Vanessa Van Edwards shares her personal protocol for first impressions: raise your eyebrows, angle your body toward them, show your palm, choose your greeting, lean in, smile, and maintain eye contact. She also mirrors their gestures and points her toes as an optimistic signal.
Okay, let's break down my first impression. So first things first, eyebrow raise. I try to always start with a hi with an eyebrow raise. So I first start with an eyebrow raise. I also angle my body towards the person as they're coming towards me to show immediate mutual respect. Love if I can to do a palm, visible palm. So either 2 palm or palm. So eyebrow raise, angle towards the body, palm raise shows I want to make friend. Then I immediately show the kind of greeting I want. I prefer a handshake unless I know you really well. Instead of being like hi, Then I'm like, are we gonna fist bump? Are we gonna side hug? Are we gonna high five or cheek kiss? I'm like, hi! I try to lean in, I try to smile, and I try to make eye contact. In order: angling the body towards someone, eyebrow raise, palm flash, leaning, smiling, and making eye contact. I sort of make fun of myself here, which I always love making fun of myself, so that's really easy. I'm gonna mirror his gestures, so we're both mirroring. He was teasing me from my keynote, so we were— I was mirroring his body language to show I literally want to get on the same page as you. I sometimes point my toe towards this guy. I do this naturally. Now I do it even more. I think it's like sort of an optimistic nonverbal cue.
