⁠@Vvanedwards taught me THIS about masters of communication #communicationskills #communication

Vanessa Van Edwards taught me that masters of communication don't just decode cues, they control the ones that they send to other people.

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 want to 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.

Your body language isn't just a reflection, it's an instruction manual for how people should treat you.