Insights from Vanessa Van Edwards' Interview

if I'm listening to you like this not gonna go over very well it doesn't matter how good my hand gestures are it doesn't matter how good my vocal power is if I'm making that face nothing else is gonna go well hey inside there I'm back with another special interview today featuring a success insider called Vanessa van Edwards vanessa is a lead investigator at science of people she designs original research experiments and scouser latest academic research to crack the code of human behavior her unique work has been featured on NPR The Wall Street Journal Today Show and USA Today and she has written for CNN Fast Company entrepreneur and Forbes in a latest book captivate was a national bestseller and was chosen by Apple as one of the most anticipated books of the year so if you are somebody who want to take your influence your charisma and your confidence on to a next level you're gonna find today's interview incredibly useful so if you like to take this interview today on the go and you like to listen to a whole interview be sure to tune in to a podcast version of this interview by going to www.hsn silent TV for saj Vanessa to get instant access right now to the podcast version so without further ado here's the interview featuring a success insider Vanessa van Edwards enjoy the place wants to start and just really kick off is there you tell you you basically say on your website your self recovering boring person right true very true yes what do you really mean by that specifically yeah so I used to be very afraid of everything I was afraid of the emotional things rejection judgment being criticized and I was also just afraid of doing things wrong and so what I think that fear did to me now that I look back is that fear kept me very caged in so I became very boring I was afraid to make a joke so I didn't make any jokes I was afraid to share any of my ideas so I never raised my hand in class I never shared my opinion in groups and so I was this very rigid kind of quiet person and that made me very very boring and so I joke now that I'm recovering because I think that when we learned that actually withholding things and holding ourselves back actually keeps us from connecting that's worse than boring that's actually extremely limiting right what would you say was a pivotal shift that made you want to not be boring was there like a one moment or was it more series of very it's a question I think that um I accidentally stumbled upon a lot of charisma advice just by letting myself be a little bit more vulnerable sometimes so ended up happening was I was so tired of being afraid right I would go to a birthday party and I would be like should I say that should I say that was that awkward was that weird was that funny it was exhausting I'd come home from those events just like like ready to go to sleep and I was so tired of it that sometimes I would just let my guard down and that's when I actually made the most friend since when I had the most but the best conversations when I had the most fun I would thought to myself how is it that I actually have more energy when I give more and less energy when I give less and that's what I realized and there was a very specific time in my life where I began to realize that I got out exactly what I put in and there's a story that I like to share with my students about karaoke I don't know do you ever do karaoke as a Korean we we meant to be really big into it but yeah I'm not very good yeah I do it another game okay I'm terrible it's like it was my biggest fear I mean talk about a fearful person karaoke was like the Everest for an awkward person right I got invited to a karaoke party from one of my very good friends and everyone was kinda you know up there and they weren't even killing it they were just like you know singing their hearts out and it wasn't even good and still I was like I can't I can't do it and then my friend said for my birthday everyone has to do a song she's like how can I see note of that right one of my best friend chocolates you know that and so one of the woman's next to me she said karaoke is not about your singing it's about how much energy you put in if you own it it does matter if you have a good or bad boys people will love it and so I picked the song Slim Shady by Eminem yeah like it's not like it's not is it totally ridiculous um but I thought what better song to like really get into it close my high and just kind of try to rap it out people loved it people loved it and I was like you know what I didn't try to sing my heart out I didn't have the best voice by any means but I just tried you know I tried to do a worm on the floor which didn't work you know I tried to rap which was horrible obviously people under they laughter that was great people gave me high fives it was the most social acceptance I had ever felt and yet I was doing something I was terrible at I was like hmm something weird here right because I got the most so she looked up at something I'm terrible at maybe if I do things badly but honestly and authentically people will like that right and from there that's when you got fascinated in this whole load of studying into human behavior and so forth yes so I always have liked looking at different social experiments and trying to figure out there was any science behind it so what I did was I thought you know I heard about vulnerability by then I don't think Bernie Brown's TED talk without yet for those are vulnerability geeks I don't think I talked about yet but there was a little bit of research on sharing vulnerability and I started to stumble across this really interesting research one of the first experiments I remember reading was called about a spotlight effect have you ever heard of the spotlight effect so what it is is they had looked to a big classroom full of students wearing a Barry Manilow t-shirt and the reason they picked the Barry Manilow t-shirt that's because Barry Manilow is not a cool artist it's really uncool and they ask the students if you're gonna walk into a class at the Barry Manilow t-shirt how many people do you think are gonna notice that you're wearing a Barry Manilow t-shirt and all the students thought that everyone would notice oh my god it's gonna be so embarrassing it's gonna ruin my social life it's gonna ruin my reputation but actually what happened is the students walking in the classroom and very few people noticed and the whole point is that you think you spotlight your vulnerability is your mistakes but other people don't see them so that was one of the very first study is where I was like okay there's something to this and that's when I begin to reverse engineer so I thought to myself if I want to be my best self but I don't have the inner confidence I don't have it can I learn about strategies and tactics that can give me confidence that I can bring out into the real world and that's exactly what I did so I started to find all these really fascinating research experiments that have been done that were really helpful but no one was talking about and so that's what I started to do is bring the science and the light to show people what can we really use in the real world to build our own confidence if you don't have it any tweak right so what you believe in your eyes is the opposite of boring I mean opposite of boring is engaging and we talked about being engaging I think we have to look at the science so very very highly engaging people are very highly charismatic people are more contagious they've actually proven this they found that people who are highly charismatic let me think about highly charismatic people they're actually more contagious so if a highly charismatic person is in a bad mood they're gonna infect more people with their bad mood than people who are on the lower charismatic scale and I can go both positive and negative so the highly charismatic persons in a good way they could walk into a boardroom or a party or a meeting and they make everyone's day everyone gets excited about it so what that taught me was that if I wanted to be highly charismatic I had to make sure that I was at least infecting people with the right emotions and so that's why I think are doing interpersonal skills doing work on ourselves and our confidence is so important it's not just for us it's also kind of benefit of everyone else right and do you believe there is a way that you can become likeable in front of everybody because there's some form of no I mean there's that cliche not everybody will like you so is it possible to improve everybody in your eyes or I think it's not possible to have everyone like you and trying to do that is gonna set you up for failure right it's the reason for this is because of something called similarity attraction effect so