Confidence Classic: The Confidence Signals You’re Sending with Vanessa Van Edwards

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I want you to focus on the cues that get you that perfect balance of warmth and competence.

When we talk about confidence, confidence is so important.

I think confidence comes from purpose.

I think that if you know you have an important email to send out with a really great announcement,

you are confident the cues that you're using in that email are going to get you the

kind of response you want.

Learning cues gave me a confidence in, I know exactly what I have to do, warmth and competence.

Balance it out, warmth and competence.

So I want you to know exactly what cues you're sending.

I don't want you to have any more accidental inflection, and I don't want you to give away

any more opportunities.

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Hi, and welcome back.

I'm so excited for you to meet my guest today, Vanessa Van Edwards.

She's a speaker, a researcher and nationally bestselling author.

For 36 million people have seen her on YouTube and in her viral TED Talk.

Her behavior research lab, Science of People, has been featured in Fast Company, USA Today,

CNN, CBS, Entrepreneur Magazine, and more.

Her book Captivate, The Science of Succeeding with People, has been translated into over 16

languages.

For over a decade, Vanessa has been leading corporate trainings and workshops to audiences

around the world.

She's been doing MIT, Google, Dove, Microsoft, Comcast.

She lives with her husband and daughter in Austin, Texas.

Vanessa, thank you so much for being here.

Oh, I'm so excited to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Okay.

I have to tell you what I get a lot of pitches on potential guests for the show and sadly

I do not say yes very often, but I'll tell you and I want to read exactly what your team

sent me that I loved and I know everybody listening to them.

I love this.

This is what they sent.

All language being spoken all around us that has an incredible impact on our daily lives.

The language of cues, cues are the tiny signals we send to each other 24-7 through our body

language facial expressions, word choice, and vocal inflection.

Though our brain is incredibly skilled at picking up these subtle skills, far too often

the superpower is left untapped.

Learning how to utilize cues is critical to showcasing one's talents, ideas, and skills

with confidence.

And that just blew me away because I mean, Vanessa, obviously we all think about it right

now.

We're talking about it.

It makes sense.

Oh, yeah, I get it.

But never during my day or week and I ever analyzing or being thoughtful or mindful about

cues that are happening around me.

You know, it's so funny because I think that was me for a long time as I was existing in

my world.

I was trying to show up as my best self.

I was trying to bother people, trying to connect.

And then what began to happen is I noticed cues that made me feel uneasy.

So I started off with some of the negative cues, right?

So I'd be in the meeting and I would, I felt off, but I would either catch a funk or

I would be like, does she mean what she's saying?

First I started this entire process over a decade ago, looking for red flags.

What are the cues that I should know that indicate that something is off because I kept

having these intuitive hits that something was off.

I didn't know what I was seeing.

And the very first one, I tell you about the very first cue I ever had.

Okay.

So very first cue I ever learned about, I was watching a Lance Armstrong interview.

Way back in the day, he was on a televised interview and he was insisting on live television

that he had never doked in his life.

He had never used type performance drugs, okay?

And he was adamant about it.

And I remember watching this video and going, something's off.

Something's not right here.

He just did not feel right to me.

So I began to look at what he did.

So I watched the recording, I slowed it down, I ruined it, I slowed it down.

And there was a moment right before he said, I have never taken a performance in enhancing

drugs where he did a very specific nonverbal cue called a lip purse.

A lip purse is when we match our lips together.

So we press our lips together into a hard line.

So I go into the research, I love research, I'm a total science geek, I run a human behavior

research lab.

I go into the research and the lip purse is a nonverbal cue of withholding.

It's literally like your brain is saying, don't say that, don't say anything more, keep

it in, keep it together, keep it in, keep it together.

And I was like, huh, why do you worry about to share your confession or share the truth?

Why would you be with the holding something?

And of course, it came out many spoiler alert, spoiler alert, I hope no one didn't know

the end of this story, but spoiler alert.

She was had a massive undercover doping scheme.

And I found that like the lip purse is one very small example that it's a signal, it's

an invisible cue or a visible cue that we don't realize is happening of internal withholding.

