Let's start with introverts. What are mistakes that introverts make when it comes to body language?

Okay, so one of the biggest mistakes that we have identified, there's a lot of them, is with our facial expressions. I think with our facial expressions, we forget how rich our face is in demonstrating emotions or cueing emotions. A big mistake that I see is people will fake smile. I love smiling, but there is nothing worse than smiling. I do not believe in toxic positivity. So people have been told, smile, smile more, which I think is the worst advice. I'm like, smile purposefully, don't smile more. So a really simple mistake is someone will say, Yeah, I'm so happy to be here. Incongruent. So what will happen is, introvert really wants to show up as their best self. They come with the best intention, or someone will hop on a video call and they're trying to be positive. And so they'll have a lot of incongruent messages by trying to show warmth of fake smile. The problem is Dr. Barbara Wild and her associates, they actually looked at fake smiling. What they did is they showed people pictures of smiling people, fake smiling people, and neutral people. By the way, just the science of this? A fake smile or a real smile reaches all the way up into these upper cheek muscles.

So if you were to smile all the way up into your upper cheek muscles, they activate your crow's feet. That's a real smile. Only one in 10 people can consciously activate those muscles. So they really do happen with authentic happiness. Okay. Fake smiles are only on the bottom half of the face. So if I was in a face mask, you could not see my fake smile.

Right.

But you could see the smile lines in somebody's eyes.

If it's real.

So a real smile, you actually make with your eyes.

Exactly.

Okay.

Upper cheek muscles/eyes. Exactly. So what happens is, what happened in this research experiment is she showed people pictures of real smiling people, and people caught the happiness. It Actually, it affected their positive mood. They felt happier. When people saw the fake smiles, they caught nothing. In other words, queuing for real happiness actually makes you more contagious. Fake happiness makes you less than memorable. Nothing happens. So the biggest mistake that will happen with introverts is they want to come across as warm, and their only tool in their toolkit is smiling. The good thing is there are many other warmth cues.

So what are the other warmth cues that you can use?

Okay.

So if you're You're not going to smile, smile for real. And please, please go look at your LinkedIn profile picture. Please, please go look at your dating profile pictures. I either want you neutral, sexy, or smiling all the way. No fake smiles. So make sure That smile is all the way up into your eyes, because if you have a fake smile in your LinkedIn profile picture, you are literally signaling fake happiness in authenticity. So if you don't want to actually smile, that is totally okay. That's not your only warmth cue. Here are your other warmth options. One, One, a head nod. So a slow triple nod, one, two, three, is an immediate warmth signal.

Wow. One, two, three.

Okay, we can do that, people.

Yes. And by the way, the funny thing about this, the research found this just tickles me, that when someone does a slow triple nod, the other person speaks 67% longer. It's like a nonverbal dot, dot, dot. You're literally saying to someone, Tell me more. I I want to listen. I want to hear you. So a slow triple nod.

I think they teach that to therapists, don't they?

I think they teach the therapist triple nod technique.

Right. So a slow triple nod, very easy. You don't have to smile. It's a warmth cue. The other thing that we found, we did this in LinkedIn profile pictures. If you add a simple head tilt, you are seen as warmer. So if I tilt my head to the side, this is a universal response. If I want to hear something better, so if I say, Mel, do you hear that? We automatically tilt our head and expose our ear. That's the way that we want to hear better. And so when you are on a video call on a date in your LinkedIn profile picture, if you want to be seen as warm, you can tilt your head to the side as if to say, I am deeply listening. I am really trying to hear you. And it's much more natural than smiling maniacally.

This is fascinating. So we've got the triple nod, everybody. We've got smile with your eyes. We've got tilt your head slightly. What are other warm cues?

Okay, so other warm One cue is vocal. So let's talk about vocal. Those were three nonverbal cues. Vocal, remember, is the one that we often forget. You have a lot of power in your voice. So another warm vocal cue is what I call vocalizations. Do we love a vocalization? So a vocalization is surrounding It's on sound listening. It's showing that you're listening. So this is going to immediately make me sound warmer.

Oh, I just did that.

I'm very warm.