typically we are attracting to people we like people who are like us and that's really hard right because we like to have diversity we like to meet people who are different than us but actually the science says the more similar to us someone is the better this is why you'll have a group of everyone has the same kind of sarcastic bitter teasing sense of humor that works for them right they like that for me that does not work for me I take it all far too personally I would much rather be a positive goofball so in that way that's okay with me right you could have that sarcastic sense of humor and that works for you and your friends whereas I want to find what works for me so I always like to teach my students there's different flavors of charisma I think that we used to be taught that there was one kind of charismatic the kind of booming extrovert right when you think of a highly charismatic person mostly people are like oh it's the party animal the life of the party that booming extroverted personality that's actually not true imagine if we were all booing extroverts no one ever get a word in right we would never ever hear we would never ever get to actually listen to anyone and so we actually have to have different kinds of charisma so I like people to think about what is your brand of charisma and can you find other people who either match you or appreciate you so it might be the extrovert for me that that's not I'm an ambivert so Hammond virtus when someone falls in between an extrovert and introvert so am averts we are good at listening we love to be empathetic but we also in certain situations like to share we like to share stories we don't necessarily have to hold back and so I used to think I was introvert but actually I'm going to invert so figuring out what your unique flavor is and then owning it what would you say when you were when you were boring quote-unquote what would you say is the biggest change that you personally made in regards to how you were showing up other than you talked about variability but was there something else that you did specifically as an influencer strategy yeah I think that one of the mental tricks I used was a game changer and this happened accidentally so for a long time I used to think how do you impress people right I have to think of a really funny story to tell or I have to ask the best possible questions or I have to share really impressive anecdotes and that was is one way of doing it right people can be impressed by prismatic codes funny stories always kill in a room right that always works what was a real game-changer though was I was asked to do a panel at a conference so I was gonna lead the panel of these really I thought be a big bips I was like oh my gosh so huge VIPs how am I gonna lead this panel and they gave me very little time to prepare they the person who was supposed to moderate the panel wasn't available so like fast can you step in and do it oh my god I haven't prepared any questions I have done my research so I had like 10 to 15 minutes in the green room with all these VIPs before we walked out on stage and they're like you know just chitchat for a while come up with some good questions then go out on the stage introduce them so I had 15 minutes where I definitely didn't want to be impressive I needed them to impress me right I needed to ask them very specific questions to be able to introduce them each well and I also needed to find some kind of hot-button topics to talk about on the stage and that completely shifted my mindset in how I was asking them questions I was searching for ways for them to impress me and that was an aha moment because not only do we have a great conversation in the green room right and really fascinating interesting things I learned about these VIPs I had never heard before we had a great time on stage and they said to me you know you asked a bunch of questions that we had never been asked before and that was a moment where from then on I thought okay instead of walking into a conversation and thinking I want to impress them I want to be impressive which is what most of us do with networking events VIPs and meetings the opposite is how could I meet people and let them impress me what questions can I ask so when I meet someone typically and this is not a fairy interaction because you're interviewing me but normally we would have met at a party I would be pretending that I was about to interview on stage and imagining what questions I have to ask you to solicit any of those interesting nuggets out of you that would be the the mentor that was a real game-changer did you do any form of like going for acting classes or any form of like video recording yourself on video because it seems like you really didn't the first impression that you give off is a very warm impression thank you a problem and I feel like if you're saying you know you used to be boring you must have improved over time somehow did you adopt any habits like that specifically yeah it's a good question it's my total I was talking a lot about the verbal techniques but I also did a lot of non verbal work so it's a very good question so I think that when we're talking about communication especially first impressions there are two things that someone is looking at they're looking at the verbal side of things what are the first words I use and they're also have you been non-durable my facial expressions my voice tone my body language how I move my hands there's those two aspects that are at play the first one that I talked about already was verbal right so for example when I first meet someone I try to use engaging words even when I say oh I'm so happy to be here happy pleasure attorneys up warm words on the nonverbal side I also got very very deep in the body language science and I learned what are the negative micro-expressions what are my tells like when I'm nervous or anxious how does that come out in my body and how do I minimize that so I'm not infecting people with my nervousness one thing I realized what I was so fearful is that fear was coming out of every pore of my body I mean I was I looked nervous and that made other people feel nervous so instead of having you interact with me and feel like they were welcome and they belonged and they were calm and comfortable they were actually picking up on my anxiety which was the the worst possible way to interact see how the other aspect was trying to figure out what are my nervous tells one way that I don't know if your listeners want to take it a little challenge but this is a really really powerful challenge you can do so for your next five phone calls and try to do phone calls with different kinds of people a parent a client a colleague a VIP a cold call the cable company right totally different people turn on your video camera and video just your end of the conversation try to forget about the camera and just have your normal conversation watch this video videos back and count every single micro negative so one of the things I teach is this idea of micro messages that we are sending out very small subtle nonverbal cues a micro negative are very small negative non-verbal cues you send up everything from an eye-roll to a frown to pinching me to your eyebrows notice these two lines appear that look like anger to distance in your body so turning your body away so you're not angling towards the person to covering your mouth to cracking your knuckles or in your hands as negative body language cute you can see that's one column so you get a piece of paper a pen and on one common way to write all the negatives the next column will read all the positives anything you do you think books positives that would be smiles liens nodding using hand gestures making eye contact with the camera or you know if there's a video call it's even better you're on the phones can't really make eye contact you may be of a mirror if you want to I mentioned leaning in any kind of positive eyebrow raises are another really positive micro gesture and then I want you make a column for question marks the last column is just a question mark of things you're like I don't know how that came across was it positive was it negative and out all those things if you're doing really well you should have the longest column B or positive column all right that should be the most things you see if you're giving off signs of anxiety you'll notice you have lots and lots and lots in your negative column and that's what happened to me if I realized I was constantly sending out these micro negatives and I was barely sending out any micro positives and so what you want to do is slowly after each phone call is keep doing those notes and after time you'll add more and more positive column and less and less than negative column it's a very simple exercise you