Transcript for:
Understanding Charisma and People Skills

[Music] so I've been fascinated by Charisma and people skills ever since I used to play Dungeons and Dragons while I was growing up characters with a high Charisma could just roll the dice and get people to do whatever they wanted while my wizard could never get anybody to do anything go figure I always thought Charisma would be a great power to have in the real world Vanessa van Edwards is a behavioral investigator published author public speaker and body Lang language trainer specializing in science-based people skills she runs the science of people which is a human behavior research lab in Portland Oregon where she studies Charisma influence and power body language Apple chose it as one of the most anticipated books of the year so let's give a warm welcome to Vanessa van Edwards yay thank you hello so thanks for joining me on your lunch break I am so excited to be here because I really get to dive into the science of people and I I'm a data geek a research geek so hopefully today we can go over some of my favorite studies so as mentioned I run a human behavior research lab which is basically an excuse for me to ask invasively personal questions for my own amusement and we do all kinds of studies in our lab one of the first that I want to talk about is very relevant to us so one thing that I do is I critique the body language of candidates for different news outlets it was a busy year for me last year it's kept very very busy and I was curious you know we were focused this year so much on politics it's dominating the news and I was wondering is there any kind of research that I can find in our history so we embarked on a decent size study I wasn't sure what we were going to find what we did is we analyzed the last 20 inaugural addresses the reason why we picked the last 20 is because the oldest one we could find that was video was 1944 was Truman and so we wanted to analyze many different things we analyze everything from tie color to body language patterns to vocal patterns we partner with with a company called Quantified Communications to analyze the words used in each inauguration speech and we found some kind of interesting patterns so I was wondering if we could guess some of those patterns together so I have a couple of quizzes for us to see if we can get it so we use body language patterns word usage patterns timing weather tie color and Podium use just to see what we would find see if we found any kind of interesting things so let's test your political knowledge with some presidential Bingo you guys want to play some presidential Bingo all right good get let's get us warmed up a little bit so here is the very first question who used the most hand gestures your choices are John F Kennedy Donald Trump Bill Clinton Ronald Reagan now the question is is this a trick question right that's what you're wondering so go with your gut how many people think it's John F Kennedy how many people think it's Donald Trump how many people think it's Bill Clinton how many people think it's Ronald Reagan so pretty evenly split you are right if you said Donald Trump Donald Trump used 641 hand gestures in 17 minutes that's impressive my friends that's impressive by the way Ronald Reagan the great communicator zero hand gestures I was shocked by that he actually gripped the podium in fear so Ronald Reagan Jimmy Carter Richard Richard M Nixon that Beast right there that Podium destroyed their hand Charisma so that's why I'm going to be a avoiding it as much as possible trying to get away from the podium and by the way Donald Trump 641 close second was Barack Obama second term by the way the difference between Barack Obama's first inaugural address and his second inaugural address on paper looked like two totally different presidents totally different hand gestures totally different amount of smiling different word usage patterns two totally different goals now I I mentioned hand gestures the power of hand gestures and why I'm avoiding that little Podium over there the reason for this is I always knew the research was quite robust on the importance of hand gestures but I didn't know how important it was for Charisma so every day at lunch I watch a TED Talk I love TED Talks I'm a Ted junkie and I was searching in ted.com leadership in their search bar up popped two talks one by Simon cnic probably most of you have seen it called something like the great leaders of tomorrow it has over 45 million views another talk also popped up by Fields wicker Miran this had under 40,000 and I looked at these two talks and I thought both of these talks are 18 minutes long both of them have almost the same title both of them were given by relatively unknown experts in the beginning Simon synic got famous from his Ted Talk and both of them are on the same kind of topic and they came out the same month of the same year September of 2009 why did one talk go viral and one didn't why is it that certain people can walk into a room and you you go yeah I want to know that person whereas other people walk into room and you're like me I don't even know if I've met them before so we decided to analyze thousands of hours of TED talks over many months we analyzed every single Ted Talk from 2010 and compared any patterns we could find to view count the biggest difference we found is that the most popular Ted talkers used an average of 465 hand gestures in just 18 minutes my coders I love you they painstakingly counted every single hand gesture so they use an average of 465 hand gestures the least popular TED Talks use an average of 272 hand gestures almost half what's going on here so the academic research is pretty clear on hand gestures what happens is is when we see someone's hands and if you watch Ted Talk they all look the same I'm going