Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Body Language Expert: The #1 Habit That Makes You Unforgettable | Vanessa Van Edwards

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

What if the key to deeper connection isn’t in what you say — but in how your body speaks, listens, and moves?On today’s episode, we sit down with Vanessa Van Edwards — behavioral researcher, bestselling author, and founder of Science of People. A self-described “recovering awkward person,” Vanessa turned social anxiety into a science-backed toolkit anyone can use to improve communication, connection, and leadership. Vanessa studies what happens beneath words: how posture, tone, eye contact, and presence shape how we’re perceived and how we make others feel.Together, we explore the subtle science of connection — from how warmth and competence support charisma to the micro-cues that determine trust, likability, and confidence. This is an episode for anyone who wants to show up with authenticity, read the room better, and make their communication more impactful.In this episode, you’ll learn:How to use posture and physical space to project calm confidenceWhy warmth must come before competence to build trust fastHow to eliminate vocal fry and question-inflection for stronger communicationThe key to spotting and disarming contempt before it festersHow to teach kids “micro social skills” that build courage and connectionIt’s a grounded, science-backed guide to showing up with more presence — and helping others feel at ease in your orbit. ____________________________________________________Links & ResourcesSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindset!Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Finding Master is brought to you by NutraFal. In many of my conversations about high performance and well-being, I often come back to this idea. The mind and body is one of the most beautiful ecosystems. And when something's out of sync for too long, like stress or hormones or nutrition, it often shows up in visible and sometimes invisible ways. One of those signals, hair thinning, hair loss. That's what intrigued me when I was introduced to NutriFal and their founder, Georgios Settis.

What I respect about NutraFal is they don't treat hair. hair as an isolated issue. They see it as a reflection of whole body health. Born from personal experience, Nutrafall has evolved into a science-backed system. Their team of experts created a daily supplement to target the root causes of thinning hair with ingredients that are supported by published clinical studies. In three to six months, over 1.5 million users have reported thicker, stronger, faster growing hair and less shedding. Nutrafall is also NSF certified, so that means that you know exactly what you're putting in your body. Their formulas are personalized, built for both men and women.

So if you're looking for a smarter inside-out approach to hair health, go to Nutrafall.com and take their hair wellness quiz. You can also get $10 off your first month plus free shipping with the code finding mastery. Again, go to Nutrafall.com, N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L, Nutrafall.com and use the code finding mastery for $10 off and free shipping. We send thousands of social signals every day. And there are a couple of cues that I want to teach you that high performers do exceptionally well. The distance between your ear and your shoulder is a window into your confidence soul.

That's what I'm going to say. And here's why. What if the key to a deeper connection isn't in what you say, but in how your body speaks, listens, and moves? When people sit within 25 feet of a high performer, their own performance improves by 15%. And the second part, which is really important, is if you sit within 25 feet of a low performer, your performance decreases by 30%. Welcome back. Or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I am your host, Dr. Michael Jervais, by trade and training a high performance psychologist. The idea behind these conversations is simple. To sit with the extraordinarily to really learn how they work from the inside out.

Today's guest is Vanessa Van Edwards. She's a leading voice on body language, presence, and communication. She calls herself a recovering awkward person. And she's turned her social anxiety into a practical set of cues you can use anywhere, from a boardroom to a first day. Your eye contact in the first three seconds actually matters more to me than in a five-minute conversation. Typically, powerful people make very specific eye contact patterns, and they signal to you their power and confidence with those eye contact patterns. And so if you're processing and talking, you don't have to make eye contact.

But then if I want to deliver at the very end, I can deliver right now. to you. And that feels so much more competent. In this conversation, we get tactical. How to break social autopilot with better first questions, why high performance is contagious, and how to practice social generosity so others feel safe to be themselves. You need to be in the habit of breaking social autopilot. Do not ask, how are you? What's up? How's it going? Nope, social autopilot. Do not ask, where are you from? What do you do? Nope. And there's a question that I ask, and I'll ask it to you. And the answer to this question could change your life. You ready? So with that, Let's jump into this week's conversation with Vanessa Van Edwards.

Vanessa, what a treat to be able to sit with you. Thank you so much for coming to the mastery lab. Your work has caught fire and it's changing people. And at one level, when I'm, I was so interested in what you had to say. And I was like, oh, yep, oh, that's good research. Oh, yep, that's good. Oh, my grandmother said that. Oh, yeah, my grandfather said that.

Like, there's this connection between things that I knew that were familiar, some research that you're pointing to to back it up, and then great storytelling on helping people just be a little bit more at home with themselves. And that is how we frame and think about excellence is the ability to be at home with yourself. So I think you have something really important to offer to that conversation. So thank you for being here. Oh, my goodness.

What a compliment. Thank you for having me. I'm a recovering awkward person. and I think a lot of traditional advice on communication and socializing and making friends come from extroverts and that makes it hard for not extroverts. No, I'm not an extrovert. I'm an ambiverts. I'm somewhere in between the two. Are you an ambivor?

Explain what that means. So extroverts, pure extroverts, and there's actually not a lot of pure extroverts. Pure extroverts thrive and gain energy from being with people. So on a good day, they seek out people to celebrate. On a bad day, they seek out people to commiserate. true extroverts. They always want to be with others. True introverts only get energy from being alone. They have a good day. They want to celebrate it and savor it by themselves. They have a

bad day. They want to process it by themselves. Ambriverts, we dip into both. And I think that actually over 80% of people are ambroverts. Most of us are not on the extreme ends. And so I'm an ambivert leaning a little bit more towards introvert. I've actually gotten more extroverted as I've gotten older. And you've gotten more extroverted as I've gotten older, I think. That's interesting. Usually it goes the other direction. Really? Well, the idea, Carl Young first introduced the idea about introversion and extroversion. And the guiding thought that he had is that we're born with a true preference.

And then a crisis is met, whether it's a small crisis or a big life crisis, when we are forced to be in the other dimension, but we haven't built those skills. So he thought that introversion and an extroversion was there was a preference and that you could build the orthogonal or the opposite skills so that you would have a balanced approach. in any environment that you're in. And I think I've become way more introverted as I've gotten older. Like I really am relishing the kind of private space. Wow. Okay.

So I think that directional personality is really interesting because it shows you this trajectory of your life. And I always ask people like, one of my favorite questions is, what are your life chapters? Like if you had to go back and look at your life and give me the chapters and not just like the basics,

like elementary high school college. No, like, give me the basics of, like, first girlfriend, then, like, first heartbreak, right? Because always, your first, almost always ends in heartbreak. And then, like, you know, first career failure, first career win. Like, give me those chapters. I think you can predict how someone's trajectories will go in their personality based on the titles of their life chapters. Oh, so you're thinking that this, okay, but if I deconstruct that, life events have a primary shaper of personality is what you're suggesting. And then if you understood some important life

events, then you could better understand personality. Yes. So I think that there are two kinds of narratives, a redemption narrative and a contamination narrative. And so I think that, and there's only those two. And so you got to figure out which one you're going to be in. People who feel that they're the hero of their own life, people who feel that they're the author of their story are typically in redemption narratives. And a redemption narrative sounds like this. It doesn't mean all good. In fact, it usually means hardship, struggle, mistake, challenge. Through grit, resilience, hard work, and smarts, I can overcome. That's a redemption narrative. A contamination narrative is the opposite. They feel I've had struggle and challenge and mistakes, but through all my grits and all my hard work and all my

smarts, I just can't overcome. And they also don't feel like the author of their own story. So what happens is you have a set of life facts. And you might be heard this with people where they say, you know, I was born here, my mom was here, I worked here. Someone in a reded narrative can look at those facts and tell you how it's built up to them getting better, someone in a contamination narrative will look at those same facts and see how they've gotten worse. And so I feel that over the course of my life, I started very awkward and very introverted. And as I've become more myself, I've found more of my people, which has allowed me to be more extroverted. Secretly, that is the mission of my work, is can I help

you be more yourself? Whatever that is, your flavor of charisma, where you find, you find your people. And then you can become more extroverted, more confident through being more of yourself. I want to add one piece and then ask why you are studying clues, right? So why you're studying cues. Clues too, actually. I was like, I am studying clues. That's true. Yeah, because you're talking about encoding and decoding. So, yeah, okay. But first let me just add on the redemption and the, what's the other one? Contamination. Contamination. Never heard it. I love it. You're kind of pulling on Joseph Campbell's work a little bit there. But actually, you're grounded in self-efficacy, which is a fancy psychological term that Albert Bendor popularized, which is this felt

sense of I have power. I can make a difference in my world around me. There's something about me that I can go solve and figure things out with others, with myself. It's agency. Yeah. So agency, well, agency and self-efficacy a little different. Agency is like, yeah, I can, I I can do that. And then self-efficacy, I can do that and create the change that I imagine. Yeah. So we want both. We want both.

And then hopelessness is what you're talking about, like a little bit like, I've been through the hard things. I've got some resources, but boy, I don't know. I also think in the contamination narrative, there's a question, I'm doing a lot of experimenting now on narrative, self-narrative and self-authorship. And there's a question that I ask, and I'll ask it to you. And the answer to your, this question could change. your life. You ready?

Well, you're set the stage pretty well. Yes. Are you lucky? The answer to this question will dictate the kind of luck you have. I want to gather myself because I think a lot about luck. Do you? Yeah, I think a lot about it because it's in the sport world. Yeah. Oh. Does it even exist is where I spend a lot of time. There's a grand question underneath the simple question. I think I'm lucky. Yeah. I think that I can't understand.

It's a placeholder for me, though, for not being able to fully explain and understand the circumstances that have taken place in my life. And so I also think that I have developed more than when I was younger, more than maybe even last year, a whole set of tools that allow me to navigate better than I used to. And those are psychological tools. and frameworks that I work from. So there's skill, and I do think I've just been, I don't know how I got into this body, into this place in the earth, and like I just don't know how it happened.

And so I go, yeah, maybe I'll just call it some luck. Yeah, and for you? So I think a lot about luck in a different way, whereas I think about luck as it is the lubricant of life. If you feel that you're unlucky, life is going to be stickier, it's going to run less smoothly, and you're going to be looking for missed opportunities, meaning, and I've watched unlucky people. I asked people in my research, are you lucky or unlucky? And then I code them. There's actually a luck scale you can use.

And I code them on how lucky they are. Unlucky people, they sound a very particular way. They sound like this. Oh, today. First, coffee machine, broken. Second, just hit every red light all the way to work. then can't believe right like it's that narrative but with everything with their morning with their dates with their love life with their careers with their sports with their pickleball game like that narrative is is is a woven it's like it's like the grittiness of their life that that unluckiness is causing all this stuckness and when I ask them do you feel where you you are where you want to be in your life they always say no and then I ask them what is stopping you and it's never them.

