Pod Insights Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee BITESIZE | How To Read Body Language and Become More Confident: Simple Cues That Work | Vanessa Van Edwards #560 About this episode Cues are the small signals that we give and pick up that have a big impact. The head tilt, the smile, the open-palmed gesture – they all carry meaning that people intuitively understand. And if you’ve ever felt misunderstood, overlooked, or underestimated, you can change that by using the right cues. Everything from the way you walk into a room to how you stand, your choice of words to your intonation, can affect how people perceive you.
Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests.
Today’s clip is from episode 254 of the podcast with an expert in body language and nonverbal communication, the wonderful Vanessa Van Edwards.
Her book Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication is packed with practical tools and exercises to help you understand more about others – and communicate your own ideas with warmth and competence.
Vanessa likes to introduce herself as a ‘recovering awkward person’. She certainly doesn’t come across as awkward anymore; in fact, she exudes confidence and charisma.
In this clip, she shares how to discover your unique “flavour” of confidence and how small changes in your body language could create big shifts in how you’re perceived.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:20 Rangan Chatterjee? See all details at drinkag1.com/livemore. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 254 of the podcast with the wonderful Vanessa Van Edwards, an expert in body language and non-verbal communication. Vanessa likes to introduce herself as a recovering awkward person. She certainly does not come across as awkward anymore. In fact, she's someone who exudes confidence and charisma.
2:04 Rangan Chatterjee? In this clip, she shares how to discover your unique flavour of confidence and how small changes in your body language could create big shifts in how you're perceived.
2:18 Rangan Chatterjee? One thing that I think many people struggle with these days is confidence. And I wonder if you could share some of the psychological tricks that we can all use to, I guess, feel more confident, but also come across as more confident to other people.
2:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, and it's actually a cycle, right? Like, the more confident we feel, the better we come across. And even like if we start on the outside, it also works in. I know this quite personally, as I'm a recovering awkward person. So confidence always eluded me for many, many years. I have a problem where I'm a social over thinker. I just tend to get in my head about cues. And I didn't realize that what was taking away my confidence was that I was misinterpreting a lot of cues. So I would assume that someone's neutral cue was negative. And that was, it just ruined all of my confidence. And so the very first thing I want people to think about is, what is your perfect flavor of confidence? I think that when we think about people's skills, we often idolize the extrovert, right?
3:19 Speaker 01 We think we all have to fake it till you make it. You have to fake being outgoing, you have to pretend to be an extrovert. I do not believe you have to be an extrovert to be confident or to be likable.
3:29 Rangan Chatterjee? I mean, that's very powerful, because I think a lot of people will probably say, Vanessa, look, I see people around me all the time who, they're confident, right? I can feel it when they come in the room, yet that's not me. Like, I can't be that. And I guess what I hear you saying there is that it's not about us necessarily being that other person, it's trying to figure out what's our unique approach, or as you say, flavor to that confidence.
3:54 Speaker 01 Yes, so for example, I think, and this is a really big myth, that we think that the life of the party, the bubbly extrovert, they're the people who are confident and likable. And yes, that is one flavor of charisma. But if you think about the most charismatic person you know, or the most confident person you know, just think about that person for a second, think about a couple of people you can think of in your mind. We also have the quiet, powerful introvert who's very confident. We also have a nurturing, empathetic healer who's also very confident. And so I think that if we can broaden our definition of what confidence means, we have more permission to feel authentically ourselves. And here's the biggest problem. We can feel inauthentic confidence. And this is actually proven.
4:36 Speaker 01 So Dr. Barbara Wild, she had a very simple experiment. She took photos of people. In one photo, she had them authentically smiling. They were actually thinking about something that made them happy. Their puppy, their dog, their child, right? Everything else, and it actually made them happy. In the second picture, she had the same people doing a fake smile. So not thinking about anything that made them happy, just smiling on the bottom half of their face. By the way, the difference between a real smile and a fake smile is that these upper cheek muscles are engaged. So if you smile all the way up into your eyes, those crow's feet, that means it's a real smile versus just a smile on the bottom half of the face is a fake smile. So she took these photos and she had participants look at the photos one at a time. She found that when people looked at the real smile, they caught the smile.