kind of quantify how you're coming across it's really interesting because because I used to be very shy as well about eleven years ago I started to transformation I used to film myself doing phone calls especially taking job interview phone calls and I used to just turn flash red and those pretty embarrassing watching it but I could see why I kept on failing like every day how did you control the flushing because that's one thing that's really really hard I don't I don't flush when I'm nervous but some people do do you find it you need to control that I think just exposure therapy just keep on doing it yeah I just kept on doing it over and over oh my god they get it but they exposure therapy really works right if you keep putting yourself in an anxiety provoking situation your body goes old after a while this is an anxious anymore yeah yeah definitely but why I founded them when I was adopting the strategies that's finding online there was so many things to remember him Augustus my body language and regard I was making every single mistake in the book yeah I felt like I had so many things in my head that the next interaction I was just stuck in my head again I mean is that something that you've ever heard of or you've experienced I mean what advice would you give to people who ask one thing to really master this but they're still stuck in here yes that is so so true so one of the things I like to joke about is when you learn body language if you learn too many skills at once you end up like a body language Frankenstein right like more hand gestures nodding smiling angling leaning forward nodding angling smiling laughing hand gestures like you're it's very robotic right you're like you cobbled together all these things none of them feel authentic you're way in your head about them and you keep forgetting one like whack-a-mole right like you got the hand gestures then you got the smiling but you forgot the eye contact and you're kind lit constant trying to whack one down so what I always say is what you're trying to do especially from an honorable perspective is you're trying to get to muscle memory okay so think about it like you're going to a gym and I constantly remind my students they're their athletes they are emotional mental athletes athletes when they go to the gym the first time I try something it's very very hard I wrote it before it specifically a squat have you ever done a squat yeah okay so the first time I did a squat I was doing literally everything wrong right like my butt wasn't out far enough my back was curved I was leaning too far forward my chin was in the wrong place and so my trainer was like chin butt hips back arms chin chest arms but the same thing right constantly trying to fix one thing so what we ends up doing is we first got just my stance rep then we worked on my back family work to my chin and after a couple of sessions I was doing the swap perfectly I didn't even have to think about my form anymore then I could add in a kettlebell swing then I could add in a bicep curl then I could add in a whole overhead lift it's the exact same thing with body language you want to think of first what is just your squat stance what's the most important highest impact thing you could do for you it might be different for me so for me one of my big ones was getting rid of my resting so resting is a serious thing there's actually science behind it and I listen like I'm angry even though I'm not angry and I knew that if I was gonna do videos cause when do podcasts five-minute pitch meetings or VIP meetings or coffees if I'm listening to you like this not gonna go over very well it doesn't matter how good my hand gestures are it doesn't matter how good my vocal power is if I'm making that face nothing else is gonna go well so what is your spot what is the one highest impact thing just do that do that just that one thing forget everything else until it's so natural to you that it's like muscle memory you don't even do anymore and then do the same thing again and again and again so it's it's it's more tedious that way I wish I could tell you could do all at once but that's really important because you have to use muscle memory or else your cognitive load is too much cognitive load and a social interaction is going crazy right you're thinking about your body language your reading their body language what you're gonna say or listen to what they're gonna say your also notice in the environment you're also thinking about that your hot or cold you also think about your parking meter I mean there is so much going on if I'm also asking you to control hand gestures nodding micro-expressions voice tone priming there's just no way and so muscle memory takes cognitive load away from you so that you can focus on one thing at a time that might be a week for you it might be twenty days might be longer well if I should normally give to let's say authoritative leaders who want to have a resting because they want to come across a forest if I mean where is that fine line between coming across really likable and being a pushover if that means yes no that that's a very very important point so we're talking about power and leadership typically people in positions of power have a very still face they are not smiling all the time they're they have less movement in their body more stillness in their face now there's a difference between stillness and resting face so resting is when your face at rest is mimicking or very similar to a micro expression so micro expressions were discovered by dr. Pollock men I talk a lot about them in my book there are seven micro expressions and five of those micro expressions are negative so happiness surprise are the only ones that are not super negative then you have disgust contempt anger sadness and fear those four are sorry those five actually are more negative and so if you're showing any aspect those in your face you're going to come across as angry disgusted contemptuous fearful if you show those so you want to make sure of is when your face is at rest it's either neutral or slightly positive it doesn't mean you have to smile all the time but I want to show you are people gonna be listening and watching yeah they can be watching mostly I might be watching you okay great so I just want to go through a little resting face exercise so if you look at my face when I have my mouth at rest my corners of my mouth point down and this is my face at rest well that looks a little bit like sadness right of sadness micro structures like this that's actually your resting face oh yeah that's definitely them yeah everyone's face and their facial features are angled differently for example my eyes at risk our wrists are pre neutral right they go out some people's eyes go down teresina they actually are like little down that means that they're going to struggle more with looking tired even if they're not they're gonna struggle more with bored even if they're not for me my angle my mouth makes me look sad or irritated even when I'm not so when I'm at rest with you I don't listen to you like this even that's my resting face the way I listen to is I actually just very slightly engaged as part of my mouth and it's muscle memory now so don't even think about it so I look like I am neutral positive so when I almost seem to you I listen to you like this all right so subtle that makes a difference yeah I don't think about it at all now I had to for a couple weeks so now I make sure that my mouth is neutral to positive that's really important so if you're trying to be a powerful leader I don't want you to be resting like this I actually know people who rest with this kind of like concentration you might think that you're concentrating but that comes across as angry these two vertical lines here indicate anger so I just want to make sure that if you're going to come up if you want that powerful still is great you do not have to sit like this I do not want you to sit with a smile on your face that's super inauthentic but I do want to make sure that your facial features are working for you so make sure their mouth is neutral or angled up making sure that your eyes are either angled neutral or angled up by the way there's a couple of tricks you can do with this with eyes so if you're if you are a female and like to wear makeup you can actually angle your eye makeup to be more up so I don't know if you can see I'm gonna go really close so you can see lucky lucky you guys you can see can you see my liner how it goes up kind of yet I've never paid attention to makeup so I can see it does go for my ladies watching you can actually make yourself look more awake by angling your liner and your shadow up that's a very very really good skill for making you look more awake for men who aren't using makeup or anyone who's