And so when you're in a meeting, when you're in a negotiation and you see your partner,

your colleague, a friend, lip purse withhold, you should stop right in there and say, are

we all good?

This makes sense?

Everything okay?

We're on the same page.

I have found that that one cue opened up my world.

That was one of 93 cues, right, in the book.

That one cue was like opening a world, it was like opening a world.

Because when you address that or ask the question, you're giving them the opportunity

to empty their glass to you?

Yes, I think there's two aspects here.

I've always wanted to show up as the most empathetic, compassionate communicator that I

can, which means that you're trying to hear the truth, you're trying to accept people's

truth.

And I noticed that looking for cues actually allows me to listen on a deeper level.

So if someone lip purses and I give them permission and safety and belonging to say, are we

all good?

Is it okay so much so that I'm willing to stop my agenda, whatever I'm going through

whatever I'm talking about, to be like, are you good?

Is there anything that I'm missing?

So one is I find that people are often relieved.

They're actually like really, one of the very first times I use this, I was in like a business

picture presentation.

It was about six or seven people around the table.

And I noticed from our decision maker, a lip purse, and I was on a very specific slide.

And so I said, you know, I'm just going to pause here.

Any questions?

And I actually looked right at him and I opened up my hands to him.

So I, one of the cues you'll learn is the universal gesture of openness as we open our

two hands towards someone as if they're coming in for a hug.

Right?

Like it's like the open arms.

Yeah, open arms.

It literally.

Exactly.

And we get these intuitively.

I opened my hands to him and I angle my body towards him, which is called fronting.

And I said, are we all good?

Do you have any extra question?

There's one to pause for a second and make sure you feel good about this.

And he went, oh, you know, I'm a little hung up on one thing.

And it was the smallest clarification on our payment plan that I could address it immediately.

And he was like, oh, great, great.

Yes, yes, we're all on the same page.

And I went, whoa, if I had barrelled along in my presentation,

and not address that, he wouldn't listen to any of the next 10 slides.

He would have been hung up on that one, cute.

And afterwards, he said to me, you know, I love how responsive you were.

I actually was just looking for cues beyond the verbal.

So it opens up people up, but also it shows people that you really deeply care about what

they have to say and what they have to share.

I mean, this is brilliant.

And as I listen and I'm going through all of your materials, I'm saying I want to do this.

However, here's the thing and I'm sure you have an answer for this.

Everyone's moving so fast.

People are nervous going into meetings, right?

The fact that you are presenting and confident enough,

and you know, that you're taking breaths and recognizing what's happening around you,

back in and of itself, in my opinion, is a win.

Most people are not doing that, right?

They're barreling it and they're panic, they're nervous,

they're intimidated, whatever.

So how do you advise to people, or even people who might not be nervous,

someone like me who's saying, I'm afraid I'm going to get busy and I'm going to forget to do this.

You are so right.

So the biggest hurdle we have in this science is cognitive overload.

To our brain is trying to do too much.

You are absolutely right.

And that is what we have to fight.

So here's the good news is when I started out in the Sturning,

I was cataloging all these clues, you know, in a spreadsheet, right?

And I'm like, how am I going to remember all 93 of these cues, right?

So that's when I found some amazing researches back in 2002.

So it's very well established research.

And what they looked at is what are the cues?

What are the traits that are most important interaction?

We can't get them all, right?

We can't be open and trustworthy and leaders and powerful and capable and likeable

and friendly is too much, right?

So they narrowed down.

There are actually only two traits that we have to focus on to be most effective.

What they found is the most highly charismatic people differ from control groups.

So the high, think about the most charismatic person you know,

that secret sauce, what makes them charismatic,

what they found in the research is just two traits.

And that highly charismatic people rank off the charts in just these two traits,

which is warmth and competence.

Here's where it simplifies the process.

I'm writing that down right now, by the way.

Yes, please write down.

So so in, by the way, if you're listening and you can write these down,

so warmth, that's trust, likeability, friendliness, collaboration, okay?

Warm, that's that bucket.

Then you have competence, power, capability, efficiency.

The problem is, is it the smartest people I know,

the most successful people I know, might focus all of their energy on one of those traits.

They show up and they try to blow you away with their competence.