It's never them. I totally get how you're working. Now, lucky people, by the way, I ask, oh, lucky people, do you feel stuck? Some of them do. But then when I ask them, what's stopping you? A lot of the times they say, me, myself, my productivity,

ah, I just got to get over this thing that I'm having. You know, I've been really procrastinating. Not always, but I've noticed that there's something there. And so, recently I've made some very big life changes, because I was like I'm not feeling happy something stuck and so I was like

time to make some change so my husband and I moved across the country in three weeks we completely changed our life in three weeks because we were like something's got to change and no one else

is going to change it's going to be us so I think for people listening also to begin to think about how do you answer that question do you feel stuck and who's in the way is it you or is it someone else

or is it something else finding master is brought to you by Square. One of my favorite local surf shops here in Southern California, they started really small, just a few boards, a tight-knit team, and a vision. And over time, they've grown into something really special. But what stood out most to me wasn't just their gear or the community around it. It was how effortlessly they ran the business. And a big part of that was Square. Square isn't just a payment tool. It's a platform that's designed to meet businesses wherever they are, from the spark of an idea to the reality of scaling across locations, managing

staff and building loyal relationships. Whether it's scheduling inventory, customer insights, or financial management, Square is built to support your growth without pulling you away from your craft. It takes care of the behind-the-scenes stuff so you can stay focused on what matters most, your team, your community, and of course your product. At Finding Mastery, we talk a lot about performance systems, and Square has been built for business, clean, integrated, and ready for whatever is next. If you're building something meaningful or dreaming up what's next, I'd encourage you to explore what Square can unlock for you. Head to square.com slash go slash finding mastery to learn more. Again, that's Square, S-Q-U-A-R-E, dot com slash go slash finding mastery.

Finding Master is brought to you by Lisa. Sleep is a cornerstone of high performance, full stop. It touches everything, how we think, how we feel, how we move. And when we get quality sleep consistently, we give ourselves the best shot at showing up at our best. That means the environment we sleep in really matters. For me, that starts with a great mattress. One of our teammates here at Finding Mastery has been on a Lisa mattress for over a year now, and it's made a noticeable difference.

They picked from Lisa's chill collection because they tend to sleep hot. And what they noticed was fewer wake-ups, steeper rest, and waking up more recovered for the day. Lisa has options for every type of sleeper, side, stomach, or somewhere in between. And I really respect their mission goes beyond customers. They've donated over 41,000 mattresses to people in need. That's impact. Right now you can get 20% off all mattresses at Lisa.com. Plus an extra $50 off when you use.

the code finding mastery at checkout. That's Lisa L-E-E-E-E-S-A.com. The promo code is Finding Mastery for 20% off plus an extra $50 off on us because great sleep. It's just too important to leave to chance. Are those questions prescriptive for you? Are those the questions that you ask? Not yet. Not yet. Okay. Yeah, I was, because I'm really appreciating this because I'm seeing how you work. You're pointing to, I would call the big rocks of psychology. And you're getting to them by almost like the tip of the iceberg approach. So you're asking a very simple question. Simple. And then, but you're pointing to something or anchoring or tethering to something that is like really well understood. So this idea of luck, what you described, unlucky, is like

a bit of hopelessness, but it's a negativity bias. There's a attribution bias. It's a attribution bias. It's it's called, which is a negative attribution bias. So I look, this is fun because you are, you're, this is why I liked your, your book, I think so much is because you're helping with these small, surfacey kind of easily. They feel easy. They don't feel scary. That's right. And, but underneath.

So, okay, think about outside in versus inside out for a minute. Yeah. I primarily work from the inside out, meaning that I'm helping folks, you know, some of the best in the world prepared, then ready themselves to meet high speed, high stress environments with great accuracy, precision, and even masterful, to do it masterfully. And I think, I thought originally your work was from the outside in, is like, hold yourself this way, make eye contact this way, use your tone this way, to create an internal change. So is that assumption correct? Or before we get to the meat of what, like, you can offer.

I think it's a cycle. So I'll come to the cycle wherever you are. If you're willing to let me help you anyway, I will meet you where you're at. So there's some people who come to me and they say, I'm super introverted and internally, I'm afraid to even show up at the party. Or I work with a lot of my favorite student is very, very smart, talented, awkward. These are my favorite folks because they're so smart and they're so. high performance mentally, but they do not know how to show it. They don't know how to talk

people. They don't know how to share their ideas. They have the great ideas, but they can't share them. So that's internal. So you don't like the ignorant and the arrogant. No, not my favorite. You know what? I'll work with you. I don't coach me. I think it's like the worst combination of everything. Oh, you know, I can crack a hard net. That's really great. I like the challenge. Yeah. I don't coach anymore. So it would only be through courses. And I think there's something to that also is like you have to have some gumption to be able to work through this content and come to coaching group coaching where does that come from for you the the wanting to crack the hard nut well to face down hard problems i like a puzzle really like a puzzle and sometimes i think like everyone

has like i don't think anyone's boring right like when you meet people who it's really hard in conversation i'm just like why are you making yourself so boring because you're not i know you're not are you fundamentally optimistic? I'm fundamentally optimistic, but I am very neurotic. So I have a high negativity bias. How do you know so much psychology? I just love reading academic papers, but I have no educational background. I took psychology 101. 110. You skipped psychology 110. You skipped 101 and went to 110. Yeah, I did. No, really. How do you, what do you, how are you organizing your life to know, because you just referenced, like, I think you're going to point to the big five. I'm going to point to the big five for sure. Yeah. And we, and I like, I like, you know, I like

Yeah, sorry, Big Five is a personality kind of trait thing. Yeah, Ocean, so when we look at personality frameworks, Ocean is one of the most reliable ones across cultures and genders and races. So you said you are low on extroversion. Medium extroversion. Medium extroversion. High neurotic. There you go. And I just want to talk about, can we talk about neuroticism? I think it gets a bad rap, and I would like to give it not such a bad rap.

You know what's happening in my head? Yes, let's do that. What's happening in my head is like, I want to get to the meat of your asset. Like, you have so much to offer about how to help people feel at home with themselves by these minds. So I want to make sure that we stay connected to that because I feel like I could have this part of the conversation be super stimulating for us. But then there's also all these gifts that you have to others. I actually don't want to leave it.

I don't want to leave it. Actually, so when we talk about the big five, we talk about extroversion, I think that if I'm going to help someone feel like the best version of themselves and feel at home with themselves, knowing where you are on the extraversion scale is actually very important. clarify that I'm a medium extrovert, which means wherever you are, it's okay. I don't think you have to change who you are, but you have to know who and what triggers your draining of your social battery. Very easy, right? Like that's that trait. Neuroticism is one that I think we don't think about enough, and it's very tied to luck. It's very tied to luck. I did not know this.

Yes. So high neurotics typically have less optimism, and I think they're less lucky, typically. And the reason for this, there's a chemical explanation for this. And I read this research And it was like, it gave me the chills when I read it because I was like, this is me. So if you're a high neurotic, hello friend, welcome to the show. If you're a high neurotic, you like me experience negative things more strongly, which has a very important biological effect in your body. This means that, for example, high neurotics, we see neutral faces as negative, like we misinterpret facial expressions, which is actually what got me into this work originally,

is I would leave a party and say to my husband, is everyone mad at me? and he would be like, no, I don't think so because I would misinterpret neutral expressions as negative. Why? High neurotics carry a special version of the serotonin transporter gene, which means that we produce less serotonin more slowly, right? So if I experience something bad,

let's say even not bad, let's say that we almost get into a car accident, almost. We don't actually get into the accident. And I had that feeling of like, oh, whew, a non-neurotic produces serotonin and it begins to feel like, well, that was a close one. And then you forget about it. Not a high neurotic.

A high neurotic, we are like a little jittery the whole rest of the day. Because our body didn't tell us you're okay. Right. And so the whole day we're like jumping when someone opens the door. We respond negatively to an email. I snap at my daughter for asking for another snack. You know what I mean? Like because my body has not recovered chemically.

So the reason we worry, the reason we feel, unlucky is because when a bad thing happens to us, it feels worse. It literally feels worse for us. So, of course, we're going to worry. You're describing this idea that the way you experience experience is likely, heavily induced by previous experience and the interpretations of the past experiences. And not even these. I want to be very clear that. When you say these, you mean. Sorry, not even your mind, your brain. I think that we sometimes get very meta and we get hard on ourselves. Like, I will sometimes worry and then worry that I'm worrying and then worry that I'm a

worrier. This is a very bad experience mindset-wise. So what I'm saying is give yourself a break neurotics, which is, yes, you might have a worry or a bad feeling, but your body is also in the heart in charge of that. It's not producing enough of the right chemicals for you. And so your brain is left just like, oh. Yeah. this is why earlier you described it's more of an interactionist loop right that there's both the

the brain and the mind are looping you know around each other and all things so that's great so you just embodied the you know neuroticism very much you understand it and and there's a bias for people that have been through something heavy yeah let's call it we could say big t trauma or little t trauma they've been through something really heavy that's one way to enter into neuroticism because you're, it's the wrong diagnosis term, post-traumatic stress disorder is, it's really a re-avoidance. You're trying to avoid re-traumatization. Like, that's really what's happening. And so, okay, so this is it. This is why I'm a recovering awkward person and why other, so when I came out as an awkward person, right? For many years, I tried to hide it. And that did not work. It

felt inauthentic. It was exhausting. And I think it just wasn't relatable because I was pretending to try to be extroverted when I'm not extroverted. When I was like, hey, guys, I'm actually super awkward and this video is hard and I'm, you know, wish I could just be at home all day, right? Like when I started sharing that, hundreds of thousands of people told me I'm also a recovering awkward person. So if you're a recovering awkward person, it might be that you have set up your life and your social life and your work life in prevention of the bad thing that happened to you at the eighth grade dance. And literally when I talked to you about with our life chapters, I will find the spot, the interaction in their life where they decided

I will never have this happen to me again. So therefore, I'm not going to try to make new friends. I'm going to isolate. I'm going to be whip it smart. A lot of my recovering awkward people, they had one bad experience or bad moments in their life socially, which told them I don't get along with people. I can't get people. So I better double down on my test scores, my book smarts. I better be really technical. I'd be really good at my job, so I don't need anyone. It's actually one of the, let's call it five emblems of people that go through heavy experiences in childhood. So if mom or dad are alcoholics or there's some stuff, it would make sense that a young mind would say, I'm going to be a high performer.

See me that way. I'm going to be an angel. That's it. I'm going to be the jokester. I'm going to be the rebel. And so what you're pointed to is one of the more favorable. You know, like, see me as competent and smart. See me as being a high performer in whatever.

But don't really look at the mess. Just see the cleanliness and the metallic nature of my performance. And until you do the deep work to free yourself from that, it's likely that you're adopting something that was to avoid retramatization as opposed to the freedom that can come from just being a natural orientation. Yeah. Did you say natural orientation? Yes, yes.

I think that or, or we, we take the outside approach in. So you just gave an inside approach, an inside to outside approach. Okay. Here we go. That's good. Okay. So like, yes, you can, you can do the deep work and I've done the deep work and it's great and I love when people do it and they realize, ah, this was a trigger from that really bad chapter and I'm going to, you know, rework this. Or we can do social exposure therapy. Social exposure. Yeah. Okay. Or we can say, all right, you had one bad experience in college or even at work, right? And that taught you. That taught you. that you're not good with people. And it's the worst thing in the world. If I get down with them,

it'll say it's the worst thing in the world to be awkward. It's the worst thing in the world to be not accepted and not liked. So then I'm like, let's do some rejection therapy. Let's go out and you're going to get rejected. So there's an experiment that I encourage everyone to do, which is the say hey experiment. And all you do, all day long, and I want you to literally go out to malls, go out in your office, and in your office especially, and be like, hey, hey, Because you are going to, in a hundred times in a row, be the first liker, the first initiator, which is one of the hardest things. But once you do it, you just break that seal. Second, you're going to get people who go to you.