to show you what they look like are you ready so usually they have head talker off stage and there's a red dot in the middle and they go like this come to the Red Dot today I want to talk to you about a big idea I'm going to break it down to three different areas that are going to change your life right they all do that they actually don't all do that but the most popular talks the ones that we've seen they do that in other words they're kind of signaling or triggering your brain to say this is going to be good like that's basically what they're saying because we give a lot of weight to hand gestures so if I say I have a really big idea it's huge your brain laughs because you're like it's not very big look how small it is where if I'm like I have a big idea you're like whoa that is a big one it's almost beach ball size big and that is because our brains give 12.5 times more weight to our hand gestures so the best Ted talkers are are actually doing something very interesting they're speaking to you on two different tracks they're using their words but they're also explaining their words along with their hands they're actually giving you cliff notes with their hands they're saying I have a really specific thing I want to tell you look how specific it is I can actually hold it in my hand just like that or they're saying I have three different things that I want to show you and they tell you one two three they quue you or they say they have a big idea or they say they're bringing two different groups together or they say there's three different levels or they say it really means a lot to them all of those things are like Bolding or highlighting their words along with their hands hands along with their words so we found that was a huge indicator of Charisma as I mentioned our non-verbal signals are 12 to 13 times more powerful than our words so for example if I were to come up here today and say hi Google I'm uh so happy to be here you would know because my voice tone my facial expressions of my body body language that that wasn't true because you give more weight to my non-verbal let's go into the next one talking about emotionality and how we read emotion so looking at word usage passion language persuasive language which president used the most emotional language the choices are John F Kennedy Donald Trump Jimmy Carter and George W bush how many people think John F Kennedy a lot how many people think Donald Trump okay how many people think Jimmy Carter got two one taker all right how many people think George W bush three takers this one was shocking right by the way for people at home only three people voted for George W bush people at home always like to be come with us participate so when we look at the the breakdown of this for pause for emotional language so I was shocked by the way that George rby Bush used the most emotional language most people are that's surprising second was Jimmy Carter but not by a lot and our lowest emotional use was Lindon B Johnson the least emotional language now here's a question which party uses more emotional language so how many people think the Republicans use more emotional language how many people think the Democrats people are now afraid to vote I can see people are afraid to vote so this time so the Republicans actually use more emotional language they use much more emotional language whereas Democrats by the way use more numbers and that that chart is not in here but I'm happy to send out the white paper so the Democrats use more data more numbers what we call logic in in their speeches whereas Republicans are much more emotional which party uses more I language so more uses of I me or my versus we our us Democrats Republicans or it's about the same how many people think Democrats how many people think Republicans and how I'm feeling it's about the same so this one absolutely Republicans do use more we our us language next one what is the most popular tie color going into a little more fun thing here little less a little less important so we looked at the tie colors we were just curious to see if there was any pattern there um choices blue red gray or there was a tie did you get it a tie between red and blue that made me laugh so hard when I wrote my own slide like I can't tell you okay so how many people think blue only three or four how many people think red most of you how many think gray couple how many think there was a tie between red and blue that was just funny guys it wasn't actually true sadly so this one is my remote is broken maybe not it's really dramatic right we're really exciting did it work yes it worked just delayed blue so very few of you guessed blue most of you guess red I don't know what's happening here um so with the there was actually 10 presidents that wore blue ties only four presidents wore red ties I think less than three wore gray or black the problem is is that someone told me they think the reason for this is actually not emotional or not a choice it's because actually blue looks better on camera so this might be different if we looked at speeches that were older in time but more presidents weree blue how about this one who had the shortest speech your choices are Lyn B Johnson Gerald Ford George W bush John F Kennedy how many people think Lyndon B Johnson couple of you how many people think Gerald Ford how many will think George W bush how people think John F Kennedy so this one is Gerald Ford eight minutes what was funny about this fact the only reason I included it is because he had the shortest by far the longest by the way was 22 minutes he also had the best weather day of any candidate so I thought it was funny that he had the shortest speech we didn't take advantage of that beautiful weather so Gerald Ford Lind B Johnson for those of you who guessed him was second and dwighty