They name, drop, they mention their accolades.

They're like data, data, term, vocab.

And what do you think?

Wow, they're impressive, but I don't like them.

They're really powerful, but they're not very friendly.

I wouldn't want to go to lunch with them.

Whereas on the other hand, you have people who put all of their eggs in the warmth

basket, so they just want to be likable.

Like me, like me, like me.

They tend to be people, please, or write a struggle with saying no.

And they just want to be as friendly, likeable as possible.

That's great, everyone likes them, but people interrupt them.

People don't take them seriously.

People don't listen to their ideas.

So the key, the sweet spot, why cares about people are so rare and we're so drawn to them

is because they hit both warmth and power.

We like them and we trust them and we rely on them.

They get stuff done, but we also love chatting with them.

So this is all I want us to focus on is I want you to focus on the cues that get you

that perfect balance of warmth and competence.

That's it.

Those the only two.

And so if you know that you're deep on, so for people listening just for a moment, which

one sounds more like you.

So I have this little quiz.

Let's just do it together.

You want to do it together?

Yes.

Let's do it.

Okay, so I'm going to read off 12 words.

And I want you to pick the three that sound most like you case you're only allowed to pick

three.

Ready?

Impressive, powerful, smart, trustworthy, collaborative, kind, capable, compassionate,

effective, open, expert, team player, compassionate, effective, open.

Okay.

I picked three words, two warm words and one competence word.

That's incredibly important because that's a snapshot into where you fall on the charisma

scale.

Are you higher in warmth or are you higher in confidence?

So if you listening picked two competent words, a one and one word, you're a balance that

you lean a little bit higher in confidence.

If you picked all warm word, it means you have to balance out with confidence.

You picked all competent words and we did about balance out and warm.

So the only cues that I want you to focus on are the ones that help you hit that sweet

spot.

And I want you to focus on the cues and competence cues based on your balance.

That makes sense.

It's sort of like a scale that we're trying to balance.

So is this something that you truly believe you can teach people to be charismatic 100% I

think the biggest mistake that people make is that they think that you can only be born

with it, right?

That you're charismatic.

You're they're born with it.

You're not.

Actually, the most charismatic people are incredibly purposeful with their cues.

I'll leave them.

It happens in two ways.

So for queues, there's two sides of queues.

There's the decoding and the end coding.

I don't want to get too sciencey, but I love that.

I can't help.

I love the science.

So you can queues.

First, we decode.

We read other people's queues.

And the second thing is we encode.

We send queues to others.

And if you listen to highly charismatic people talk about how they communicate, you'll notice

they are always purposefully dialing up or looking for queues that will help them.

So for example, one of the stories I love is Neil deGrasse type and astrophysicist, famous

author, TV show host, he says that he's highly competent, right?

He's an astrophysicist.

So he's very obsessed with the facts, but he realizes if he's too competent, people tune

him out.

It's too much science.

So what he does, he has a test.

He said, by the way, multiple bestselling books.

He says, when I'm trying to decide what I'm going to put in a book, I go on an airplane,

I sit next to someone, and I begin to tell them about my work.

Every time that they eyebrow raise, so raise their eyebrows up, he says that I put in

a book.

They don't eyebrow raise, I skip from the book.

In other words, he's even using queues to tell him what's the warmth that he's missing?

What are the warm, interesting things that he can add?

So an eyebrow raise, another warmth to you that you can show, to increase collaboration

and trust, but also that you can look for it to see if someone's interested or engaged.

Oh, that's so interesting and thank goodness that I didn't sit next to me enough, like,

because I purposely put earbuds in my ear, because I can't stand talking to people in

airplanes.

That would have been a wasted little airplane ride for him.

I think you would have seen you as a challenge.

I think you would have liked it.

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You know what's so interesting when you were talking about the warmth and the competence

and being self-aware as to which way am I leaning more and how could I potentially level

that off or be more equal on the scale?

This is so crazy.

This is what popped into my mind immediately.

Fast.

I was fired four years ago for my job.

I was a chief revenue officer.

One listening already knows this, but I'm sharing with you in case you don't know.

And the woman that fired me was previously the CFO.

She became the CEO and when she became CEO fired me immediately.

