Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #254 How To Read Body Language and Become More Confident with Vanessa Van Edwards

Episode Date: April 5, 2022

Today’s conversation is all about cues - the small signals that we give and pick up that have a big impact. The head tilt, the smile, the open-palmed gesture – they all carry meaning that people intuitively understand. And if you’ve ever felt misunderstood, overlooked or underestimated, you can change that by using the right cues. Everything from the way you walk into a room to how you stand, your choice of words to your intonation, can affect how people perceive you. My guest today is Vanessa Van Edwards, an expert in body language, facial expressions, and nonverbal communication. Her latest book Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication is packed with practical tools and exercises to help you understand more about others – and communicate your own ideas with warmth and competence. Vanessa likes to introduce herself as a ‘recovering awkward person’. She certainly doesn’t come across as awkward anymore, in fact she exudes confidence and charisma. And during our conversation, she reveals some of the tricks that helped transform her. She begins by explaining that confidence and charisma are unique to each of us. You don’t have to be an extrovert to have confidence in what you do and say. She defines charisma as the combination of competence and warmth and says these two components are essential for trust. Research has shown that when people assess one another, what they’re looking to find out is, ‘Can I trust you?’ followed by, ‘Can I rely on you?’ By identifying and using the cues that convey trust and reliability, we can instantly come across as more charismatic and likeable. But it’s not just about how we want to come across. Understanding the cues other people are giving us can help us deal with conflict and build better connections. Arguably, there is nothing more important because at our core we all want to belong, to understand and be understood. I’m convinced that mastering cues can help us improve communication and nourish connection in all areas of our lives, from business to romance. This was such a fun and uplifting conversation that is full of practical tips that you can use immediately. I hope you enjoy listening.  Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.blublox.com/livemore https://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore https://www.leafyard.com/livemore Order Dr Chatterjee's new book Happy Mind, Happy Life: UK version: https://amzn.to/304opgJ, US & Canada version: https://amzn.to/3DRxjgp Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/254 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified health care provider with any questions you have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

We've spent way too many years hiding anxiety or hiding what we're awkward about. If we can broaden our definition of what confidence means, we have more permission to feel authentically ourselves. Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More. Today's conversation is all about cues. These small signals that we give to others and pick up from others that have a big impact. This could be anything from a head tilt, a smile, open palms or closed palms. All of these things carry meaning that people intuitively understand.

And if you've ever felt misunderstood, overlooked, or underestimated, you can actually change that by using the right cues. Everything from the way you walk into a room to how you stand, your choice of words, your intonation can affect how people perceive you. And what's really interesting for me is that if we want to make a good impression or come across in a certain way in our interactions with others, we spend a lot of time thinking about what to say, but not always how to say it. Yet, as today's guest explains, as much as 90% of our communication may be non-verbal and learning how to read and use non-verbal cues can turn you into a master communicator. My guest this week

is Vanessa Van Edwards. She's an expert in body language, facial expressions, and non-verbal communication. And her latest book, Cues, Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication, is packed with practical tools and exercises to help you understand more about others and communicate your own ideas with warmth and competence. Now, Vanessa calls herself a recovering awkward person. She certainly does not come across like that. In fact, she is someone who exudes confidence and charisma. During our conversation, she reveals some of the tricks that helped to transform her. She begins by explaining that confidence and charisma are actually unique to each and every

single one of us and that you don't have to be an extrovert to have confidence in what you do and say. She also defines charisma as the combination of competence and warmth and says that these two components are essential for trust. In our conversation, Vanessa explains that when people assess one another, what they're looking to find out is the answer to two key questions. Can I trust you? And then can I rely on you? And by identifying and using the cues that convey trust and reliability, we can instantly come across as more charismatic and likable. Now, this is not just reliability, we can instantly come across as more charismatic and likable. Now, this is not just about how we want to come across. Recognizing the cues

other people are giving us can help us deal with conflict and build better connections. And arguably, there's nothing more important because at our core, we all want to belong, to understand, and be understood. I'm convinced that mastering cues can help us improve communication and nourish connection in all areas of our lives, in our personal lives, social life, and our work life. This really was a fun and uplifting conversation that is full of practical tips that you can use immediately. I hope you enjoy listening. And now, my conversation with Vanessa Van Edwards. One thing that I think many people struggle with these days is confidence. And I wonder if you could share some of the psychological tricks that we can all use to, I guess, feel more confident,

but also come across as more confident to other people. Yeah. And it's actually a cycle, right? Like the more confident we feel, the better we come across. And even like if we start on the outside, it also works in. I know this quite personally, as I'm a recovering awkward person. So confidence always alluded me for many, many years. I have a problem where I'm a social overthinker. I just tend to get in my head about cues. And I didn't realize that what was taking away my confidence was that I was misinterpreting a lot of cues. So I would assume that someone's neutral cue was negative. And that was, it just ruined all of my confidence. And so the very first thing I want people to think about is what is your perfect flavor of confidence? I think that when we think

about people skills, we often idolize the extrovert, right? We think we all have to fake it till you make it. You have to fake being outgoing. You have to pretend to be an extrovert. I do not believe you have to be an extrovert to be confident or to be likable. I mean, that's very powerful because I think a lot of people will probably say, Vanessa, look, I see people around me all the time who they're confident, right? I can feel it when they come in the room, yet that's not me. Like, I can't be that. And I guess what I hear you saying there is that it's not about us necessarily being that other person. It's trying to figure out what's our unique approach, or as you say, flavor to that confidence. Yes. So for example, I think, and this is a really big myth that we think that the life of the party,

the bubbly extrovert, they're the people who are confident and likable. And yes, that is one flavor of charisma. But if you think about the most charismatic person you know, or the most confident person you know, just think about that person for a second, think about a couple of people you can think of in your mind. We also have the quiet, powerful introvert who's very confident. We also have a nurturing, empathetic healer who's also very confident. And so I think that if we can broaden our definition of what confidence means, we have more permission to feel authentically ourselves. And here's the biggest problem. We can feel inauthentic confidence.

And this is actually proven. So Dr. Barbara Wild, she had a very simple experiment. She took photos of people. In one photo, she had them authentically smiling. They were actually thinking about something that made them happy. Their puppy, their dog, their child, right? They were thinking it was going to actually make them happy. In the second picture, she had the same people doing a fake smile.

So not thinking about anything that made them happy, just smiling on the bottom half of their face. By the way, the difference between a real smile and a fake smile is that these upper cheek muscles are engaged. So if you smile all the way up into your eyes, those crow's feet, that means it's a real smile versus just a smile. The bottom half of the face is a fake smile. So she took these photos and she had participants look at the photos one at a time. She found that when people looked at the real smile, they caught the smile. They actually felt happier and more confident in themselves. When they looked at the fake smile, they had no mood change, no behavior change at all. In other

words, when you are truly confident, you actually infect other people positively. When you are faking it, when you're trying to pretend to be an extrovert, you are less memorable, you are literally less impactful. Over the last few years, because of the job I do with the public, I've had to do lots of photo shoots for books or whatever might be coming out. And something photographers will often say is smile with your eyes. Right. And so I guess they must have that experience and also go, listen, if you're trying to fake it, because we're saying smile now, it's like, actually, I can tell on that image, no smile with your eyes. And I guess that just bolsters out what you're showing from your science and

you've written about in your wonderful new book. I think that really good photographers, they know this smile into your eyes because they know that that's the photo that's going to feel more authentic, more like you. A couple of little things I want you to think about for profile photos, or if you're doing photo shoots. So first is either really big smile, right? Think about something that truly makes you happy or neutral, but you don't always have to smile. You can also be neutral. There's some very confident, powerful folks who have no smiles in their photos. And you also want to avoid asymmetry. So the other thing that research found is there's a universal contempt micro-expression. And so this is a micro-expression of scorn or disdain. It's very simple. You can

even try it with me. It's a one-sided mouth raise. So if you raise up one side of your mouth, kind of into the smirk, you actually begin to feel like, huh, I know more. I know better. It's a really weird cycle. There's something called the facial feedback hypothesis, which is not only do our emotions cause our face, our face causes our emotions. So also be sure, go look at your LinkedIn profile, your dating profile pictures, make sure you are not accidentally showing an asymmetrical smile. That's actually a sign of negativity. It's incredible. I was trying to do that as you asked me to. What do you feel? You just feel your mood change. You don't feel as,

I didn't feel as engaged. I didn't feel as happy, as excited to talk to you as I really am. I felt, I don't know, a bit flat, I guess, is what I felt. Okay. So it's, what's really great is, let me just dive into contempt for a second, because by the way, now that you know it, you'll see it everywhere. You'll start to see this smirk everywhere. And remember, it's a sign of disdain or better than. So first is we did a massive facial expression survey. We had over 25,000 people try to guess what facial expressions meant. Contempt was the one that most people got wrong. The majority of people thought it was ambivalence or boredom. So it's, we don't even realize how negative it is. And Dr. John Gottman, he's a marriage and family counselor out of Seattle.