not using makeup you should also know that when you're on video calls or when you're with people and you look down your face you're going to look more tired because your lids are going to be more hooded right so you'll notice that I'm not listening like this which is actually the way most people listen angle their head back and I look down that makes you look much more tired because you can't see the whites of my eyes I almost always angles that you can see more the whites of my eyes so also being aware of the angle of your face and that sounds really small but I like him this kind of thing to a golf swing right minor minor tweaks in your swing are gonna have massive output on your first impressions especially your first impressions so especially the very beginning part of video there would be any part of interaction making sure that you have more of an update so this is my regular base right this is my up base slightly different but it does make a difference in warmth what would you say is the other than that what would you say is the biggest mistake that you see entrepreneurs make or leaders make in regards to influence or come across charismatic yeah so most of our students so we have a very typical archetype of student I think it's actually very similar to how people watching very very high achievers almost all of our students are killing it in their career very ambitious typically entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs people who are making waves in our company are starting their own company and the biggest biggest mistake they make is because they're highly intelligent because they're highly ambitious because they're making waves they think that they have to be only highly competent competent powerful capable those are very important things when you actually look at the science of charisma this is the basis of our entire people school course you have to have a blend of both warmth and competence that is the definition of charisma people who are both highly relatable highly approachable highly likeable and at the same time highly capable highly powerful and highly competent the biggest mistake that leaders make and entrepreneurs make is they think I just have to be capable I've just shown my knowledge but the problem is is if you do that you come across as intimidating hard to talk to distant and if you truly want to be a leader you also have to make sure that you are approachable and relatable otherwise your team will be afraid to tell you things you won't be able to pitch well from stage or when you're giving presentations or pitches people will think I don't like him very much we buy from people we work from people we like people who we both trust and think are smart it has to be both those things so he's true I can relate so much because I have made so much so so many mistakes in fact you you you've got some videos about reading faces as well right instantly just do it nowadays you can just tell straight away so it's the art and science of reading micro-expressions is both an art in science there are seven micro-expressions we can break them down very specifically about looking at different parts of the face that's very scientific there's also an art to it in the sense that if I was reading micro-expressions all the time I would never be able to have a relationship with someone because they would constantly be giving me too much information right so the art and science is about both spotting and responding to micro-expressions first is spotting them the second thing is how do you respond right if you see disgust on someone's face disgust is when you crinkle your nose up and flash your teeth and people that's disgust you often see disgust when you ask someone a preference based question they're about to lie to you so it's really is we do a lot of lion action research in our lab and it's a very big light I should tell because you'll ask someone so what do you think of the new girl she's fine yeah and I'm actually flashing that discussed it you will I do it do you say right then and there you're disgusted I see you being disgusted no you don't say that right you can't say that so the next piece of it is how do you then reply in a way that allows them to be honest with you allows them to express their true emotion and dig deeper into what is the cause of this disgust how do I fix it so that's a lot of the interpersonal intelligence we're talking about is leaders have to be able to both spot competent and respond with empathy warmth this is so fascinating we could go on forever we're gonna start wrapping up there Vanessa just first thing on us they just really appreciate your time today and really appreciate later on if you were to because I find you know leaders people tuning in right now entrepreneurs they're so busy and sometimes they just allow this information to kind of just become shelf development let's say they didn't take action if you were to just give one step for somebody just act on right now straight after this interview what would that one step be my one the most important action step that I think that you can do is get rid of the ambivalent relationships in your life and the reason for this is because I've been doing a lot of research on toxic people difficult people and we know about toxic people there's actually a really fascinating set of research on ambivalence so ambivalence is actually more dangerous than toxic people that are great research study with police officers and I found that police officers who have toxic relationships in their work environment are actually happier at work than police officers who have and violent relationships their office why if you know someone's difficult or toxic you avoid them like the plague right you do the bare minimum with them you never go out to lunch with them you know gonna avoid that person if you're ambivalent about someone they take a lot of mental energy you wonder do I really like that person do I really trust that Ford is that person a friend I can't I cannot figure them out do they like me do they not like me was that a passive-aggressive comment those people takes so much energy they're constantly making you second-guess yourself because I can guess them trying to figure out where they fit in your life and so what I would say is look at every relationship that you have in your life the top 20 people that you interact with on a daily basis and ask yourself do you like this person do you not like this person are you unsure it's the unsure that I want you to begin to look at you either have to decide yes this is someone that I like and I trust I want them in my life and choose to have them in your life or if you're like I don't trust this person it's time to let go of the ambivalent relationships those are the people that are dragging you down those are the people who are taking the way mental energy and if you're a high achiever or you're someone who wants to get a lot done you don't have time for that you don't have energy for those ambivalent people and so my big push for you is decide I either like this person or I don't and if you don't it's time to say bye-bye thank you so much for this day if people were to basically go check out more of your work where should they want to go to or where should they go yes so um science at people.com is our lab website where we have all of our videos YouTube videos and our blog posts if you want to just kind of get a little primer you could check out my book captivate it's I recorded the audio book you can hear me make funny voices or it's wherever books are sold and if you really want a level up our next class of people school is coming up it's all the people skills you never learned in school and not to coming out soon incredible so inside there's just one say thank you so much for tuning in today be sure to comment below regards to your biggest action point or biggest takeaway from today's interview and like this video if you'd like this video and do me a favor and share this with somebody that you know would benefit just even one person as life I believe it's about paying boards and as always folly harm a friend and take action and go live like we truly want to live speech very soon [Music] [Applause] [Music]

