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

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Head to chime.com slash confidence. That is chime.com slash confidence. Don't risk your business on unreliable lenders. Go to nerdwallet.com slash confidence to find the funding you deserve. Fundera Inc. NMLS ID number 1240038. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to quince.com slash confidence for free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash confidence. You've seen the buzz, but let me give you the inside scoop. Live shopping on WhatNot is exploding right now. Visit whatnot.com slash sell to start selling. That's W-H-A-T-N-O-T.com slash sell. I want you to focus on the cues that get you that perfect balance of warmth and competence. When we talk about confidence, confidence is so important. I think confidence comes from purpose. I think that if you know you have an important email to send out with a really great announcement, you are confident the cues that you're using in that email are going to get you the kind of response you want. Learning cues gave me a confidence in, I know exactly what I have to do. Warmth and competence, balance it out. Warmth and competence. So I want you to know exactly what cues you're sending. I don't want you to have any more accidental inflection, and I don't want you to give away any more opportunities. Come on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Tell me, have you been enjoying these new bonus confidence classics episodes we've been dropping on you every week. We've literally hundreds of episodes for you to listen to. So these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones you may have already missed. I hope you love this one as much as I do. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet my guest today, Vanessa Van Edwards. She's a speaker, a researcher, and nationally best-selling author. Over 36 million people have seen her on YouTube and in her viral TED Talks. Her behavior research lab, Science of People, has been featured in Fast Company, USA Today, CNN, CBS, Entrepreneur Magazine, and more. Her book, Captivate the Science of Succeeding with People, has been translated into over 16 languages. For over a decade, Vanessa has been leading corporate trainings and workshops to audiences around the world, including MIT, Google, Dove, Microsoft, Comcast. She lives with her husband and daughter in Austin, Texas. Vanessa, thank you so much for being here. Oh, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Okay. I have to tell you what I get a lot of pitches on potential guests for the show. And sadly, I do not say yes very often, but I'll tell you, and I want to read exactly what your team sent me that I loved. And I know everybody listening is going to love this. This is what they said. There is an invisible language being spoken all around us that has an incredible impact on our daily lives. The language of cues. Cues are the tiny signals we send to each other 24-7 through our body language, facial expressions, word choice, and vocal inflection. Though our brain is incredibly skilled at picking up these subtle skills, far too often the superpower is left untapped. Learning how to utilize cues is critical to showcasing one's talents, ideas, and skills with confidence. And that just blew me away because, I mean, Vanessa, obviously we all think about it right now. We're talking about it. It makes sense. Oh yeah, I get it. But never during my day or week Am I ever analyzing or being thoughtful or mindful about cues that are happening around me? You know, it's so funny because I think that was me for a long time as I was existing in my world. I was trying to show up as my best self. I was trying to bond with people, trying to connect. And then what began to happen is I noticed cues that made me feel uneasy. So it started off with some of the negative cues, right? So I'd be in the meeting and I would, I felt off, but I would either catch a funk or I would be like, does she mean what she's saying? First, I started this entire process over a decade ago looking for red flags. What are the cues that I should know that indicate that something is off? Because I kept having these intuitive hits that something was off, but I didn't know what I was seeing. And the very first one, can I tell you about the very first cue I ever- Yes! Okay. So the very first cue I ever learned about, I was watching a Lance Armstrong interview. Way back in the day, he was on a televised interview and he was insisting on live television that he had never doped in his life he had never used high performance drugs okay and he was adamant about it and I remember watching this video and going something's off something's not right here it just did not feel right to me so I began to look at what he did so I I watched the recording I slowed it down I rewound it I slowed it down and there was a moment right before he said I have never taken performance enhancing drugs where he did a very specific nonverbal cue called a lip purse. A lip purse is when we match our lips together. So we press our lips together into a hard line. So I go into the research. I love research. I'm a total science geek. I run a human behavior research lab. I go into the research and the lip purse is a nonverbal