He did a massive marriage experiment. I'm sure you've talked about this in your show before. And he looked at married couples looking for patterns. He wanted to know, can you predict if a couple will get divorced or stay together? So he brought the couples into his lab and he tested them on everything he could think of. You know, he gave them IQ tests and personality tests. He observed them. He interviewed them. He looked at their histories and he followed those couples for 30 years. So a massive amount of data. He found that the one predictor of divorce was that in the intake interview, if one member of the couple showed contempt towards the other, there was with 93.6% accuracy, they would get divorced. John Gottman can watch a silent video of a couple.

And if he sees that smirk, that one-sided mouth raise, he can predict with 93% accuracy that couple will get divorced. Why? Just as you mentioned, you said, I felt kind of flat. I felt like all of a sudden not excited. Contempt is one of the only emotions that doesn't go away. Fear comes in a burst, you self-soothe. Anger comes in a burst, you calm down. Happiness comes all at once, you go back to neutral. But contempt or disrespect, it grows and it festers if it's not addressed. And it grows and it breeds into hatred. And so I think that why some of these cues are so powerful is if we can spot a cue at its infancy and address it,

we then prevent any kind of negative growth out of that hidden emotion. I think the eye roll as well is associated with contempt. Is that right? So the eye roll is funny. It's a negative behavior and it's a little softer than a scorn, right? So if we roll our eyes, sometimes it can be that you're trying to process something. For example, humans tend to look away when they're trying to process something. So if you've said something that someone doesn't like, or they're trying to process, they might eye roll to be like, I don't know about that. An eye roll paired with a scoff though, pretty contemptuous, right? It doesn't, that's a really negative one. So let's say someone hears this, Vanessa,

right? They're listening or they're watching. And this evening, they see that their partner is exhibiting that cue to them, right? One part of them potentially could be really scared thinking, wait a minute, hold on a minute. I just heard that that's going to lead to a divorce. Or could it be that with that knowledge, we can actually address it and do something about it? Help me understand that. Yes. Every time you spot a cue, it's an opportunity. So if you see that on your partner's face, think of that as an opportunity. That is information, super valuable information for you to learn more, find out more, dig deeper. So you have a couple different options when you spot a cue.

So there are 96 different cues, right? There's a lot of cues that we're getting sent all the time. Contempt is one of the more powerful ones. You have a choice with contempt or any negative cue or red flag. One, you can say, hmm, I noticed that contempt around this topic or this idea. I wonder what was going on there. I'm going to keep that in the back of my head and do more research. That's just information for you. How wonderful to have more valuable information. Second, you can absolutely address it. So everyone in my life speaks cues, right? I'll be like,

hey, I saw contempt. Is everything okay? I will literally say that. Or if you want to be more, you know, more soft about it, you can say, does that make sense? Are we all good? How are you feeling? You okay? Does that work with you? Right? So even having a tiny moment of acknowledgement, I think is a gift.

And this is how I like to think about reading people is we are so in need of belonging. We so want to be with people who truly, deeply understand us. And how amazing for you to go into an interaction with your partner or your best friend or your colleague and say, I respect you so much that I don't want to just listen to you with my ears. I don't want to hear the words. I want to listen to you with my entire body. I want to look at your cues, hear your voice, listen to your words, and I want to deeply understand you. So I think that the intention here is that every time you spot a cue, it's an opportunity to learn more, learn more about them, learn more about yourself, learn more about the relationship. Yeah, it's really powerful that because as you described that, I was thinking, let's say I'm in a work meeting and I'm describing something and you notice this,

then that's good information. You're like, ah, maybe this isn't landing as I thought it would. Maybe there's a problem here. Maybe I need to just keep that in the back of my mind and come back to it later. Whereas if you hadn't noticed that, you might think, oh, everyone's got this, I can just move on. So I can see the relevance there. I can see the relevance in a personal relationship where someone is saying with their words, hey, yeah, I got it, everything's fine, yet you're noticing something else. And I think that speaks to a wider point that as I immerse myself in your work, which I have been doing, which I love, and your new book, you talk about cues and you put them into these four categories, don't you? Non-verbal, vocal, verbal, and imagery. And the first thing that came into my head,

because it's something I think a lot about as a doctor, is that most communication is not really with our words, is it? It's that nonverbal communication. So maybe can you speak to nonverbal communication a little bit? Explain how important is it? How much of communication is that and why our words don't always tell the full story? Yes. Okay. So you said it exactly right. That when we think about communicating with others, we tend to put all of our energy in the verbal basket, right? We think, I want to have the perfect answer, or of our energy in the verbal basket, right? We think I want to have the perfect answer, or I want to script the perfect presentation, or I want to answer the perfect way. And words is only one portion. Nonverbal is about, and it's really hard to

measure this exactly, but about 65 to 90% of our communication is nonverbal. And by the way, that's a huge range, but it's still the majority, right? So if you only focus on your words, it's like showing up with 40% of your ability. It's like leaving 65% of your abilities at home. And so what I want to think about is, and by the way, let's put this into practical terms. So when I say, oh, nonverbal matters, here's what I mean. If I were to show up to a business meeting and say, hey, everyone, so happy to be here. You would know you can't even necessarily see what my face is doing or my or my body. Even if you just were to close your eyes and listen, you'd be like, she doesn't sound so happy to be here.

So you mentioned your work as a doctor. And this was one study that completely shocked me when I was doing this research. This was a research that was done with surgeons and they wanted to know how do we judge doctors' competence? Doctors are a beautiful case study because we know doctors are smart. We know they're high in competence. And these researchers wanted to know, does warmth matter? Like what do we get from meeting a doctor for the first time? So what they did is they took one channel, which is vocal. So we have nonverbal, vocal, verbal, and imagery. Vocal is sort of a forgotten aspect. Nonverbals are postures, our gestures, our face. Vocals are pace, our volume, our cadence. What they found was is they

had doctors record 10 second voice tone clips. So said their name, their specialty, where they worked. So it sounded like this. My name is Dr. Edwards. I specialize in oncology and I work at Children's Presbyterian Hospital. They took these clips and they warbled the words so you could hear the pace, the cadence, the volume, but not the actual words being said. Then they asked participants to rate these clips on warmth and competence, which hopefully we'll talk about in a little bit for charisma. Warmth and competence are essential for our trusting people. They found that the doctors who had the lowest ratings in warmth and competence had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits, which tells us something very interesting that when we

are listening to people, especially in those first few seconds of hearing them, we are listening for cues to their warmth and competence. And so how we say something is just as important as what we say. You say we're listening for cues, but I guess we're also looking for cues. It's not just our ears, is it? It's all our senses. We're trying to pick up everything we can to, I guess, ask that basic human question, can I trust this person? Yes. Well, actually, I think there's two basic human questions.

This was research that was done for Princeton University. And what they found is when humans meet or interact, and this could be on video, on the phone, in person, professionally, romantically, socially, they're trying to answer two basic questions about every human they meet. Can I trust you? And then can I rely on you? But actually it's a chronological order here. So what we're looking for in those first few seconds of interaction are trust cues, right? Can I, are you, do you have good intention? And then are you smart? Can I rely on you? So those being able to very quickly answer those two questions, I think that that's why we're drawn to certain people. We are drawn to people who very quickly signal trust, trust, trust, and then reliance.