And they're going to make a bad face. And they're going to act like you're weird. And you're going to feel it. You're going to be like, oh, that was awkward. But you know what? You survived it. It's all right. And then you're going to get one person out of five that goes, hey.

Now we're winning. Now we're winning. Yeah, that's so fun. And so that's just one social exposure experiment. But I say, look, I'm not a therapist or a psychologist. I have no training. But I am an experimenter. And I think everyone should be an experimenter.

So if you can do little experiments in your life, this is outside in a little bit. But we're also doing some inside stuff too, which is let's just see how bad it feels. But let's also see how good it feels. Yeah, through that framing this material, there's really good research on that exposure approach. is purposely put yourself in an awkward situation and then survive it. And then you put yourself in another awkward situation and you go, oh, I don't have to just survive it.

I can actually kind of be okay with it. And maybe, just maybe, for my awkward folks, we could, like, dig into the awkwardness. We can, like, go even deeper into the awkwardness and feel that, like, sometimes it can be good to be a little awkward. And the story I tell my students, which I'll share with yours, is I was invited to a very cool party.

And, like, I'm not very cool, and I do not like cool things. Like, I don't like a rooftop bar. I don't go to nightclubs. Like, when the conference ends and everyone goes to happy hour, I go to the bathtub. You know, like, that's, like, more my vibe. So, like, I like learning environments, but, like, I don't like cool things. I don't like, cool people make me a little nervous, right?

Like, you can see my trauma was, like, cool people. Was this high school? Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and college. Oh, college was hard. College was so hard.

What did you do to cope? Did you become a high performer? You triple majored. Yeah. In? What were they in? Mandarin. the hardest, the hardest one I could pick.

Okay, good. I literally picked the hardest major I could so that I could not go out. Yeah. So, aren't we clever? So clever. Okay. And my parents were so happy. And my parents were so happy.

It's a conspiracy. The whole system was working. I was like, wow, I should just study more. Yeah, your whole system was working. And so this is what I was talking about, the insight story. Yeah, there we go. Right. Thank you.

Is you can show up as a little awkward. Right. I actually think that's a, that's a good thing to be. Like, I can be myself here because if I make a mistake or I'm awkward, I think that you would forgive me. Like, I hope you would forgive me. So here's an example of that is I was invited to a very, very cool party in Austin. As I mentioned, I do not like cool things.

I do not like cool people. I hide from cool people. And I show up to like a literal mansion. It's like a literal mansion. And I'm like, I walk in, right? And I'm just like, regretting. I'm like, I should be watching Netflix right now, like, or having an intimate dinner with my friends.

and I walk in and I already can recognize people like I already recognize people from like the cover of Time Magazine and like very important people and like within three minutes like before I've even gotten my drink they say I want everyone to stand in a circle and we're going to go around

and we're going to introduce ourselves and I want you to say who you are what you do and your most successful achievement and I'm just regretting my life at this point you know wondering if I can take off my heels You know what I mean? Just wondering if I can just like moonwalk into the bathroom, you know, for 30 minutes.

So we like get in the circle and before you go, how is your, how do you express that? Does your heart pound? Does your, does your body shake? Do you sweat? Yeah, nausea. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. I'm like prone to nausea. Like I threw up all my pregnancies, you know what I mean?

Like I'm just like prone to it. So I was like, just like nausea. Got it. Which I also think is where you produce serotonin. So I've often wondered if like I have something wrong in my stomach. Oh, that's interesting. I wonder because I'm just really prone to nausea. Anyway.

for another day. No one wants to hear about my gosh. Okay. So we get in the circle and I'm like maybe fourth or fifth, sixth in the line. And the first person says something like,

I'm a billionaire and my most successful achievement is I invented the internet. I'm like, the next person goes and they're like, I cure cancer. And my most successful achievement is I save hundreds of thousands of lives.

It's just like, it's getting worse. You know, it's like, I'm just like, Like it's just like getting to me And in that moment I had a choice I do know the cues of power I do know the cues of confidence And I could have

In that 30 second introduction Shown up as really confident robotic, used all those cues But I was like It's not real It's not real And if it works It will only work for this introduction

It's not going to last And also like I don't want to Like I'd rather just be me So I said it's like really important right and then I'm like I'm Vanessa and I'm an awkward person and the whole circle laughed and I said my biggest I wrote some books about confidence and awkwardness but my biggest achievement is being able to do this introduction after those introductions that's what I said and everyone laughed and that's all I said that is all I said that I wrote a

couple books on confidence every single person mostly after me were like I'm also an awkward person so it immediately gave permission for everyone else to say they were like a little awkward. Someone said I think that they were like a slow talker. It's like, so people like it kind of gave permission. And then afterwards, most people came to talk to me, not the billionaire, not like the cancer curer because they were, I think, feeling safe. You became the epitome of honesty. It's just safe.

Like not the most confident person in the room. Definitely not the most powerful person in the room, not the richest person in the room, not the most representative in the room. They didn't have to impress you. you didn't have to impress them so they could have a real honest conversation. So I share this because I think there's like this wanting to be the most confident of the most powerful presence, you know, but that actually is not what most social situations call for. If you're not that, if you are that, you own it.

You know, you be that alpha. I love it. I'll teach you those cues. And if you can rock those alpha cues, I love it. But most of us are not that. And most situations don't call for that. So you're better off, like, digging into whatever you are. And that could be awkward.

It could be, you know, shy. It could be quiet. Like, it's okay to be those things. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. If you're trying to grow your business, which I think most of us are, your work is about more than just running the day to day. It's about building something with intention, shaping culture, growing a team, setting the stage for what comes next. And when it comes time to hire, you want a partner that matches that same level of clarity and care. That's where LinkedIn jobs comes in.

They make it simple to post a job, tap into your network, and connect with high quality candidates all in one place. Plus, with LinkedIn's new AI powered tools, you can write stronger job descriptions faster. Because the right hire is more than just skills. It's about alignment. With deep candidate insights, LinkedIn helps you feel confident that you're bringing in someone who's the right fit, both for the role and for your company's values. And we can speak from personal experience here. At Finding Mastery, we've used LinkedIn jobs to find our last several hires. If you follow Finding Mastery on LinkedIn, you would have seen these posts.

And as an aside, if you don't follow us, please do. We post content there that you can't get anywhere else. It's how we found our recent project managers, Janelle and Taylor. And it's how we found our lead producer, Emma. We love what LinkedIn has created. And it's been such a great service for us as we've grown. If you're looking to grow your team with intention, this is a great place to start. Post your job for free at Lenton.

LinkedIn.com slash finding mastery. That's LinkedIn.com slash finding mastery to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Finding Masterry is brought to you by Mac Weldon. In high performance, preparation is key. And how you prepare sets the tone for how you show up, whether that's in a boardroom or on the field or during a family moment at home. I'm a believer in building routines to help reduce needless friction, finding ways to make it easier to focus on what matters. And that includes what I wear. McWeldon makes it simple. Their gear is clean, it's comfortable, it's thoughtfully designed,

so I don't have to second guess it. And a few pieces that I've been reaching for lately are the McWeldon Ace Half-Sip. It's what I'm wearing right now. It's lightweight, it's surprisingly warm, making it a great outer layer. Plus, I love their Tech Marino Half-Sip and their silver denim jeans.

Somehow they feel broken in from day one. They've done a really nice job with them. But what really resonates with me is their philosophy. Mac Weldon leads with substance over flash. Their tagline, knowing is more important than showing. That maps right onto what we talk about here at Finding Mastery. The confidence is about knowing that everything you need is already inside you. If you want gear that supports how you move through the world, I think you're going to appreciate what they're doing. Head to macwellden.com and use the code Finding Mastery for 20% off your first order of $100 more. Again, that's macwellden.com.

M-A-K-W-E-L-D-O-N dot com and use the code finding mastery. I want to hit two things. One is surfacing, one's much more material. My son is in high school right now. He's 17. And I wanted, when I was reading your book, I wanted him to read it. Yes. Yeah.

And it's just there's so many good gems in it. The thing that I want to say about high school and maybe college is that your job is to be awkward. But if you put, this is why I tell them all the time. Yeah. No, I tell them this all the time. I'll tell you why. Is because if you go to a social setting, you're going to feel awkward.

It's okay. But if you start drinking or doing drugs or being some other version, if you're doing something to numb that anxiousness, cortical arousal, that you don't get the reps or the required reps to be awkward. And then you can go on in your life and like, once you are in an awkward setting, if you've trained during high school and college, like you know how to do it. And I'm not trying to be a puritan. I'm just saying get reps at being awkward. When you're, you're kind of naked to the experience, then you figure out how to take care of yourself. But alcohol won't do it. Agreed. I also

think for my young folk, and by the way, that's a very common thing. I'll have a parent or an auntie or uncle read my books and then give it to younger people. It sort of tricks you into, you know what I mean? It seems casual, but then like we're actually really talking about tea stuff. I also have noticed that I'm a little, the self-care movement, I like it, but I'm a little nervous because I have noticed, you know, I have boomers, Xers, millennials, Gen Z and Alpha students, and they're very different, very different. And I've noticed that with my Gen Z and Alpha students, and I'm going to generalize this, not for everyone, but there's this empowerment around being gentle with yourself. And I love that idea, but it can be an excuse to not do the

reps. And so I'll have students where I'll say, okay, here's the conversation charter I want you to use today, which is a very tricky way for me to get you to go out and talk to people, right? I'm like, I wanted to go try this question. Hey. Oh, no, this is not hey. No, this is different. This is what's next? Okay. So the hey experience, say hey is first. Step one. Step one. And then step two is what's your first question. And it needs to break social autopilot. You need to be in the habit of breaking social autopilot. Do not ask, how are you? What's up? How's it going? Nope, social autopilot. Do not ask, Where are you from? What do you do? Nope, social auto. So we practice breaking social autopilot. Okay. Is they say, oh, you know, I don't, I don't want to put myself in a situation where I would be uncomfortable.

You know, I'm trying to be kind to myself. And this is a tricky one because I do want you to be kind to yourself. Of course, I want you to be kind and gentle to yourself. But then how do we find a line between pushing yourself to feel that cortisol, adrenaline response when someone isn't right? So just as a side tangent, I think that that's something that we're fighting with. Yeah, that's good. The way I over-simplify the framing between we need all the right support mechanisms and we need all the right challenge mechanisms. So you can support yourself and challenge yourself. Others can support others and challenge them. And the ordering of that is material, support first, then challenge. So like just throwing someone in the deep end. Without a tool. Yeah, right. I want them to go out with a question. It's pretty callous.

Yeah. The other thing is that you're the embodiment of an exuberance. for life, for curiosity. Like, you feel like you're really at home with yourself here. And it's really refreshing because I think you've not only just applied it, but you are masterful with your inner life. And I think that that's the, if you will, the hero's journey is that you can be super awkward or whatever when you do the internal work. And unless you're performing for me here, which I don't get any sense of.