That's just backstory.

But she was incredibly leaning towards the confidence side, like very articulate, many

awards, you know, very much a numbers person, always rambling off numbers of blue people

away, you know, in any moment in time.

She had zero big egg on the warmth scale.

However, and I worked with her for 14 years and woman was complete antithesis of me.

And what was interesting is I remember the last two years, and you'll like this, you'll

tell me how the right coach there.

The last two years I worked with her, she started showing up differently, so weird, because

I knew her.

Well, you know when you know someone, you know who they really are.

So I knew this is not real.

This is just my opinion, but nobody else knew that was not in the C suite with her that

didn't spend a lot of time with her.

Other people said, God, she seems just fantastically, you know, they'd be saying really positive

things about her.

She's really changed a lot as she's gotten older or she's become a mother or whatever

reason they would create storyline, they create about her.

And I started thinking it from a standpoint that I see something very different about this

person.

I'm very confused.

I don't know what's going on.

However, I see it's landing.

It's landing with the team.

It's landing with people.

It's working.

So, you know, to your point that this can be taught and it's not ingrained from day one,

you're 100% right?

I've seen it.

However, it's very weird to see it happen to someone when they're not disclosing it openly

to you.

Like, hey, I'm working on my warrant.

I'm trying to come, you know, like that would have been better for me, the kind of person

I am.

I would have preferred to have heard that.

So that's exactly right.

I think that as you begin to change your cues, I mean, you're kind of doing a body language

makeover in a sense.

By the way, body language is only a half book.

We also can talk about imagery and verbal and colors.

I think it's so important to broadcast this, right, to say, you know, sometimes I can

come across a little cold.

You know, I got in my last feedback review or my team told me I was a little bit intimidating.

That's not okay with me.

It's really important to me that you feel safe.

You feel connected.

So, starting at the beginning of the year, being in the month, I'm going to be working

on my warrant, my openness.

I want your feedback.

I would love to hear from you, but I'm going to really try to dial up because I want you

to feel good.

That is so powerful because two things happen.

One is it has you state your goal, gives you permission to reset, right, like sometimes

we need a president's reset, like sometimes we just know that we're like a funk with someone

or like, we've had some difficult relationships and we need a reset.

So that's sort of as a soft reset, a soft restart on the button.

The second thing is verbal.

So some fascinating science that we don't realize is the words that we use, change people's

perceptions of us as well as their actions and behavior.

So for example, in one study, I love this study, I think this is like mind blowing already.

Just like, I literally read it three times, I was like, how, okay, a researcher named

Brian Wansing told participants to come into his lab and eat a bowl of yogurt.

The catch was, if it was all the dark, so they come into the lab, it's completely dark.

He hands on the bowl of yogurt, he has to eat the yogurt and he says, would you please

rate the yogurt on its strawberry flavor?

So imagine it's for a second, you're in the dark, you're eating a bowl of yogurt and

you're trying to decide how strawberry is this flavor.

59% of participants rated the yogurt as having a nice strawberry flavor, but there was

a second trick.

There always is.

The yogurt was actually chocolate, strawberry and chocolate tastes totally different.

It was like strawberry and raspberry.

What happened was, and this is one of many experiments that shows the power of our verbal

priming, when Brian Wansing asked participants to look for the flavor of strawberry and search

for the flavor of strawberry, the brain heard strawberry, the mouth tasted strawberry,

and then therefore they felt that it was very strawberry.

We are constantly telling people what yogurt they're eating.

In other words, we say, hey team, this is how every team calls starts.

Hey everyone, we have some company updates to go over and so we'll review everything.

Let's wait for people to get on and we'll just get started if you.

You're basically telling people, go to sleep.

This meeting is going to be like every other meeting you've been to, the tone of voice

I use, and also I used words that didn't mean anything, right?

I said, let's hop on a call, let's review, we'll get started in a few.

What research has found is that when people hear words like collaborate, their brain actually

begins to prepare to collaborate in their prefrontal cortex and they are more likely to

be collaborative.

So if you tell people, you know what, it's so important to me that you feel connected,

that you feel that you can trust me, that you feel that we could be open.