if I&#39;m listening to you like this not gonna go over very well it doesn&#39;t matter how good my hand gestures are it doesn&#39;t matter how good my vocal power is if I&#39;m making that face nothing else is gonna go well hey inside there I&#39;m back with another special interview today featuring a success insider called Vanessa van Edwards vanessa is a lead investigator at science of people she designs original research experiments and scouser latest academic research to crack the code of human behavior her unique work has been featured on NPR The Wall Street Journal Today Show and USA Today and she has written for CNN Fast Company entrepreneur and Forbes in a latest book captivate was a national bestseller and was chosen by Apple as one of the most anticipated books of the year so if you are somebody who want to take your influence your charisma and your confidence on to a next level you&#39;re gonna find today&#39;s interview incredibly useful so if you like to take this interview today on the go and you like to listen to a whole interview be sure to tune in to a podcast version of this interview by going to www.hsn silent TV for saj Vanessa to get instant access right now to the podcast version so without further ado here&#39;s the interview featuring a success insider Vanessa van Edwards enjoy the place wants to start and just really kick off is there you tell you you basically say on your website your self recovering boring person right true very true yes what do you really mean by that specifically yeah so I used to be very afraid of everything I was afraid of the emotional things rejection judgment being criticized and I was also just afraid of doing things wrong and so what I think that fear did to me now that I look back is that fear kept me very caged in so I became very boring I was afraid to make a joke so I didn&#39;t make any jokes I was afraid to share any of my ideas so I never raised my hand in class I never shared my opinion in groups and so I was this very rigid kind of quiet person and that made me very very boring and so I joke now that I&#39;m recovering because I think that when we learned that actually withholding things and holding ourselves back actually keeps us from connecting that&#39;s worse than boring that&#39;s actually extremely limiting right what would you say was a pivotal shift that made you want to not be boring was there like a one moment or was it more series of very it&#39;s a question I think that um I accidentally stumbled upon a lot of charisma advice just by letting myself be a little bit more vulnerable sometimes so ended up happening was I was so tired of being afraid right I would go to a birthday party and I would be like should I say that should I say that was that awkward was that weird was that funny it was exhausting I&#39;d come home from those events just like like ready to go to sleep and I was so tired of it that sometimes I would just let my guard down and that&#39;s when I actually made the most friend since when I had the most but the best conversations when I had the most fun I would thought to myself how is it that I actually have more energy when I give more and less energy when I give less and that&#39;s what I realized and there was a very specific time in my life where I began to realize that I got out exactly what I put in and there&#39;s a story that I like to share with my students about karaoke I don&#39;t know do you ever do karaoke as a Korean we we meant to be really big into it but yeah I&#39;m not very good yeah I do it another game okay I&#39;m terrible it&#39;s like it was my biggest fear I mean talk about a fearful person karaoke was like the Everest for an awkward person right I got invited to a karaoke party from one of my very good friends and everyone was kinda you know up there and they weren&#39;t even killing it they were just like you know singing their hearts out and it wasn&#39;t even good and still I was like I can&#39;t I can&#39;t do it and then my friend said for my birthday everyone has to do a song she&#39;s like how can I see note of that right one of my best friend chocolates you know that and so one of the woman&#39;s next to me she said karaoke is not about your singing it&#39;s about how much energy you put in if you own it it does matter if you have a good or bad boys people will love it and so I picked the song Slim Shady by Eminem yeah like it&#39;s not like it&#39;s not is it totally ridiculous um but I thought what better song to like really get into it close my high and just kind of try to rap it out people loved it people loved it and I was like you know what I didn&#39;t try to sing my heart out I didn&#39;t have the best voice by any means but I just tried you know I tried to do a worm on the floor which didn&#39;t work you know I tried to rap which was horrible obviously people under they laughter that was great people gave me high fives it was the most social acceptance I had ever felt and yet I was doing something I was terrible at I was like hmm something weird here right because I got the most so she looked up at something I&#39;m terrible at maybe if I do things badly but honestly and authentically people will like that right and from there that&#39;s when you got fascinated in this whole load of studying into human behavior and so forth yes so I always have liked looking at different social experiments and trying to figure out there was any science behind it so what I did was I thought you know I heard about vulnerability by then I don&#39;t think Bernie Brown&#39;s TED talk without yet for those are vulnerability geeks I don&#39;t think I talked about yet but there was a little bit of research on sharing vulnerability and I started to stumble across this really interesting research one of the first experiments I remember reading was called about a spotlight effect have you ever heard of the spotlight effect so what it is is they had looked to a big classroom full of students wearing a Barry Manilow t-shirt and the reason they picked the Barry Manilow t-shirt that&#39;s because Barry Manilow is not a cool artist it&#39;s really uncool and they ask the students if you&#39;re gonna walk into a class at the Barry Manilow t-shirt how many people do you think are gonna notice that you&#39;re wearing a Barry Manilow t-shirt and all the students thought that everyone would notice oh my god it&#39;s gonna be so embarrassing it&#39;s gonna ruin my social life it&#39;s gonna ruin my reputation but actually what happened is the students walking in the classroom and very few people noticed and the whole point is that you think you spotlight your vulnerability is your mistakes but other people don&#39;t see them so that was one of the very first study is where I was like okay there&#39;s something to this and that&#39;s when I begin to reverse engineer so I thought to myself if I want to be my best self but I don&#39;t have the inner confidence I don&#39;t have it can I learn about strategies and tactics that can give me confidence that I can bring out into the real world and that&#39;s exactly what I did so I started to find all these really fascinating research experiments that have been done that were really helpful but no one was talking about and so that&#39;s what I started to do is bring the science and the light to show people what can we really use in the real world to build our own confidence if you don&#39;t have it any tweak right so what you believe in your eyes is the opposite of boring I mean opposite of boring is engaging and we talked about being engaging I think we have to look at the science so very very highly engaging people are very highly charismatic people are more contagious they&#39;ve actually proven this they found that people who are highly charismatic let me think about highly charismatic people they&#39;re actually more contagious so if a highly charismatic person is in a bad mood they&#39;re gonna infect more people with their bad mood than people who are on the lower charismatic scale and I can go both positive and negative so the highly charismatic persons in a good way they could walk into a boardroom or a party or a meeting and they make everyone&#39;s day everyone gets excited about it so what that taught me was that if I wanted to be highly charismatic I had to make sure that I was at least infecting people with the right emotions and so that&#39;s why I think are doing interpersonal skills doing work on ourselves and our confidence is so important it&#39;s not just for us it&#39;s also kind of benefit of everyone else right and do you believe there is a way that you can become likeable in front of everybody because there&#39;s some form of no I mean there&#39;s that cliche not everybody will like you so is it possible to improve everybody in your eyes or I think it&#39;s not possible to have everyone like you and trying to do that is gonna set you up for failure right it&#39;s the reason for this is because of something called similarity attraction effect so typically we are attracting to people we like people who are like us and that&#39;s really hard right because we like to have diversity we like to meet people who are different than us but actually the science says the more similar to us someone is the better this is why you&#39;ll have a group of everyone has the same kind of sarcastic bitter teasing