This is an area, a zone of confidence for me, but not everywhere is. If you met me in a different setting, I might not feel that way because I am not in my zone of confidence. What do you say to yourself to be in a zone? I have to use tools. I have to use tools. The backdoor for confidence for me and what I say to my introverts or my awkward folks is, okay, you don't have to manufacture confidence. But what we can do is I can give you a very specific blueprint for the interaction that you're going to have. So go in lack of confidence.

Go in awkward. Go in scared. But here's what I want you to say, do with your body. do with your gestures, and here's the kind of conversation that we're going to pre-plan to talk about. Great. Because that will kind of back door to confidence. It's back-doring it.

Yeah, so you're doing a bottom-up approach? A little bit. Yeah, so from a body kind of sense of competence to be able to settle down so that your mind can be more clear. Right. Or I'm like, stop focusing on yourself. It's a very selfish place to be.

Yeah, right. When you're going to interaction, if someone's like in that loop, especially my unlucky folks, I'm like, okay, stop focusing on yourself. All I want you to do in this conversation is here's your blueprint. Here's what you're going to do with your gestures and your hands and your face and your body. Here are the kinds of questions we pre-planned to talk about.

Then all I want you to do is focus on how to put the other person at ease. That's it. How could you put the other person at ease? It's interesting because that's what an alpha horse would do. Oh. That's what an alpha dog would do. So when the alpha, the one that's kind of the strongest of the pack, when they come around, the others go, oh, I can settle in. I don't have to be something special.

I can just, so if you fit, in other words, no one needs to be the alpha. What I'm suggesting is when you're really at home with yourself, you are in return able to settle other people down because we are constantly trying to see, is she dangerous? Right. Yeah. And I would say you don't have to even be at home with yourself to put others at ease. Yeah. Right?

Like, we could skip that step. I'm not sure. I totally agree. That's interesting. Yeah, keep going on that. Like if you're super self-conscious and that's where awkwardness comes from, awkwardness can, just for a moment, awkwardness can dress up as other things. Awkwardness is, we tend to stereotypically think that awkwardness is like, you know,

this shrinking, very quiet, bumblings. That's not, that's not all awkwardness. That's not how I was awkwardness. Awkwardness can also dress up as judgment, as meanness, as dream killing, as drama, as name dropping, as showing off, as intimidating, as bullying. That's all awkwardness. It's just dressing up in different ways. we have to recognize that if someone is doing any of those things, name dropping, they probably

feel awkward, which comes from a sort of self-consciousness. Okay. So if I want you to go into a situation to be at home with yourself, but you can't get there. You cannot get there. What happens, you stop going out. And that's where most of my students will find me is they've stopped. So I'm like, okay, let's stop trying to get you to be at home with yourself. That's going to take too long. Let's work the other way. Okay. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to go say, hey, then I want you to ask this question, then I want you to craft a conversation around these topics, and I typically like people to pick topics that light them up, right? Or I want you to find the topic that lights someone else up. There you go. I'll often say to my students, stop trying

to be impressive. Stop trying to be funny. Stop trying to tell great stories. Just let other people impress you. What questions could you ask to let them impress you? Could you be an easy laffer? It's so hard to be funny. Like, I've tried to learn how to be funny. It's really, really hard. But you know it's easy, looking for laugh moments. And a lot of people like an easy laugher. We like someone's going to laugh at us. And what happens to awkward folks is they're so in their head, and I've watched them on videotape during interactions, they're so in their head they forget to laugh at the joke. And that is one of the hardest things. If someone else is like, oh my gosh, I made such a good joke. And the other person was like, uh-huh. And they're

like thinking about their next question. I'm like, don't even think about the story. Don't try to be impressive. Just be an easy laugher and let them entertain you. Let them impress you. That takes the pressure. You don't have to be at home with yourself to be entertained. You don't have to be at home with yourself to be awed by someone or impressed by someone. And that is a very, it's a back door into feeling like yourself because at least you can, you put it all outward. Yeah, I understand what you're doing. I really like that.

Yeah, it's different. Yeah, it's actually one of the seven best practices for some more of the garden variety, mental health stuff, like anxiety, depression and stuff is like to go be in service, volunteer, be of help to somebody else. else. It's a forcing function to get out of your own. And what most people don't talk about is you can do that socially. Yeah, that's cool. Like this is a new idea for me. You can be socially generous. You can be the first liker on a post. Like if people are like, I can't go out yet. I'm like, okay, start on social media. Okay, you're on social media. Be the first liker. Follow your closest friends.

And the moment they put up a post, give them a like and give them a comment. Vanessa, you're doing great work. This is really cool. It's small. But, you know, when I put up a post and I'm like, does it even like, like it. And then someone likes it. I'm like, oh, Eric liked it. You know, like, it's a gift to me. And so be the first liker, be the first commenter, be the inviter, be a generous laffer. Ask someone really good non-autopilot questions. That is being socially generous. And that is an act of service. So if you can do random acts of social kindness, random acts of social kindness are even as small as, you know, someone interrupted you. You have to finish your great story. Asking someone to finish their

story is an act of social service. That's great. Or, you know, last time we talked, you mentioned this thing. I was thinking about it recently. How did it go? That's saying you're memorable. I remembered. And I'm going to invite you to talk about it so you don't have to talk about yourself.

That is an act of social service. What I'm also appreciating is your framings are good. They're super practical. My hope is that even high performers in a social environment can use the tactics and the strategies. But I'm also, like, part of my training is to listen to the words. Yeah, that's good. That's a story. Okay, good. But trying to understand one or two levels below that what's happening. And it's not an inspection. It's just kind of like, where's this coming from and is there alignment in it? And if somebody's going to talk, here's a good simple example,

somebody's going to talk about something really heavy in their life and they're smiling. It's like, well, hold on, wait a minute. Like, it's not lined up. So there's, okay. You are lining your stuff up. Your words and your micro expressions and your body expressions are aligned, which makes you believable. There's a trustworthiness about it. And it's also evidence that you've done a lot of work unless you have read your own book and you're just practicing the more surfacy, like let me use hand gestures. Let me like smile and have it be glowy for a while. It doesn't work though. it's actually repulsive. Yeah, it's super inauthentic. Yeah, and it does not work. It's repulsive.

So you're not doing that. No, and also, first of all, it's exhausting. Like, doing it without anything behind it is exhausting. And so in my book, there's 97 cues you can use. And I say, you've got to pick these cues carefully. It's like a recipe for a cake, right? If you just throw them all in the bowl, it's going to be like very robotic and not fit together. You've got to kind of find your flavor.

So what are some of the cues that you would like to share that would be important for people? You know, and I, it's just remind us, like, our community, they're really talented. They're decision makers. They've, for the most part, worked really hard to be able to shape something special. And so these are already people that are, you know, in the top 5% for the most case. You know, and then those that there may be early in their career, early on their path, but they know that, like, they have something that they want to be able to express and they're kind of on that path, whether they're early or already well established. So these are

folks that really will hang on what you have to offer here because they know they have something to offer and they want to be better at it. I love talking to high performers because I think that high performers miss something about their performance, which is that. Their high performance is going to help them. It's going to help you. Like if you're destined for greatness or you're already doing great things, great. But your performance is contagious. If you're a high performer and you want to have a positive impact, you can actually make your high performance contagious to everyone in your life, your kids, your team, your colleagues, your clients, your customers. So one study looked at 11,000 working hours. And what they, no, no, it was 50, I think it was 58,000 working

hours across multiple different companies. And they found that when people sit within 25 feet of a high performer, their own performance improves by 15%. And the second part, which is really important is if you sit within 25 feet of a low performer, your performance decreases by 30%. So the first is what percentage increase? 15% if you're near a high performance. So it's a stronger pull. If you're on a performance. It makes sense.

The brain has a, for the most part, we have a negativity bias. Right. Yeah. So I share this first for you to know that the more you work on your high performance and you're socializing that performance, like your ability to work with others, the more your performance is contagious than where you're helping others. But also, if you're a manager or a boss or a team leader, you need to identify your high and low performers on your team and be able to increase that performance of your low performers and make your high performers more

contagious. So would you, how would you go about that? So cues, right? So how are we contagious? That's the next question I had is like, I read that research. I was like, great, cool. How is this happening? How is this happening? I think it's a couple things. One is there is the socializing aspect of you know, high performers are talking and inspiring and asking the right questions. But actually, I think it's more cues based. You know, we send thousands of social signals every day, especially for in person, even on phone, even on the video, even over email. We're still sending these even over email. And our cues, we're very aware of these social signals. There are four different main channels that I talk about for cues. Words, the words we use. So the types of words you use

are changing behavior in your emails and your calendar, advice, and your profiles. You're nonverbal. your facial expressions, your gestures, your posture, your vocal, so how you say your words, your volume, your pace, your cadence, that is affecting people. We actually tend to mirror the vocal frequency of the most powerful person in the room. So that's affecting things. And then lastly, our ornaments, like the colors we wear, what's in our background, the kinds of cups we drink out of, right, kind of jewelry we might wear. So all those things are mattering. I think there are a couple of cues that I want to teach you that high performers do exceptionally well that are very contagious. They don't realize they're using.

love this. Okay. Yeah. The very first one is, it's a weird measurement. Are you ready? Yes. It's just the distance between your ear and your shoulder. The distance between your ear and your shoulder is a window into your confidence soul. That's what I'm going to say. And here's why. Whenever someone is anxious or nervous, they begin to creep their shoulders up. They turtle their neck down and in. And they, if really, if you're really scared or low confidence, you have almost no distance between your ears and your shoulder. You see this with teenagers when they walk down the hall. always in school. You also see this at the very beginning of a Zoom call when someone's like, morning. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So what you just, for the listener, you pulled your shoulders

up and you waved and you kind of nervously smiled. And I watched people walk into restaurants for their very first date, which could be with their partner for life. And they're like, hey, good to see you. Both men and women. Both men and women do this. So what I want to say is, one, in your profile pictures. Please make sure that you have a maximum distance between your ears and your shoulders. Otherwise, you are signaling low confidence in your profile picture. Very simple. Second is I want you to get in the habit of maximizing this difference distance. That means pushing your head back and up and lowering your shoulders. Now secretly what that's doing, very simple, right? I can do that very non-obviously during a work call. I can do it during a picture negotiation is I'm forcing your shoulders down,

which opens up your chest, which makes you take in more air, which increases your vocal power. done. It also forces your head up. It relaxes your jaw and it makes you have more of a relaxed face. So there's like a bunch of ripple effect things with that very quick adjustment and it is very contagious. Researchers from the University of British Columbia studied winning and losing athletes in the Olympics and they found that winning athletes take up more space with their body. They typically have space between their arms and their torso. They have space between their ears and their shoulders and they typically tilt their head up towards the sky. Losing athletes and I literally want you to think of this as loser body language. Losing athletes, they roll their shoulders in,

they tilt their chin down to protect their jugular, they press their arms either right in front of them or tightly around themselves. They take up as little space as possible. You know, when we do this, every time we check our phone. Finding Master is brought to you by David Protein. One of the lessons I've learned working with some of the best in the world is that consistency matters. And one of the ways to help drive consistency is to find ways to remove blockers in your day. Like get ahead of it. You know, those blockers, those moments of indecision or delay that can really derail building great habits. So for me, nutrition is one of those areas where if I don't plan ahead, I can easily slip into whatever is available to me. And then oftentimes I will be disciplined enough to not make that

fast, easy choice. And then what ends up happening is I just don't eat. That's equally problematic. So when I'm hitting the ground running, I want to make sure that I fuel my body in the right way. And that's why I really like David protein bars. They remove the blockers. They remove that friction in my day. I can just throw one of my bag, grab it in between meetings, or while traveling or after a workout, whenever it makes sense for me. Each bar has 28 grams of protein, zero sugar, and only 150 calories.

