast. But that's a great thing that you, you pointed out, which is that you need to recognize some of these cues. And then slowly you can implement the 96 that are in the book.

So you mentioned something really important, which is that self-analysis piece. So one of the first challenges I give in the book, which I'll give right now. So if you're kind of like, I want to get started right now, here's like one of the first thing that I want you to do, which is analysis, which is an analysis endeavor, which is look at a recent recording where you were sharing, teaching, or talking about something that mattered to you. So this could be a personal thing or professional thing. So it could be a recorded Zoom call. If you don't have one of these, just record your next end of your next presentation or pitch, or even just a few minutes in a meeting that piece of content is incredibly important because it's going to be your starting line. And what I want you to do is watch that piece of content and code every single cue you see and hear. So it's not just about body language, it's also about what you hear. So that could be everything— excuse me— everything from the way you position your body, the way you hold your hands, the way you interact with the audience, your amount of eye contact, what your face looks like. All of those different cues are going to add up To your impression. Your impression is a summary of all the cues that you are sending. The second thing that I want you to do, if you're willing, is turn on your video camera, and I want you to answer a couple of questions to camera. And I'm not gonna— I'm doing this now beforehand because I want to also make sure that I don't give away what you're gonna maybe show. So what I want you to do is record yourself talking to camera. Pretend you were talking to me. Pretend you're about to send me this video. First, I want you to tell me What did you have for breakfast? So tell me that in as much detail as possible. Second, I want you to tell me your most embarrassing story. Okay, just like you're really sending it to me. And third, this is the hard one. Do not turn off the camera. I want you to tell me a fake embarrassing story, an embarrassing story that did not actually happen to you or a friend, a totally made-up embarrassing story, and I want you to deliver it to me Just like you told your real embarrassing story. This is for master-level communicators. What you're seeing there is your starting line was your impression when you're generally talking about something. These are your impressions. One, when you're recalling something, what do you genuinely look like? What cues do you send when you're trying to recall a piece of information? Second, what do you look like when you're talking about something embarrassing, shameful, or negative? What are your nervous cues? And lastly, we're looking for your lying tells. What are the tells? What are the cues you use in deception when you're trying to hide your nervousness? Just that, knowing those things about yourself can completely change the way that you interact.

Vanessa, let me ask you, do other interviewers ever get nervous talking to you now because you're the cues master? I'm over here like, oh my gosh, I need to make sure that when I smile, it doesn't look fake. And my nodding speed is okay. Cause I don't want to get caught in a speed trap, like all that stuff.

You're doing great. You're doing great. This is a problem, actually. Interviewers are going, oh my gosh, I'm so nervous. I want to give you all the right cues. And second, my friends are now reading the book, right? They bought the book to support me. And they show up and have a friend who will come up and he, he always steeples now when he sees me, he'll be like, steeple, steeple, eye contact, head tilt, nod. I'm like, you're good, John. You're good. I adore you. You look great. And so I have friends that now tease me, but They're kind of not joking, right? So this is another thing to just keep in mind, that cues are a blessing and a curse in that they've been invisible, right? Most of us, we're interacting with these cues all the time, right? We're constantly sending these cues back and forth, but it's invisible in that we don't consciously change them, or we're not necessarily consciously aware of them. A couple we're aware of, like make eye contact or give a good handshake, but most of this is an invisible, unspoken language. With cues, like, my goal is to make it spoken. I want us to talk about our cues. Like, I want to have relationships where I look at my friend and I'm like, hey, you look angry, what's up? Or I want to be able to say to my partner when he says, yeah, I'm fine, I'm like, you don't sound fine, dude. You do not sound fine. Let's talk about it. So this is bringing language to cues, and I highly recommend reading it with people that you communicate with because The more we talk about it, the more honest and transparent I think we can be.

I love that. Read it with people that you care about and communicate about the subjects that you're learning with them. It, it actually reminds me a little bit of The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. He's exposing these power dynamics that we previously weren't aware of. And we had Robert on the podcast a while ago to talk about this. And he said, it's not always an offensive book. Sometimes it's a defensive book. You become aware of these power dynamics being used by other people, and you can apply them for for your own protection. And that's what I think cues can do for you as well.