5:21 Speaker 01 They actually felt happier and more confident themselves. When they looked at the fake smile, they had no mood change, no behavior change at all. In other words, when you are truly confident, you actually infect other people positively. When you are faking it, when you're trying to pretend to be an extrovert, you are less memorable. You are literally less impactful. And I think that really good photographers, they know this smile into your eyes because they know that that's the photo that's going to feel more authentic, more like you. A couple of little things I want you to think about for profile photos or if you're doing photo shoots. So first is either really big smile, right? Think about something that truly makes you happy or neutral. But you don't always have to smile. You can also be neutral. There's some very confident, powerful folks who have no smiles in their photos.
6:05 Speaker 01 And you also want to avoid asymmetry. So the other thing that research found is there's a universal contempt micro expression. And so this is a micro expression of scorn or disdain. And it's very simple. You can even try it with me. It's a one-sided mouth raise. So if you raise up one side of your mouth, kind of into the smirk, you actually begin to feel like huh. I know more. I know better. It's a really weird cycle. There's something called the facial feedback hypothesis, which is not only do our emotions cause our face, our face causes our emotions. Let me just dive into contempt for a second, because by the way, now that you know it, you'll see it everywhere. You'll start to see this smirk everywhere. And remember, it's a sign of disdain or or better than. So first is we did a massive facial expression survey.
6:46 Speaker 01 We had over twenty five thousand people try to guess what facial expressions meant. Contempt was the one that most people got wrong. The majority of people thought it was ambivalence or boredom. So it's we don't even realize how negative it is. And Dr. John Gottman, he's a marriage and family counselor out of Seattle. He did a massive marriage experiment. I'm sure you've talked about this in your show before. And he looked at married couples looking for patterns. He wanted to know, can you predict if a couple will get divorced or stay together? So he brought the couples into his lab and he tested them on everything he could think of. You know, he gave them IQ tests and personality tests. He observed them. He interviewed them. He looked at their histories. And he followed those couples for
7:28 Speaker 01 thirty years. So a massive amount of data. He found that the one predictor of divorce was that in the intake interview, if one member of the couple showed contempt towards the other, there was with ninety three point six percent accuracy, they would get divorced. John Gottman can watch a silent video of a couple. And if he sees that smirk, that one side of mouth raised, he can predict with ninety three percent accuracy that couple will get divorced. Why? Contempt is one of the only emotions that doesn't go away. Fear comes in a burst, you self suit. Anger comes in a burst, you calm down. Happiness comes all at once, you go back to neutral. But contempt or disrespect, it grows and it festers if
8:10 Speaker 01 it's not addressed. And it grows and it breeds into hatred. And so I think that why some of these cues are so powerful is if we can spot a cue at its infancy and address it, we then prevent any kind of negative growth out of that hidden emotion. When we think about communicating with others, we tend to put all of our energy in the verbal basket, right? We think, I want to have the perfect Or I want to script the perfect presentation, or I want to answer the perfect way. And words is only one portion. Nonverbal is about, and it's really hard to measure this exactly, but about sixty five to ninety percent of our communication is nonverbal. By the way, that's a huge range, but it's still the majority, right?
8:52 Speaker 01 So if you only focus on your words, it's like showing up with forty percent of your ability. It's like leaving sixty five percent of your abilities at home. And so what I want to think about is, and by the way, let's put this into practical terms. So when I say, oh, nonverbal matters, here's what I mean. If I were to show up to a business meeting and say, hey, everyone, so happy to be here. You would know, you can't even necessarily see what my face is doing or my, or my body, even if you just were to close your eyes and listen. You'd be like, she doesn't sound so happy to be here. So you mentioned your work as a doctor, and this was one study that completely shocked me when I was doing this research. This was a research study that was done with surgeons. And they wanted to know, how do we judge doctors' competence?
9:36 Speaker 01 Doctors are a beautiful case study because we know doctors are smart. We know they're high in competence. And these researchers wanted to know, does warmth matter? Like, what, what do we get from meeting a doctor for the first time? So what they did is they took one channel, which is vocal. So we have nonverbal, vocal, verbal, and imagery. Vocal is sort of a forgotten aspect. Nonverbals are postures, our gestures, our face, vocals, our pace, our volume, our cadence. What they found was is they had doctors record ten second voice tone clips. So said their name, their specialty, where they worked. So it sounded like this.
