The Body Language Expert: Stop Using This, It’s Making People Dislike You, So Are These Subtle Mistakes! Your Resting Face Matters & How To Fix It!

Vanessa Van Edwards (0:00)

Your brain is 12.5 times more likely to believe my gesture over my words, and that's because it is very hard to lie with our gestures. For example, you want to do a little experiment with me?

Steven Bartlett (0:08)

Sure.

Vanessa Van Edwards (0:08)

Okay, I want you to say five, but hold up the number three.

Steven Bartlett (0:12)

Five.

Vanessa Van Edwards (0:13)

Hard, right?

Steven Bartlett (0:13)

Yeah. I had to think about them separately.

Vanessa Van Edwards (0:15)

This is why liars use less gestures, but known tools like that is critical if you're trying to set yourself up for success.

Steven Bartlett (0:21)

We're going to go through all of them.

Vanessa Van Edwards (0:22)

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_3 (0:23)

Vanessa Van Edwards is a behavioral investigator who science-backed research from body language and micro-expressions to vocal tones and first impressions has revolutionized the way we build confidence and create more authentic relationships in every social and professional interaction.

Vanessa Van Edwards (0:35)

I'm a recovering awkward person. I thought that charisma was genetic and I didn't know how to have conversations. I didn't even know how to have friends. Then I discovered that highly successful people speak a hidden language, and that is the language of cues. It's directly from the research. They know the blueprints to talk to anyone. They know that if you sit within 25 feet of a high performer, your own performance improves by 15 percent, and that there's a direct correlation between confidence and anxiety and the distance between our shoulder and our earlobe.

Steven Bartlett (1:01)

So interesting.

Vanessa Van Edwards (1:01)

They also know that 82 percent of our impressions of people are based on warmth and competence. So if you worry that people don't take you seriously, you have trouble getting raises, you feel anxious and overwhelmed. I have five power cues for competence. But if you have ever been told you're intimidated, hard to talk to, I want you to use these five warmth cues first.

Steven Bartlett (1:20)

What about how to get a partner in terms of cues and body language?

Vanessa Van Edwards (1:23)

Let's start with a study that blew my mind. It's impossible to be attracted. It's just someone who f*****g...

Steven Bartlett (1:28)

That's so crazy. Just such a small...

Vanessa Van Edwards (1:29)

That one little thing.

Steven Bartlett (1:35)

Vanessa Van Edwards, for someone that's just clicked on this conversation now, and they're wondering why they should stay and listen to what we're going to talk about, what would you say to them?

Vanessa Van Edwards (1:47)

Very highly successful people speak a hidden language, and that is the language of cues. If you don't know how to read the cues people are sending to you, if you don't know how to control the cues you're sending to others, you are missing a crucial element of success.

Steven Bartlett (2:02)

How do you quantify that in a way that I know that it's true? Are there studies or stats that reinforce what you've just said?

Vanessa Van Edwards (2:09)

82% of our impressions of people are based on warmth and competence. That means that if we can control our warmth cues and our competence cues, we know we are taking care of 82% of our impression. And that is critical to be more memorable, to be more confident, to have a clearer communication.

Steven Bartlett (2:28)

And to take that a bit further, what areas of my life will that have impact? So if I'm warm and I'm competent, which you're telling me are things that I can control, what are the downstream consequences of that?

Vanessa Van Edwards (2:38)

So I think my mission is to tackle a big lie. And that is that smart people will translate their book smarts into people smarts. But actually, no matter how smart you are, if you do not know how to communicate with people, you can't connect with people, you can't have good relationships, you can't have supportive friendships, you get looped into difficult people or toxic people, you have trouble getting raises or promotions. When you are able to control your communication, it helps you not be overlooked, not be misunderstood. And that affects your friendships, your partner, your career, and it also helps you feel more confident walking into a room.

Steven Bartlett (3:16)

And what is your research based on? Are you a researcher? Have you done sort of first-party research yourself? Where are you drawing from?

Vanessa Van Edwards (3:23)

So I'm a recovering awkward person. So I used to believe that you were either born with charisma or you weren't, that charisma was genetic. And in 2002, I discovered a study that changed my life, which said that charisma can be learned. This is when I started to tackle, to figure out, okay, if charisma can be learned, how do we learn it? How can we learn blueprints for conversation? How can we learn frameworks for how we connect and how we socialize? That's when I started doing my own research. So I'm a behavioral researcher and a bestselling author on communication. And I specialize in helping very brilliant, very smart, awkward folks not be overlooked.