Wow. Well, first of all, I'm so honored to even be put in the same sentence as Mr. Robert Greene. And I would— I agree is that there's actually different language, but same idea. So offensive and defensive is a great way to think about power. For cues, I actually want to think about it as decoding and encoding. Meaning, when most of us think about cues, we think about decoding, right? We think about spotting the cues on others. The other way that cues work is encoding. Controlling the signals we send to others. This is— if, if you remember one thing from this podcast, it's this: the cues you send to others teach people how they should treat you. So it's not just decoding and spotting cues. The cues you are sending are changing the cues that are being sent to you. So if you want to be treated with more respect, you have to change your cues. If you want to be treated or liked better or treated with more warmth, you have to change your cues. If you wanna be taken more seriously, less underestimated, you have to change your cues because your cues are what is teaching people on how they should treat you.

In chapter 2, you talked about the cues cycle, which is decode, internalize, which we didn't just mention. So I'd like to have you talk a little bit about that and then the encode piece. So what's the internalize piece in the middle there?

Thank you. Yes. So what a lot of people don't realize is, well, we'll back up for a second. Have you ever walked into a room Or been on a video call or gone on a date and you suddenly feel a little bit anxious, like, I don't know, I'm a little bit— you're in dread, get a little bit worried, a little bit confused. We— our brain goes, oh, just calm down. It's okay. You're gonna be okay. Everything's fine. What probably happened is you spotted a cue that your brain did not like. And they actually proved this. So this study was the foundation for the book for me internally while I was writing it. Which is very simple study. They found that when participants spot a cue of social rejection— so a cue of social rejection could be an eye roll or a scoff or a dismissive voice tone. Yeah, great idea, right? Those are all cues of social rejection. The moment we spot a cue of social rejection, our field of vision increases. Literally, our pupils dilate to see more of our environment. That's the piece. that I think master communicators are really good at. They know, I just spotted a cue. They know it's probably going to change their physiology. They could produce cortisol, adrenaline, it might change their eyes, and then they know what cues to send back. And so in this way, our cues are creating all these loops in our life where we spot a cue we don't like, it makes us not feel good, then that makes us more worried, which sends off anxiety cues. Then they catch the anxiety cues and they send more social prediction cues back to us. And it's creating this loop. What if we could instead inhibit that loop to work for us? So let's say we spot a negative cue and we don't want it to affect us in a negative way. What Dr. Matthew Lieberman found is that the moment we label a cue, especially a negative cue, it disengages that part of our brain that's processing that cue. Specifically, he showed people pictures of fear. The fear microexpression— fear microexpression is when we widen our eyes and raise our eyebrows and suck in air. So that's the fear microexpression. When we see that expression, our own amygdala begins to fire where we process fear. But the moment participants said fear, that's a fear cue, the amygdala deactivated. So the act of labeling, just even knowing the 96 cues and being able to say scoff, eye roll, mouth shrug, lip purse, lower lid flex, just that ability is actually putting you in control of your own physiology so that then you can make an empowered choice of what you wanna encode.

I love that advice. So labeling negative cues reduces their impact is sort of the home run point there. And that emotional contagion is real. So you can have an impact on other people, other people can have an impact on you. Once you're conscious of it, you label the cues, you reduce their impact. Or once you label the cues and you have them at like as tools at your disposal, you can implement them and change the energy of another person, which is really interesting.

Control, right? Like, that's that. I think, you know, we talk a lot, I hear a lot about confidence, you know, sort of the— I might even say it's the decade of confidence, right? We're getting a lot of books about confidence, and I love confidence, don't get me wrong. But when I was trying for a decade to be more confident, it did not work. It just did not work. Like, I tried mantras, I tried affirmations, I tried changing my story. I mean, I tried everything. Nothing brought me more confidence than being able to control my cues. It feels incredibly— when I am in control of the cues being sent to me, or I wouldn't say I can— they can be sent to me, but I know what they are, I know what they mean, what they do, and then I know what to send back. That's my backdoor into confidence. I think that's the other way that, um, we can think about communication is if confidence has eluded you, you are not alone. There's a backdoor way, and I think it's this.