10:11 Speaker 01 My name is Dr. Edwards. I specialize in oncology and I work at Children's Presbyterian Hospital. They took these clips and they verbalized the words. So you could hear the pace, the cadence, the volume, but not the actual words being said. Then they asked for dispense to rate these clips on warmth and competence, which hopefully we'll talk about in a little bit for charisma. Or the competence are essential for our trusting people. They found that the doctors who had the lowest ratings in warmth and competence had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits. Which tells us something very interesting that when we are listening to people, especially in those first few seconds of hearing them. We are listening for cues to their warmth and competence. And so how we say something is just as important as what we say.
10:57 Rangan Chatterjee? You say we're listening for cues. But I guess we're also looking for cues. It's not just our ears, is it? It's it's all our senses. We're kind of we're trying to pick up everything we can to, I guess, ask that basic human question. Can I trust this person?
11:16 Speaker 01 Yes. Well, actually, I think there's two basic human questions. This was research that was done for Princeton University. And what they found is when humans meet or interact, and this could be on video, on the phone, in person, professionally, romantically, socially. They're trying to answer two basic questions about every human they meet. Can I trust you? And then can I rely on you? But actually, it's a chronological order here. So what we're looking for in those first few seconds of interaction are trust cues. Right? Can I are you have good intention? And then are you smart? Can I rely on you? So those being able to very quickly answer those two questions. I think that that's why we're drawn to certain people. We are drawn to people who very quickly signal trust, trust, trust, and then reliance.
12:00 Speaker 01 We're like, yes, those questions are answered. Now I don't have to worry about it anymore. So in a weird way, the more clear we are with our cues, the more magnetic we become because we're just providing clarity for people. We're giving them less work to do in their brains. So when we think about warmth, warmth is a basic human instinct for survival. Right? So warmth is friendliness, likability, trust, openness, collaboration. So that is when a when a doctor or a business partner or a partner walks into a room, we want to know, do you like me? Are you a threat to me? Are you friendly? Right? So we're looking for warmth, like just are we safe? Are we going to be accepted by this person? Competence is capability. It's efficiency, it's productivity.
12:43 Speaker 01 It's knowing that this person that they will do what they say they're going to do. We love being around people who both are friendly to us and do what they say they're going to do. That is, I think, the definition of highly charismatic, magnetic people is we are drawn to people who are like, yeah, I like you. And yeah, I'm going to get it done. Ooh, that's like a secret magic cocktail that we want so bad.
13:06 Rangan Chatterjee? Is there a difference between charisma and confidence?
13:10 Speaker 01 Those are two very powerful keywords and they are so close. Here's what I think the difference is. I think that confidence comes from knowing you have high warmth and competence. So there are people who can try to fake warmth and competence and maybe they'll come across as charismatic for a little bit. That's that like smarmy salesman type, you know, that inauthentic person who like is like a con man and you're like, ah, I don't, I don't like it. There's something you don't like about it. You can be charismatic for a short period of time using warmth and confidence cues, but it doesn't last. Confidence is knowing I am warm, I am trustworthy, I am authentically likeable and I am competent. I am capable, I am productive, I can get things done.
13:55 Speaker 01 So I think that when we are confident in our warmth and competence and our abilities, that is like that true, deep charisma. Those people who walk into a room and you are drawn to them, those folks who speak and you're like, I want to both have a coffee with you and pick your brain for my business, right? Both at the very same time.
14:14 Rangan Chatterjee? When I think about your work, I always think about, well,
14:19 Rangan Chatterjee? you're not asking people to fake it really. Is it more that some people, let's say, are actually feeling full of confidence, but they're not coming across that way because they don't know how to do it? Is that what it is? And if so, then what can we do to help us come across as more confident, as more charismatic? You know, to make it super practical, what are these things that we can think about utilizing?