We're like, yes, those questions are answered. Now I don't have to worry about it anymore. So in a weird way, the more clear we are with our cues, the more magnetic we become because we're just providing clarity for people. We're giving them less work to do in their brains. In your book, you write about charisma being a blend of warmth and competence. And then I hear those two fundamental questions that you just mentioned, and I'm drawn to that idea that charisma is warmth and competence. And the two questions are, idea that charisma is warmth and competence. And the two questions are, can I trust you? And can I rely on you? Which kind of neatly fits into that. Can I trust you is, I guess,

warmth. I mean, you're the expert on this, but presumably warmth signals trust. And then competence answers the second question says, hey, you know what you're doing. I can rely on you. Is that how you see it as well? Yes. So when we think about warmth, warmth is a basic human instinct for survival, right? So warmth is friendliness, likability, trust, openness, collaboration. So that is when a doctor or a business partner or a partner walks into a room, we want to know, do you like me? Are you a threat to me? Are you friendly? Right? So we're looking for warmth, like just are we safe? Are we going to be accepted by this person? The next question, exactly what you said, I'll even take it a step further, which is competence is capability. It's efficiency, it's productivity. It's knowing that this person that they will do what they say they're going to do. We love being around people

who both are friendly to us and do what they say they're going to do. We love being around people who both are friendly to us and do what they say they're going to do. That is, I think, the definition of highly charismatic, magnetic people, is we are drawn to people who are like, yeah, I like you. And yeah, I'm going to get it done. Ooh, that's like a secret magic cocktail that we want so bad. Is there a difference between charisma and confidence? A really good question. We really thought about naming this book either confidence or charisma, because those are two very powerful C words, and they are so close. Here's what I think the difference is, why we didn't use confidence in the title, is I think that confidence comes from knowing you have high warmth and competence.

So there are people who can try to fake warmth and competence, and maybe they'll come across as charismatic for a little bit. That's that like smarmy salesman type, you know, that inauthentic person who like is like a con man. And you're like, I don't, I don't like it. There's something you don't like about it. You can be charismatic for a short period of time using warmth and confidence cues, but it doesn't last. Confidence is knowing I am warm. I am trustworthy. I am authentically likable and I am competent. I am capable. I am productive.

I can get things done. So I think that when we are confident in our warmth and competence and our abilities that is like that true deep charisma those people who walk into a room and you are drawn to them those folks who speak and you're like I want to both have a coffee with you and pick your brain for my business right both at the very same time I think we all know when we meet people like that, I think everyone who's listening will immediately have in their mind a few people that go, oh yeah, that represents this person or that person. And you're right, we aren't very much drawn to them. When I think about your work, I always think about, well, you're not asking people to fake it, really. Is it more that some people, let's say, are actually feeling full of confidence, but they're not

coming across that way because they don't know how to do it? Is that what it is? And if so, then what can we do to help us come across as more confident, as more charismatic? You have to make it super practical. What are these things that we can think about utilizing? Love it. Okay. So you said it exactly. The reason I wrote this book when I, so I didn't even think I was going to write this book. It's actually the journey started 17 years ago where I started noticing patterns. I noticed that highly charismatic people didn't matter what their talent was. If they were athletes or business folks or politicians, they showed this strikingly set of similar charismatic cues. On the other hand, I noticed that bad actors, lying athletes, duping politicians, people who are faking it or fudging it,

they also use a very similar set of cues for shame and fear and guilt. And what I wanted to know was how do we learn those cues so that the people who are being underestimated, overlooked, they have so much confidence. They know their ideas are good. Most of our readers are highly talented, incredibly smart individuals. And this is the problem that smart people face is very smart people rely too much on their ideas. Your ideas are so good that we forget about the delivery. And so what the research found in this, this quote struck terror into my heart. And this, I was like, I have to write this book. What Dr. Fisk found is that competence without warmth leaves people feeling suspicious. So most people who have really good ideas and so much competence, if they're missing a couple of the warm cues, even though they know they are authentically likable, they

know they are trustworthy. If they don't know how to deliver their competence, people won't believe it. So yes, my goal is to actually, if you authentically feel it, I think that it's about delivery and less about the ideas. So a couple of very practical things that we can talk about. So I want you to think about your charisma, like a dial, like a thermostat. So we can dial up our competence with specific cues and we can dial up our warmth specific cues. If you are high in competence and you've ever been told you're cold, intimidating, or hard to talk to, warmth will help

literally warm people up to you. Here are a couple of my favorite warmth cues. So the slow triple nod. So a slow triple nod, one, two, three. Research has found that that helps the other person speak three to four times longer. So that is a very simple, easy warmth cue, but be careful not to bobble head, right? So not just constant nodding, but purposeful nods. Second is a head tilt. So if I were to say, can you hear that? We tilt our head up to the side.

They've actually found that when someone just head tilts while they're listening to someone, it encourages the other person to feel more engaged. These are very specific because I think that sometimes I'm an overthinker. I get so in my own head that I forget to show the warmth cues. I'm so overthinking it that I don't show it. So the nod and a tilt are very easy ways

to just dial up warmth. On the competence side, so if you're very high in warmth, so folks who are very high in warmth, you often are people pleasers. You really want to be liked, but that can mean that people sometimes step on your boundaries or interrupt you. So if you're really high in warmth and you want to dial

up competence, you want to be taken more seriously, you want your ideas to be heard, you want to actually show competence cues of being a winner. And what I mean by this, I don't mean it in a judgmental way. I mean it like physically as a winner. So researchers from University of British Columbia, they found that athletes, when they literally win a race, they typically take up as much space as possible. They tilt their head towards the sky. They open up their body. They typically open up their hands. It is a way that they're signaling to the world an innate sense of pride. If you want to dial up competence, I want you to dial up and show your innate sense of pride. So a couple of things we can learn from those athletes. One is open palm, open hand. So I love

an open palm. I start all of my video calls with a good morning. How are you? Good to see you. That little cue kind of shows someone I'm open. I'm not hiding anything. I'm not concealing anything. We also love the distance between this, a really weird measurement, the distance between our earlobes and our shoulder. I know that's a very, very weird measurement, but we can sense that someone is anxious or nervous when they roll their shoulders up to their ears and they tilt their chin down and they look like they're trying to protect their jugular, right? It's literally an instinctive protective gesture. If you see people who are really nervous, they'll try to take up as little

space as possible. So when you hop on video, when you, in your profile pictures, when you're in a room, see if you can maximize the space in your ear and your shoulder. Those are some, they seem like micro movements and that's the point. These are small but impactful ways that we can actually dial up people's impression of ourselves. 30 years, right? These are basic, innate human cues that we have used for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years to answer those two questions. Can I trust you? Can I rely on you? These are sending messages to other people, whether we want them to or not. Whether we can say, oh, they shouldn't do, well, it's irrelevant. They are sending messages to other people and they're widening. So I remember a few years ago for my second book, which is called The Stress Solution, I wrote a chapter on human touch and we're going to get to touch cues because I think it's really, really fascinating. But I remember there's a bit of

research that was done at Liverpool University, this chap called Professor Francis McGlone, and he has found these receptors on our forearm and upper shoulder called C-tactile afferent nerve receptors. And he has shown in his lab that when they get stroked, something like three to five centimeters a second, I think, it activates them maximally and it lowers cortisol, the stress hormone, in our body. And what was really incredible as I was thinking about this, I thought, well, no one's going to stroke their partner or their child and actually have a stopwatch there and go, right, I'm a bit too fast here. Let me slow that down. No, this is naturally the pace at which a mother will stroke her child. And so it's naturally what we do when kind of other things don't get in

the way. And I really feel a lot of your expertise is also speaking to that same kind of concept, which is, hey, if your shoulders are close to your ears, you may not realize you're doing that, but you are signaling to other people that you're uncomfortable, you're anxious, you're stressed. And so I love it how you're helping us take control. First of all, that study is absolutely fascinating because what I think is happening is, and this is a problem that also very smart people face, is that they think, I have a lot of smarts. I have a lot of book smarts. I know what I'm talking about. I don't want to think about my cues or I don't know what cues to send. So I'm going to try to mute my cues.

So this is the other thing that can happen is they think, okay, I don't know what to send, so I'm just going to send no cues at all. This is why you'll see sometimes very smart people will go stoic. They'll go very still. They try to be underexpressive. It's because our fear of, we have this instinct that, uh-oh, I am sending some kind of cue, but I don't know what cue it is, so I'm going to try to stifle any expressiveness. And the problem with this is when we under express, when we don't show enough cues, we don't send off messages of our competence or our worth. And Dr. Tronick, I believe is his name. He did an experiment called the still face experiment where he had babies in his lab with their mothers and he instructed mothers to be playing with their babies and all of a sudden show a very still face. So they're still with the baby. They're still making eye contact with the

baby, but all of a sudden they show a very still face. You can see that the babies immediately gauge something is wrong and their mother is still there. She's still making eye contact, but the moment the mom removes all of her cues and expressiveness, doesn't show hand gestures, doesn't show facial responsiveness, the baby begins to go into stress. The baby begins to try everything that the baby can to get his or her mother's attention back. They do things with their hands, they screech, and eventually they begin to cry because they're like, why aren't you giving me expressiveness? And so I think this is really important for folks who think I'm just going to under emote.