cue of withholding. It's literally like your brain is saying, don't say that. Don't say anything more. Keep it in, keep it together, keep it in, keep it together. And I was like, huh, why if you were about to share your confession or share the truth, why would you be withholding something? And of course, it came out many, spoiler alert, spoiler alert, I hope no one didn't know the end of this story, but spoiler alert, he was under, had a massive undercover doping scheme. And I found that like the lip purse is one very small example that it's a signal, it's an invisible cue or a visible cue that we don't realize is happening of internal withholding. And so when you're in a meeting, when you're in a negotiation, you see your partner, your colleague, a friend, lip purse, withhold, you should stop right then and there and say, are we all good? This makes sense. Everything okay? Are we on the same page? I have found that that one cue opened up my world. That was one of 93 cues, right, in the book. That one cue was like opening a world. It's like opening a world. Because when you address that or ask the question, you're giving them the opportunity to empty their glass to you? Yes. I think there's two aspects here. I've always wanted to show up as the most empathetic, compassionate communicator that I can, which means that you're trying to hear the truth. You're trying to accept people's truth. I noticed that looking for cues actually allows me to listen on a deeper level. So if someone lit purses and I give them permission and safety and belonging to say, are we all good? Is everything okay? So much so that I'm willing to stop my agenda, whatever I'm going through, whatever I'm talking about to be like, are you good? Is there anything that I'm missing? So one is I find that people are often relieved. They're actually like really, one of the very first times I use this, I was in like a business picture presentation. There's about six or seven people around the table. And I noticed from our decision maker, a lip purse, and I was on a very specific slide. And so I said, you know, I'm just going to pause here. any questions and I actually looked right at him and I opened up my hands to him so I one of the cues you'll learn is the universal gesture of openness is we open our two hands towards someone as if they're coming in for a hug right like it's like the it's like the open arms yeah open arms literally exactly so again we get these intuitively so I open my hands to him I angle my body towards him which is called fronting and I said are we all good do you have any extra questions I just want to pause for a second and make sure you feel good about this. And he went, oh, you know, I'm a little hung up on one thing. And it was the smallest clarification on our payment plan that I could address it immediately. And he was like, oh, great, great. Yes. Yes. We're all on the same page. And I went, whoa, if I had barreled along in my presentation and not address that, he wouldn't have listened to any of the next 10 slides. He would have been hung up on that one cue. And afterwards he said to me, you know, I, I loved how responsive you were. I actually was just looking for cues beyond the verbal. So it opens the people up, but also it shows people that you really deeply care about what they have to say and what they have to share. I mean, this is brilliant. And as I listen and I'm going through all of your materials, I'm saying, I want to do this. However, here's the thing. And I'm, I'm sure you have an answer for this. Everyone's moving so fast. People are nervous going into meetings, right? The fact that you were presenting and confident enough that you were taking breaths and recognizing what's happening around you. That in and of itself, in my opinion, is a win. Most people are not doing that, right? They're barreling in, they're panicked, they're nervous, they're intimidated, whatever. So how do you advise to people or even people who might not be nervous, someone like me who's saying, I'm afraid I'm going to get busy and I'm going to forget to do this? You are so right. So the biggest hurdle we have in this science is cognitive overload. to our brain is trying to do too much. You are absolutely right. And that is what we have to fight. So here's the good news is when I started out on this journey and I was cataloging all these clues, you know, in a spreadsheet, right? And I'm like, how am I going to remember all 93 of these cues, right? So that's when I found some amazing research. This is back in 2002. So it's very well-established research. And what they looked at is what are the cues? What are the traits that are most important interaction? We can't get them all, right? We can't be open and trustworthy and leaders and powerful and capable and likable and friendly. It's too much, right? So they narrowed down. There are actually only two traits that we have to focus on to be most effective. What they found is the most highly charismatic people differ from control groups. So think about the most charismatic person you know That secret sauce what makes them charismatic what they found in the research is just two traits And that highly charismatic people rank off the charts in just these two traits which is warmth and competence Here's where it simplifies