So I am working on a little presence reset, I'm going to work on my collaboration, I'm

going to work on my trust and openness.

I want you to feel safe to tell me anything.

Just telling people those words changes how their brain is working.

You are actually setting them up to be more open, trusting, warm and connected with you,

which is incredible.

I think we throw away these verbal opportunities.

Yeah, that's mind-blowing.

It makes perfect sense and I'm a big fan of we're teaching people how to treat us.

Our word choice is we are showing people how to respect us or not respect us either way,

which is similar to what you're saying, but it makes perfect sense.

But wow, that's incredibly powerful and what a great hack you just gave everyone to

use.

You make it even more practical.

So I think this makes sense to us, right?

Intuitively, a lot of these cues will be like, oh yeah, that makes sense.

Here's a really practical way to think about it.

I want you to do an email audit.

I want you to open up your sent email folder and I want you to open five important emails

that you've sent out in the last few days.

So important emails, whoever your colleagues, teams, customers.

And I want you to look at the first 10 words that you used.

What we don't realize is that we are throwing away our words with words that don't mean anything

or we're jumping right into agenda, which is okay when we're rushed, but you're actually

taking away cues that people need to be successful.

And here's the kicker.

In your email audits and those important emails, I want you to count how many warm words

you're using and how many competent words you're using.

We found in our lab, we can predict exactly where people fall in the charisma scale based

on the email audit.

I just asked you to do.

So we can see based on their emails exactly how their colleagues would rate them.

And that is because we are constantly looking for these warmth and confidence cues.

So if you open up an email, highly competent words, trigger productivity and efficiency,

highly warm words, trigger trust and collaboration.

And by the way, exclamation points are highly warm, emojis are highly wrong.

Of course they are.

Right.

So we have people who will say to us, you know, but I don't know why people are not taking

me seriously.

I don't know why I can't raise my rates.

I don't know why that I can't charge people more.

I don't know why people feel like they are always showing up late, they're not as fine

of an email.

We open up their email and I'll count 15 warm words and one competent word.

Hey girl, exclamation point.

It was so fun hanging out last night.

Fun.

I would love to collaborate on this new project coming up.

If you can get back to me, it would be so wonderful, so wonderful exclamation points

in my life.

So we're already like eight words.

And it's a very, very warm email, but it does not trigger the competent part of our

brain that goes, I should get back to her.

I want to pay her rate.

I want to make sure that I take her seriously.

So the next push is, okay, you do that email audit.

I want you to see is it warmer, competent or nothing at all, right?

So it'll either be totally sterile, so no warmer, competent words or one together.

And then how can you purposefully add verbal cues that set you up for success so that the

important emails, not every email, no one has time for that, but in the important emails,

you have a perfect balance of warmth and competence.

In my slide decks, my presentations on our website, even on my Instagram, for every warm

photo, I have a competent photo, every competent photo, I have a warm photo, because we saw

our engagement shot up and we're hitting that balance.

That's unbelievable, but yet makes perfect sense.

And of course, I'm thinking of myself and I, I just recently won a big recognition about

speaking.

And so I purposely and intentionally reached out to all my past clients, people who are

pending in the queue, you know, just to like try to push people over.

And I'm thinking of the email and I, because I didn't want to come across to, I'm the greatest

thing in the entire world.

I definitely went way more, more, more, more, more, more, excellent point, excellent point.

And I'll tell you, Vanessa, I did not get anywhere near the kind of responses I thought

I would get back.

And now I'm thinking, I don't think I was competent enough in the, in the email.

Yep, exactly.

And I think that that's you just made of the classic mistake that smart people make is

we don't know how to be purposeful when we talk about confidence, right?

Like confidence is so important.

I think confidence comes from purpose.

I think that if you know you have an important email to send out with a really great announcement,

you are confident the cues that you're using in that email are going to get you the kind

of response you want.

I think that that's where confidence comes from.

I joke that I'm a recovering awkward person.

I get very socially anxious.

I always doubt myself.

I used to doubt the kind of emails I wrote.

I used to doubt the way that I stood where I did it with my hands.

Learning cues gave me a confidence in, I know exactly what I have to do.