All right, let's jump into some real-world examples of how this can be applied. I know that when we were talking sort of before I pressed record, we want to give the audience some examples of what this book is going to teach them that they can actually implement. And so chapter 3 talks about the body language of leaders. And in each one of these chapters moving forward, you have cues and they're numbered. And so these are charisma cues. The first is lean like a leader. So what does that mean?

Okay, so, um, by the way, it was a little bit torture to try to figure out which cue to lead with.

Right?

Like, that was like the first big cue in the book, and I was like, it has to be a good one, and it has to be easy, and it has to be like— so, um, leaning was the first one I went with. And here's why, is because we don't realize this is one of those cues that we're doing all the time, we're seeing it all the time, but we haven't actually labeled it, which means it's out of control. So this is a cue that's really interesting because it's a precursor to action cue. In other words, to activate any of our 5 senses, we lean in. You want to smell something better, you lean in. You want to hear something better, you lean in. You want to touch something, you lean in before you touch it. You want to taste something, you lean forward. So a lean cue is a pre-activation cue, and our brain knows this. In fact, our brain knows it so much that when we lean in— so right now, wherever you're sitting or standing, if you're running, I think it can also work— just lean forward slightly, just like a couple inches. And wait a second. Do you feel like you're about to do something? Like, what was I about to do? Does that emphasize something?

Seasoning?

It actually— they found that leaning forward even a couple inches activates a very specific part of your prefrontal cortex. This is extremely helpful because you can use it for yourself, but also we recognize it as humans as I'm engaged, I'm interested, I'm curious, I'm being so charismatic right now, the other person is literally leaning into me. And so leaning is a great both decoding and encoding cue. It's also a great internalization cue in that one, you always want to be on the lookout decoding for leans. Really master communicators are always subtly aware of what content is making someone literally lean in. So if they're talking, and I've seen master communicators do this, especially from stage, they'll be talking or giving a pitch, and they'll notice the decision maker or a VIP lean forward or lean in. They'll catch eyes of that person and go just a little bit deeper, or they'll remember that was the point The decision maker liked the best. So I'm always on the lookout for, even with my interviews, when are you leaning into something? That's when I should double down. That's something that I know that you— is a hot button for you. And second, you should lean in to encode to others your most important point. You can also encode others to show agreement. I love doing this with introverts. So I work with a lot of introverts and recovering awkward people, and my entire mission is to support them. All I want them to do is feel like their best self, their most charismatic self with without having to fake being an extrovert. I think it is a great injustice to humanity that we try to teach introverts how to just pretend to be an extrovert. So one way that I will encourage them is nonverbally leaning in. So when they say something that I like, instead of me interrupting them, because then it's going to be hard for them to get restarted, I will lean in like, yes, I get you. Tell me more. I want to hear you better. I want to see you better. I want to smell you better. Not really. That one's weird. But I will lean in to show them I am nonverbally listening. I'm literally listening with my entire body. You will notice people get excited when you lean into them. It's like they think, oh, she's really into it. So it works.

And I even remember when I was reading that originally, I had poor posture. I think I was leaning back and I leaned forward and I almost felt like I'm ready to learn. I have more energy, like, let's go, you know.

So the reason also I picked that as first, I was like, let's pick it. Like, let's literally pick a cue that's going to help readers feel like Yes.

Let's change the physiology of the reader in real time. Yeah. And that's why I remember that part of the book so much. So that's a really good one.

It worked.

Well, we'll go into chapter 4, The Wow Factor. This was full of warmth cues. By the way, we didn't define charisma before. We did on our Instagram Live, but that was part of the early book. So charisma is warmth cues plus competence cues. That's charisma. And you have additional resources. We can go into that for just a second. So you have additional resources like a quiz that somebody can take to go through and actually see where they fit on this spectrum?