the process. I'm writing that down right now, by the way. Yes, please write that down. And by the way, if you're listening, you can write these down. So warmth, that's trust, likability, friendliness, collaboration, okay? Warm, that's that bucket. Then you have competence, power, capability, efficiency. The problem is, is that the smartest people I know, the most successful people I know, might focus all of their energy on one of those traits. They show up and they try to blow you away with their competence. They name drop. They mention their accolades. They're like data, data, term, vocab. And what do you think? Wow, they're impressive, but I don't like them. They're really powerful, but they're not very friendly. I wouldn't want to go to lunch with them. Whereas on the other hand, you have people who put all of their eggs in the warmth basket. So they just want to be likable. Like me, like me, like me. They tend to be people pleasers where they struggle with saying no. And they just want to be as friendly and likable as possible. That's great. Everyone likes them, but people interrupt them. People don't take them seriously. People don't listen to their ideas. So the key, the sweet spot, why charismatic people are so rare and we're so drawn to them is because they hit both warmth and power we like them and we trust them and we rely on them they get stuff done but we also love chatting with them so this is all i want us to focus on is i want you to focus on the cues that get you that perfect balance of warmth and competence that's it those are the only two and so if you know that you're default and so for people listening just for a moment which one sounds more like you so i have this little quiz let's just do it together you want to do it together Yes. Let's do it. Okay. So I'm going to read off 12 words and I want you to pick the three that sound most like you. Okay. So you're only allowed to pick three. Ready? Impressive, powerful, smart, trustworthy, collaborative, kind, capable, compassionate, effective, open, expert team player. Passionate, effective, open. Okay, so you picked three words, two warm words and one competence word. That's incredibly important because that's a snapshot into where you fall on the charisma scale. Are you higher in warmth or are you higher in competence? So if you listening picked two competent words and one warm word, you're a balanced, but you lean a little bit higher in competence. If you picked all warm word, it means you have to balance out with competence. You picked all competent words, and we did a balance out and warmth. So the only cues that I want you to focus on are the ones that help you hit that sweet spot. So warmth cues and competence cues based on your balance. That makes sense. It's sort of like a scale that we're trying to balance. So is this something that you truly believe you can teach people to be charismatic? 100%. I think the biggest mistake that people make is that they think that you can only be born with it, right? That if you're charismatic, you're either born with it or you're not. Actually, the most charismatic people are incredibly purposeful with their cues. I'll even give you, and this happens in two ways. So for cues, there's two sides of cues. There's the decoding and the encoding. I don't want to get too science-y, but I love that. I can't help, but I love the science. So with cues, first we decode. We read other people's cues. And the second thing is we encode. We send cues to others. And if you listen to highly charismatic people talk about how they communicate, you'll notice they are always purposefully dialing up or looking for cues that will help them. So for example, one of the stories I love is Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, famous author, TV show host. He says that he's highly competent, right? He's an astrophysicist, so he's very obsessed with the facts. But he realizes if he's too competent, people tune him out. It's too much science. So what he does, he has a test. He's had, by the way, multiple bestselling books. He says, when I'm trying to decide what I'm going to put in a book, I go on an airplane, I sit next to someone, and I begin to tell them about my work. Every time that they eyebrow raise, so raise their eyebrows up, he says that I put in a book. Everything they don't eyebrow raise, I skip from the book. In other words, he's even using cues to tell him what's the warmth that he's missing. What are the warm, interesting things that he can add? So an eyebrow raise is another warmth cue that you can show to increase collaboration and trust, but also that you can look for to see if someone's interested or engaged. Oh, that's so interesting. And thank goodness that guy didn't sit next to me on a flight because I purposely put earbuds in my ear because I can't stand talking to people on airplanes. That would have been a wasted little airplane ride for him. I think he would have seen you as a challenge. I think he would have liked it. Meet a different guest each week. Confidence clear. 