Eisenhower was after that here's a good question which party speaks more so the amount of minutes used was it more Democrats or more Republicans how many you feel think that Democrats spoke more how many people think Republicans spoke more you would be right those of you who guess Republicans Republicans used more minutes 61% versus 39% of the minutes spoken which president smiled the most so we what we did here for this is we actually had a stopwatch and we we actually stopped the watch every time they smile to get the total number of seconds smiled during an inauguration speech so your choices are Bill Clinton Jimmy Carter George Bush senr and Barack Obama how many people think Bill Clinton smiled the most a lot of you how many people think Jimmy Carter how many people think George Bush Senor we got one guess how many people think Barack Obama so this one is Barack Obama smiled the most in his second term in Aug dress remember how I said the first and second term were totally different his second term he was much happier just so you can see the number of seconds clocked 14.5 seconds by Barack Obama so only one person I think over here guest George W senr actually second which really surprised me with 13.5 seconds Bill Clinton Rd rean and Jimmy Carter after that by the way usually I have really beautiful pictures these slides but we don't have the rights to all those president pictures so you'll have to stick with just my text so the next study we did off that smiling research with the presidents is I thought okay we know some things about political leaders some patterns how about Business Leaders how about entrepreneurs how about Investors so I love the show shark tank does anyone else watch the show shark tank so I love that show in the show if you haven't seen it it's a panel of investors named sharks are pitched by entrepreneurs who come into the tank so I was fascinated ated to see was there patterns between the most successful least successful entrepreneurs because I don't know about you I watch that show or I watch people pitch and a lot of the time I think it's more about their Charisma than their actual idea so I wanted to see was there any truth to that was there any difference happening behind the scenes so what we did me and my code are Jose Pia you're amazing researched all 495 pitches on Shark Tank it took us six months and he coded every variable we could think of so everything from the introduction to their grand entrance to the amount of times the Sharks laughed to try to find patterns so let's see how we do on some of these so here are the things we tracked specifically body language patterns we spent a lot of time on the first impression those first few seconds trying to see if the research about First Impressions is actually true we looked for pitch patterns so uh what was the structure of a pitch some sharks some entrepreneurs pitch with the hero's journey like they talk about their personal Journey whereas other entrepreneurs talk about the pioneering aspect of their ideas wanted to see was there pitch patterns there and we also looked again at word usage patterns the biggest thing we found right off the bat was there was a deal breaker so if you did not know your math that broke you no matter what no matter how charismatic you were if you couldn't get P past the math problems you couldn't do it so 64% of no deals had some kind of math problem that was the biggest thing but once you got past the math problem then we had a lot more room when we talked about smiling we found that 45% of successful Entre rurs smiled while walking in that first impression smile seemed to be very important while only 21% of unsuccessful entrepreneurs did interesting note here but I think this speaks to a larger implication about smiling and about our facial expressions we take a lot of cues about someone from their facial expressions and I'm obsessed with the micro expression so we used to believe that babies were born and learned facial expressions from their mom or dad so Mom a baby would look at its Mom or Dad's face face and then mirror it or mimic it and that's how babies learned facial expressions but actually what they found is congenitally blind babies babies who've been blind since birth make the same facial expressions at the same time as seeing babies this was a huge surprise in the body language Community because we thinking well if you don't learn facial expressions but we all seem to emote in the same way where are they coming from somehow how we express is coded and that means maybe we can study it so Dr Paul ukman is the champion of This research he's an incredible researcher and he discovered something called the microexpression the micro expression is a very quick involuntary facial expression that all of us make when we feel an intense emotion so this is across genders across races he went to remote tribes in Papu Guinea showed them pictures of Americans making faces and asked them in their own language to describe the emotion and they were able to pick the same emotions As Americans did when they saw the papa ninian's face so these are tribes that had never even been exposed to Western culture had never seen television before so how do we how does this benefit us they have discovered there are seven universal facial expressions and today I want to teach you two I think I'm going to teach you four of my favorites so the very first one smiling as we talked about earlier smiling is the easiest one to talk about however most people think that smiling is just a smile happiness is just a smile right but anyone knows that you can do a fake smile right like yeah I'm so happy for you right that smile on the bottom half of the face so when you look at the difference between a real and a fake smile you see the difference so real Smiles the only