They taste great. They're amazing. My go-to is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And our team here has been all over the fudge brownie, the peanut butter one too. they seem to just kind of rip through them. It's fun. They've also been formulated with top tier standards in mind. And you can feel that level of precision in the product. They've done a really nice job here. If you're looking for a way to hit your daily protein goals with more intention, I'd love for you to check them out. And side note, these bars have been in high

demand recently. David is available on Amazon and other retailers. And they also have a store locator on their site. Just go to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. Again, it's It's Davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. The way we capture ideas matters. For me, the new remarkable paper pro move has just changed how I work on the go. It's a digital paper tablet about the size of a paperback book. It's light enough to slip into a pocket, and it's also powerful enough to hold everything, notes, documents, and to-dos. Wherever work takes me, it goes with me.

The writing experience is unlike anything else. It looks and feels and even sounds like paper, but with the power of digital. I can handwrite my notes, turn them into text, organize them in folders, and then share them instantly with others. And because there's no apps or social media, it's designed to help people stay present. It's also beautifully crafted. It lasts up to two weeks on a single charge, which means I can take it anywhere I go, wherever I need to show up without missing a beat. Most importantly, it's built for focus. Remarkable's mission is to help people think better.

No buzzing distractions, just a clear space for your ideas to flow. And the best part, you can try at risk-free for 100-8. If it's not for you, send it back and get your money back. Head over to Remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro move today. This is not great for the now generation of teenagers because they have that kind of forward leaning posture. And the other thing that I'll add to it is that when your chin comes forward and down and if you bring your hands up, I'm describing it for people listening, and you're checking

your phone, and then you took your palms up and then you made a fist and turned them sideways, so your knuckles are facing another person. Now you're literally in a protection fight mode. And so what that does is, I mean, that is an organic fight, you know, hundreds of thousands of year old posture. And it, it, it, our brain is not that sophisticated in sorting things out. So when your shoulders are up, your chin is forward and your hands are up, it sends a signal like protect, protect. So now you've got this cortisol thing going on, which is going to affect your micro expressions. And the person across from it. Yeah. And your voice and your person across me, you would be like, well, what's up with them? Maybe I should

be scared too. Like, what's going on over there? And then you become as contagious as a low performer. There you go. Wow. Look at that. Right. So now we're back to it. Yeah. Is that one cue. And by the way, feel free to check your phone, you know, when you're by yourself, when you're working. This is for those moments that have some weight. Like those first impression moments, a really important meeting. As people are walking into the boardroom, as you hop on a Zoom call, that's when we are typically checking our phone. And then we pop up and we're like, hi. No, your first impression has been made. It's done. If someone, if your boss or you are the boss and you walk into a room and you quickly take stock of everyone around the table, you know where your eyes going to go to the person who has

the maximum distance between their shoulders and their ears. What about for folks that have like, they just have shorter necks? You know, like some people and some people have really big traps. You know, there's an, I'm wondering about. And I have a very long neck. Yeah, you have like a dancer's neck, right? Pelotti is dancing. My head had just hurt. I was like, oh, my head's left. So this works for you really well. Is this the reason why I'm teaching this cue? It could be. So, but like, how do you think about, like, folks that if you had somebody with your, your posture next to somebody who anatomically had a different structure, do you think it still holds up like they're, they're maximizing theirs? Yes. And also remember that everyone's working with different limitations or

advantages. Everyone. So, okay, if you have a shorter neck, you have less distance. And I actually, I would argue. I don't, this is not verified. This is just an anecdote, anecdotally. I have noticed that sometimes when men especially have very big traps, like they're like, like they almost, their shoulders are higher, they look like they're ready to that's right.

They actually do look like they're a little bit more anxious, even though I don't think they are. So it's just something to just know about yourself. Same thing with your height. So if you're very short, you are often looking up at people. Well, this is actually a very good place to be looking up. Whereas if you're very tall, you're often looking down at people, which immediately puts you into that down position. Neither those are right or wrong, but you should just know what you're working with.

I know I have a very long neck. I'm also a woman. I have to work with those things. Like I have to make sure I put my hair in a way that I'm not touching it a lot. It takes away from my perceived confidence. Nothing to do with my actual confidence. Like if I'm fixing my hair, it's usually because it's a little tangled. It's not actually about my confidence.

But perception is a different part of cues, right? is we can feel confident, we can feel warm and competent, my two favorite things, warmth and competence, but how you signal it is what matters. Yeah, because I think hair grooming. Yeah. And like there's something to do with being a little internally itchy, scratchy. I just itch my forehead, which is funny. But like when we talk about itchiness, by the way, like, let's try it.

I'm going to try something right now. After we shake hands, can we just shake hands for a second? Of course. Okay, so we shake hands. We are both going to really want to smell our. hand. No, you're going to want to. You're going to want to. Watch. You're going to want your nose and get so itchy. Now you, now you, now that you've introduced it. Like, like, now even I want to touch my face.

Fair moose. Because I really want to smell it. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. It's like, there's like, anyway. Which is funny for a contagion issue. But it's also like, there's, there's, there's, so there's the, when I'm unsettled, there's a grooming that would happen. But it's also a sign of flirting. Right. Like taking care of yourself in that way. And like. And habit. Yeah. And so because it can you can be a combination of both. And so you're saying for most, for the most part, don't self-groom. It's a signal that you are. I'm saying be purposeful. So purposeful. So for example, like if we let's talk about, yeah, let's talk about grooming, self-touch. Let's talk about self-touch as a whole. So self-touch, any kind of self-touch that's touching my hair,

touching my face, you know, rubbing my arms, rubbing the back of my head, eye blockings like pinching my nose or rubbing at my eyes. Okay, those are all types of self-touching. They could be flirtatious. They could be signs of self-soothing or pacification gestures, so showing my inner nerves. They could be habitual, so I'm very just used to touching my face. So I don't even think about it. I even realize I'm doing it. And they also could be practical. I need to fix my hair because I am on camera and it could be knotted.

That's right. Yeah, right. We have all those things. They don't matter. To the other person. Yeah. Because it's sending a signal. Yeah.

They don't matter. And so when my students are like, but I like crossing my arms, it's so comfortable or I get cold. I'm like, I don't care. your person doesn't care. All they see is that you're distractingly fidgeting or that you're blocking and being closed off. So if you want to do that, just be purposeful with it. If you want to block, like there are some negotiations where you maybe want to be closed minded. Fine with me, just make it a choice. That's right. Very cool. There are some things where maybe you want to self-touch because you don't care. Fine with me. Just be purposeful with it. Yeah, you're ringing the bell to be aware

and then have a skill and a choice that you get to flex on, right? Which is great. I mean, that's... I'm confident. That is what high performers do. Confident? It's confident. It's confident to choose. A high performer might say, you know what, Vanessa?

I don't like your tip about the shoulders and the, and I want giant traps and I'm going to wear shoulder pads on top of them and I don't care. Cool. That is confident and that's also going to come across. Yeah, I think 100% right. I do think that having available reference points and tools is really important. And if you're kind of sucked into your own narrative and your own survival mechanism and or you're not really aware because you haven't put in the awareness training work, it feels like you're constantly in the rapids of the river as opposed to like, I don't know, watching from shore or like being like in command of the boat in the rapid. So I love what you're doing here.

And then I would go to the person who has like, let's say a smaller neck. there's something to do about the the shoulders like having your hands in a way that your shoulders are back down relaxed as opposed to like using armrests oh keep going right so we can compensate for spatial issues so i actually do recommend having a chair with armrests wherever you can in your office and your in your boardroom um restaurants with chairs and that is because when you create a lot of space here it also increases confidence like even if i were to have my shoulders up a little I'm putting my shoulders up a little bit. I'm still taking up space, so it's okay.

So, like, you can use more broad gestures. You can, you know, be more expansive with across your body. Like, that can compensate for it. You also can use other power cues. Like, this distance is, I would categorize it as a confidence or competence queue. Competence is signaling reliability, efficacy, capability, power. And you're pointing back to your neck. Yeah.

So the space is a competence cue. I would categorize it as that. There are many competence cues you can choose from. So if you have a shorter neck, you could just choose another competence cue, such as making eye contact at the end of a sentence. So typically powerful people make very specific eye contact patterns, and they signal to you their power and confidence with those eye contact patterns. And so if you're processing and talking, you don't have to make eye contact, but then if I want to deliver at the very end, I can deliver right to you. And that feels so much more competent. it. I like it. Right? I said nothing. I just said nothing, but like, boy, did it feel good for it. It felt good to you and to them. Yeah. It's, it's something that I do on a regular basis when I am speaking is that I'm kind of generally speaking. And then at the end of almost every sentence, I'm connecting with a person. And I learned that that was something by watching, like, oh, why am I doing that? I'm actually wanting to connect. And there's a nice feedback loop. But it's also there's a command in the sentence. If,

forces me to actually have a command of what I'm saying. And so. And a command of your presence, which we like. Yeah. And eye contact. I don't know. I don't think this was your work. I think it was somebody else's. But when you're listening, give all of your contact to the other person's eyes. When you're listening, when you're speaking, you can kind of gather yourself and look around and like point to some things and like and come back. When you're speaking in, it's all eye contact. It can be a little overwhelming. Yes. So there is a natural blend. between the two? 100% eye contact is bad, right?

Like people who say, make more eye contact. I'm like, ooh, caveat, asterisk there. Right? Like, in Western cultures, it's expected to have like 60% to 70% of the conversation eye contact. It's very hard to measure that exactly. Yeah. But yes, we need to process outwardly. Like, we like to think through things.

We also will sometimes look at body language or look around the room. We'll look at our cup. And so, I content is a hard one because people really struggle with it. And if you're on the spectrum, you really struggle with it. What's the struggle? The struggle is that it's distracting. It's distracting. Making eye contact distracting because.

Yes. So for certain brains, making eye contact, it's very hard to process. So actually, making eye contact while listening, you're having trouble listening. Yeah. So for certain brains, it actually is helpful. When you're speaking, I'm listening. I want to make eye contact with you for two reasons. Yes.

One is I'm really trying to see what's happening and feel what's happening for you. The others, I also want to make sure you know that I'm paying attention. Like, I'm here with you. I'm not on my phone. I'm not kind of looking. I'm not signaling with my... That is a neurotypical advantage. To do what?

Both those things. So for folks who are not neurotypical, actually making eye contact with you while you speak, I'm having trouble listening. Yeah. And so there's, I just want to make sure that people understand that I would rather you listen well. So if you have to choose between making eye contact to look like you're listening and not making eye contact to actually listen, I'd rather you choose the second. Actually listen. Yeah. Maybe you need to write, maybe do some stuff. Right. Right. And so for for brains that it's

hard for you to actually process while you're making eye contact, I would rather you be taking notes. Like that's a good way. It's a little challenging for if I'm talking to you and you're not, if I'm talking to you and you're looking away, I might not know. I, now. Now, in my work, I am assuming, ah, you're processing. All good. But someone who doesn't know that might think, what? Yeah, right. Rood.