Yes. So this is a free diagnostic. Anyone can take it. You don't have to buy the book to get it. It's just scienceofpeople.com/charisma. So with this quiz, we left it for free. You take it as many times as you want on purpose. And the reason for this is because when I was first organizing the book, this is maybe 5 or 6 years ago, and I was using it just really for me. At first, I started with positive-negative, right? We start— we talk about that at the very beginning. Then I started to do, um, and a lot of body language books do this, by the way, they'll do like body part. So they'll be like head, face, mouth. But I realized when we're interacting, we're not like, what should I do with my elbows? What should I do with my torso? Like, we don't think that way. So it took me a long time to figure out the bridge of this. The bridge is, okay, what are we thinking about interactions? Like, what do we want, whether it's professional or social? And what research shows— this is amazing research from Dr. Susan Fiske— that highly charismatic people What makes them so charismatic is they rank off the charts in 2 traits. It's really only these 2 traits, warmth and competence, that at the same time they're warm, open, collaborative, friendly, likable, but also competent, powerful, impressive, and memorable. And so in an interaction, all I really want you to worry about— I wouldn't say worry— what I want you to take control of is your warmth and competence. That if you can come across in a date, in an interview, in a presentation, at a party, as friendly and like you know what you're talking about, people will be drawn to you. That is literally the definition of being, of being magnetic. And so that's how I organize the book is if we can think about our cues simply as in this interaction, I want to be warm and trustworthy and open and collaborative. Here are the warmth cues to do. In this interaction, I want to be competent. I want to get it done. I want to be productive. I want to be powerful. I want to be impressive. Great. Here are the cues you do. So wow factors, we talked about, you know, leaning in is a, is one of the very few charisma cues and that it's charismatic. It's both warm and competent, right? It's both closing the physical gap as well as showing activation. So it's both warm and competent. There's only 5 cues that are that powerful. Wow factors are about our warmth cues. So specifically, if you need to either come across as trusting, collaborative, or you are very highly competent and need to be seen as less cold. A lot of our students fall high on the competence side. They're off-the-charts smart. They're very powerful technical engineers, graphic designers that are really, really book smart. And they have been told they're cold, intimidating, or hard to talk to. And so they have to use warmth cues to balance out their smarts.

Yeah, I love that you just mentioned that because one of the points that stuck out to me is that Not everybody's balanced. A lot of us are unbalanced. And so by implementing these— most of us, yeah, we can implement these cues with intention. Like you just talked about some of these warmth cues. If you're highly competent and you implement something like head nodding, then you can become more warm. Like you— other people interpret you as warm. So let's talk about the head nodding, because now that I'm on Zoom talking to you right now, I catch myself nodding and I'm like, I don't know if this is the right speed. So could you tell everybody a little bit about that cue?

You got the right speed. So nodding— and by the way, I try to make always notes of cultural differences. So there was a challenge in this book of like, how do I stick to universal cues? I mean, the book, thank goodness, has already been picked up in 5 different languages, so we hit that great note of universal. But I make notes. Nodding is— this is true for most cultures except for India, Pakistan, and Bulgaria. They use nodding a little bit different. So I always like to make a cultural note when that happens. But nodding, especially up and down vertically, is an affirmative nod. And in Western cultures, or not in India, Pakistan, and Bulgaria, when we nod, it's both a decode and encode. It shows I'm listening, I hear you, I get it, I like it. It doesn't always have to show agreement, right? When we're nodding and we're nodding yes, it just shows I'm with you, I'm here, I got it, I'm with you. So the key is the Speed, as you just mentioned. So nodding can warm you up almost immediately. If you've ever been told you're cold, you can nod while listening, and you can even nod while talking. It will immediately warm you up. But do not be a bobblehead. So it's purposeful nodding. It's like, ah, I liked that point. Yes, but not just uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh. Right? So that's way too warm. Right? So it's purposeful nodding on points that you like, and the speed at which is one. 2, 3. That's actually the speed that we like. The reason for this is because slow nodding is I'm with you, I'm engaged. Fast nodding is impatience. So the difference is, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, versus uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. So make sure that you do that slow nod. But if you want someone to speed up, you can try another one. You didn't hear it from me.

Yeah. And you, you said in the book that A-Rod, when he was being interviewed about performance-enhancing drugs, he answered the question no, but he was nodding in the affirmative. So his nonverbal was saying, yeah, I did it.

Yes, exactly. So nods will often give us away. So you'll notice that throughout the book, the cues have, you know, both positive intention, but also sometimes they can give away truth or give away deception. So yes, A-Rod, when he was being interviewed by Katie Couric, his— he did the opposite of his words. And we like congruent people. So I knew there was something happening here. Again, I love watching duping athletes and lying politicians. because a couple years later I can verify if the cues were correct or not. So he says no, but shakes his head yes. And then on the opposite, when he's asked something else, he says yes and shakes his head no. So his nod gave him away.