true indicator of Happiness is when the smile reaches into these upper cheek muscles so this is the engagement of a real smile you have to be able to physically see it in the eyes why this is important is because when we see fake smiles that comes across as inauthentic when you hear people talk about H she just seemed a little fake to me she little seemed a little authentic what you're actually picking up on is an in congruency that someone said they were happy for you or said they were happy but weren't actually showing that genuine happiness next one's getting a little harder so happiness was the easy one we got that out of the way now I'm going to test your skills what is this face this is one of the seven universal facial expressions surpris amused curious I or fear how many people think this is surprise a lot of you how many people think this is amused how many think this is curious and how many people think this is fear so this one is the universal micro expression for fear surprise is a different micro expression that's one of the seven but this is not it this surprises most people most people guess surprise so when we talk about fear I like this micro expression I like starting with it because this face keeps us the safest in terms of danger let me explain how this works so when you look at the fear micro expression and action let's say that I'm hiking and all of a sudden I see a snake my eyelids and my eyebrows jump out of the way so I can take in as much of the environment as possible is there another snake and what's my Escape Route then my mouth opens I take in oxygen in case I have to fight flee or yell for help this face you can try it with me if you want if you raise your eyebrows up and you widen your eyes very good you'll actually begin to feel a little anxious and the reason for that is because of something called the facial feedback hypothesis so what they found is that our emotions are feedback loops we don't only feel the emotion which causes the face if we make the face it also helps us feel the emotion this is the basis of empathy when you get on a subway car and you see someone make this face you immediately make that face as well what's going on what's happening right you immediately begin to feel fear before you even know what happens that is your body's way of protecting you why I think this is so helpful in business environments not just for walking on a subway car seeing snakes is because you see fear all the time in business environments you mentioned something that that confuses someone you mention something that they didn't know you give them a piece of information that makes them uncomfortable you put them in an uncomfortable situ situation they will flash fear at you if we know what we're looking for and we're just looking for the whites of someone's eyes you will see that flicker all the time that gives you so much information the moment you spot someone's fear you have a choice you can either keep it tuck it away inside our piece of information which is always helpful or you can choose to address it and and soothe them calm them reassure them here are your choices when it comes to fear one you can give them reassurance right if something you said made them uncomfortable you're in a pitch you're trying to sell an idea and someone flickered fear at you maybe you said something that was confusing maybe you said something that they mistook as something threatening so you can go into reassurance you can also just go into more explanation since we tend to be afraid when we are confused sometimes more verbal explanation will calm the fear just having more understanding and lastly you being calm and confident also can soothe Their Fear let's go into the next one what does this face mean choices are disgust suspicion anger and sadness how many people think this is disgust how many people think this is suspicion how many people think this is anger how many people think this is sadness so this is anger and by the way if you raised your hand at suspicion I'm going to give that to you also um and the reason for that I'm going to explain in a second so this is anger anger is really easy I want you to actually try it with me so I want you to pull your eyebrows down so these two vertical lines up here very good now hold it for a second squint your lower eyes at me and Harden your lips you will begin to feel real irritated don't do it for too long okay wipe it away wipe it away wipe it away wipe it away and that is because that feeling of like that is the face that we make when we have that emotion what you're looking for in the workplace is those two vertical lines the moment you see those two vertical lines you know that that person is starting to Bubble into anger I also want you to look for the lower Lids this a very weird tip it's really protected me against some bad deals the sister emotion to anger is suspicion suspicion is a really important one to spot and suspicion happens when someone lowers their Lids tightens their lower Lids you I'm going to show you what that looks like so watch my face I'm G tighten my lower Lids right when I do that you are seeing that even though it's a very micro gesture can you guys see that in the back there if I okay a little bit it's when I tighten my lower Lids you can try that with each other other so even all the way back there they can see it that is because as humans we like to know if someone does not believe us right so even all the way in the back corners of the room you can see when I'm like I don't think so in fact I can see when you're doing that to me so when I go into further explanation it's because I'm seeing more than one suspicious face in the audience you can do this even if you're in front of a huge crowd or one-on-one so I want you to watch out for those lower Lids hardening