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Optional services and products may have fees or charges. See Chime.com slash fees info. Advertised annual percentage yield with Chime Plus status only. Otherwise, 1.00% APY applies. No min balance required. Chime card on time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See Chime.com for details and applicable terms. I ask you to try to find your passion. You know what's so interesting? When you were talking about, you know, the warmth and the competence and being self-aware as to which way am I leaning more and how could I potentially level that off or be more equal on the scale. This is so crazy. this is what popped into my mind immediately. Fact. I was fired four years ago for my job. I was a chief revenue officer. Everyone listening already knows this, but I'm sharing with you in case you don't know. And she, the woman that fired me was previously the CFO. She became the CEO. And when she became CEO fired me immediately, that's just backstory. But she was incredibly leaning towards the confidence side, like very articulate, many awards, you know, very much a numbers person, always rattling off numbers that blew people away, you know, in any moment in time, she had zero big egg on the warmth scale. However, and I worked with her for 14 years and woman was complete antithesis of me. And what was interesting is I remember the last two years and you'll like this, you'll tell me Heather, I coached her the last two years I worked with her. She started showing up differently. So weird. Cause I knew her, well, you know, when you know someone, you know who they really are. So I knew this is not real. This is just my opinion, but nobody else knew that was not in the C-suite with her that didn't spend a lot of time with her. Other people would say, gosh, she seems just fantastic lately. You know, they'd be saying really positive things about her. She's really changed a lot as she's gotten older or she's become a mother or whatever reasons they would create storyline they'd create about her. Yeah. And I started thinking it from a standpoint that I see something very different about this person. I'm very confused. I don't know what's going on. However, I see it's landing. It's landing with the team. It's landing with people. It's working. So, you know, to your point that this can be taught and it's not ingrained from day one, you're 100% right. I've seen it. However, it's very weird to see it happen to someone when they're not disclosing it openly to you. Like, hey, I'm working on my warmth. I'm trying to come, you know, like that would have been better for me, the kind of person I am. I would have preferred to have heard that. So that's exactly right. I think that as you begin to change your cues, I mean, you're kind of doing a body language makeover in a sense, by the way, body language is only a half book. We also can talk about imagery and verbal and colors. I think it's so important to broadcast this, right? To say, you know, sometimes I can come across a little cold. You know, I got in my last feedback review or my team told me I was a little bit intimidating. That's not okay with me. It's really important to me that you feel safe, that you feel connected. So starting at the beginning of the year, beginning of the month, I'm going to be working on my warmth, my openness. I want your feedback. I would love to hear from you, but I'm going to really try dial up because I want you to feel good. That is so powerful because two things happen. One is it has you state your goal, gives you permission to reset, right? Like sometimes we need a presence reset. Like sometimes we just know that we're like a funk with someone or like we've had some difficult relationships and we need a reset. So that sort of is a soft reset, soft restart on the button. The second thing is verbal. So some fascinating science that we don't realize is the words that we use change people's perceptions of us as well as their actions and behavior so for example in one study i love this study i think this is like mind-blowing are you ready this like i i literally read it three times i was like how okay a researcher named brian wansing told participants to come into his lab and eat a bowl of yogurt the catch was is it was all in the dark so they come into the lab it's completely dark He hands him a bowl of yogurt. He has to eat the yogurt and he says, would you please rate the yogurt on its strawberry flavor? So imagine for a second you in the dark you eating a bowl of yogurt and you trying to decide how strawberry is this flavor 59 of participants rated the yogurt as having a nice strawberry flavor But there was a second trick There always is The yogurt was actually chocolate. Strawberry and chocolate taste totally different. It wasn't like strawberry and raspberry. What happened was, and this is one of many experiments that shows the power of our verbal priming, when Brian Wansink asked participants to look for the flavor of strawberry and search the flavor of strawberry, the brain heard strawberry, the mouth tasted strawberry, and then therefore they felt that it was very strawberry. We are constantly telling people what yogurt they're eating. In other words, we say, hey team, this is how every team call starts. Hey everyone, we have some company updates to go over and I'll review everything. Let's wait for people to get on and we'll just get started in a few. You're basically telling people, go to sleep. This meeting is going to be like every other meeting you've been to, the