I'm going to try to hide my cues. That actually causes anxiety and confusion in the people around you. The less cues you send, the less easy it is for people to understand you, connect with you, and they also don't know how to interact. When we send off cues, we're telling people how we want them to behave. If we send out warmth cues, we're saying this is going to be a warm interaction. Let's get along. Let's collaborate. When we send out competence cues, we're saying let's get it done.

Let's be productive. Let's be smart together. And so when you don't send cues that are neither warm nor competent, other people don't know what to do back. And so I think that not only are we accidentally sending these cues, as you so brilliantly mentioned, but also at least do it for others, right? That your cues are actually helping people. If this is within us, why is it that we've lost it then? And I guess what I'm going to with that, Vanessa, is, you know, I've got two young kids. And with respect to cues then, are schools and I guess society at large overly focusing on verbal?

So the words, you've mentioned there's four categories, right? Non-verbal, vocal, imagery. So the words, you've mentioned there's four categories, right? Non-verbal, vocal, imagery. Are we so focused on verbal that we actually start to de-skill and forget all those other things? Yes. I think it's actually important to discuss this because we can actually help our future generations the more we talk about this proactively now. So I have a three and a half year old daughter and just like you, I'm watching her learn cues right from the very beginning. And I noticed she's very aware of my facial expression. She's very aware of my body posture.

What's interesting is that I think as we get more one to many teaching. So what happens is when our children are home, they're often getting one to one teaching right between their caregiver or their mother or father, or even a sibling, where there's a lot of back and forth where I'm raised my eyebrows, you raise your eyebrows, right? I smile at you, you smile back. I say, no, Sienna, you cannot do that. And she knows from my tone of voice, no, she cannot do that, right? There's a lot of one-to-one teaching. Then as children get older, they go from one-to-one to five to one to 20 to one to 30. In college, I had classes where it was one to a thousand, right? I was in a huge lecture. What happens is then you get less of this cue feedback and we get very, very focused on the verbal, right? We're listening to the

lesson. And so we are sometimes reading cues, but we're not getting any of that cue feedback. And all we're doing, I don't know about you, but the older not getting any of that cue feedback. And all we're doing, I don't know about you, but the older I got, the more I took notes looking down. And I've noticed that first graders are much more interactive, but every grade you go up, heads go down. So by senior year or, you know, even freshman year of high school, most kids, you look in the classroom, just take a snapshot, heads are bent down, taking notes furiously, and no one's making any, any cue exchange or eye contact at all. So that is a partially of that. We're not getting enough practice for focusing so much on the verbal. We're literally not even looking anymore by senior year.

I was never looking at my teacher. I was literally just furious taking notes. And second, cues are like a foreign language in that once I tell you, oh, contempt, contempt is a universal scorn of disdain. I just taught you the equivalent of a vocab word. So like learning a foreign language, how do we learn foreign languages? First, we start with vocab words, the basics. Then we begin to think about sentence structure, how we put different vocab words together. Cues are the exact same way. We have to learn them cue by cue, word by word. So we learn off, that's contempt. Oh, wow. That's a mouth shrug. Oh, interesting. There's a lower lid flex. There's the universal expression for anger. So slowly we're learning vocab words. And then if we're taught right, we learn to put them together. Interesting. If I see, if I add an open palm with a head tilt and an authentic smile,

that's very charismatic. What we're not doing as parents and teachers is we are not teaching our children the language that we want to teach them, the words and the cue language. Luckily, this is extremely easy to fix. There's only 96 basic cues. I know that sounds like a lot, but that's far less than how many words we need to speak. If we can just begin to call out the words, and I tell my daughter, oh, look, I think she's smiling. I think she wants you to go over. You should go say hi. Or I teach her, when you see someone across the playground, give them a little wave, and then make eye contact and see if they want to play with you. Those are two very easy cues. So the more that we can name these cues

for not only our kids, but for each other. Imagine if you were able to say to a partner, it looks like you're giving me a lower lid flex. Does that make sense? Could you imagine how deep? So I think, yes, if we could just name them, we solve this problem. I love that language analogy because at the start, you know, you're learning vocab and then you're trying to get it in your head. And then before you know it, if you practice enough, at the other extreme, you're fluent, right? So without thinking, you are now speaking that other language. You've described yourself as a recovering awkward person. So in your awkward days, you presumably had to learn the skill of cues. So are you at a point

in your life now, having written the book, having studied this for years, if we use that language analogy, are you fluent with your cues? Can you now turn up? And even if you're feeling awkward, well, there's two parts to that. Do you sometimes feel awkward, but you can actually give the impression that you're not, which of course I can see can be helpful. And do you also just feel less awkward and that you don't have to think about these cues because you practice them so much that they're now happening automatically? Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart

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including longevity, preventive medicine, genetics and biochemistry. preventive medicine, genetics and biochemistry. I talk to them regularly and I'm really impressed with their commitment to making a top quality product. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually, they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer. All you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Yes, I think I became fluent in 2017, specifically in June.

Wow. I literally, I felt a moment where I went from very mechanical learning, just like learning a language, right? In the beginning, it's very mechanical. You're like, yo puedo ir a la biblioteca. Like it's like very, you're like trying, it's very mechanical. And it was like that for many years. I mean, having to think, okay, now I'm going to do this cue now. Oh, and also, by the way, there's two aspects of cues. There's the decoding, so spotting cues. And then there's also encoding, the cues you send. So just like with a foreign language, you have to be able to speak and you have to be

able to listen. So it took me many years of also training my muscle memory out of some very bad habits. So I had some very bad cue habits in my awkward days, which contributed to my awkwardness. I use a lot of question reflection, which I'd love to talk about. I use a lot of closed body posture. So I often put one arm over my chest and would shrink my, one of my shoulders up and I would talk to you like this, which is a very bad habit. And I remember specifically in June of 2017, that's when I gave my TED talk and we were doing a whole bunch of media around the tech. I gave it

in London. And I remember at the end of the day thinking, I didn't think once about my cues. I just was. And so that was a moment where I think I hit fluency. It took me far longer because it took me a long time to code it. The second issue is, you mentioned, do I still feel awkward? Yes, absolutely. And I think I can hide it a little bit. But actually, what I've found much more exciting is telling people I feel awkward. And this is a kind of radical transparency. And if anyone who's watching or listening is willing to take this challenge with me, I think we've spent way too many years hiding our discomfort, hiding anxiety or hiding what we're awkward about. When I wrote Captivate, my first book, I tried to hide it. And my publisher

so kindly, my editor is Nikki, and she wrote back and she said, you know, I love this book, Captivate, but it doesn't feel like you. Can we do a little bit more about where it feels like you? And so we changed the entire nature of that book. And I, my opening line of that book is hi, I'm Vanessa and I'm a recovering awkward person. When I introduced myself to people, I say, hi, I'm Vanessa. I'm an author and I'm a recovering awkward person because it gives me permission to be awkward if I feel it. And then we can make bad jokes and we can laugh at ourselves. And also I like being a beacon

for other awkward people. Like if you feel awkward, like I'm safe, like you can come and talk to me. And so, yes, I can hide my awkwardness, but I think that my mission now is actually to not hide it. And if I feel it, I feel it and it's okay. Yeah. I really like that. And there's this real subtle nuance there, isn't there? That you're not trying to say, listen, pretend to be someone who you're not. And actually, I guess, deceive people and manipulate people because you could go to that extreme potential, I guess, and think, well, if I master these cues, can I kind of override them and actually deceive and give an impression, right? So that's one aspect. But if you're not using cues effectively, you've got all this knowledge to share, but people may be switched off from it because they think whatever, that you're not interested,

that you're detached. But actually, it's not that, you just feel awkward. But I think that final piece is so important, that vulnerability, sharing actually how we're truly feeling. And it took me a while to realize this as well in my life that actually, oh, when you do that, people lean in, they come closer to you, they can see you, right? So you're not trying to be someone you're not. You're sharing that, hey, look, I've got a few insecurities. Hey, and we all do. Yeah. And also, by the way, I think I didn't realize this at first, but vulnerability is warmth. So maybe a side door into warmth is just being vulnerable. And so vulnerability, sharing your true feelings, just being vulnerable. And so vulnerability, sharing your true feelings, being super transparent, that's not negative. That's not bad. That's those are warmth cues. So even me saying,