cuz you're not done selling yet you're not done explaining yet that's one of the most interesting power tips I can give you on micro Expressions so what do you do when you see anger or suspicion one it is our Instinct as humans we cannot help it that when someone flashes anger at us we either flip into the offensive right or we go into the defensive it's either not my fault or it's all your fault so it's really important if you want to stop their anger from happening is to stay as neutral as possible don't follow that instinct right away to go into offensive or defensive try to figure out what is the source of this anger it might not actually be you it could be something else something beyond your control what is the source of that anger and then lastly trying to figure out how you can highlight cooperation if you can figure out what the source of anger is and that you can actually help them solve it or get through it or talk through it then you are not the source of the anger you're more of an ally against it so that can help you get prevent a no or a miscommunication from happening later I want to briefly go into the power personality it ties in really well people often ask me at this point in the presentation you know when else would I see these with my colleagues when am I going to see anger or fear they seem like such intense emotions in the workplace and this brings me to some of the differences our wired differences in personality so I'm fascinated by personality we have a whole chapter on it in the book because I think that it is one of the most fundamental aspects of our communication the biggest thing that I want you to think about is that a lot of our personality is not a choice specifically 35 to 50% of our personality is genetic and a lot of the rest of it is formed in our childhood so the time we get here in the workplace our personality is pretty inflexible this is a really interesting computer rendering of an introvert face versus an extrovert face which actually shows you that there's some tie between our hormones our pheromones our facial development and our wiring our personality traits by the way who which one do you think you look more like do you think that fits your personality don't worry I won't ask you to raise your hand but I always think it's interesting to see if it compares to your face so when we talk about personality science I'm not going to go into all the details today they're the only personality science that's used in Academia Myers Briggs enag dis those are great paradigms they are not back backed up in real science the only personality science that's actually used in Academia it's called the big five and that is these five personality traits extroversion conscientiousness neuroticism openness and agreeableness I want to talk about two of them today because I think that these two are the reasons why you see a lot of anger and fear and contempt in the workplace specifically let's talk about conscientiousness first so all of us rank either high or low in our personality traits so people who are high in conscientiousness it's how we focus on details a lot of Engineers are typically high in conscientiousness I just did a training at Intel very very high conscientious group they are called focused they love details steps lists schedules they like to go in order they like to have agendas low conscientious people are called flexible they much prefer Big Ideas they like to be easygoing schedules make them feel boxed in they like to have they they don't like lists lists make them feel like they can't be creative enough we are wired either be high or low how many people feel like they are high in conscientiousness they love details and lists specifics how think that they are low in conscientiousness and lastly how many of you people feel like you can flip into both if you need to okay so as adults we also develop this skill this is less we do this as kids as adults we develop this really great skill where in the right situation we can dial up or dial down our personality depending on where we need to go I actually think leveraging is incredibly important so what I want to think about for conscientiousness is a couple of things one with the people you work with are they the same as your conscientiousness level or are they different the biggest problem that I see in workplace when you see anger most it's when a really high conscientious person has a whole detailed project plan lots of phases tons of lists they bring the product to someone and they say here's this huge project and the low contentious person is like just what's the big idea here just uh give me the just couple couple couple bullet points on this and the lowc conscientious person feels overwhelmed by all these details where the high contentious person feels like their work is not being taken advantage of or not being appreciated so I want you to think about the people you work with and where they fall on the Spectrum how would they most like to be pitched second when you talk about pitching what is the best way to approach them so a high conscientious person they love agendas on calls they like scheduled meetings they like thing when people show up on time whereas low conscientious people that feels like that that's boxing them in so if you want to approach them on something really important how can you do it according to their personality traits I've always liked the Golden Rule right treat we know the golden rule is treat others way treated so I have a funny story just briefly so I asked that to an audience a few weeks ago in Silicon Valley and it was a lot of Millennials and I'm a millennial that's great but there was a lot of Millennials I said so the golden rule is and someone said I am awesome and I was like that's not the Golden Rule but good job nice try