Yeah. Right? So what you can say is, you know, I'm listening. I'm just processing. So you tell them. No. Or I tell them to bring a tool. Yeah.

So for any of my... That's a signal. Yeah. And so I tell them, if you have trouble with that, bring a notebook wherever you go so that you can be have somewhere to look. Even if you're not taking notes, it shows that the person, wow, they're listening so well, they're actually taking notes. And you can say, you know, I just, I like to track my car.

I like to take notes of my conversations that helps me process. So I just share that because I think the eye contact is really important, but it's different. It's different for most people. As the speaker, when somebody's speaking, so I'm speaking to you right now. And if I'm staying on your eye contact, there's another thing that takes place is that it can spring up another narrative, which is, wait, is she evaluating me? Is she agreeing with me? So there's this other conversation that can pop up. But if I am in my own little world a little bit and I'm really trying to find the right words and I'm connecting kind of, you know.

Totally fine. It is like there's a freedom in that. Yes. That's why I think it makes more sense when you're speaking. Like, just like you're saying when you're listening, you do need to make sure you're connected, but like have the honest alignment between your thoughts and your words. And if you, however you do that would be a benefit. But let's say you're saying neurotypical. if you are neurotypical, make sure that you are connecting with the other person to your best

abilities. Yes, and timing matters, right? So, like, I like finding small cues or phrases that have a big impact, right? Like asking someone to finish their story has a major social impact for you, even though it's one thing. I contact. Your eye contact in the first three seconds actually matters more to me than in a five-minute conversation. So if you're going to make that eye contact, or if you struggle with eye contact, just give me those first few seconds, like with the handshake while you're approaching across the room, if you can hit those first few seconds, you're going to give them a burst of oxytocin,

which is going to last longer. So what I always say for my students who struggle with eye contact is, okay, cool. Don't worry about it while you're listening if it's distracting for you. I'd rather you listen really well. That's better.

If you can't make eye contact while you're speaking, okay, I'd rather you be a good speaker. I'd rather you do that. But the time that it mentally matters the most is upon approach with the handshake. And if you can while you say your name because you know that. That's great.

You don't have to think about it. And do you add the fourth, which is at the end of a sentence. At the end of a sentence. If you can do it, if you can do it at the end of a sentence, even at the very end of a sentence, like the very last word or at the end of an interaction. Yeah, it was so good talking to, so good, you know, having this interact. Like at the very end, it leaves them with oxytocin. Oxytocin is a lot of things in our body, but it's very, we can really trigger it with a lot of different social cues. And just for the, I don't know, the one person that doesn't know what oxytocin is.

Oxytocin is the cuddle hormone or cuddle chemical where it makes us feel the warm and fuzzies. The way that I... It's bonding. Explain it is like when they give people nasal sprays of oxytocin in the lab, they gave away all their money in Prisoner's Dilemma Games. Okay? Just to give you an idea of like, we just try to love everyone. We just trust everyone. So it's the giving, it's the giving chemical.

And so when you trigger interaction, you're helping someone be more giving. And so there's small little clever ways that we can do that. that we can hold hands. We can give hugs. We can give high fives. And part of your research, you pulled forward the value of air high fives even. Right. Yeah, even saying the word, a virtual, virtual high five, you know, a digital hug. Even saying it triggers a little bit of that. We didn't take blood samples. I just want to be careful. We didn't actually measure oxytocin, but we measured like responsiveness, like skin conductivity. And so even just saying those things. It triggers something good. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah. So I think we could, okay, so you had, did you do three of the four that we're talking about for

the list you're going from? I said smiling, but I don't think you did it. Yeah. So is that a nonverbal? Yes. So smiling is a nonverbal cue. And it's, I'm always delicate with smiling because I feel like people have been told just smile more. But nothing is worse than someone saying, Good morning. How are you? Yeah. With like a very fake smile. I have a very fake smile on my face. We pick up on inauthenticity. Dr. Barbara Wilde studied inauthentic smiles, and she found that when people see an authentic smile, they catch the happiness. They have an increased mood change. When they see an inauthentic smile, even though they don't know it's inauthentic,

they have no mood change. So if you want to be more contagious, I would rather you never smile if you don't feel it. But look for moments for smiling. And this is the key with smiling is I think we need to be more smile ready. Just like being a first liker, just like being socially generous. If you can gift a real smile because they told a good joke or they told you some good news. I think I see oftentimes in work situations, I'll be sitting with a team and someone will be like, oh, you know, my kid won his soccer game this weekend. And people go, oh, that's nice. No smile. And I'm like, if any part of you like soccer likes this person, likes that kid and you can just bring out that authentic smile for them, it is a gift. So being

more smile ready, being laugh ready, but also looking for smile opportunities, I give, you know, very serious presentations to corporations all the time. And in the very beginning of my career, I would give these presentations and I had low retention rates. Like I got very high ratings in my presentation, but I also wanted to see did they keep the material in their head? Because that's actually what matters to me more is do, does this cause action? Does it cause behavior change? And I realize that laughter is the lubrication of learning, for sure, but I think I have a theory that when someone's mouth is open, ha, and they're smiling, they actually are just learning more. Like, there's something about it. That's a good image.

And so I counted the number of laugh moments in my keynote. And I feel that a successful keynote has like multiple, multiple laugh moments. Almost every three to four minutes, I want you laughing. So can you push yourself to be a little bit creative with stories, case studies, gifts, memes, videos that add to you? your work. I work with a lot of data scientists and a lot of people who are very technical. And there are really clever ways you can add laugh moments even into your data, right? Like hard data soft skills. Like we can do both? And so can you also as a presenter or a team leader be bringing more authentic laugh moments into your workplace? That is true, true expert

communicators are able to be, are able to do that. That's really nice. Yeah. So the glow of the smile is the tell. Yes. You know, after your, if after your lips come down, how long do they last? you know, kind of in that favorable posture, if you will. And when they just drop, you're like, ooh, something's off there. That's weird. I think I think of it as like a saver smile. Like, are you like, oh, this is so good. And it's like sort of lingers on your face.

That's the kind of smile we like the best. What about for those of us who like don't like our teeth or to smile and like, great question. Where do you go with that? Okay. So remember. Because it shouldn't be an excuse. Well, well.

Oh, you've, really? I mean, if you don't like your smile. Mm-hmm. I don't want to force you to smile because then I'm just forcing you into discomfort and agony. What if that's coming from like you're hypercritical and your smile is like it's just yours

and it's like you're beating yourself up more than anyone else ever would. I love your approach of like let's work on liking your smile. I would say okay you don't like it. Let's find another warmth queue that you like. Yeah, there's your, you're really flexible. Yeah, I'm like, cool. If you don't like your smile

I'm not going to sit and convince you that I like it because it doesn't matter what I think. Yeah. It matters what you. think. And like, we could do, you know, five weeks of talking about it. Yeah. And I could show you, I could, I could get you testimonials of other people about your smile, but no, that's cool. Don't like your smile. Let's pick another warmth cue. Smiling is a warmth cue, right? So warmth, one of the aspects of charisma or how we, how we judge people. Competence is one. Warmth is the other.

One of the aspects. Well, this is worth pausing on before we go back to the smile is that warmth and competence are the two variables for charisma. Yes. So Dr. Susan Fisk did research, the fancy academic word is called the stereotype content model. It's actually not called charisma research. That's just what I call it. And she found that 82% of our judgments of people are based on warmth and competence. It's a lot. And there's lots of signals that you can.

This is the essence of your work. There's so many signals that you can do to demonstrate warmth, which also pulls on some trust and likability. And then if you've got some competence cues, like to make sure that what you're saying actually is aligning with the way that you really know it. which is a sense of an expression of your competence. The very simple way to think about this, the way I teach it, is every time someone interacts with you, they are trying to answer two basic questions. Can I trust you and can I rely on you? The faster you can answer those two questions, the more people will like you. So you're separating trust and reliability.

I am. I'm separating them. And they're actually a little bit chronological too. Warmth actually comes first in an interaction. We like to see that we can trust someone before we can rely on them. So warmth signals typically go first under first impression. if you can do them, and then you go into competence, which if you think about this, this is every meeting we ever have, right?

When I do corporate trainings, I teach my sales teams or my leaders. I'm like, okay, the moment you walk into a room or hop on stage chart or presentation, you're focused on your keynote, your content. But actually what matters first is the first 10 seconds of warmth. And this comes directly from the research. Competence without warmth is likely to leave us feeling suspicious. That's right. Yeah, a little dangerous.

A little dangerous. So if you show up with the best ideas, the best data, are the best slides, it does not matter. People will be suspicious of them if you do not couch them with warmth. You're speaking to what my mask was for a long time is that I didn't, I didn't feel comfortable in my skin so that I led with competence and the high performer kind of approach. And when I would ask questions, it was, there was an inspection. I really wanted to learn. So that was always organic, but I wouldn't hold my micro-examined. expressions or body in the way that would create space for people to to keep unraveling,

keep unraveling. So non-consciously, what I wanted the person to know is that I'm on it. Wait, what did you say, you know, as opposed to like, oh, my God, that's great. Okay, go back. And they wouldn't go deep with you, huh? Yeah. And so, and then it was like, oh, yeah, he knows this stuff, but I don't know. I don't know. There's something there. And I'm like, wait, what's going on? And so I had to do that work to really understand how to keep the aperture open. Yes, so highly competent leaders

have the same set of problems. High competence, low warmth. And by the way, this isn't what you actually are. It's what you're signaling. This is very important, okay? Like, I didn't want that. Of course, you're so warm, your intention was warm.

That doesn't matter. Like, you can be a leader and you're very kind and very friendly, but if you're not signaling, it doesn't matter. So for my leaders who signal lots of competence without enough warmth, they run into the same problems.

people think they're intimidating, hard to talk to, cold. They cannot get as much buy-in. They're seen as a bad collaborator, but a good leader. And people don't bring them the truth. Okay? There you go. Same set of problems. Very fixable.

A couple cues and you can fix it. My highly warm leaders, again, this isn't your actual warmth of competence, who are signaling lots of warmth like me, like me, like me, but not enough competence, struggle with credibility. They get interrupted more. Their data isn't believed as much. they are told that they are not serious and their authority is pushed. They also, in sales, by the way, have a really hard time closing.

They have a really hard time negotiating and they have a really hard time being taken seriously. Now, it's actually hard to make it as a leader in this one. There's less of them. It's hard to make it if you're only warm. If there was a bias, would you want a starting place? Would you want to start with warmth and develop the competence or would you want to start with competence and back into warmth? For sure, start with competence and back into warmth.

competence comes from somewhere. It comes from knowing your stuff. So a problem that I will sometimes have with folks is I want to dial up their competence but never inauthentically. So they want to dial up these competence cues but they don't actually know their stuff. Well, we can't do that. It's not going to last.

So I would much rather start with high competence which is why this is my favorite kind of student and why I think, you know, if you're a student and you come into my course and you're not willing to do the work and you're not willing to know your stuff, it's not going to be a good fit for you. I'm not going to teach you how to fake it. Yeah, right.

You know, and I say, bye, bye. You know, so I think that if you're actually competent, you can learn warmth on top of it, especially if you have good intention. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Branch Basics. Here at Finding Mastery, we often talk about the power of aligning your thoughts, your words, and your actions.