tone of voice I use. And also I used words that didn't mean anything, right? I said, let's hop on a call. Let's review. We'll get started in a few. What research has found is that when people hear words like collaborate, their brain actually begins to prepare to collaborate in their prefrontal cortex, and they are more likely to be collaborative. So if you tell people, you know what, it's so important to me that you feel connected, that you feel that you can trust me, that you feel that we could be open. So I am working on a little presence reset. I'm going to work on my collaboration. I'm going to work on my trust and openness. I want you to feel safe to tell me anything. Just telling people those words changes how their brain is working. You are actually setting them up to be more open, trusting, warm, and connected with you, which is incredible. I think we throw away these verbal opportunities. Yeah, that's mind blowing. It makes perfect sense. And I'm a big fan of we're teaching people how to treat us, you know, our word choices, you know, we are showing people how to respect us or not respect us either way, which is, you know, similar to what you're saying. But it makes perfect sense. But wow, that's incredibly powerful. And what a great hack you just gave everyone to use to make it even more practical. So I think this makes sense to us, right? Like intuitively, a lot of these cues were like, Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Here's a really practical a way to think about it. I want you to do an email audit. I want you to open up your sent email folder. And I want you to open five important emails that you've sent out in the last few days. So important emails to whoever, your colleagues, teams, customers. And I want you to look at the first 10 words that you used. What we don't realize is that we are throwing away our words with words that don't mean anything, or we're jumping right into agenda, which is okay when we're rushed, but you're actually taking away cues that people need to be successful. And here's the kicker. In your email audits and those important emails, I want you to count how many warm words you're using and how many competent words you're using. We found in our lab, we can predict exactly where people fall on the charisma scale based on the email audit I just asked you to do. So we can see based on their emails exactly how their colleagues would rate them. And that is because we are constantly looking for these warmth and confidence cues. So if you open up an email, highly competent words trigger productivity and efficiency. Highly warm words trigger trust and collaboration. And by the way, exclamation points are highly warm. Emojis are highly warm. Of course they are. Right. So we have people who will say to us, you know, Vanessa, I don't know why people are not taking me seriously. I don't know why I can't raise my rates. I don't know why that I can't charge people more. I don't know why people feel like they are always showing up late. They're not responding to emails. We open up their email and I'll count 15 warm words and one competent word. Hey girl! Exclamation point. It was so fun hanging out last night. Fun. Hang out. I would love to collaborate on this new project coming up. If you can get back to me, it would be so wonderful. So wonderful! Exclamation point. Smiley face. So we're already at like eight words. And it's a very, very warm email, but it does not trigger the competent part of our brain that goes, I should get back to her. I want to pay her rate. I want to make sure that I take her seriously. So the next push is, okay, you do that email audit. I want you to see, is it warm or competent or nothing at all, right? So it'll either be totally sterile. So no, one more competent words or one or the other. And then how can you purposefully add verbal cues that set you up for success so that the important emails, not every email, no one has time for that, but in the important emails, you have a perfect balance of warmth and competence. In my slide decks, my presentations on our website, even on my Instagram. For every warm photo, I have a confident photo. For every confident photo, I have a warm photo. Because we saw our engagement shot up when we were hitting that balance. That's unbelievable, but yet makes perfect sense. And of course, I'm thinking of myself, and I just recently won a big recognition about speaking. And so I purposely and intentionally reached out to all my past clients, people who are pending in the queue, you know, just to like try to push people over. And I'm thinking of the email and I, because I didn't want to come across to, I'm the greatest thing in the entire world. I definitely went way more warm, warm, warm, exclamation point, exclamation point. And I'll tell you, Vanessa, I did not get anywhere near the kind of responses I thought I would get back. And now I'm thinking, I don't think I was competent enough in the, in the email. Yep, exactly. And I think that that's, you just made the classic mistake that smart people make is we don't know how to be purposeful. When we talk about confidence, right? Like confidence is so important. I think confidence comes from purpose. I think that if you know you have an important email to send out with a really great announcement, you