How, how often are inconsistent cues going to predict that somebody's lying? You know, do some people just naturally nod in the affirmative, but they're telling the truth and, and that kind of stuff?

Yes, and with nodding, you have to be a little bit careful. That's why there's— by the way, this is very important— there's no Pinocchio's nose. There's no one cue that always means someone is lying, but there are clusters we can look for. So with nodding, it's interesting. You'll often see someone will lie and they'll say yes, but they'll shake their head no, and that's a pretty clear indication. However, you have some people who nod like, I can't believe it. So you'll have someone who will be like, I just got engaged, and they're shaking their head no, and you're like, are they lying? No, it's because they literally can't believe it. Like, I cannot— I just cannot believe it. Sometimes we'll do it in like, I can't believe it, or like a humility way. Like, it's a way of like taking down the hubris. Like, if I were to say I got engaged and shake my head yes, like, it's almost too much. So oftentimes you'll see people nod no as a way of being like, I can't believe it, I'm being humble, wow. So again, we always want to take nods and all cues in context.

Well, I can't believe we are running up on our time. Time flies when you're having fun, and we didn't get to 95% of my questions, so we're going to skip ahead a little We'll talk about, we'll talk about some verbal cues here. So when people want to sound powerful, if they're insecure about their voice, they know they have room to improve, what are some recommendations for sounding powerful?

So vocal power, I think, is one of the biggest untapped potential areas for charisma. I think we sometimes think about our words, sometimes we think about our body language, but our sound is so important. I mean, you think about some of the most charismatic people out there. I did a big deep dive on The Rock, for example, for our YouTube channel. As well as Morgan Freeman, who both are marked by really great vocal power. What both of those men have in common is that they use the lower end of their natural voice. And we know this is a universal signal of someone is relaxed, they're calm, they're confident. We want to catch it. And so we're always listening. For example, if I were to do this interview in my higher end of my range— so if I were to be in the higher end of my range, this is how I talk to my daughters, how I talk to my husband. So if I were to give the entire interview like this— This is This is still me. This is still natural, but it would kind of drive you crazy. You wouldn't be able to listen to it. You also probably wouldn't take me very seriously. It sounds— it's natural for me, but you wouldn't like it. So I'm working pretty hard to keep my voice in the lower end of my natural range. So this still feels natural to me, but it's just I'm keeping my voice really relaxed. I've learned how to relax my vocal cords, and you can too. So you should, as a master communicator, know what you sound like when you're anxious and up here. Sometimes people get vocal fry. Sometimes that's the problem they have is they don't go high, they just have vocal fry. So you should know what you sound like when you're anxious. You should also know what your lower end of your range sounds like. Special note here, please do not be Elizabeth Holmes, right? Elizabeth Holmes talks— I think she read that study, by the way. I think she read the exact same study that I talk about in the book, and she was like, oh, speak deeply.

Okay, I'm gonna speak like this.

Then she started talking like this, and it was absolutely crazy. So definitely do not be Elizabeth Holmes. It's your lowest end of your natural range. I swear she read that study and then just changed her voice to be more authoritative, which ended up sounding really fake.

Yeah. I've had a lot of people point out to me that I have a very different book thinker's voice if I'm interviewing or if I'm creating content and then a different conversational voice. So, which is not always a bad thing because if my natural voice isn't powerful enough and I don't emphasize enough when I get behind the camera, But anyway, I guess I just did that naturally from years of knocking on doors or something.

I don't know. That all might be true. We, we had a long walk. And, um, you have also a soft volume. So you have a higher volume now we're talking because you're interviewing me and asking questions, but you also speak with a soft volume, which is actually really nice. It's like a great kind of confidence, but it is a little bit different than when you talk here. That's kind of cool. I like it.

I wonder, I wonder, should they be integrated or should they stay separated?