Yes. Actually, you have a very good balance smell of warmth and competence. I was going to say you when you asked for an example, But I was like, that's way too brown nosy, so I didn't. But you have a very good warmth competence because you will vocalize for me. So as a speaker, when you nod at me, I can see you nodding right now. Oh, yeah.

I'm just doing it naturally.

Yeah. And that encourages me as a speaker, I'm doing good. That makes my crunchiness smoother.

Oh, that's so awesome.

So your warmth cues are gifts to awkward people. When you show someone who's crunchy, awkward, afraid, I'm listening to you. That was interesting. Oh, aha. You are gifting them lubricant. You are saying, You got this, girl? I'm listening. I am hearing you. This is super smooth, which then makes me more smooth. And so there's two sides of why I wrote this book. Yes, I want you to be more charismatic, but I also want you to be more inspiring. I want you to be contagious in a way that's gifting warmth and competence. And so adding vocalizations is a very easy way, especially for my introverts. Remember, my introverts, I want to teach you how to be heard without being loud. So nonverbal cues, vocalizations, that's a way for you to participate in conversation without saying a word.

That's fantastic. All right, do that again. What are the other ones other than Mm?

Wow. Oh, what? Those are all warm vocalizations. In fact, doing them right now should give you the warm and fuzzies, a little bit. She'll be like, That feels so good. So whenever I say vocalizations are like a warming blanket, it makes the other person feel like, wow, I'm doing so good.

You're doing better than good. You're doing fantastic, Vanessa. How do you display competence? What are some cues for competence?

All right. So competence. Low tone, which we talked about already. So not using the accidental question reflection is really important. Explanatory gestures, so being purposeful with our gestures. Eye contact. Eye contact is a hard one because I know that eye contact can be different for culture, different cultures. But what I want us to understand about eye contact is that eye contact produces a chemical. So when we mutually gaze, and they even found this happens through a screen. So if I make eye contact with the camera, we also produce this chemical oxytocin. Oxytocin. Oxytocin is a very complicated chemical. It does a lot of things in our body. But for social purposes, oxytocin is the chemical of connection. When we are making eye contact, when we first meet someone or we hop on video, our bodies go, Oh, we're both mutually gazing. We must be friend, not fo. Therefore, let me produce the chemical that allows me to trust. The more oxytocin that's in our bodies when we're communicating, the more open we are, the more we say yes, the more we feel like I'm on the same page as this person. So eye contact is one of the fastest ways to get or gift oxytocin.

Now, the amount of oxytocin is different. I do not believe, and I really want to repeat this, I do not believe in 100% eye contact.

Oh, thank God.

Okay. No.

Because for somebody with... I have ADHD, and I've noticed every time I read anything about body language, you're lying if you look away. And I'm like, I have a hard a time holding eye contact for a long period of time, and I know it has to do with the ADHD.

That is correct. So let's talk about this. First of all, I want to talk about looking up to the left is lying because that's a myth I want to bust. Second, the worst advice that bad body language books give is make more eye contact. No, eye contact is great, and it can produce oxytocin. But actually, we should not be making 100 % eye contact or even 80 or 90 % eye contact. That is a territorial gesture. Our bodies know that when we're trying to process something mentally, we look away. So for example, if I were to ask you to do some math with me, Mel, if I were to say, Mel, what's 10 times 10 plus 5? I'm not going to make you do it. But You immediately break eye contact.

105. I looked up to do the math. Yeah, you looked up. I never noticed that, but you're right. I looked up to go... I looked up at an imaginary chalkboard and imagined 10 10 plus 5, 105.

And this is a really important thing for humans to do. Why? If I ask you a complicated question, a technical question, even a memory-based question, Oh, tell me about your last job. Tell me about your last girlfriend. You need to look up to access the memory or to access the knowledge. You do?

Is that a neurological thing? Yes.