so the I prefer What's called the Platinum rule the Platinum rule is treat others the way they would want to be treated so this is how I go about my work interactions yes I know my own personality traits but I would much rather have a lens of their personality traits so I am speaking to them where they come from I'm meeting them where they at so we see a lot of anger when there's a mismatch right we see a lot of anger when you are pitching a low conscien or a high conscien person that's opposite from you and lastly which I'm going to ask for every single one of these is what could you do to respect their level of conscientiousness if you had to if you had to dial up or dial down could you the next one I want to talk about and we see a lot of emotional emotional changes is neuroticism so neuroticism gets a really bad WAP whenever I ask people are you high neurotic hey you were in the front you didn't see no one rose their raise their hands but I am neurotic with you so neuroticism always gets a really bad wrap but I want to explain something about neuroticism I am a high neurotic and there is a chemical explanation for this so researchers looked at H neurotics and they found that many of them carry a long form of a certain Gene this Gene is a serotonin transport Gene now serotonin is a really important chemical for us simply basically it kind of Keeps Us calm so let's say that you are driving to work and you almost get into a car accident someone almost hits you they don't but they almost do and you're like you have adrenaline you have cortisol you're really anxious serotonin is what comes into your body and says you're fine you're okay and then calms you down a low neurotic person transports and produces serotonin faster meaning something bad happens to them they freak out and they go it'll all be okay a high neurotic person we something bad happens to us and we are freaked out for a long time because our serotonin just takes a little bit longer to go so my lovely husband who's a lone erotic will say it's fine and to a lone neotic it's fine sounds like you're not worrying enough so I better worry enough for the both of us that's how a high neurotic feels about it so high neurotics not only produce less serotonin but they also have a greater physiological response to negative events so if you go into a high neurotics office with a small piece of bad news not a huge piece small piece of bad news you go in you present it and then you go you might have left that high neurotic in a state of panic and they might stay that way for many many hours and then you reach out to them later call them later slack them later I don't do you guys use slack at Google no maybe chat chat you chat with them later and they're still kind of salty it's because they're still recovering serotonin Wise from that bad news you dumped on their desk earlier so I want you to think about when it comes to neuroticism how can you work with your H neurotics my H neurotics in the room you are called reactive so high neurotics have much more emotional fluidity we have high moods and low moods it's because we often will catch the moves of the people that we're with and if something even slightly bad happens to us it lasts a lot longer we are also because we're such worriers because we have a greater response to negative events we try very hard to prevent those negative events from happening in the first place I think this is a good thing in fact you have to have a high and low neurotic on your team your low neurotics are resilient so low neurotics very little mood change you're almost always the same same mood mood you don't catch other people's emotions very easily you can always kind of see the bright side of things or at least the realistic side of things depending on if you're optimistic or pessimistic someone got my joke so I'm just curious how many people think that they're high neurotic love you guys okay how many people think you're a lone neurotic I love you guys too because you're my rocks how many people think that you're in the middle you kind of flip depending on where you are home or at work it is extremely important to know where you fall on the neuroticism Spectrum why you want to have both on your team your low neurotics get you through crisis they're the ones who have a nice calm head they can think real logically they're really good to have if something's going wrong but your high neurotics prevent the crisis from happening in the first place they're the ones who sit at their desk playing what if what if what if my high neurotics you know what I'm talking about we make those pros and cons lists right we think like months and months of bad events into the future just in case that could happen so it's really important that you leverage both of those strengths and you know who to call depending on where you are want to have a brainstorming session want to prevent or protect anything bad from happening call a high neurotic into the room you're having a crisis you want to stay calm and get through it call your low neurotic right those are your rocks so here are a couple specific things I want you to ask about yourself as well as the people on your team one how do they self calm so everyone self sooes in different ways some high neurotics calm by verbalizing they want to come into your office or come by your desk and just verbalize out loud forever until they're calm others completely shut down and want to process by themselves they don't want to talk to you they don't want to talk to anyone they just want to self-process the best the greatest gift I think we can give to our fellow human beings is by helping them self calm in their natural way so if you know that someone's a verbalizer and they've had a really bad day or you just had bad news the greatest gift you can give them is