sense of humor that works for them right they like that for me that does not work for me I take it all far too personally I would much rather be a positive goofball so in that way that&#39;s okay with me right you could have that sarcastic sense of humor and that works for you and your friends whereas I want to find what works for me so I always like to teach my students there&#39;s different flavors of charisma I think that we used to be taught that there was one kind of charismatic the kind of booming extrovert right when you think of a highly charismatic person mostly people are like oh it&#39;s the party animal the life of the party that booming extroverted personality that&#39;s actually not true imagine if we were all booing extroverts no one ever get a word in right we would never ever hear we would never ever get to actually listen to anyone and so we actually have to have different kinds of charisma so I like people to think about what is your brand of charisma and can you find other people who either match you or appreciate you so it might be the extrovert for me that that&#39;s not I&#39;m an ambivert so Hammond virtus when someone falls in between an extrovert and introvert so am averts we are good at listening we love to be empathetic but we also in certain situations like to share we like to share stories we don&#39;t necessarily have to hold back and so I used to think I was introvert but actually I&#39;m going to invert so figuring out what your unique flavor is and then owning it what would you say when you were when you were boring quote-unquote what would you say is the biggest change that you personally made in regards to how you were showing up other than you talked about variability but was there something else that you did specifically as an influencer strategy yeah I think that one of the mental tricks I used was a game changer and this happened accidentally so for a long time I used to think how do you impress people right I have to think of a really funny story to tell or I have to ask the best possible questions or I have to share really impressive anecdotes and that was is one way of doing it right people can be impressed by prismatic codes funny stories always kill in a room right that always works what was a real game-changer though was I was asked to do a panel at a conference so I was gonna lead the panel of these really I thought be a big bips I was like oh my gosh so huge VIPs how am I gonna lead this panel and they gave me very little time to prepare they the person who was supposed to moderate the panel wasn&#39;t available so like fast can you step in and do it oh my god I haven&#39;t prepared any questions I have done my research so I had like 10 to 15 minutes in the green room with all these VIPs before we walked out on stage and they&#39;re like you know just chitchat for a while come up with some good questions then go out on the stage introduce them so I had 15 minutes where I definitely didn&#39;t want to be impressive I needed them to impress me right I needed to ask them very specific questions to be able to introduce them each well and I also needed to find some kind of hot-button topics to talk about on the stage and that completely shifted my mindset in how I was asking them questions I was searching for ways for them to impress me and that was an aha moment because not only do we have a great conversation in the green room right and really fascinating interesting things I learned about these VIPs I had never heard before we had a great time on stage and they said to me you know you asked a bunch of questions that we had never been asked before and that was a moment where from then on I thought okay instead of walking into a conversation and thinking I want to impress them I want to be impressive which is what most of us do with networking events VIPs and meetings the opposite is how could I meet people and let them impress me what questions can I ask so when I meet someone typically and this is not a fairy interaction because you&#39;re interviewing me but normally we would have met at a party I would be pretending that I was about to interview on stage and imagining what questions I have to ask you to solicit any of those interesting nuggets out of you that would be the the mentor that was a real game-changer did you do any form of like going for acting classes or any form of like video recording yourself on video because it seems like you really didn&#39;t the first impression that you give off is a very warm impression thank you a problem and I feel like if you&#39;re saying you know you used to be boring you must have improved over time somehow did you adopt any habits like that specifically yeah it&#39;s a good question it&#39;s my total I was talking a lot about the verbal techniques but I also did a lot of non verbal work so it&#39;s a very good question so I think that when we&#39;re talking about communication especially first impressions there are two things that someone is looking at they&#39;re looking at the verbal side of things what are the first words I use and they&#39;re also have you been non-durable my facial expressions my voice tone my body language how I move my hands there&#39;s those two aspects that are at play the first one that I talked about already was verbal right so for example when I first meet someone I try to use engaging words even when I say oh I&#39;m so happy to be here happy pleasure attorneys up warm words on the nonverbal side I also got very very deep in the body language science and I learned what are the negative micro-expressions what are my tells like when I&#39;m nervous or anxious how does that come out in my body and how do I minimize that so I&#39;m not infecting people with my nervousness one thing I realized what I was so fearful is that fear was coming out of every pore of my body I mean I was I looked nervous and that made other people feel nervous so instead of having you interact with me and feel like they were welcome and they belonged and they were calm and comfortable they were actually picking up on my anxiety which was the the worst possible way to interact see how the other aspect was trying to figure out what are my nervous tells one way that I don&#39;t know if your listeners want to take it a little challenge but this is a really really powerful challenge you can do so for your next five phone calls and try to do phone calls with different kinds of people a parent a client a colleague a VIP a cold call the cable company right totally different people turn on your video camera and video just your end of the conversation try to forget about the camera and just have your normal conversation watch this video videos back and count every single micro negative so one of the things I teach is this idea of micro messages that we are sending out very small subtle nonverbal cues a micro negative are very small negative non-verbal cues you send up everything from an eye-roll to a frown to pinching me to your eyebrows notice these two lines appear that look like anger to distance in your body so turning your body away so you&#39;re not angling towards the person to covering your mouth to cracking your knuckles or in your hands as negative body language cute you can see that&#39;s one column so you get a piece of paper a pen and on one common way to write all the negatives the next column will read all the positives anything you do you think books positives that would be smiles liens nodding using hand gestures making eye contact with the camera or you know if there&#39;s a video call it&#39;s even better you&#39;re on the phones can&#39;t really make eye contact you may be of a mirror if you want to I mentioned leaning in any kind of positive eyebrow raises are another really positive micro gesture and then I want you make a column for question marks the last column is just a question mark of things you&#39;re like I don&#39;t know how that came across was it positive was it negative and out all those things if you&#39;re doing really well you should have the longest column B or positive column all right that should be the most things you see if you&#39;re giving off signs of anxiety you&#39;ll notice you have lots and lots and lots in your negative column and that&#39;s what happened to me if I realized I was constantly sending out these micro negatives and I was barely sending out any micro positives and so what you want to do is slowly after each phone call is keep doing those notes and after time you&#39;ll add more and more positive column and less and less than negative column it&#39;s a very simple exercise you kind of quantify how you&#39;re coming across it&#39;s really interesting because because I used to be very shy as well about eleven years ago I started to transformation I used to film