Hey everyone, I'm a recovering awkward person. I'd rather be home watching Netflix, but I thought it was important for me to come. Right. That in itself is warm, which also helps people believe my competence, right? If warmth is a lubricant for competence, vulnerability, truth and transparency is a way for people to believe your ideas. So I think that that's another reason to dive into that vulnerability, because it actually is an element of your trust and your likability. I love that vulnerability is the kind of way into warmth, because otherwise, you're in the scenario where you're learning the cues, you're trying to come across as something you're not, you may not get all the cues right. And then people can also feel that there's something going on here. Her body language and her energy is not matching the words. And so that big, that number one question, can I trust you? Well, automatically, it's like,

no, I can't trust you because something doesn't feel right. As I was reading your book, Vanessa, I thought about this phrase that I use a lot in my professional life, both for myself as a doctor, but also one of the things I'm proudest of is teaching doctors about the principles of lifestyle and how we can use it, use lifestyle to help, you know, yes, prevent illness, but also treat illness in a lot of situations. And I often get asked the question, what's the most important thing I've learned in 20 years of seeing patients? And for me, I have four words that I always say, And for me, I have four words that I always say, connect first, educate second. And for me, I've always felt that, and what I always try and teach younger doctors and sometimes older doctors is, listen, no one really cares how much you know and what you

want to educate them with, right? Until they really feel that you care. So I feel intuitively I've always done this, which is take some time to connect, make sure they feel seen and heard before I then go on to trying to educate them or helping them. And so I thought what might be quite useful is to unpick what I think I do with a patient and you can tell me what the science says and how that fits in with cues. Are you up for that? Yes, I would love it. And I call this a nonverbal protocol. So I think everyone should have this based on your goals. You should have a protocol for a date, a friend-to-friend interaction, or professional interaction, which is what do I want to cue in the first few minutes of interaction

so I can be purposeful for the other person. So I would love to hear your nonverbal protocol or even some vocal protocol of what, yeah, I would love to know what you do and then we can break it down. So I don't think I've ever thought about it in terms of a tick-box list that patient comes in, I'm going to do this. And I guess as a broader question,

do some of us intuitively do this more than others? And so- Okay. I think, so it's important to know you're right. So I'm an awkward person. So I have to learn by protocols. Got it. Yeah. And this is important. So if you're listening and you're like, I need a checklist, I need a formula, I need a blueprint. Cool. Right. That's how you learn. And that's okay. If you're more of intuitive, a feeler, a healer, you're empathetically already tuned in, amazing. You don't need a checklist. It's just good to know the science about how you're already intuitively doing things. So yes, it's two different kinds of way of learning. I love that. I love a unique approach for whoever you are. I really, really like that. So if I'm imagining, I will always go to the door, I'll walk to the waiting room usually, and I will get the

patient because I feel it's a lot more personal. And then I'll walk to the room with the patient. And then, you know, I'll say, hi, how you doing? I'll sit them down. And I'm a tall guy. You can't see this on Zoom, but I'm, you know, six foot six and a half, nearly two meters tall. So, you know, I might have, you you know a little old elderly lady coming in to see me and so I'm not going to sit up straight and proud in my chair I'm gonna I'm gonna lean in I'm gonna lower my posture so I'll probably have a rounded back which is probably not great posture for my body but I want to get on the same level as that person I want to get on the same level as that person.

I lower my tone. The pace at which they're speaking, I think I naturally start to, I guess, mirror that pace. What can you see in that that you can sort of unpick for us? Okay, let's break it down. You actually skipped over the most important part. The most important part is actually the moment you open the door. And this is a mistake that we, I know as humans, we tend, you as a doctor are thinking about the room. So even how you told me that story, it was, the intro was very quick and then you wanted to

get us in the room, but actually our first impression happens the moment we first see someone, not the moment they start talking, not the moment we start our meeting or a pitch or a date or a presentation this is a common mistake I used to make is I would prepare for the thing right the date the presentation the pitch but actually when we make a first impression it happens in those first 10 to 20 seconds of seeing someone so when you open that door and this is for anyone opening a restaurant door opening your office or opening waiting door, is the very first thing I want you to do is you're opening the door with lots of space between your ears and your shoulder. That's actually, it's more important then than

later. Later, I like you go down to their level, but you're super broad. You're opening the door broad, right? So you're having more of a pride, innate pride gesture, I want you to immediately seek mutual gazing. So you're looking around the room for your person, you find them. And this is, there's actual research by Monica Moore who looked at this, a searching gaze, and then a long hold makes us feel so good. It's literally your way of saying to someone, I'm looking for you. I'm looking for you. I found you. And we love to be found. So it's a sweeping gaze around the room.

You find your person and you immediately try to lock eyes with them. Now, in your situation, you probably have someone who hears their name being called or sees you and then has to get their purse and their coat. Right. And so I want you to hold that eye contact with them until they are walking towards you and also making eye contact with you. A mistake that I think people can make is they'll say, you know, hi, or come on in, or hey, it's so good to get together.

And they immediately turn and walk away. Turn their back, yeah. Yeah. So I want you to hold open the door, searching gaze, hold their gaze. Then they finally stand up, they're walking towards you. Just a couple beats.

It doesn't have to be very long. Just a couple of beats of that mutual gazing. You immediately are triggering oxytocin. So oxytocin, I'm sure you talk about a lot. It's a very complicated chemical in our body. It does lots of things. But for our purposes, when we lock eyes with someone, we produce oxytocin, which helps us feel chemically connected. And that's incredibly important for trust. They actually found that if you give someone a nose

spray full of oxytocin, they trust more, collaborate more and share more profits in prisoners' dilemmas. Like it's a immediate trust cue. And so that, can I trust you? That eye contact, you're very quickly answering that question. Absolutely, you can. I'm keeping eye contact. Why? Because when we're nervous or we're hiding something, what do we do? We look down. We look down and away, right?

Like when my daughter takes too many cookies, right? I say, Sienna, did you take another cookie? And she looks down. Uh, no, because she doesn't want to make mutual eye contact. So you don't want to look down or look away in those first few seconds. So that's only the first few seconds. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brilliant. Love it. Okay, good. Okay. So broad pride door, searching gaze, you make eye contact, they're coming in. If you feel naturally you want to smile, great. If you don't feel naturally you want to smile, that's okay too. I would rather an authentic smile than a forced smile. Always, always. So if you're really, truly excited to see someone, this is the time where

you're like, oh, it's so good to see you. And your verbal here doesn't have to be rocket science, but it should be something slightly positive. So it should be, it's so good to see you. Wow, I'm so glad you could come in. I'm so happy we could do this. The reason for this is because in the first few seconds of an interaction, our brain is doing a lot. It's trying to gauge all the cues. We're trying to make sense of things. Maybe someone's nervous or sick. So if we send off just verbal, slight verbal cues of good, glad, happy, pleasure to see you, pleasure to meet you, we go, we're okay. And that's because research shows that when we hear words like happy, we are more likely, our brain is more likely to take that cue and internalize it and then say, yeah, happy. I'm happy to be here too. It's a

very weird thing. So a couple positive words, same thing on video, by the way, the moment I hop on a video, I'll give a nice hey good to see you yeah oh I'm so happy to be here little like little small the other thing you can do here is and you didn't mention this in your and when you were telling me the story do you shake hands do you wave before the last couple years yeah always I would always shake hands with my patients like I can't remember I can't remember not doing it with anyone really until things start to change. Yes. So this is the problem with this time we're in. So one, if you can, and you feel comfortable shaking hands, oh, it's so good. And that is

because a double deal, a double dose of oxytocin is eye contact plus touch. And we can talk about touch cues. But the moment you get a touch with an eye contact, your body's like, oh, this is an ally. If I'm close, our bodies are smart, right? Our bodies know if I'm close enough to you to make mutual gazing and to handshake, you must be a friend. I should try to get to know you. So if you can handshake, great. If you can't, I want you to replace a handshake with some kind of nonverbal acknowledgement. So that could be a nod. It's so good to see you.

It could be a wave. Oh, it's so good to see you. Please come in. Please come in. And you're gesturing. Gesturing. Yeah, I love that. And that is because, again, think back to our basic, basic instinct, right?