14:42 Speaker 01 Love it. Okay. So you said it exactly. The reason I wrote this book when I, so I didn't even think I was going to write this book. It's actually the journey started 17 years ago where I started noticing patterns. I noticed that highly charismatic people, didn't matter what their talent was, if they were athletes or business folks or politicians, they showed this strikingly set of similar charismatic cues. On the other hand, I noticed that bad actors, lying athletes, duping politicians, people who are faking it or fudging it. They also use a very similar set of cues for shame and fear and guilt. I wanted to know was, how do we learn those cues so that the people who are being underestimated overlooked? They have so much confidence. They know their ideas are good.
15:25 Speaker 01 Most of the read our our readers are highly talented, incredibly smart individuals. And this is the problem that smart people face is very smart people rely too much on their ideas. Your ideas are so good that we forget about the delivery. And so what the research found in this this quote struck terror into my heart and this I was like, I have to write this book. What does Dr. Fisk found is that competence without warmth leaves people feeling suspicious. So most people who have really good ideas and so much competence. If they're missing a couple of the warmth cues, even though they know they are authentically likable, they know they are trustworthy. If they don't know how to deliver their competence, people won't believe it.
16:10 Speaker 01 So a couple of very practical things that we can talk about. So I want you to think about your charisma like a dial, like a thermostat. So we can dial up our competence with the specific specific cues and we can dial up our warmth specific cues. If you are high in competence and you've ever been told you're cold, intimidating or hard to talk to. Warmth will help literally warm people up to you. Here are a couple of my favorite warmth cues. So the slow triple nod. So a slow triple nod, one, two, three. Research has found that that helps the other person speak three to four times longer. So that is a very simple, easy warmth cue, but be careful not to bobble head, right? So not just constant nodding, but purposeful nods.
16:54 Speaker 01 Second is a head tilt. So if I were to say, can you hear that? We tilt our head up to the side. They've actually found that when someone just head tilts. While they're listening to someone, it encourages the other person to feel more engaged. These are very specific because I think that sometimes I I'm an over thinker. I get so in my own head that I forget to show the warmth cues. I'm so overthinking it that I don't show it. So the nod and a tilt are very easy ways to just dial up warmth. On the competence side, so if you're very high in warmth, so folks who are very high in warmth. You often are people pleasers. You really want to be liked, but that can come. That can mean that people sometimes step on your boundaries or interrupt you.
17:36 Speaker 01 So if you're really high in warmth and you want to dial up competence, you want to be taken more seriously, you want your ideas to be heard. You want to actually show competence cues of being a winner. And what I mean by this, I don't mean it in a judgmental way. I mean it like physically as a winner. So researchers from University of British Columbia, they found that athletes, when they literally win a race, they typically take up as much space as possible. They tilt their head towards the sky. They open up their body. They typically open up their hands. It is a way that they're signaling to the world an innate sense of pride. If you want to dial up competence, I want you to dial up and show your innate sense of pride. So a couple of things we can learn from those athletes. One is open palm, open hand.
18:20 Speaker 01 So I, I love an open palm. I start all of my video calls with a, "Good morning. How are you? Good to see you." That little cue kind of shows someone I'm open. I'm not hiding anything. I'm not concealing anything. We also love the distance between, it's a really weird measurement. The distance between our earlobes and our shoulder. I know that's a very, very weird measurement, but we can sense that someone is anxious or nervous when they roll their shoulders up to their ears and they tilt their chin down and they look like they're trying to protect their jugular. Right? Where it's literally an instinctive protective gesture. If you see people who are really nervous, they'll try to take up as little space as possible. So when you hop on video, when you, in your profile pictures, when you're in a room, see if you can maximize the space between your ear and your shoulder.
19:06 Speaker 01 Those are some, they seem like micro movements and that's the point. These are small but impactful ways that we can actually dial up people's impression of ourselves.
19:16 Rangan Chatterjee? What I love about your approach is that pretty much all the cues, you've got scientific research to back them up. And, you know, these cues weren't invented in the last 20, 30 years, right? These are basic innate human cues that we have used for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years to answer those two questions. Can I trust you? Can I rely on you? These are sending messages to other people, whether we want them to or not.
19:45 Rangan Chatterjee? You've described yourself as a recovering awkward person. So. In your awkward days.