And that includes setting up the spaces you live in with intentionality. The same reflection led me and my family to take a closer look at the products we were using every day, especially in our home. That's when we found Branch Basics. Their ultimate starter kit, it helped us eliminate the guesswork and streamline our home care and cleaning. Branch Basics is one simple, powerful concentrate that replaces virtually every cleaning product

in our home, from the kitchen to the bathroom to laundry dishes and even hand soap. The ingredients are plant and mineral based. There's no dyes, no fragrances, no harmful chemicals. Just a human and pet safe effective formula that works. really well and help simplify your routine. It's a small change and a meaningful one, one that brings more clarity not just to your home, but how you live in it. If you're ready to try it for yourself, head to branch basics.com and use the code finding mastery to get 15% off your first order. Again, that's branch basics. B-R-A-N-C-H basics, B-A-S-I-C-S.

BranchBasics.com and use the code Finding Mastery for 15% off a simpler and safer home cleaning routine. Finding Mastery is brought to you by AG1. One of the through lines and high performance is consistency. Finding routines that support your mind and body day in and day out. And for me, AG1 has been one of those routines for over a decade now. Since day one of finding Mastery, they've supported our show, our full team, and have fueled us in reaching dozens of milestones along the way. And now they've taken it a step further. Ag1 just released their newest generation, AG1 NextGen. It's the same one scoop in a glass of water, but now with an even better formula. A pretty unique fact about AG1 and why I've come to respect them so much. They've

gone through over 50 different iterations of their product, constantly upgrading ingredients, optimizing nutrient forms for better absorption and utilization, and adding in what modern human's need to thrive in today's stress environments. And they've continued to uphold some of the most rigorous standards and comprehensive testing in the industry, including third party, NSF Certify for Sport Certification, to ensure quality with every scoop. If you haven't tried them yet, there's no better time than right now. This is their best formula yet. And the difference it's felt. Go to drinkag1.com slash finding mastery to get started. With your first order, you'll get a free bottle of AG1, D3K2, a welcome kit, and five AG1 travel packs.

Again, that's drinkag1.com slash finding mastery to get started. Let's move to vocal. Yeah, vocal. So we've hit a bunch of the nonverbals, which are awesome. Before we close it, are there any nonverbals that are important to you that I know you have many. Many. Yeah. I would say contempt is the other one that I think people should just keep in the

back of their head, which is actually more of a decoding thing than an encoding thing. So encoding are the social signals you send. We've been talking a lot about end coding. And that's great because we don't talk about those enough, which are what signals are you sending to others? So they see you as trustworthy, likable, credible. Decoding is the other way. It's spotting cues in the room and being able to respond to them and see what emotion is hiding under them. Contempt is one, one, I don't want you to show it. Contempt is a one-sided mouth raise or a smirk. So it looks like this. Right, one-sided mouth raise. Yeah, right. Um, people usually think it means like boredom or, um, apathy. But actually it's a, a micro expression of

superiority of, um, like condescension, like being better than somebody, uh, pessimism. And so it goes along with sarcasm, often I notice in the workplace. Uh, so you know the root word for sarcasm? No, what is it? Sikar, which means to rip flesh off a bone. Oh my God. I mean, whoa, we went there. I know. Like that's a, it's like such a protective mechanism to keep, somebody at distance and you in a position of power because you're ripping the flesh off of their bone usually in front of other people. And that's contempt is distance. Yeah. I am better than you. Yeah. How dare you? I know better than that. Don't even get it in this like come on. Right. And so one, I don't need to encode it. So check your profile pictures. Make sure you have

an even or even smile or no smile. Yeah. And authentic, right, all the way up into these upper cheek muscles. But decoding is I think more important, especially for leaders in that contempt is one of the only emotions that doesn't go away. Anger comes in a burst, you calm down. Happiness comes all at once, and then you go back to baseline. Even sadness, we want to recover. Contempt festers. Like if you, the internal experience of contempt, I pay attention when I feel it because I'm like, it is sticky, this emotion. When you feel kind of better than someone, like you know better, that won't work for me. You're watching this. That won't work for me. That's a little bit of contempt, right? I know better. I do better. And it sticks with you. And it kind of festeres. And in a relationship,

it's destructive. Yeah, it's one of the four horsemen, if you will, it's the one. As soon as you have this, and I'll do deep contempt, I hate you. Oh, just, ugh, that type of contempt is like, we're in real trouble now. Yeah. And in a relationship, if you don't address it, it will just fester. Yeah. It's a good word, fester. Fester. It just is like, it's a lot of low simmer. So what I recommend is in meetings, especially during presentations or negotiations, you want to be a dynamic communicator, which is, I'm going in with an agenda as a presenter. But if I see contempt on someone's face, I'm going to try to pause right then or very close and say, this all makes sense to you, any questions, anything I can clarify here for you.

Right? Like you are very comfortably acknowledging something happened. Now, it could be something internal to them. It could be their own contempt. A lot of it is self-contempt. actually, I've noticed. When I actually get to the root of it, it's like they were contentious. They didn't understand something. It could be something like that. That doesn't have to do with you. But I will pause and dynamically say, are we good? Or one to one, if you're in performance reviews or you're with your partner and you see contempt, you want to be like, we good here? You know, what else can we like, let's deep dive on this issue a little bit more, right? Like, we can use all those questions that are very comfortable. I'm going to send you, it was the only podcast I've ever had where a very prominent coach, had like full contempt for me on the finding mastery like he came at me and he was like well

he didn't know how I've lived the last 25 years professionally he's like well obviously you've never worked with a high performer and I was like oh and I thought did you correct him no I did not I was like well let's see where this goes oh yeah right and so and so and so we just publish it I did good for you yeah I did well I was honest like and so but here's the here's the kind of the judo of the whole thing is like his face turned purple, and he was raging because we were fundamentally in a different kind of approach to life. Okay. And so I said, hey, I actually really disagree with that, but I want to understand where it's coming

from. And then he's like, well, you haven't worked with. Okay. And so then I said, I don't know, let's say it's three minutes later. That's a long time for someone to kind of rant and rage. And I said, so what was the tripwire we just stepped in? What did he say? And he's like, well, and he explained it.

And I was like, oh. So it's like a fundamental disagreement on like how we think about helping other people. But we're both trying to help other people. Yeah. So it was like this thing. And then by the end of it, he's like, oh, this was the most amazing conversation. It was a full. Yeah, it was really quite wild.

That's, that's a masterclass in how you deal with contempt, which is you, you address it, you try to spot it. You give them permission to share what's bothering them. And they may or may not. then now we're good we're good nothing nothing we're good okay what do you do in that case right so you have um a choice with contempt to either try to fix it i try to guess what it is and try to fix it which is which is an option or be the ally against it right like you can you can join in forces against the thing that you both don't like so for example let's say it's um oh this client this

client they're just so difficult and i'm showing this contempt Now, as a boss, I have two choices with a difficult client, right? Not that we ever, we never have difficult clients at science people. We have a choice. I can say, oh, you know, they just need some time, and they're going to get better, and I have some tools to work with them. I can try to fix it. I can try to give my team tools to work with that client.

That's option one. It's good option. But option two is, I know. You know what? They're challenging. They are challenging. I had a call with them last week, and it went long, and they were mad, and they were they're underpaying, and it is rough, I feel you.

Then the contempt is not going to be confused to you. Contempt is sort of like, it's like, you know, it's a broad emotion, so you don't want to be painted in it. And so you're better off saying, like, yeah, that is challenging. Like, that client is challenging. I'm also with you. And maybe some tools or maybe just like, sucks. Just sucks.

Yeah, right. Because then, like, that is very human. And it's, I think, good leadership. and I think that's what high performers do. High performers cannot fix everything. They also cannot please everyone. I joke with my high performers. I'm like, you're not pizza.

You cannot please everyone. Oh, that's what? Right? Like, you're just not. And I think... There's your jokes. That's it. I work on those jokes.

I know. It's the lubrication of learning. So I think, like, high performers who try to please everyone, they burn out. Or they're seen as inauthentic, which I think is worse. So fix the problems you can fix

and don't fix the problems you can't. If the contempt is about something that it's kind of sucky, say it's kind of sucky. Yeah, I do appreciate, like, you don't have to fix it, but you can bring it to the surface because if that thing is there, likely everyone else is noticing, and now they need to make up a narrative about, do I trust Vanessa or not? There's another variable at play is like sometimes when folks like you and I are entering into a room and it's a well-established team, they could be in the middle or the beginnings of storming. And there's another thing that takes place, which is like in that storming phase to get to

the norming and then performing is that sometimes they need to just storm. You might be the greatest opportunity. It has nothing to do with you said, but there's just an agitation on the surface. They got to get it out. Yeah. And so one of the great gifts is you can be like, hey, you know, what's going on? And then the agitation comes out. It looks like the vitreels towards you, but it's actually just the under the surface tension. Yeah. And so it's a nice moment to uncrack it if you can be vulnerable in all of the ways that you talk, but not give yourself. to their contempt. And you don't have to fix it.

Yeah, that's right. You don't have to fix it. So contempt is the last one I would do before vocal. Okay. I think that's a really important one. Beautiful. Okay, vocal. Vocal.

Yes. Okay, so our voice dictates a lot of who we are, but it's very hard to control. So when I was thinking about my book Q's and I had all this voice research, I really debated not including it. Like that section almost did not make it in the book because it is very hard. to control your voice. It is very hard. However, I think there are a couple things you can control. And here are the things I think you can control that are very important. The first is that I am working very hard to use the lowest end of my natural range right now. When I'm talking to my kids or my

husband, I typically go a little bit higher like this. So I'm talking to my daughters and I'm saying, hey, baby, how's it going? And I'm a little higher. Now, if I were to give the entire podcast in this tone of voice, it probably would drive you crazy. You probably would not take me as seriously up here. Now, both of those feel very natural to me. They're both the end of my range. But one signals too high of warmth and low signals high competence. And that's because when we're in our lowest range, our vocal cords are relaxed. I'm taking a lot of breath. I'm making sure that I'm pausing when I need to. My jaw is not tense. My tongue is not tense. And that comes across in sort of a maximum resonance point. This point of my voice that feels calm but still loud, right?

So that we can learn, that we can learn. You can train into that. Just singers, like. Anyone. Yeah. I'm sorry. Oh, yeah. I'm saying that singers train how to use their vocal system.

They can go higher, lower, and kind of put it on kind of the right pitch. But we can all access that type of work if we think that there's something to address there. Yes. And I think everyone should. I think it's not just limited to presenters or, you know, stage speakers. I think, you know, how one of the hard. Yeah, that's cool. It's a cool thing. This is a cool thought.

Like, I'll be in conversation with someone one to one, and I wish they would train their voice because they'll go into vocal fry. So vocal fry is when you add that element where it sounds like a sizzling frat. That's fry, yeah? Horrible, yeah. So that's when on my vocal cords. I can do it on command. It's my vocal cords rattling. But what is it projecting?