Because when we think about this from a chemical perspective, when we are talking and we are bonding, I want to make eye contact. But if you ask me a hard question my past or a math problem, I need to break the eye contact, stop producing the oxytocin so I can access that memory. It's our brain's way of saying, Don't give me too much input. I need to access this input and this information over here. That's why it can be so confusing for people who are trying to make more eye contact. No, I want you to make eye contact when you want to bond with someone. Absolutely, especially in the first few seconds. But when you're processing or accessing information, I actually I just want you to look away because you're going to give a better answer. And humans understand this. So if you were to ask me a very hard question that I didn't know the answer to, and I went, that's a great question. You are more likely to believe my answer because I looked away to process it.

That's fascinating.

So that's the first thing I want to bust about eye contact is, do not feel pressure to make more eye contact. Competent people make purposeful eye contact. Competent people, they know that when they're trying to bond and connect, they're right at you. But when they're trying to access a competent answer, they're accessing it over here, or over here, or over here. So that's actually a mark of competence. It's also a way to pause to introduce, I am deeply thinking about what you just said, so I can give you a really good answer. Second thing is we have done a ton of lie detection research in our lab. In fact, we have one chapter on lie detection in the book. I almost put it into its own book because it's so much research. I want to bust a myth. Looking up to the left or looking up to the right does not mean someone is lying. That means someone is accessing different information. What I do think that people should do is know their lying tells. I think a fundamental piece of information every single person should know about themselves is what they do when they lie.

Hold on. Let me just make sure. So you're not saying, here's a tell when someone else is lying. You're saying, what does it tell when you're lying?

That's it.

Why do I need to know that?

You need to know that because you need to know when you are accidentally signaling in authenticity. Because what can often happen is you should know your own lying tell because hopefully you're not lying a lot. But oftentimes people will do their lying tell when they're not even lying, when they're nervous or afraid. And it's signaling to the world, I'm nervous and afraid.

What's your lying tell?

So my lying tell is I hide my hands. So my hands get really cold, and I usually I hide them or I clench them. So if you see me ever have a clenched fist, I'm like, Keep it together, keep it together, keep it together, keep it together. So a clenched fist or a white knuckling it, or I hide my hands. I also use a little bit of a disgust micro expression. We talked about fear as a micro expression. Disgust is when we crinkle our nose up and we flash the YTS of our teeth. If I were to say, Oh, I smell something bad, disgust is a really common lying red flag because liars, including myself, we hate lying. It makes us feel dirty. Literally, lying makes us feel dirty. Liars will often use more purel afterwards because it makes them feel physically dirty. So you'll see people, if you ask someone, So what do you think of the new girl? Oh, yeah. She's nice.

You've got a disgust face as you say that.

And now, as I'm watching you, I'm like, you're lying because you're saying she's nice, but your face says disgust.

Yeah.

So how do you, though, know your own tell? Because I'm sitting here trying to think.

No. I'm going to give you the most fun. I don't know what it is. This is a fun Friday night. If you're willing to do this with a couple of friends, it's really fun to do this. I highly recommend doing this with your partner. My partner and I know are each other's tells, which is made her marriage super honest, which I love. Radical honesty, I'm all about it. So here's what I want you to do. Okay.

Get ready, Chris. Okay. Date night. Get ready.

One, if you can film this also, it's helpful to rewatch it together. First, I want you to open up your camera or your phone. One, I want you to tell me what you had for breakfast yesterday. Okay? The reason for this is a recall test. You need to know what you look like when you're recalling truth. You will notice You'll probably look up to left, look up to the right.

Yeah, I looked to the left.

Or touch your face.

I looked to the left, and then I looped my head around.

Okay. And you also were tapping your foot.

You're shaking your foot.

Oh, I was?

Okay. Yes. Okay, cool.

Okay. So that's your recall test. That's what you look like when you are accessing truthful information.

You're right. You know why I clicked my foot? It's like I'm crank the brain back up. Come on. I still can't remember what the hell I had for breakfast yesterday, even though I'm cranking the foot and I'm looking to the left.

What was it? What was it? What was it?

What is today? Yesterday was Sunday. I can't remember what I had for breakfast.

If I made you sit and think about it, by the way, it's okay if it takes you a couple of seconds to think about it. We'll see exactly what you look like or what Mel looks like when she's recalling truth.

Oh, I'm scrunching my face up right now. I'm not sure I had breakfast yesterday.