to go and be like hey you know let's go for a walk let's go talk this thing out whereas if you have a high neurotic who self- calms by just totally shutting down you say hey you know what I'm going to give you some space I'm going to check in later why don't you uh go take some time and let me know when you're ready to talk those are two very different responses that respect how they are wired next what do they worry about and how they worry so all neurotics have certain things that get them triggered triggers you know we have those things that really get us going it's also very helpful for both low and htics to know what do we worry about what triggers Us and how do we worry do we worry out loud do we worry by ourselves do we seek friends so do you seek camaraderie and Community when you're in your worrying stage or do you want Solitude and quiet and lastly what else can you do to respect their level of neuroticism how about this one back to micro Expressions what does this face mean confusion contempt sarcasm or boredom how many people think it's confusion how many people think it's contempt how many people think it's sarcasm how many people think it's boredom this one most people get wrong this is the universal expression for contempt most people guess boredom we actually have had I think 22,000 people take this quiz on our website and most people guess boredom this is very dangerous contempt is an extremely negative micro expression it's also the simplest it's a one-sided mouth raise you kind of see when you just look one side of your mouth up either side it's a very pessimistic scornful kind of micro expression the reason why it's important actually has to do with I think the best way to discuss this is with a research that was done by Dr John gotman so Dr John gotman is actually here in Seattle and he did a massive experiment with married couples analyzed thousands of married couples followed them for many years and he found that one of the biggest indicators of divorce was when one of the couples showed contempt towards the other in fact he can predict with 93.6% accuracy if a couple will get divorced within 30 years by watching a silent video of a couple what he is looking for is contempt contempt is powerful because it's the only emotion that doesn't go away of all the micro Expressions fear comes in a burst you self soothe anger comes all at once you calm down happiness comes then you go back to neutral but not contempt contempt if it's not addressed it sits and it festers and it grows and it grows in a disrespect and that's why at the end of a very bad marriage you get people who can't even look each other in the eye so when you see contempt especially on a colleague's face you have to address it immediately so here are the things that I like to do when I see it one figure out exactly where it's coming from so it might not be something you said it could be some self-contempt could be something that they are working through second how can you make sure that you are an ally against it as opposed to an enemy of it so whenever I see contempt on someone's face whether I'm in a negotiation or a pitch meeting or an interview I will always say are we all good does it all make sense anything you want me to review or retake you know what let's pause let's rewind for a second I'm going to go back over this to see if I see it again I give them the opportunity to verbally tell me if something's bothering them and or I will go back retrace my steps and see did it pop up yet again this kind of protects us against nasty miscommunications that could happen down the line by watching out for this expression it's a subtle way of checking in with someone emotionally it's like taking their emotional temperature so so I think that watching out for this contempt is incredibly important one last one I want to teach you before I show you another video so the choices are amused disgusted upset and embarrassed how many people think this is amused how many people think this is disgusted how many think this is upset how this is embarrassed so this is the universal expression for disgust now this is kind of a funny one so people are always like Vanessa why do I have to know discuss I don't care if they don't like the food or something smells bad but I want you to actually make this SP for me so pull your nose up very good Flash the upper whites of your teeth at me and then that is the face that you make when something smells really bad the other time that we make the disgusted face is we're trying to think of a nice way to say something that we don't like ask someone any preference-based question they're trying to think of a polite way to say no they look like this so uh what do you think of the new girl yeah yeah ah she's great yeah so that disgust can sometimes indicate that something is going on beneath the surface so last one discussed if you see it identify the problem immediately and give them permission to tell you the truth right give them permission to come out and say whatever it is that's bothering them so why facial expressions obviously I think it helps us to code hidden emotions which is a lot of information for your bag of tricks second it also helps us respond in the right way a lot of you raised your hands at the wrong emotions and that's because we're not as intuitively good at spotting micro Expressions as we would like so if you know what you're seeing it helps you respond in the right way we often confuse anger for fear but there could not be more of a different emotional internal state for that person or we can confuse contempt for boredom and those are two extremely different emotions so making sure that you're responding in the right way way I also think that reading people's micro Expressions helps you listen to someone on a totally new level we are