I want the confidence, balance it out, work the confidence, and that's been my back door

into confidence.

So the reason I share this is when you're sitting down right in an important email where

your heart is like, you know, this email is where you're just like, oh, like, you're

bitter-pattery and you're asking for that raise or you're checking it on your boss or

you're spending that email with boundaries.

I want to take that anxiety away by saying, all you have to do is get one of the confidence.

That's it.

If you can balance it out, it's going to be more effective email.

And so I'm hoping that we can take down some anxiety and get confidence in it differently.

So tell me a little bit about your new book, Hughes, and how people are going to feel

after they read the book to apply some of the stuff back to their life.

Yes.

So I'm hoping this is going to give everyone a sort of social blueprint, right?

I think that we have all these goals in our life.

And a lot of the times there, you know, career goals or family goals.

And then when it comes like the actual action steps behind those, especially the social action

steps, let's say that one of your goals, what's a common goal for some of your listeners

that I can like play with two or three common ones?

A common goal.

A lot of people want to leave their day job.

They're not happy with their day job and they want to make a leap.

Okay.

So let's say that you want to leave your day job and that requires doing informational interviews

with influencers and that requires setting up some side hustle things by maybe getting

a partner.

You can break that into tactical things, right?

You could say, okay, I have to, you know, figure out how much inventory is.

I have to do a marketing plan.

I have to do a revenue sheet, but there's also a lot of soft skills involved in that.

For example, how can you leave your job on a high so that you can leave on good, on good

terms with your boss?

That requires a lot of really good, powerful connecting and conversations in three or four

months, sitting up to your quitting.

If you want to reach out to a new partner, how do you make sure that they want to work

with you?

So yes, it's about setting up the coffee meeting, but it's also, okay, if I want this new

partner to take me seriously, if I want them to respect me, I have to make sure that

I have a warm and competent opener.

So like, how do you even open the emails to them when to actually get them at the coffee

date?

What kind of questions should you be asking that hit that balance of warmth and captions?

So for example, a lot of people will start a coffee date to bond with, so how's it been

going?

Man, those numbers, right?

Who are those COVID numbers?

They are rough.

And you end up on this like awkward, downward spiral nulls, and you're like, well, the

reason I wanted to talk to you today is, and you haven't built up any of this report yet.

So one of the things that I want you to think about is how can you use these skills to build

rapport with people that actually work with you?

So for example, in conversation, warm, competent, conversy, certain things like instead of how

are you?

In fact, try never to ask how are you instead of ask, working on anything exciting these

days, that's like my secret conversation because it's both warm and competent, working.

So productive people, exciting, warm, trustworthy, fun.

So working on anything exciting these days, you'll actually, he will be like, oh, huh,

you know, I am not something exciting.

So you're actually beginning to, from the very start of the conversation, those first

10 words of your opener are beginning to open their minds to trying something a little

bit different.

Not just how are you, you know, has it been, had you been busy, but trying something

a little bit different.

We have different guests each week.

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Last days, I'm all about quality over quantity, especially my closet.

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Quince.com slash competence Wow, that is really very powerful.

And I love that you give these specific examples.

I mean, it's just, it's not something that we're strategically thinking about every day,

yet this can really be a game changer for people.

I think they're hidden opportunities, right?

Like when my team and I were thinking about how to reach out, so I'm so happy that that

reach out worked a lot, this hidden language.

The other aspect of that is that there's all these opportunities that are just waiting

for us.

What an amazing missed opportunity to just instead of saying how are you or how's it

even going or how's the fam just slightly changed to working on anything exciting.

It was the highlight of your week.

It's one of your goals in this year.

Those are the questions that begin to deepen and make you more memorable and make you talk

about things that are more common.

Those are the opportunities that are like easy to grab once we know how to grab them.

Gosh, I love that and I'm totally going to rip and run with I've been taking notes the

whole time that we're sitting here talking.

So to me, you're bringing me a lot of value.

That's what I want you to know.

I know you talk about there's more to cues than just a word choice.

For example, where you sit in a meeting, there's actually better decisions to be made there.

Yes.

So we don't realize that there's cues in so many aspects.

So obviously we talked about body language, the lip first.