And that could be the answer.

Yeah. I don't think I ate breakfast yesterday.

So we just saw what Mel looks like when she is recalling truth.

Okay.

That's very important to know about someone, because if you ask your teenage daughter, did you hear about the drug incident at school? And they use truthful recall cues.

You're good.

Okay, cool. I like this game. So How do I know when I'm lying?

It's coming. Okay, so the second question I want you to answer the camera. And by the way, what was it?

What did I have for breakfast? I don't think I ate anything.

Okay, good. Got it. So you can do this all in one take. It's even better. I like the pause. We want to see what you do in those moments of like, what was it? What was it? Okay. Second question. I want you to tell me your most embarrassing story. The more embarrassing, the better. I want to deliver it right to camera. This is how you look when you're recalling something that makes you nervous. The biggest mistake that we make in lie detection is we confuse nervousness for guilt.

Got it.

They are different. So when you recall your most embarrassing story, and I want you to feel it, really feel it, I want you to see what you do when you're nervous. That's your nervous tell. And those are also things you don't want to show when you're trying to come across as confident because they're your nervous leaks. So common nervous tells are mashing the lips.

Oh, I think I just did that.

Yeah. We try to hold it in. Common nervous tells are touching the stomach, the face.

That's often more like, Oh, nervous.

Do people do this on Zoom calls, too? You see them doing this?

All the time. All the time. It's a great way to... I mean, I don't want you to do this to your colleagues up and knowing it. It's always good to do it honestly, but it's very helpful to know. On my team, we do team calls every week.

Oh, my God. I would hate to be on a team call with you.

It's helpful to know when I'm making someone nervous.

What did you say?

It's helpful to know when I'm making a teammate nervous. I have a wonderful big team, and if I share, Oh, we're having a big New Year's launch, and how does that feel? And I know my team members nervous, tell. And I see it on a Zoom call, I can say, Hey, Rob, are we good on that? Any hesitations, any hangups? That then gives him permission to say, I don't know if the graphics are going to be ready in time. So a deeper way to interact, I believe, is radical honesty, where on my team, we know each other's nervous tells, so I can address them.

Can you give us the top five signs that somebody is nervous based on their body language?

Yes. So touching the hands, touching the face, touching the stomach. That actually comes out of Cornell University. They actually found that when we're nervous, we touch our stomach, we clench our stomach, we touch our face. Third is purposeless gestures. So wringing the hands, cracking the knuckles, touching the back of the neck, gestures that have no purpose. What's the other one? I'm trying to take the research.

Playing with your necklace?

Playing with your necklace, fidgeting. Those are also also purposes gestures. Adding unnecessary pauses or awkward pauses. So someone's in the middle of a talk and they're really trying to explain it, but they're pausing as mid Mid-word or mid-sentence like that.

If you call out somebody on a Zoom meeting for their nervous tell, do they get more nervous?

It depends on how you do it. Intention is everything here. So I don't like being like that got you, that's not a good way to interact with cues. However, if I notice, I'm on a team call and I say, Hey, everyone, we're having a big New Year's launch, and I notice one of my team members shows a cluster of three nervous tells. One cue Lying by itself does not usually mean anything. For example, we're going to talk about lying in the last question. One of the top lying red flags is touching the nose. We have a very specific tissue in our nose, and research has found that when we lie and we're in guilt, it swells and it causes our nose to itch. So Bill Clinton, during his Monica Lewinsky testimony, when he lied, he touched his nose 26 times. In his truthful testimony, he touched his nose twice. So this This is a response that we have.

Are you lying right now because you just touched your nose?

No, I'm showing you. I'm showing you because- Oh, I'm sorry. But also, what if you have allergies? What if you have a cold? So one cue by itself is never good. Three cues. So if I see someone nose touch, and that's another interesting lying tell is a shame touch. So when we touch the side of our forehead, we have to do this when we're very embarrassed. It's an eye-blocking behavior. And I see a lip purse. We press our lips into a hard line. That's three very, very big red flags in a row. That's when I either will pause the Zoom call and I'll be like, Hey, everyone, I just want to check in. Rob, does this sound doable to you, this launch timeline? Are we good on this? Anything that I should know or that we're not thinking about? That's not me saying, Rob, I saw you touch your nose. It's just terrible. But it's me checking in with him. Or I might afterwards hang up the Zoom call, text him or call him or and say, Hey, are you good with the launch? I just want to make sure. So I believe in that.