No, keep them authentic. Right? So like, you know, this is not— this book is not about fake it till you make it. And I know that the science in the book hints that that could be true. But really, when it comes down to it, faking it, it's so exhausting, right? Like, if I were to tell you right now, yes, yes, Nick, definitely integrate them, you would be like, that's really hard, right? It's going to be really hard for you to try to make them the same. So I think this is also about leveraging your strengths, right? So Leveraging when you sound the most confident, like forget even all the tips I just said, listen to recordings when you felt like your best self. That's what you should sound like. Listen to recordings when you felt like you were really nervous and really anxious. That's what you don't wanna sound like, right? This is about trying to leverage our natural, our natural competence.

Yeah. I love that advice. Thank you. We have to wrap up in a couple of minutes, but I wanna get everybody a little preview into the imagery piece. Wow. So we're all on Zoom, we're all having these Zoom calls. It's part of our regular day-to-day. for most of the listeners, probably. What in the world should we pay attention to in terms of our background?

These are really important. So one thing that research came out after the pandemic, so that's important, there's research before and after. So after the pandemic, that pretty clearly showed, and I know people are gonna be real mad about this, but I, I, it's just the research, don't blame me, which is real backgrounds do better than virtual backgrounds. So please, number one, is there something about our brain? Yeah, let's look at that. You reached into your real background and got the real book. There is something about a virtual background that our brain smells fake because it is fake. And so it's really, really hard for our brain to see what you're saying as congruent when they don't really know what's behind you. Also, it's very distracting when someone like holds up a hand and your hand disappears, or like someone walks by the background, you're like, what was that? So if you can, real is always better. Second, your background should serve your purpose. So for example, I've experimented with a lot of different backgrounds in my studio. Right now I have a world map behind me. I do that on purpose. I used to have chemicals behind me. The reason for that is because I was doing a lot of lectures and I was using them as teaching props. So you can have teaching props or demonstrative props behind you. Those are great. Like Nick had cues behind him because we were talking about cues. Extremely helpful, very congruent. The brain's like it. I ended up switching out my, my chemical cues because one, I was told that they're not high enough in warmth. In other words, people were intimidated by them. Uh-oh, I was bad at science in school. I'm not going to be good at this. So I took them down because they were actually too high in competence. It was too much science right off the bat. And second, I noticed I was getting a question all the time, which is, are cues cultural? Are cues cultural? Are cues different in different cultures? So as I began the book tour, I changed it to a world map, and those questions have stopped. Like, it's incredible that just adding that cue behind me almost subtly answered the questions for folks. So you also can think about with your backgrounds, how can your background serve a worry or an anxiety that people you're talking to might have? So like, I also, I like Nick's background. So you have a globe in your background, you have a typewriter in your background, of course you have books, right? You actually have 2 globes and you have the thinker. You also have, I believe it's a Stoic philosopher. Is that who that is?

Yep. It's Marcus Aurelius.

There you go. So that is helpful to me because Nick is cueing me for how he wants to be treated. Remember, our cues tell the world how we want to be treated. So I can tell he's a global thinker. He's a thinker. He also really values books, but also values the writing of the books and honors authors. So all those cues help me inform my opinion and my impression of Nick before he even says a word. Right.

You should do an entire series about this where you dissect people's backgrounds. It's super interesting. I think it's really interesting.

I'm taking a photo. I'm taking a little screenshot. Say hi of your background right now.

There we are. I guess I shouldn't be.

There you go. I did it. Yeah. It's like, so I think that for your background, and this is not only for your Zoom background, but also for like your LinkedIn profile pictures, your dating profile pictures, how can the cues behind you work for you before you even have to say anything?

Yeah, that's fascinating. Well, Vanessa, I know that we need to wrap up. Thank you so much for the conversation today. I hope everybody is convinced that they need a copy of Cues. Where should people go?

What should they do if they want to learn more about you or Oh, I would be so honored. I read the audiobook. So if you like my audio, my Audible, my audio messages, go check that out. I worked really hard on my vocal power for it. It's also available wherever books are sold. Amazon, Barnes Noble, Powell's, you pick your favorite. It's there. It's actually right now, it's even in airports. So you can check that out. And I also just want to thank you for letting me come on twice, for supporting the launch, also for using all the tips that I've shared.

Thank you.

And being just so incredible as a friend and a supporter. I also want to thank everyone who's listening, and I know your time is very valuable, and I know that you gave us, you know, almost 45 minutes today. And so thank you so much for, for listening and for being open-minded to these cues.

Amazing.