We talked a lot about verbal kind of our open areas.

There's also spatial cues, relational cues.

There's vocal cues you could talk about.

I love the seating one.

So I was looking at the rules of space.

So cross cultures and energy races, we had rules of space.

So when we're closer with someone, we like someone we want to get closer.

Research has found that there's actually four different space zones.

Those are the personal zone, the intimate zone, the social zone, and the public zone.

What happens in our interactions is we're not aware that we're doing these where subconsciously

going through them, but we know they ever talk to a close talker where someone gets really

close to your face.

I don't like that.

We don't like it because that person has gone into our intimate zone too quickly.

So what I realized was that when we're sitting around a boardroom table or a conference table,

your spatial choice, there's actually research that's done this, makes a huge difference

for your effectiveness, and that depends on your goals in the meeting.

So if you have a goal or a presentation or a meeting where you want to be on the bosses

or the VIP or the decision makers front of mind, you actually want to be in their direct

eye line, their direct sight eye line.

Being the closest in will help you whisper or talk to them, but if you want to be front

of mind or top of mind, you're actually better off picking seats that are in their direct

line of sight.

They also found that the seat that faces the door actually typically is the power player

seat, and that's because they can get everyone's first impression as they walk into a room.

So if you want to be the power player, you might consider taking the seat that faces

the door or that sees the door.

So it's all kind of really interesting rules that we can think about, even when choosing

our seat.

Again, it's just an opportunity that we get, right?

It's like one that we haven't noticed our whole life actually is just waiting for us

to pick up and try.

I always thought, you know, if I was with my old boss and I wanted to be, you know, I

wanted my agenda to win in the end, I would sit right next to him.

I never thought, sit across the table so he has to look at you the entire time and that

never crossed my mind.

Yeah.

And that's a goal alignment, right?

Like a lot of these cues, it's like, okay, what are your goals?

Is your goals to be coming across as competent and efficient and capable?

You have to get stuff done today.

Okay, competent, dial up the competence.

Is your goal all about collaboration, trust connections, less about getting things done?

Okay, dial up the warm.

Is your goal in a meeting to really get in with the decision maker, sit across from them?

Is your goal to not be seen and to let someone else take the stage, sell on the side?

Is your goal to be whispering in there?

You're occasionally going to be front of mind, sit right next to them.

Right?

Like there's no right or wrong cue.

It's all based on your goals.

Wow.

That's really, really powerful.

So I have to selfishly ask a question.

So I've been told that which I can't believe because I don't see myself like this and

I'm sure you must hear this from a lot of people that you deal with and research you do.

I've been told I can be very intimidating in a meeting or in a presentation.

And I don't see my, so I think I'm the biggest knucklehead out there and I'm hilarious

and that I should be dialing up on the competent side.

You know, that's just my opinion.

However, I get feedback sometimes from people who, who I know are trying to help me give

me this feedback.

What suggestions do you make to someone like that who doesn't really see themselves as

having that problem?

Oh, man.

I would say that you're in the boat with most people.

What's crazy about that research that I brought up from 2002 that's been repeated by

a number of different academic institutions is that while warmth and competence makes

up 82% of our dozens of people, so a huge majority of our people, most of us are terrible

at assessing our own warmth and competence and better and terrible at assessing

it.

So here's the first thing is I have a little free little quiz you can take to assess your

warmth and competence.

It's science people calm slash charisma.

It's free.

It's up to take as many times you want because of this exact problem is it's hard to step

back and say, well, I think I come across this friendly likeable, but I don't know.

So first of all, you take the quiz.

Here's the harder one.

I want you to send that quiz to a colleague, a partner and someone important to you and

ask them to take it as you.

I bet that is very telling.

It's horrifying and very telling and extremely helpful because A, first you start with yours.

Okay, great.

I took this.

It's 10 questions.

It's very simple.

You're taking it.

You're like, great.

I see that my how I see myself is highly warm.

You send it to a colleague, a friend and a VIP and you get to see how they see you, which

is incredibly helpful to know how accurate am I and how I'm coming across.

I think that I'm coming across one way, but I actually want to come across a different

way.

And it also might be different based on family versus colleagues and that's good, right?