As humans, we are always afraid that we don't belong. We are always afraid we're in the wrong place that we're not accepted so if you can constantly be sending cues of you're welcome here it's so good to see you absolutely double handshake yes i make that kind of all you're doing is calming that inner sense of worry so a wave gesture a nod gesture you bring them in do you usually walk ahead of them or next to them down the hallway it kind of depends on which surgery i've been in in the past um i guess in one of them it's quite narrow so i would usually walk ahead but then what i would do is i would get to

the door open it and wait and allow them in first and gesture so that's the one i guess that comes to mind at the moment yeah and that's great by way. So if you have to walk ahead of someone, opening the door is wonderful, especially if you aim your entire body towards them. I know these sound small, but this is what set you up for a really easy meeting. So if you can get these first few cues right, it's like lubricant. It makes everything else easier. Vanessa, on that, I just so wholeheartedly double down on what you just said and agree. Like, I guess a lot of business people, work people are going to love your book, but I think it actually helps our healthcare professionals interact better. I actually think it helps our health and we can maybe get to that later because I think, I think there's a couple of reasons why

I think that is. But that whole connect first, educate second piece is don't rush to the next bit because you spend the time connecting the next, the next bit is pretty easy actually. Once you've done that first bit. Yes. That's why I like thinking of it as the protocol is that walking from the waiting room into your office was that 30 seconds. Yeah. All you have to worry about is 30 seconds. That's actually what makes everything else way easier. So it's only that 30 seconds. So a couple of tips here, and this is for again, professionals. I love working with healthcare professionals. I mean, in cues, I do an entire breakdown of a doctor and how he interacts with the patient, an old friend of mine. And so whether you're walking into a restaurant or you're bringing

someone to your office, whether you're a healthcare worker or business, even if you're bringing kids into your home, even if you're a teacher opening up your classroom and welcoming your children in same protocol. So you've opened the door, you've tried to initiate touch, or you've done some sort of nonverbal acknowledgement. My first choice, my very first choice is walking shoulder to shoulder, side by side. Why? In, when we look at human behavior for proxemics, proxemics is a fancy word for space. Between humans, we have space boundaries and the closest boundary is our intimate zone. That's about zero to 18 inches apart. I don't know what that is in the UK. You might have to do some math. That's okay. We can use inches as well. That's fine.

Okay, good. Okay, good. Zero to 80 inches apart. So that is the intimate zone. And we don't like people in our intimate zone. But if you are in a healthcare industry, or you are about to do an examination, you are going to get into their intimate zone. So a really safe way to go into someone's intimate zone is to go shoulder to shoulder because that's not threatening. So walking down a hallway and just if you've ever done this before, have you ever imagined you're walking and you're in lockstep with the person next to you? There is something physiologically when you're like walking with someone in their shoulder to shoulder and you're in the same lockstep. It's literally mirroring. And that mirroring plus you're in their intimate zone but it's still safe it's like it's like um like it's like an enzyme for interaction like it's it's going to speed up

your rapport so much so if you can walk side by side shoulder to shoulder and then you're looking over at them how are you doing how was your day it's so lovely to see you so you're making a little bit of eye contact and walking you're walking in lockstep which is mirroring mirroring is a beautiful one one of my favorite charisma cues is mirroring so it means you're showing similar body language that's going to set you up for whatever you say in the room and then if you can open the door for them wonderful you sit down and you mentioned something very important you said you know i i'm tall so i i hunch over you know i actually don't mind it now that your first impression has been made. Right? You already have a really, you had a broad first impression. Going down to their level is a way of showing nonverbal respect. That's actually a beautiful gift, as long as it's not in those

first few seconds. So you could sit down on a stool or a chair, as long as you're on the same level as them, like trying to get the same level, that is a show of nonverbal respect. So I love that you do that already. Yeah, really powerful to hear that. And I think, as you've mentioned, that has such broad applications. Yes, we use the model of doctor getting a patient, right? But, you know, if you're running a team meeting in your job, and, you know, what are you doing to connect initially and give that warmth before you kind of rush in? And I guess there's a wider point for me, which is electronic communication. So there's many ways that we communicate electronically. Of course, we are, you know, using the wonders of modern technology to have this conversation. You know, I can see you

through the camera and the video, right? That's wonderful. Let's go to email for a minute. Because if, I mean, I've noticed, I mean, I think we all know that tone and all kinds of messages can get misconstrued on email or text message. I'm sure there's no one listening or watching who hasn't at some point either got the wrong end of the stick or given the wrong end of the stick via those modes of communication. And I know there's a few emails I receive where I just don't want to reply, right? And of course, we all have emails we don't want to reply to. But I've unpicked this a little bit. I've had to think about it in the past, but also in prep for this conversation.

I've unpicked this a little bit. I've had to think about it in the past, but also in prep for this conversation. I think, well, sometimes the emails are so blunt and to the point. It's not that I intentionally don't want to reply, but what happens? I read it. I don't feel good. So I go to the next one and I deal with the other stuff where I like the rapport and I get back to this stuff pretty quickly. And then before you know it, there's been a new barrage that's gone to the bottom. And before you know it, it's on the second page of your inbox and I never get back to it. It's not that I'm trying to be rude or trying to ignore. It's just, if I put it through your lens, there may be competence in that email, but there's zero warmth. And without the warmth, I just switch off. So maybe unpick that a little bit for us. And, you know, is this real,

do you think? And is this something we need to think about when sending emails? Oh, yes. So what you were picking up on is why we are so burnt out. So I would argue the reason we are so burnt out is because more and more of our communication has gone to email and to videos. And so that means that we are having to work even harder to get the cues we need to be able to succeed. So in an email, especially, remember that we cannot digest competence without warmth, warmth, confidence, that warmth leaves us feeling suspicious. So in an email, what can happen, especially in a chain is you lose the warmth and that under signals trust. What's great about this is it doesn't take much to trigger warmth. In fact, it takes one word, literally one word. And I did this

research with Dr. Paul Zak. So Dr. Paul Zak, he's like the oxytocin researcher. I adore him. He's done so much incredible work on how our chemistry helps us connect. And right at the start of the pandemic, I reached out to him and I said, what are we going to do with this lack of oxytocin? And so we had some ideas. We wondered if, okay, when we meet a person and we

make eye contact and we shake hands or we hug or we fist bump or we cheek kiss, we get this burst of oxytocin. We wondered if we could say what we were missing and that would replace the oxytocin or the engagement. So what we did is we, he has a software that he's created in his lab. He has a lab called immersion neuroscience, where he puts it on people's smartwatches and it measures their skin conductance and their heart rate. So it's a way of measuring literal engagement. It doesn't measure blood, right? I wish we had smartwatches that could take our blood, but yet not yet.

So it measures skin conductance and heart rate. And he has this software. So what we did is we had people put this software on their smartwatch and I filmed two different versions of videos. One video, I used neutral positive statements, things like, um, uh, so happy you're here. Uh, welcome to the call. Um, happy to talk to you. So neutral positive ways that we often start our conversations, emails in the second video. And by the way, that got a little bit of skin conductance. A little bit.

Yeah. So pretty good. The second video, I said what I wish I could touch. So if I were to meet someone, I would typically give them a handshake. So I'm like, I'm sending you a handshake from here. I'm sending you a virtual hug. I wish we could cheat kiss, but alas, this will have to do. So I had statements where I said the physical touch that I would have done when we met.

On those, that video, it was double the amount of engagement. So even just in an email thinking, what would I say or do to this person in person? You can say that doesn't necessarily have to be a touch word, but it can be an engagement word. Like there's a very big difference between, do you have the documents for the meeting next week? Okay. Very high competent, right? You're like, Oh, that's an email that you let go to the bottom versus high team was hoping you could help me with something. Do you have the documents for the meeting next week? What that does is you're actually cuing their brain. You're reminding them we're a team.

Team is a great engagement word. It literally is like if we were in person, we'd be sitting around the table as a team. You're also saying, I was wondering if you could help me with something. Help is also a very powerful word. The other thing you could do, the next level here is you can think about how do you want someone to feel before, during, and interacting with you? What is the emotion that you want to cue? If you want someone to be warm, you should be using warm words. Collaborate, trust, can't wait to work together next week. If you want someone to be

competent, can you use more positively competent words? Win, productive, efficient, brainstorm, power through. Those cues are your way of giving gifts to people you're dealing with. You're literally saying, I want to cue you to be your best self. And so I'm going to gift you those words. By the way, you mentioned, you know, email video is also everything I talked about in that non-verbal protocol works on video. So when you pop on video, the exact same thing, looking for sweeping gaze, I find my eye contact. Thank goodness, research found we still produce oxytocin even through a webcam. Even just making eye contact with your camera, it's not quite as good, but almost as good as actual contact. Same thing, a non-verbal greeting.

Oh, it's good to see you. Little hand wave, little nod. Same thing with, oh, tell me all about you. And I'm leaning over now. So we've made our first impression. All the same rules apply. We just have to make sure we get creative. For anyone watching this on video, you just leaned in and it changed how I felt. Like it literally, I'm like, oh, she's really interested. But I think this is huge, absolutely huge, given how much we communicate electronically now where, you know, frankly, it's verbal. There's no nonverbal there. And we're saying 65 to 90%.