myself doing phone calls especially taking job interview phone calls and I used to just turn flash red and those pretty embarrassing watching it but I could see why I kept on failing like every day how did you control the flushing because that&#39;s one thing that&#39;s really really hard I don&#39;t I don&#39;t flush when I&#39;m nervous but some people do do you find it you need to control that I think just exposure therapy just keep on doing it yeah I just kept on doing it over and over oh my god they get it but they exposure therapy really works right if you keep putting yourself in an anxiety provoking situation your body goes old after a while this is an anxious anymore yeah yeah definitely but why I founded them when I was adopting the strategies that&#39;s finding online there was so many things to remember him Augustus my body language and regard I was making every single mistake in the book yeah I felt like I had so many things in my head that the next interaction I was just stuck in my head again I mean is that something that you&#39;ve ever heard of or you&#39;ve experienced I mean what advice would you give to people who ask one thing to really master this but they&#39;re still stuck in here yes that is so so true so one of the things I like to joke about is when you learn body language if you learn too many skills at once you end up like a body language Frankenstein right like more hand gestures nodding smiling angling leaning forward nodding angling smiling laughing hand gestures like you&#39;re it&#39;s very robotic right you&#39;re like you cobbled together all these things none of them feel authentic you&#39;re way in your head about them and you keep forgetting one like whack-a-mole right like you got the hand gestures then you got the smiling but you forgot the eye contact and you&#39;re kind lit constant trying to whack one down so what I always say is what you&#39;re trying to do especially from an honorable perspective is you&#39;re trying to get to muscle memory okay so think about it like you&#39;re going to a gym and I constantly remind my students they&#39;re their athletes they are emotional mental athletes athletes when they go to the gym the first time I try something it&#39;s very very hard I wrote it before it specifically a squat have you ever done a squat yeah okay so the first time I did a squat I was doing literally everything wrong right like my butt wasn&#39;t out far enough my back was curved I was leaning too far forward my chin was in the wrong place and so my trainer was like chin butt hips back arms chin chest arms but the same thing right constantly trying to fix one thing so what we ends up doing is we first got just my stance rep then we worked on my back family work to my chin and after a couple of sessions I was doing the swap perfectly I didn&#39;t even have to think about my form anymore then I could add in a kettlebell swing then I could add in a bicep curl then I could add in a whole overhead lift it&#39;s the exact same thing with body language you want to think of first what is just your squat stance what&#39;s the most important highest impact thing you could do for you it might be different for me so for me one of my big ones was getting rid of my resting so resting is a serious thing there&#39;s actually science behind it and I listen like I&#39;m angry even though I&#39;m not angry and I knew that if I was gonna do videos cause when do podcasts five-minute pitch meetings or VIP meetings or coffees if I&#39;m listening to you like this not gonna go over very well it doesn&#39;t matter how good my hand gestures are it doesn&#39;t matter how good my vocal power is if I&#39;m making that face nothing else is gonna go well so what is your spot what is the one highest impact thing just do that do that just that one thing forget everything else until it&#39;s so natural to you that it&#39;s like muscle memory you don&#39;t even do anymore and then do the same thing again and again and again so it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s more tedious that way I wish I could tell you could do all at once but that&#39;s really important because you have to use muscle memory or else your cognitive load is too much cognitive load and a social interaction is going crazy right you&#39;re thinking about your body language your reading their body language what you&#39;re gonna say or listen to what they&#39;re gonna say your also notice in the environment you&#39;re also thinking about that your hot or cold you also think about your parking meter I mean there is so much going on if I&#39;m also asking you to control hand gestures nodding micro-expressions voice tone priming there&#39;s just no way and so muscle memory takes cognitive load away from you so that you can focus on one thing at a time that might be a week for you it might be twenty days might be longer well if I should normally give to let&#39;s say authoritative leaders who want to have a resting because they want to come across a forest if I mean where is that fine line between coming across really likable and being a pushover if that means yes no that that&#39;s a very very important point so we&#39;re talking about power and leadership typically people in positions of power have a very still face they are not smiling all the time they&#39;re they have less movement in their body more stillness in their face now there&#39;s a difference between stillness and resting face so resting is when your face at rest is mimicking or very similar to a micro expression so micro expressions were discovered by dr. Pollock men I talk a lot about them in my book there are seven micro expressions and five of those micro expressions are negative so happiness surprise are the only ones that are not super negative then you have disgust contempt anger sadness and fear those four are sorry those five actually are more negative and so if you&#39;re showing any aspect those in your face you&#39;re going to come across as angry disgusted contemptuous fearful if you show those so you want to make sure of is when your face is at rest it&#39;s either neutral or slightly positive it doesn&#39;t mean you have to smile all the time but I want to show you are people gonna be listening and watching yeah they can be watching mostly I might be watching you okay great so I just want to go through a little resting face exercise so if you look at my face when I have my mouth at rest my corners of my mouth point down and this is my face at rest well that looks a little bit like sadness right of sadness micro structures like this that&#39;s actually your resting face oh yeah that&#39;s definitely them yeah everyone&#39;s face and their facial features are angled differently for example my eyes at risk our wrists are pre neutral right they go out some people&#39;s eyes go down teresina they actually are like little down that means that they&#39;re going to struggle more with looking tired even if they&#39;re not they&#39;re gonna struggle more with bored even if they&#39;re not for me my angle my mouth makes me look sad or irritated even when I&#39;m not so when I&#39;m at rest with you I don&#39;t listen to you like this even that&#39;s my resting face the way I listen to is I actually just very slightly engaged as part of my mouth and it&#39;s muscle memory now so don&#39;t even think about it so I look like I am neutral positive so when I almost seem to you I listen to you like this all right so subtle that makes a difference yeah I don&#39;t think about it at all now I had to for a couple weeks so now I make sure that my mouth is neutral to positive that&#39;s really important so if you&#39;re trying to be a powerful leader I don&#39;t want you to be resting like this I actually know people who rest with this kind of like concentration you might think that you&#39;re concentrating but that comes across as angry these two vertical lines here indicate anger so I just want to make sure that if you&#39;re going to come up if you want that powerful still is great you do not have to sit like this I do not want you to sit with a smile on your face that&#39;s super inauthentic but I do want to make sure that your facial features are working for you so make sure their mouth is neutral or angled up making sure that your eyes are either angled neutral or angled up by the way there&#39;s a couple of tricks you can do with this with eyes so if you&#39;re if you are a female and like to wear makeup you can actually angle your eye makeup to be more up so I don&#39;t know if you can see I&#39;m gonna go really close so you can see lucky lucky you guys you can see can you see my liner how it goes up kind of yet I&#39;ve never paid attention to makeup so I can see it does go for my ladies watching you can actually make yourself look