Like we want to be warmer with our family.

I want to be with my toddler.

I'm very warm with her.

Right.

I don't need to be competent until I'm telling her the rules.

And I as a parent use these specifically with my daughter and my family, when I need her

to be safe or I need her to listen to the rules, I am highly competent and she knows.

She knows what mom is competent, right?

She knows what I mean.

But every other time I'm warm.

And so if you wanted her to see you, you're trying to get her direction, you're thinking

about the inflection of your voice, the way you're standing and your word choice and my

eye contact and my gestures.

For example, for competence volume is a word we talk about in the whole vocal section

of the book volume is a really important part of our power.

Most people think that, oh, I just have to be louder to be heard.

Actually, that's not true.

So when I want to be competent, my daughter, I speak really low and I say, Sienna, it's

not okay.

But you have to do that.

That is not okay.

What we do instead of you to pack up our backs, I'll need to go home.

Okay.

But like, that is much more serious than I was a lower volume.

So even using our volume using our vocal inflection, another example is, so a warm inflection

is when we go up at the end of our sentences.

So if I were to say, my name is Vanessa, my name is Vanessa.

I go up at the end of my sentence.

That is a highly warm introduction.

I can usually predict by just listening to how someone says hello in their voice mail

if they're more competent.

So highly warm voice mail sounds like this.

Hi, this is Vanessa.

I can't get back to you.

We have messed up the tone.

Right?

It drives me crazy.

But so many people do that.

Okay.

So those people and go listen to your voice mail are usually highly warm and I can predict

usually that they're highly warm.

Highly competent folks use a different inflection.

They use the downward inflection.

Actually, if you want to hear a really downward inflection from President Barack Obama,

sling his words down, that's a downward inflection is very high in competence.

So downward inflection would sound like this.

Hi, I'm Vanessa.

I'm not here right now.

We have a message after the beep.

So I go down in my sentences.

That is very highly competent.

So even the way that you use your inflection to your children on your voice mail at the

start of a meeting, if you're at the start of a meeting, you say, hey, everyone, I just

want to get started.

Let's get started.

Let's get started.

If people are not going to listen, it's going to be because it's not competent.

If you say, everyone, let's get started.

Let's get started.

Let's get started.

You're like, whoa, it's serious, right?

So even I'm the same person and both sound like me, but very different kinds of meaning,

very different kinds of meaning.

And you can, you can utilize either one strategically based upon the environment that

you're in.

100% I want you in control.

I think confidence comes from control and purpose.

So I want you to know exactly what cues you're sending.

I don't need to have any more extensible inflection, and I don't want you to give away

any more opportunities.

This book is brilliant.

Your work is brilliant.

Tell us where everyone finds cues and how can everyone find you.

Oh, my first thought.

Thank you.

That's so kind.

Cues available wherever books are sold.

It's also already picked up internationally.

So Amazon, your local bookstore, and I also read the Audible book if you want to hear

me do the inflections and the whole vocal chapter that took a while in Audible.

I do the whole Audible book as well.

Oh my gosh.

Tell us about your website that everybody can go to for the quiz.

Oh, yes.

Of course.

So scienceofpeople.com.

So if you want to take the free charisma quiz, as many times as you want, it's scienceofpeople.com

slash charisma.

If you also want to check out some of these phrases, the words I used, and you can go to

the words I used, you can go to scienceofpeople.com slash podcast.

And download.

We have 20 trust, warmth phrases and 20 cocktail phrases that you're like, I just don't

know how to do this.

That will help you with your email audit.

This is unbelievable.

So unique.

I love the work you're doing, Vanessa.

Thank you so much for being here today.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Thanks, everyone, for listening and go be warm and competent.

Be your best self.

Absolutely, guys.

Until next week, keep creating confidence.

And if I was you, I would grab views on the hurry.

Till next week, be a then.

I decided to change that time and the one thing I realized, I couldn't be more excited

than the world, what you're getting here is starting to learn it and growing.

Inevitably, some people happen.

No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop them look around once in a while.

You can miss it.

I'm on this journey with me.

With you.

With you.

With you.

With you.

With you.

With you.

With you.

With you.