It's projecting a lack of confidence because vocal fry happens when you don't have enough breath. That's the only reason. You know, I instantly go to, uh, like the, I don't know, the uncertainty. Right. Or feigned casualness. What is that? I notice that people use vocal fry when they don't know, which also we don't like, right, when someone doesn't know something. Or when they are just like, this is like, like, I don't know if this is like any idea

that's like helpful at anyone, but, you know, I was just, I was just thinking that me, right? It's a feigned sort of, I don't know what this is going to be good or not. It often is paired with people with high imposter syndrome. I've noticed, if people have high imposter syndrome, they are likely to use more vocal fry because vocal fry comes from a lack of volume, a lack of breath. If you are nervous about what you're about to say, your body doesn't want to take in a deep breath. We kind of freeze and then we are holding it tightly. We're holding our breath and we're just sort of trying to get it out there with that as quickly as possible,

but not also like, don't hear me. Good job. Yeah, you're doing it well. Yeah. You make me nervous It's very contagious. It's very contagious. And so the very first thing is that I want you to go listen to a recording of yourself. It's painful, usually. Well, the voice that you hear in your head is different than the voice that other people hear because the resonance. So it is, that's weird. But what are you asking us to listen to?

I want you to listen to your first 10 seconds of speaking. Most people make the mistake of speaking on the held breath. So they'll be like, hello, all the way up here. Or they've been holding their breath because they're waiting for their turn to speak in the meeting. And, hey, everyone, my name is Vanessa. Got it. Which is at the bottom of the breath. Or they are so nervous that they're not pausing and they have vocal for at the end of their sentence.

That also happens. So the first few seconds of you speaking, are you using your lowest natural tone? Or are you up here? Hi, everyone. It's so good to see you. Welcome to the meeting. There's a permission you're looking for. Yes. And that's the last one, which is question inflection. So listen, are you using the lowest end of your natural voice? Second, are you accidentally using vocal fry? Do you hear that rattling in the back? And then third, are you using an accidental question reflection on a statement? This guy is blue. This guy is blue. My name is Vanessa. I work at Science of People. I'm happy to be here. And what does that do? So liars use the question inflection. Do you want to be a liar? No. So liars are.

are subconsciously asking, do you believe me? And they don't believe themselves. So they often, not always, really good liars don't do this. But liars will use a question inflection because they're trying to assess if you believe them. So we did a little experiment in our lab where we had people do two truths in a lie. And we, not every time, but almost always people asked the lying statement. So it sounds like this. My name is Vanessa.

I just moved to California. I love dogs. My favorite food is cilantro. Right. Sontro is horrible, horrible food. It tastes like soap. I don't know for some. A horrible fire, you know. You're in that camp for cilantro. Yeah. I'm in the camp. Yeah. Okay, good. So, um, like, that's how it sounded. So you do not want to accidentally sound like a liar. And it most often is used on your name, on your introduction. So you're giving away all your vocal competence in the first 10 seconds. Or, this is the last one, try to pick a recorded call where there was like something you were a little bit nervous about. talking about. Because people either drop their volume when they're nervous and they get vocal fry or they ask it. And I do a lot of sales trainings and I love listening to sales calls because

I can always predict who's going to have the lowest close rate and the hardest pushbacks. It's the people who ask their numbers. So they say, you know, we'd love to work with you and the price of this service is $5,000. If you ask your numbers, you are begging people to negotiate with you. You're telling people, I don't really believe this number or neither should you. So if you are asking for a salary, a budget, a timeline, something, a boundary, you should not be asking, you should be stating it. So we'd love to work with you. The price of the service is $5,000.

Totally different. Awesome. And to say it like that, you had to come from a different place. Totally. Yeah, that was fun for me just to listen and watch. Totally. Yeah, that was cool. And like the volume and the power it takes, like, again, a back door into confidence.

Yeah, that's right. Like maybe you're nervous about your number. All right. Fine. Be nervous about your number. but at least state it with a little bit of confidence. Like, look, it shouldn't be an incompetent number, right? It shouldn't be a number that is a lie or is fake or as bad.

But if you're like, you know what, this number is high, but it is deserving, it is worth that I have the data to back it up. Well, then state it like that. This is really great. Thank you for the research, for the clarity that you've put into describing and you're a systems thinker that has great interpersonal skill. Well, don't meet me in a bar. before we wrap can you speak to the parents amongst us on or the guardians about how how to what is a couple things that you would hope our kids could take from this that we could teach them yes so the very first thing is actually at mindset which might surprise you because I don't always start with mindset which is you can do hard things you can do hard things we need to teach our kids that if they feel awkward they should keep going we need to

teach our kids that even though you don't really want to shake their hand and say hello and say your name, we do. We do if it's someone that we trust. We need to teach them that socially there's going to be hard things. It's going to be hard. And we can get through it. And we can be the better person. We can make compromise. We can set our boundaries up. It's not easy. I think that we have made a mistake, and I did this for a while with my own kids, of trying to make it easy for them. I really wanted to save them from the pain. And I think that socially, there is pain. It is kind of painful to set up your boundaries. It is painful to say, you know, can I sit there? That is hard. It's not easy. And we say that it's just so easy. Just ask if you can play with

them? Not easy. It's not easy. And so you say, can we do the brave thing? Can we do the hard thing? We do the courageous thing where we ask to play with them. Yeah. And then before, and that's a stepwise approach so I'll just add on to it is like when you see them do something brave like be like that was so a three to one or seven to one ratio yes you know is a really nice love a number I love a number yeah it's hard this is a hard ratio to get to yeah three times catching the bravery or the courage or even better seven times but we're more like like negative 12 to the one you know like it's really and also like calling it out yourself right like you know we're in I'm in a new school with my with my daughters, and I'm being very vocal about that with my daughter, where I'm like,

you know, I'm going to the mom's, I'm going to the second grade mom's coffee. I'm a little nervous. Yeah, that's good. She's like, why? I'm like, well, I don't know anyone. And they all know each other. I was like, isn't that how you felt the first day? She's like, yeah. Right? Like, it's so sweet. Just like, like, if you, it, we can do hard things. We, we, we, you and me and our kids, we can do hard things. So that's the very first thing is like, it's sometimes hard to do some of these things, like absolutely true. Second then is very, very specific micro social skills. Micro. I think sometimes parents are like, I'm going to teach my kid to be confident. And I'm like, okay, good luck. You know, that's a very, very big social skill. I'm going to teach

them how to have good conversation. And I'm like, great, that is too big of a skill. I'm literally writing a book right now called conversation. It's 300 pages. Right? So let's do a micro skill. A micro skill is how to say hello in your low tone of voice. Just that. So not, hi, not that. Just, hello, nice to meet you. So good. Microskill, right? Then, of course, how to handshake, right? Like, microskill. That one's an obvious one. Or just like, can you make eye contact when you say your name and they say their name? Just that. Because that brings their head up, right? And it gives them just a little, a little moment of time where, hi, my name is Vanessa. What's your name? Right? Like that, just that. Then what's,

when someone asks you, what kind of questions do people ask you at seven? I asked my daughter. What kind of questions people ask you in conversation? Oh, they always ask me like, what, what's my favorite subject in school? Okay, a micro skill is being ready for the questions that come at you in, in conversation. Right. I have an entire chapter called How to Answer questions you hate. Right? Because there are questions like that that you don't like. And you have to be able to answer them without going, ugh. Right? Like you have to, that's a skill. So I say, okay. So someone asks you, what do you like about school? First, we're not going to go, uh, right? We're not going to do that. Because that's going to make them feel bad. It's going to make them feel silly

for asking. We don't want to make anyone feel silly, right? You don't like to feel silly, right? When you ask me a question and she's like, I don't know. And the very next day when she asked me what I thought was a pretty dumb question. I went, ugh. And she laughed. And she laughed. And I said, see, doesn't it feel terrible? And she laughed.

You know, and I was like, okay, we're on the same page. No, eh, that's a microskill. For a kid, that's a microskill. Then it's, okay, how can we answer that question that pivots you to a topic you like? And I literally teach us to my daughter. I'm like, what are things you like to talk about? K-pop demon hunters, you know if you know.

You know if you know. Any kind of alternative Disney princess. you know, we're in that range. I say, okay, is there anything you could talk about at school that could pivot you into that topic? Well, you know, at recess, they do play K-pop Demon Hunters. Great. So what's your answer?

My favorite thing is recess, because we get to dance to K-pop Demon Hunters. And then an adult's going to go, what's K-pop Demon Hunters? And then you get to explain to them. And then she's like, come on, let's go watch a clip. So you've got to teach that pivots. Microskills. Yeah. Would you suggest reading cues?

I mean, of course. There wasn't like a parenting segment in there, but like they're just decode how you can. I would say of the 97 cues, 77 of them are good for kids. Yeah, that's right. Right? And so you can, a micro skill is teaching your kid the triple nod when they're listening, right? A micro skill is not bobbleheading because you might have a bobbleheader. Yeah, right.

So like even in those cues, you can begin to impart those lessons. You can listen to the auto book in the car. I have a lot of parents who listen to the audio book in the car. I read it. So that's always, like, fun because it's me talking. And they listen to a chapter when they talk about it. If that's too much, you could also just use my YouTube channel. You know, I try to keep my YouTube channel into microskills for young folks,

because I know that they might not commit to, you know, a six-hour audiobook, but they might watch a two-minute short about it. You're doing great. Yeah, trying. So YouTube or Q's is great. And just for all of us, give the handles, Vanessa. Yes, yes. So I'm Vanessa Van Edwards.

My company is science of people, but on YouTube, I'm Vanessa Van Edwards, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X. I'm also Vanessa Van Edwards. I think at Vivan Edwards. And my newsletter is where I share a new tip every week. So that's like a strategy that I've been thinking about. Today we got to talk about some new things. If you're like, I want her new stuff. I want the new stuff. That's in my newsletter. I share like one thing I'm considering. Warm, competent, make you charismatic. Let's it. Let's go back to Ocean for a moment. high on openness to ideas? High on openness, yeah. High on conscientiousness. High on conscientiousness. Moderate on the extra version.

Moderate actually got me. Agreeableness. I think like, I think on the upper tier of it. And but your discernment for getting to the truth, this is a little bit tricky. I think socially you understand the value of agreeableness. But then when you get into a place, you're like, wait, I don't, hold on. So you're cult proof. I'm a people pleaser, but I don't want to be wrong.

Yeah. So this is the one that, so do you know where you would score on that one? Medium. Medium. Yeah. And then high neuroticism. High neuroticism. Yeah.

These are my people. So thank you. Thank you so much for creating a fun, delightfully concrete, elevated conversation about how to help people be better. Oh, I'm so excited. If you made it to this part of the interview, then I think you have a lot of potential to do more. And remember, just put people at ease and be yourself and find the people that make you feel that way. Beautiful. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. Next time on Finding Mastery, we're joined by Neil Arthur, CEO of Wyden and Kennedy, the creative powerhouse behind Nike, Coca-Cola, and some of culture's most iconic campaigns. In this conversation, Neil and Dr. Javey unpacked the real psychology of creativity, why the best ideas thrive on clarity and constraint, how great leaders protect the creative spirit, and why the most powerful work doesn't just sell. It moves people.

Join us on Wednesday, October 29th at 9 a.m. Pacific, only on Finding Mastery. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. and if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider

dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to finding mastery.com slash newsletter to sign up. This show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously. and the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.com slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone.

The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community. share your favorite episode with a friend and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your health care providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening.

Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.