more awake by angling your liner and your shadow up that&#39;s a very very really good skill for making you look more awake for men who aren&#39;t using makeup or anyone who&#39;s not using makeup you should also know that when you&#39;re on video calls or when you&#39;re with people and you look down your face you&#39;re going to look more tired because your lids are going to be more hooded right so you&#39;ll notice that I&#39;m not listening like this which is actually the way most people listen angle their head back and I look down that makes you look much more tired because you can&#39;t see the whites of my eyes I almost always angles that you can see more the whites of my eyes so also being aware of the angle of your face and that sounds really small but I like him this kind of thing to a golf swing right minor minor tweaks in your swing are gonna have massive output on your first impressions especially your first impressions so especially the very beginning part of video there would be any part of interaction making sure that you have more of an update so this is my regular base right this is my up base slightly different but it does make a difference in warmth what would you say is the other than that what would you say is the biggest mistake that you see entrepreneurs make or leaders make in regards to influence or come across charismatic yeah so most of our students so we have a very typical archetype of student I think it&#39;s actually very similar to how people watching very very high achievers almost all of our students are killing it in their career very ambitious typically entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs people who are making waves in our company are starting their own company and the biggest biggest mistake they make is because they&#39;re highly intelligent because they&#39;re highly ambitious because they&#39;re making waves they think that they have to be only highly competent competent powerful capable those are very important things when you actually look at the science of charisma this is the basis of our entire people school course you have to have a blend of both warmth and competence that is the definition of charisma people who are both highly relatable highly approachable highly likeable and at the same time highly capable highly powerful and highly competent the biggest mistake that leaders make and entrepreneurs make is they think I just have to be capable I&#39;ve just shown my knowledge but the problem is is if you do that you come across as intimidating hard to talk to distant and if you truly want to be a leader you also have to make sure that you are approachable and relatable otherwise your team will be afraid to tell you things you won&#39;t be able to pitch well from stage or when you&#39;re giving presentations or pitches people will think I don&#39;t like him very much we buy from people we work from people we like people who we both trust and think are smart it has to be both those things so he&#39;s true I can relate so much because I have made so much so so many mistakes in fact you you you&#39;ve got some videos about reading faces as well right instantly just do it nowadays you can just tell straight away so it&#39;s the art and science of reading micro-expressions is both an art in science there are seven micro-expressions we can break them down very specifically about looking at different parts of the face that&#39;s very scientific there&#39;s also an art to it in the sense that if I was reading micro-expressions all the time I would never be able to have a relationship with someone because they would constantly be giving me too much information right so the art and science is about both spotting and responding to micro-expressions first is spotting them the second thing is how do you respond right if you see disgust on someone&#39;s face disgust is when you crinkle your nose up and flash your teeth and people that&#39;s disgust you often see disgust when you ask someone a preference based question they&#39;re about to lie to you so it&#39;s really is we do a lot of lion action research in our lab and it&#39;s a very big light I should tell because you&#39;ll ask someone so what do you think of the new girl she&#39;s fine yeah and I&#39;m actually flashing that discussed it you will I do it do you say right then and there you&#39;re disgusted I see you being disgusted no you don&#39;t say that right you can&#39;t say that so the next piece of it is how do you then reply in a way that allows them to be honest with you allows them to express their true emotion and dig deeper into what is the cause of this disgust how do I fix it so that&#39;s a lot of the interpersonal intelligence we&#39;re talking about is leaders have to be able to both spot competent and respond with empathy warmth this is so fascinating we could go on forever we&#39;re gonna start wrapping up there Vanessa just first thing on us they just really appreciate your time today and really appreciate later on if you were to because I find you know leaders people tuning in right now entrepreneurs they&#39;re so busy and sometimes they just allow this information to kind of just become shelf development let&#39;s say they didn&#39;t take action if you were to just give one step for somebody just act on right now straight after this interview what would that one step be my one the most important action step that I think that you can do is get rid of the ambivalent relationships in your life and the reason for this is because I&#39;ve been doing a lot of research on toxic people difficult people and we know about toxic people there&#39;s actually a really fascinating set of research on ambivalence so ambivalence is actually more dangerous than toxic people that are great research study with police officers and I found that police officers who have toxic relationships in their work environment are actually happier at work than police officers who have and violent relationships their office why if you know someone&#39;s difficult or toxic you avoid them like the plague right you do the bare minimum with them you never go out to lunch with them you know gonna avoid that person if you&#39;re ambivalent about someone they take a lot of mental energy you wonder do I really like that person do I really trust that Ford is that person a friend I can&#39;t I cannot figure them out do they like me do they not like me was that a passive-aggressive comment those people takes so much energy they&#39;re constantly making you second-guess yourself because I can guess them trying to figure out where they fit in your life and so what I would say is look at every relationship that you have in your life the top 20 people that you interact with on a daily basis and ask yourself do you like this person do you not like this person are you unsure it&#39;s the unsure that I want you to begin to look at you either have to decide yes this is someone that I like and I trust I want them in my life and choose to have them in your life or if you&#39;re like I don&#39;t trust this person it&#39;s time to let go of the ambivalent relationships those are the people that are dragging you down those are the people who are taking the way mental energy and if you&#39;re a high achiever or you&#39;re someone who wants to get a lot done you don&#39;t have time for that you don&#39;t have energy for those ambivalent people and so my big push for you is decide I either like this person or I don&#39;t and if you don&#39;t it&#39;s time to say bye-bye thank you so much for this day if people were to basically go check out more of your work where should they want to go to or where should they go yes so um science at people.com is our lab website where we have all of our videos YouTube videos and our blog posts if you want to just kind of get a little primer you could check out my book captivate it&#39;s I recorded the audio book you can hear me make funny voices or it&#39;s wherever books are sold and if you really want a level up our next class of people school is coming up it&#39;s all the people skills you never learned in school and not to coming out soon incredible so inside there&#39;s just one say thank you so much for tuning in today be sure to comment below regards to your biggest action point or biggest takeaway from today&#39;s interview and like this video if you&#39;d like this video and do me a favor and share this with somebody that you know would benefit just even one person as life I believe it&#39;s about paying boards and as always folly harm a friend and take action and go live like we truly want to live speech very soon [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Transcript for:Insights from Vanessa Van Edwards' Interview

Transcript for:
Insights from Vanessa Van Edwards' Interview