So maybe, maybe as much as 90% of your kind of human communication is not there. Right? Yeah. And I know so clearly this is why I don't want to respond to certain people and certain emails, because it's competence with zero warmth. And I actually tried it. I thought, okay, Rangan, maybe you're a philistine and stuck in the dark ages. Maybe you need to get down with the kind of modern email communication, because I'm the guy who writes almost like a letter on email sometimes. Hey, guys, hey, how you doing? I hope, you know, hope your kids are doing okay. Or, you know, whatever. I hope you're having a good day and

enjoying the sun. Hey, was just wondering if you could help me out with this, right? That's what I used to do. I think I tried for a few weeks. I kept seeing people like email me differently. I thought, I'm going to try this. I'm just going to go, hey, where's the video? Where's this? And I can't honestly say I know the response, but it didn't feel good for me. Like it didn't feel like I was being me. I thought I've just cut out. Like if I reply to people on DM on Instagram, when they contact me, and I don't get to read and reply to everyone, but I try to as much as I can. I'm like, I never, I feel bad just giving a quick answer. I always feel like I'm almost writing a one or two paragraphs because otherwise it feels non-human.

I think this is such a big point for, yes, our generation, but even kids now who are growing up with a lot of electronic communication. How can we bring that humanness to that electronic communication? I think that means text message as well, right? Oh, absolutely. Text messages. And by the way, I just want to make a note here is like, you would never walk into someone's office, open the door and say, do you have that video for me next week? Close the door. Right? So that's why it feels so wrong to you is because we know that's not what we would ever do to another human, but we're in this weird medium that's very efficient where we do it. And here's the, here's, I think where it can get exciting is I love a long email. Don't get me wrong, but sometimes we cannot send a long email.

It says we have to keep it short. So use power words. It is absolutely okay. If you're like, okay, I have one quick question. I don't want to have a whole like dear team. I hope your children are doing well. Like for the important emails, I do hope you do that for the quick ones. I don't want to have a whole like, dear team, I hope your children are doing well. Like for the important emails, I do hope you do that. For the quick ones, you can even add one or two words like quick help, if you don't mind, answer. Right. So like even just adding in like a little bit of extra humanity. And I do want you to think of it as adding in humanity. That warmth is going to get you a better reply. Yeah. That warmth is going to make it smoother. Text messages are interesting because text messages can mimic slow conversation, right? Like if we text someone and they text us right back,

it is a little bit of a back and forth. And so it's sometimes it's okay to have short answers because we're having this back and forth. What I want to make a note of for text messages is emojis, exclamation points. So I talked about warmth and competence, right? So your best, best, best emails are hopefully a blend of warm words and competent words. And this is a little art, not science. So warm words tend to make me feel the warm and fuzzies. Friends collaborate both together. Happy, open, creative. Those are kind of warmish words. They make me feel sort of, you know, yummy inside. Competent words make us want to get things done. They make us feel capable. Win, achieve, master, productive, brainstorm, power through efficient. Those words want me to get things done. So I can usually tell when someone comes into our lab,

I ask them to open up their email sent folder. It's always a fun thing to do. And I count the number of warm words and competent words in their emails. I highly recommend if you're willing after this show, open up your email sent folder, pull up a recent important message and count the number of warm versus competent words. That will tell you exactly what cues, what impression you're giving off to others. And then you can be more purposeful. So emojis are highly warm. So one smiling face is worth one warm word. Exclamation points are highly warm. One exclamation point is worth one warm word. What can happen here is have you ever been emailing with someone or texting with someone and you just feel like you're not on the same page?

It can be because they are using too many warm words. So a funny kind of thing to think about here is are you an exclamation point user or not? There are some folks who are highly competent. It's physically painful for them to put an exclamation point in a text message. Physically painful. And they have to like force themselves to add that exclamation point. That is your natural human instinct to add warmth. If you're texting with someone who uses a lot of emojis and exclamation points, you go, well, I better mirror them.

I better respect them. Okay, I'll try to add an emoji. I better respect them. Okay, I'll try to add an emoji. On the other hand, percents, dollar signs, or amounts of money, numbers, charts, graphs are highly competent. So for example, in healthcare, if you're sending results back or you're giving specific advice, that's extremely competent. It's going to be harder for people

to remember and activate the advice you give if you don't have some of those warm things to start and end. It's so powerful. And I mean, fundamentally, Vanessa, what your work and book is about, to me at least, is enhanced communication, right? How do we communicate better? And what better skill could there possibly be in life? Because communication is our relationships. Our relationships are the number one factor for our happiness. And I think our longevity, it's the quality of our relationships. If we one factor for our happiness. And I think our longevity, it's the quality of our relationships. If we can't communicate well, if we can't communicate effectively, that impacts every aspect of our life. So as you said, with teaching your daughter, it's like naming emotions, right? Many of us don't learn how to do that. And we know from the research, if we can name emotions, it makes us more, you know, able to deal with them and process them because we can label them. And I'm feeling that very much a similar kind of idea

with your work is that, well, if we understand these cues, it's not dry. It's like, it helps us actually be more human in a world that is, I guess, taking us away from, in many ways, who we have been for so long on this planet. And it's just almost just bringing that back in. But also I love, yeah, let's embrace electronic communication. How can we learn and make that better? So I love it. I mean, I think it's such a practical guide this book for everyone, no matter who you are. The reason I think it impacts health as well is because when we get communication wrong, or let's say we're presenting to our work colleagues and we don't quite get it right and the idea doesn't land we don't feel good afterwards right so what happens

when we don't feel good we need to do something to manage that which can often be, you know, diving into the chocolate biscuits or needing half a bottle of wine after work. Yeah, exactly. Again, I'm not saying there's anything necessarily wrong with those things in isolation, but a lot of the time our behaviors are downstream consequences for how we feel. And I, you know, I don't think it's a tenuous link at all. I think it's very strongly linked that if we can communicate better and more authentically, we're going to need less distractions to kind of numb those feelings of discomfort. Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning

a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health and together we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life, and I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour, and I can't wait to see you there.

This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now, journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision-making, and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours

into long-term habits, and improve our relationships. There are, of course, many different ways to journal, and as with most things, it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three-question journal. In it, you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than

five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal, or click on the link in your podcast app. This is actually what really pushed me into this work was actually health in that as a social

overthinker, as an awkward person, I would get into bed at night and I would replay every bad conversation in my head. And when I didn't know how to communicate, I was having a lot of them, right? I was having a lot of weird miscommunications, bad emails, people weren't replying to me or responding to me me and so i would lay in bed for hours over analyzing these conversations pumping cortisol feeling adrenaline laying in bed at 11 p.m at night because i knew that i was getting something wrong yeah that something was off with my relationships the famous study that we feel social pain in the same area that we feel physical pain yeah so having social pain makes the same area that we feel physical pain.

So having social pain makes us literally feel like something is wrong with our body. And the study that pushed me into this was very simple. They saw, they noticed that participants in their lab, when they spotted a cue of social rejection. So a cue of social rejection could be an eye roll, as we talked about earlier, could be a scoff. It could be a dismissive tone of voice. Yeah, great idea. When we hear or see a cue of social rejection, our own field of vision increases. Literally the moment we spot a cue of social rejection, our eyes dilate so we can take in more of our environment. What's our escape route? What do we do next? Are people sending more cues of rejection?