never listened to with that kind of attention right to actually put down our phones and not only be listening with our ears but actually listening with our eyes and reading them because we're trying to figure out really what's going on for them I think is one of the most amazing ways to respond I want to end on a quick story and I think we might have time for a few questions before I do book signing famous story a Benjamin Israeli William Gladstone and this is how I like to think about interactions both of these gentlemen were running for prime minister of the UK many many years ago and it was a contentious race they were extremely close in the polls and the week before the election a journalist took both men out to lunch and everyone was following these lunches everyone wanted to see who would the journalist pick who did she who she more Charmed by at the end of these lunches and at the end of both of these lunches she wrote a big article about them and and here's what she said after sitting next to Mr Gladstone I thought he was the cleverest person in England but after sitting next to Mr Disraeli I thought I was the cleverest person in England with all of these skills I hope that you will use them to gift people amazing interactions I think when we read someone's micro expressions and we respond to them we look at their personality trait and we look at them through their lens not ours I think that is one of the best ways to make them feel truly honored I think that is the best way to interact so a couple next steps packed a lot into today try to tackle one skill at a time so if there's one thing that really resonated with you start with that and then moved down the list with the micro Expressions it's very hard to try to spot all four of the ones we learned at once pick one say this week I'm going to look for just contempt or this week I'm going to look just for anger it starts to retrain your brain because our brain is a muscle on how to spot those facial expressions second the learning does not have to stop here this work changed my life I'm a recovering awkward person I could not truly I could not read facial expressions for the life of me that just did not come naturally to me it was not until I discovered this science where I was finally able to interact with people because I was able to study them in a systematic way a science-based way so we have so much free practice in the website all seven of the micro Expressions all seven of the micro expressions are in the book any way I can help I'm here to help and lastly please use your powers for good and not evil I'm happy to take a couple questions before yes sir I love to play poker what yes okay so oh great so oh the question was I love to play poker are there any tips for poker players so I yes I'll send you an article I have an article on poker playing specifically what poker players need to look out for is definitely the micro expression so if someone hates their hand they are more likely to show contempt or disgust usually not anger usually not sadness but contempt or disgust if you don't like your hand but really what you're looking for are what are called micro messages so micro messages are more the bodies we didn't talk a lot about body language today we talked more about the face there are two buckets there are micro negatives and micro positives so when you look at a micro message these are the little signals we send off micro negatives are any kind of self-touch so the more someone is self-touching usually the lower their confidences the lower their competences anytime we self-touch on our arms it produces oxytocin which helps us stay calm so if someone has they're trying to keep themselves nice and calm they're trying to keep themselves nice and calm they're literally trying to produce oxytocin to keep them relaxed I wear oxytocin around my neck my husband was my my husband was my favorite chemical that's a scientist right I have favorite chemicals my husband's like I want to get your necklace I was like no Hearts oxytocin so um you're looking for those micro negatives or micro positives so self soothing is a micro negative micro positives are leans nods half smiles and more open body language the moment someone opens up their body roll their shoulders back have more space between themselves and the table that's when you're going to see much more those that's a subtle indication of positive feelings so what a good techniques not to give it away myself ah what are good techniques not give away myself the best thing that you would want to practice is hearing extremely bad news and not having any physical movement at all so you need to know like each of us it's true each of us have tells right so we do a lot of lie detection everyone has a basic non-verbal tell usually two to three they do every time they lie or every time they feel an intense set of nerves we have found there are 33 common red flags they these are the most common red flags that people show when they're lying so you would want to tape yourself hearing very very bad news or getting a really bad hand or losing a lot of money but it has to be real Stakes right like real Stakes can be play and see what you do like right now you're crossing your arms in front of you so I'd guess it's a blocking technique you also cross your leg over your over your knee so I would guess that that's probably a negative nonverbal I'll take you off the spot that's probably what I would guess that's what I would guess is maybe some of the some of the nonverbal tells uh that you'd want to fight with I I don't do when I play okay good good good job I won't call I was like I'm not asking a question now there's no way well I will be here afterwards signing books thank you so much for giving me your hour and thanks for having me at Google this is great