19:51 Speaker 01 Yes.
19:52 Rangan Chatterjee? You presumably had to learn the skill of cues. So are you at a point in your life now, having studied this for years? Are you fluent with your cues? Can you now turn up? And even if you're feeling awkward, well, there's two parts to that. Do you sometimes feel awkward, but you can actually give the impression that you're not? Which of course, I can see can be helpful. And do you also just feel less awkward and that you don't have to think about these cues? Cause you practice them so much that they're now happening automatically.
20:26 Speaker 01 Yes, I think I became fluent in 2017, specifically in June.
20:31 Rangan Chatterjee? Wow.
20:32 Speaker 01 I literally, I felt a moment where I went from very mechanical learning, just like learning language, right? And I remember specifically in June of 2017, that's when I gave my TED Talk. And we were doing a whole bunch of media around the TED Talk, I gave it in London. And I remember at the end of the day, thinking, I didn't think once about my cues. I just was. The second issue is, you mentioned, you know, do I still feel awkward? Yes, absolutely. And I think I can hide it a little bit. But actually, what I have found much more exciting is telling people I feel awkward. And this is a kind of radical transparency. And if anyone who's watching or listening is willing to take this challenge with me.
21:16 Speaker 01 I think we've spent way too many years hiding our discomfort.
21:20 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah.
21:21 Speaker 01 Hiding anxiety or hiding what we're awkward about. When I introduce myself to people, I say, hi, I'm Vanessa. I'm an author and I'm a recovering awkward person. Because it gives me permission to be awkward if I feel it. And then we can make bad jokes and we can laugh at ourselves. And also I like being a beacon for other awkward people. Like if you feel awkward, like I'm safe, like you can come and talk to me. And so, yes, I can hide my awkwardness, but I think that my mission now is actually to not hide it. And if I feel it, I feel it and it's okay.
21:54 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah, I really like that. There's this real subtle nuance there, isn't there? That you're not trying to say, listen, pretend to be someone who you're not. And actually, I guess deceive people and manipulate people. That's one aspect, but if you're not using cues effectively. You've got all this knowledge to share, but people may be switched off from it because they think, whatever, that you're not interested, that you're detached. But actually, it's not that. You just feel awkward. But I think that final piece is so important, that vulnerability, sharing actually how we're truly feeling. And it took me a while to realise this as well in my life, that actually, oh, when you do that, people lean in, they come closer to you, they,
22:35 Rangan Chatterjee? they can see you, right? So you're not trying to be someone you're not, you're, you're sharing that, hey, look, I've got a few insecurities. Hey, and we all do.
22:45 Speaker 01 Yeah. And also, by the way, I think I didn't realise this at first, but vulnerability is warmth. So maybe a side door into warmth is just being vulnerable.
22:56 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah.
22:57 Speaker 01 And so vulnerability, sharing your true feelings, being super transparent, that's not negative, that's not bad, that's not, those are warmth cues.
23:06 Rangan Chatterjee? But that's honestly, it's been such a joy talking to you. And your work is just so helpful and so practical for anyone. Can you maybe leave my audience with some of your top tips, your final words of wisdom to inspire them to kind of take their cues seriously?
23:21 Speaker 01 Yes. So here's the good news. You're already using cues. We just want to leverage them. We just want to make them work for you. So a little final exercise to think about is, what cues are you naturally using? What cues make you feel like your best self? What cues make you feel good when other people do them? The more we can start with the cues we naturally use, the cues that already make us feel good, and that we can hone and leverage those, the better. So my challenge for you is, what cues do you love? What cues are you already using that you like? And what cues from your highly charismatic people? The very beginning of the show, I asked you, who's the most charismatic person you know? Think of that person. When you observe them, when you watch them talk and speak, what cues
24:02 Speaker 01 do they use that you might also want to try on? And the more that we can leverage our natural abilities, the better we feel, the more authentic we feel, and the more confident we come across.
24:13 Rangan Chatterjee? Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest? If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five, and each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles of books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small, yet powerful dose of feel-good to get you ready for the weekend.
24:55 Rangan Chatterjee? You can sign up for it free of charge at drchatgy.com/fridayfive. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.
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