That was the first time where I realized there's a link between the cues we are being sent and our physiology. So it is real when you are having bad communication or your cues are off or you can't read cues, that it is affecting your physiology down to your pupils, right? That that's changing how we sleep, how we eat, how much sugar we need, and also our cortisol and our adrenaline levels. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Couldn't agree more. Given how society is changing and the roles that men and women that I guess they played in the past things are evolving things are changing and because of that do you think that men and women potentially need to pay attention to different kinds of cues I think less than you would think and that's kind of a good thing right I actually I actually think, so when I was researching for the book, of course there are cultural cues. So there are universal cues, there's universal responses that

humans have, but there are cultural adaptations. There's also gender adaptations. So for example, let's take one example, which is when we touch, we produce oxytocin, right? So a handshake produces oxytocin, a hug produces oxytocin, a cheek kiss. But in some parts of the world, you don't handshake, you cheek kiss. In some parts of the world, you don't even touch at all, you bow. And so the mechanism that when we touch, we produce oxytocin is the same universally, but how we use that mechanism is different. Same with women to men. So women often touch more than men, whether this is because, you know, our mothers are women. So they were, you know, more physically touching with us when we were a baby or because women crave more oxytocin. There is a little bit of a gender difference there. Does that mean that men have to dial up

their touch to touch women more? No. Does that mean that women should dial down their desire to touch to try to honor men? No, but it's a really interesting thing to know. So I think that what's interesting for us to just keep in the back of our head is that typically women default to higher in warmth. Typically, not always, men default to higher incompetence. This is not always the case, but it's often the case. So that's just good to know. So for my ladies who are listening, we need to know that when we walk into a room, people are going

to assume a little more warmth simply because of our gender. Is that bad? No. But is it something that we should really keep in mind, especially in negotiations or interviews or for trying to be high competence? Yes. Does that mean I have to show a few more competence cues than my husband? Yes. Men also need to know that when they walk into a room or hop on video, they might be getting more defaults to competence. Is that bad? No. But it does mean that if they want to show up as warm, as collaborative, as trustworthy, they might have to dial up or use a few more warmth cues to make sure that people believe in their warmth. Yeah, super, super

helpful. Really, really nuanced. Very, very helpful. Before we close this conversation down, I do want to talk about lying, when we can tell if someone is lying. A fun topic. Yeah. And there's, I can't remember which book it was I read this in a few years ago. I think it was something like, essentially, there was this very famous politician and people who couldn't hear, so people who were deaf were watching. And when they were questioned about what they saw, a lot of them were confused, I think. And a lot of them said, there's something not right here. Something is not matching up. I think that lot of them said, there's something not right here. Something is not matching up. I think that person is lying. And what's incredible to me is that they couldn't hear

what this politician was saying. It was all from their body language, this nonverbal communication. Yes. So lie detection is a very interesting science. There's no Pinocchio's nose. So we haven't yet, maybe one day we will, we have not yet found there's one cue that always means someone's lying. But there are some statistical cues to see. In other words, that when we observe liars, there's some things that are patterns that liars can do or tend to do. One is actually kind of a funny Pinocchio's nose one, which is I think there might have been some truth to whoever wrote the story of Pinocchio. which is, I think there might've been some truth to whoever wrote the story of Pinocchio, because one researcher found that we have this tissue in our nostrils

that liars, sometimes it swells and it begins to make your nose itch. Wow. So there is a little bit of truth to your nose grows when you lie, because we can sometimes have this itchiness. So that means that when people lie, sometimes not always, this is a common thing we see with liars, they will touch, itch, or scratch their nose.

In fact, one set of researchers looked at Bill Clinton's testimony during the Monica Lewinsky trial, and they counted all of Bill Clinton's nose touches. When he was telling the truth during his truthful answers, he only touched his nose twice. When he was telling his lying answers, specifically saying, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, he touched his nose 26 times.

26 times. So there are cues like that, that we're learning more and more. It's our body doesn't like to lie. Our body knows lying gets us into trouble. And so there's all these leaks of the guilt and the shame that we have around lies. One of the experiments we did for the book, which was so much fun is we had hundreds of readers submit videos of themselves lying, specifically playing two truths and a lie. So if you've ever played the game, two truths and a lie, you say two true statements and a lie, and then someone has to guess what the lie is. One of the biggest cues we found, interestingly, was actually a vocal cue,

which is that people on their lie tended to use the question inflection. The question inflection is when we go up at the end of our sentence as if we're asking not saying so there are two truths and a lie would sound like this i'm from los angeles i love dogs and i'm a vegetarian right because liars want to know do you believe me they know subconscious, this is not a statement. I am asking this lie. And so a couple of things for us practically is one, make sure that you do not accidentally use a question inflection. Research has found when they actually played clips for people in a brain scanner, when people heard a question inflection accidentally used on a statement, where they listened changed. They went from just listening to scrutinizing.

In other words, our brain hears a question inflection as, hmm, something's not right here. Why did they ask that? So whenever I do sales trainings, the biggest mistake that sales folks make is they ask their number. They'll say, we'd love to work with you. We'd love to have your business. And the cost of the service is $5,000. And they wonder why they get negotiated with, pushed back, why they can't close deals. It's because the question inflection is telling other people, this number is a flexible number.

I'm not so sure about this number, neither should you be. So one is make sure you do not accidentally use the question inflection, especially on prices, timelines, or advice, especially for our doctors or healthcare workers. If you're giving prescriptions or you're giving something that someone specifically has to do, say it, don't ask it.

Yeah. If you ask it, your patients are more likely to doubt it and also they're less likely to ask it. If you ask it, your patients are more likely to doubt it and also less likely to remember it. Wow, there's just so much gold in all of this stuff. I think we've just about got enough time to briefly mention poker. Yeah. There was a great piece in the book on this, which I really enjoyed reading how this lady without much experience went and got all the way and I think won some big tournament. Can you maybe just give us the kind of top line of that for people? They could read the whole thing in

the book, but just that kind of top line because it was so interesting. This is so great. So Konnikova, she's not a poker player. She's an academic. She wanted to know if she could teach herself how to play poker and like win tournaments by using cues. And she discovered a little study that was, it was a real academic study on poker and I'll have people guess. So she wanted to know, in the study, they had people guess which hand they would want to see. So A, you could see someone's entire body while they played poker to try to guess if they have a good or bad hand. B, you could see just their head and their facial expressions to see if they have a good or bad hand. B, you could see just their head and their facial expressions to see if they have a good or bad hand. Or C, you can see just the back of their cards and their

hands to see if they have a good or bad hand. They asked people to guess, you know, which one would you like to have? And almost everyone guessed, well, of course, the whole body. I need more information. But actually what they found is people were more accurate at guessing a good or bad poker hand just looking at the person's hand gestures just looking at how they held their cards and konokova took this this cue all the way to the end of tournaments and won a lot of money but with this using this cue because when poker players are playing they are very good especially the extra poker players at muting they can hide good, especially the expert poker players, at muting. They can hide their facial expressions. They can fake their facial expressions.

They can change their body posture. What we're very bad at is hiding our hand gestures and our hand behavior. And so the way that someone holds their hands is a very easy way or a good way to see if someone has fluidity of movement. Good people with good hands typically have fluidity. They like their hands. They know what they're going to do. Their movements are super smooth. When someone doesn't like their hand, they're lying, they're deceiving, they're ashamed, they're afraid, their hands are jerky, right? They have a lot less, they have more strenuous movement, more extra movement. I share this with us. So if you play poker, this is very helpful. But even if you don't play poker, leaders have fluidity of

movement. A competence cue is being smooth with your gestures, is knowing that you're not wasting an ounce of energy on a gesture or a move that you don't need. And the other thing you can think about is how can you be more fluid in your movements? How can you make sure that you don't need. And the other thing you can think about is how can you be more fluid in your movements? How can you make sure that you're using gestures and cues that are purposeful? Yeah, no, I love it. And that bit on hands, I really liked because I'm very handsy when I communicate. Yeah, I noticed and it's like, I thought, Oh, that's a good thing. That's a good sign. Okay, great. I like it. I don't have to try and change that. But Vanessa, honestly, it's been such a joy talking to you. I just think the book and your work is just so helpful and so practical for anyone.

This podcast is called Feel Better, Live More. When we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of our lives. And for you, I would reframe that a little bit. When we cue better, I think we're going to get more out of our lives. So right at the end, can you maybe leave my audience with some of your top tips, your final words of wisdom to inspire them to kind of take their cues seriously? Yes. So here's the good news. You're already using cues. We just want to leverage them. We just want to make them work for you. So a little final exercise to think about is what cues are you naturally using? What cues make you feel like your best self? What make, what cues make you feel good when other people do them? The more we can start with the cues we naturally use, the cues that already make us feel good

and that we can hone and leverage those the better. So my challenge for you is what cues do you love? What cues are you already using that you like? And what cues from your highly charismatic people? The very beginning of the show, I asked you, who's the most charismatic person you know? Think of that person. When you observe them, when you watch them talk and speak, what cues do they use that you might also want to try on? And the more that we can leverage our natural abilities, the better we feel, the more authentic we feel, and the more confident we come across. Vanessa, thank you so much for writing this wonderful book. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. And I very much hope we get to interact in person at some point in the future.

Oh, I would love it. Please come to Austin Text. And thank you so much for reading and supporting my work. I can't tell you how grateful I am and just for all your time and all your energy. My pleasure. just for all your time and all your energy. My pleasure. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. As always, do think about one thing that you can take away and start applying into your own life. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. Always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it. Because when you feel better, you live more.