are confident the cues that you're using in that email are going to get you the kind of response you want. I think that that's where confidence comes from. I joke that I'm a recovering awkward person. I get very socially anxious. I always doubt myself. I used to doubt the kind of emails I wrote. I used to doubt the way that I stood, what I did with my hands. learning cues gave me a confidence in, I know exactly what I have to do. Warmth and competence, balance it out, warm the competence. And that's been my backdoor into competence. So the reason I share this is when you're sitting down to write an important email where your heart is like, you know, those emails where you're just like, Oh, like you're pitter pattering. You're asking for that raise, or you're checking in on your boss or you're sending that email with boundaries. I want to take that anxiety way by saying, all you have to do is get warmth and competence. That's it. If you can balance it out, it's going to be more effective email. And so I'm hoping that we can take down some of the anxiety and get confidence in a different way. So tell me a little bit about your new book, Q's, and how people are going to feel after they read the book to apply some of this stuff back to their life. Yes. So I'm hoping this is going to give everyone a sort of social blueprint, right? I think that we have all these goals in our life. And a lot of the times they're, you know, career goals or family goals. And then when it comes to like the actual action steps behind those, especially the social action steps, So let's say that one of your goals, what's a common goal for some of your listeners that I can like play with two or three common ones, a common goal. A lot of people want to leave their day job. They're not happy with their day job and they want to make a leap. Okay. So let's say that you want to leave your day job and that requires doing informational interviews with influencers. And that requires setting up some side hustle things by maybe getting a partner. You can break that into tactical things, right? you could say, okay, I have to figure out how much inventory is. I have to do a marketing plan. I have to do a revenue sheet. But there's also a lot of soft skills involved in that. For example, how can you leave your job on a high so that you can leave on good terms with your boss? That requires a lot of really good, powerful connecting and conversations in the three or four months leading up to your quitting. If you want to reach out to a new partner, how do you make sure that they want to work with you? So yes, it's about setting up the coffee meeting, but it's also, okay, if I want this new partner to take me seriously, I want them to respect me. I have to make sure that I have a warm and competent opener. It's like, how do you even open the email to them? Once you actually get them at the coffee date, what kind of questions should you be asking that hit that balance of warmth and competence? So for example, a lot of people will start a coffee date to bond with, so how's it been going? Man, those numbers, right? Those COVID numbers, they are rough. And you end up on this like awkward downward spiral. And all of a sudden you're like, well, The reason I wanted to talk to you today is, and you haven't built up any of this rapport yet. So one of the things that I want you to think about is how can you use these skills to build rapport with people that actually work with you? So, for example, in conversation, warm, competent conversation starters are things like, instead of how are you, in fact, try never to ask how are you, instead of ask, working on anything exciting these days? That's like my secret conversation starter because it's both warm and competent. Working, so productive people, exciting, warm, trustworthy, fun. So working on anything exciting these days, you'll actually see people be like, oh, huh, you know, I am working on something exciting. So you're actually beginning to, from the very start of the conversation, those first 10 words of your opener are beginning to open their minds to trying something a little bit different. 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Visit northwestregisteredagent.com slash confidence free and start using free resources to build something amazing. amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com slash confidence free. Wow, that is really very powerful. And I love that you give these specific examples. I mean, it's not something that we're strategically thinking about every day, yet this can really be a game changer for people? I think they're hidden opportunities, right? Like when my team and I were thinking about how to reach out. So I'm so happy that that reach out worked a lot, this hidden language. The other aspect of that is that there's all these opportunities that are just waiting for us. What an amazing missed opportunity to just, instead of saying, how are you or how's it been going or how's the fam, but just slightly change it to working on anything exciting was the highlight of your week. So what have your goals been this year? Those are the questions that begin to deepen and make you more memorable and make you talk about things that are more women confident. Those are just opportunities that are like easy to grab once we know how to grab them. Gosh, I love that. And I'm, I'm totally going to rip and run with, I've been taking notes the whole time that we're sitting here talking. So to me, you're bringing me a lot of value. That's what I want you to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know you talked about, there's more two cues than just a word choice. For example, where you sit in a meeting, there's actually better decisions to be made there? Yes. So we don't realize that there's cues in so many aspects. So obviously we talked about body language, the lip purse. We talked a lot about verbal kind of our openers. There's also, you know, spatial cues, relational cues. There's vocal cues you could talk about. I love the seating ones. So I was looking at the rules of space. So across cultures and genders and races, we have rules of space. So when we're closer with someone, we like someone, we want to get closer. And what researchers found that there's actually four different space zones. Those are the personal zone, the intimate zone, the social zone, and the public zone. What happens in our interactions is we're not aware that we're doing these. We're subconsciously going through them. But we know, have you ever talked to a close talker where someone gets really close to your face? I don't like that. Yeah. Right. We don't like it because that person has gone into our intimate zone too quickly. So what I realized was that when we're sitting around a boardroom table or a conference table, your spatial choice, there's actually research that's done on this, makes a huge difference for your effectiveness. And that depends on your goals in the meeting. So if you have a goal in a presentation or a meeting where you want to be on the bosses or the VIP or the decision makers front of mind, you actually want to be in their direct eye line, their direct sight eye line. Being the closest to them will help you whisper or talk to them. But if you want to be front of mind or top of mind, you're actually better off picking seats that are in their direct line of sight. They also found that the seat that faces the door actually typically is the power player seat. And that's because they can get everyone's first impression as they walk into a room. So if you want to be the power player, you might consider taking the seat that faces the door or that sees the door. So there's all kinds of really interesting rules that we can think about, you know, when choosing our seat. Again, it's an opportunity that we get, right? It's like one that we haven't noticed our whole life, but actually it's just waiting for us to pick up and try. I always thought, you know, if I was with my old boss and I wanted to be, you know, I wanted my agenda to win in the end, I would sit right next to him. I never thought sit across from the table so he has to look at you the entire time. And that never crossed my mind. Yeah. And that's a goal alignment, right? Like a lot of these cues, it's like, okay, what are your goals? Is your goals to be coming across as competent and efficient and capable? You have to get stuff done today. Okay. Competent. Dial up the competence. Is your goal all about collaboration, trust, connections, less about getting things done? Okay, dial up the warm. Is your goal in a meeting to really get in with the decision maker? Sit across from them. Is your goal to not be seen and to let someone else take the stage? Sit on the side. Is your goal to be whispering in their ear occasionally, but not be in front of mind? Sit right next to them, right? Like there's no right or wrong cue. It's all based on your goals. Wow. Yeah, that's really, really powerful. So I have to selfishly ask a question. So I've been told that, which I can't believe because I don't see myself like this. And I'm sure you must hear this from a lot of people that you deal with and research you do. I've been told I can be very intimidating in a meeting or in a presentation. And I don't see my, I think I'm the biggest knucklehead out there and I'm hilarious and that I should be dialing up on the competent site. You know, that's just my opinion. However, I get feedback sometimes from people who I know are trying to help me give me this feedback. What suggestions do you make to someone like that who doesn't really see themselves as having that problem? Oh man, I would say that you're in the boat with most people. What's crazy about that research that I brought up from 2002 that's been repeated by a number of different academic institutions is that while warmth and competence makes up 82% of our dozens of people, so a huge majority of our dozens of people, most of us are terrible at assessing our own warmth and competence. I bet. We are terrible at assessing it. So here's the first thing is I have a free little quiz you can take to assess your warmth and competence. It's sciencepeople.com slash charisma. It's free. It's up to take as many times as you want because of this exact problem is it's hard to step back and say, well, I think I come across as friendly, likable, but I don't know. So first I want you to take the quiz. Here's the harder one. I want you to send that quiz to a colleague, a partner, and someone important to you and ask them to take it as you. Wow. I bet that is very telling. It's horrifying and very telling and extremely helpful because A, first you start with yours. okay, great. I took this. It's 10 questions. It's very simple. You take it. You're like, great. I see that I, my, my, how I see myself is highly warm. You send it to a colleague, a friend and a VIP, and you get to see how they see you, which is incredibly helpful to know how accurate am I and how I'm coming across. I think I'm coming across one way, but I actually want to come across a different way. And it also might be different based on family versus colleagues. And that's good, right? Like we want to be warmer with our family. I want to be with my toddler. I'm very warm with her, right? I don't need to be competent until I'm telling her the rules. And I, as a parent, use these specifically with my daughter and my family. When I need her to be safe, or I need her to listen to the rules, I am highly competent. And she knows. She knows when mom was competent, right? She knows when I mean what I mean. But every other time I'm warm. And so if you wanted her to see you, you're trying to get her direction. you're thinking about the inflection of your voice, the way you're standing and your word choice. And my eye contact and my gestures. For example, for competence, volume is a word we talk about in the whole vocal section of the book. Volume is a really important part of our power. Most people think that, oh, I just have to be louder to be heard. Actually, that's not true. So when I want to be competent with my daughter, I speak really low. And I say, Sienna, it's not okay for you to do that. That is not okay. What we need to do instead of me to pack up our bags and we need to go home. Okay. But like that is much more serious than that was a lower volume. So even using our volume, using our vocal inflection, another example is so a warm inflection is when we go up at the end of our sentences. So if I were to say, um, my name is Vanessa, my name is Vanessa. I go up at the end of my sentence. That is a highly warm introduction. And you'll, I can usually predict by just listening to how someone says hello in their voicemail if they're more competent. So a highly warm voicemail sounds like this. Hi, this is Vanessa. I can't get back to you. Leave a message after the tone. It drives me crazy, but so many people do that. Okay. So those people, and go listen to your voicemail, are usually highly warm, and I can predict usually that they're highly warm. Highly competent folks use a different inflection. They use a downward inflection, actually. If you want to hear a really good downward inflection, former President Barack Obama would sling his words down. That's a downward inflection. It's very high incompetence. So downward inflection would sound like this. Hi, I'm Vanessa. I'm not here right now. We have a message after the beep. So I go down in my sentences. That is very highly competent. So even the way that you use your inflection to your children on your voicemail at the start of a meeting, if you're at the start of a meeting, you say, Hey, everyone, I just want to get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. If people are not going to listen, it's going to be there because it's not competent. If you say, everyone let's get started let's get started let's get started you're like whoa it's serious right so even I'm the same person and both sound like me but very different kinds of meaning very different and you can you can utilize either one strategically based upon the environment that you're in 100 I want you in control I think confidence comes from control and purpose so I want you to know exactly what cues you're sending I don't want you to have any more accidental inflection. And I don't want you to give away any more opportunities. This book is brilliant. Your work is brilliant. Tell us where can everyone find cues and how can everyone find you? Oh, first of all, thank you. That's so kind. Cues is available wherever books are sold. It's also already picked up internationally. So Amazon, your local bookstore. And I also read the Audible book. If you want to hear me do the inflections and the whole vocal chapter that took a while on Audible, I do the whole Audible book as well. Oh my gosh. And tell us about your website that everybody can go to for the quiz? Oh yes, of course. So scienceofpeople.com. So if you want to take the free charisma quiz as many times as you want, it's scienceofpeople.com slash charisma. If you also want to check out some of these phrases, the words I used, you can go to the words I used, you can go to scienceofpeople.com slash podcast and download. We have 20 trust warmth phrases and 20 competent phrases. If you're like, I just don't know how to do this, that will help you with your email audit. This is unbelievable. So unique. Love the work you're doing, Vanessa. Thank you so much for being here today. Oh, thank you so much for having me. Thanks everyone for listening and go be warm and competent. Be your best self. Absolutely guys. Until next week, keep creating confidence. And if I was you, I would grab cues on the hurry. Until next week, see you then. Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen. No one succeeds alone. You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it. I'm on this journey with me.