Got it.

Okay, that's super cool. So how do I tell what my lying tell is?

Okay, so the last question. So we did what you had for breakfast, your most embarrassing story. The last one is the most important. I want you to make up an embarrassing story that did not happen to you, and tell it to the camera, and try to convince me it happened to you. This is an example of what you do when you're trying to make up a completely false story, and you will We'll see exactly what you do when you lie.

Wow.

That's so cool. It's fun.

I want to do some rapid fire questions. Okay. Let's do it. Okay.

So what are your top tips for displaying charisma and being more influential on a Zoom call?

Okay. So on a Zoom call, specifically, there's a couple of nonverbal cues that translate really well over camera. So one of them you do a lot, which is a lean. So a lean is a universal charisma cue. The reason for this is because when we're trying to understand something better, when we activate our five senses, we lean in. We hear something better, we lean in. We want to see something better, we lean in. We want to smell something, we lean in. So a lean cue is what you can do on a Zoom call when someone says something super interesting or powerful. We do this in person, but on Zoom, we forget that we had that personal reaction. So if you were to say something, Mel, that was super impactful, I would go, Really? Wow, that's so interesting. Not even a lot, just a couple of inches. I want to do a little experiment here so you can actually feel this. Wherever you are right now, if you're sitting or standing or running or cooking, I want you to lean forward just two inches. Go ahead and try it with me. What research has found is that when you lean forward two inches, it actually activates a pre-action part of your brain.

It literally makes you more motivated. And so what can happen is when When you lean in, it makes you a better listener. It also is contagious. It tells the other person, Wow, they like what I'm saying so much. They're literally trying to lean in to activate what I'm saying. So you want to use the lean very purposely when you hear something good or when you're saying something that you want someone to pay attention to. So if I, for example, even on this interview, when I'm saying something that I really strongly believe in, I will bold it by adding a lean. I'll say, This is one of the most important things I could share today. That is a cue for you. Bold, bold. Listen to this. So lean for you listening and as a speaker.

I love that.

Easy.

Is there Any phrase or something that you suggest, particularly somebody who's shy or introverted, to say or do during a virtual meeting to be more influential?

Okay, we didn't even talk about the verb. We didn't even talk about words. So words are incredibly important aspect of our charisma that we also need to address, right? So for verbal power, what you want to do, especially for my introverts, and especially on a video call, is use warmth verbal cues. We actually did a study with Dr. Paul Zack. Dr. Paul Zack is a big oxytocin researcher. He's incredible. He's one of my good friends, where I wanted to know during the pandemic if saying warm words could stimulate to emulate connection. In other words, I'm on a video call. If we were in person, Mel, you and I would be hugging, we'd high five, we'd have some touch. I wanted to know, could you replace that verbally? What we found was we had people where he created a software that people wear that measures their skin conductance and their physiology. When I say, I'm sending a virtual high five, I wish I could give you a digital hug, I'm giving you a warm wave from here, when I say those words, it actually triggers a physiological response on your skin. So one thing that you can do in the very start of a call or at the very end of call is, I wish I could give you a hug.

A virtual one will have to do, or this has been so lovely talking to you. I just feel so much warmth, and I just had such a great time connecting with you. Using warm words, connection, warmth, trust, hug, handshake, they actually trigger a physiological response to the other person. So if you can use those warm words, it's a very easy way to trigger more warmth.

That's fantastic.

Easy. Okay, terrific.

What about emails? How do you display more influence, more charisma in an email? What is the pros? What's the danger zone?

Okay, so remember, the good news is, by the way, I just want to say a big rule here. I'm sharing a lot of cues. Some of these cues you're going to hear and you're going to be like, Oh, that one is so good. Great. Some of the cues I'm going to say, and you're going to be like, I don't know about that. That's good. I actually want you to follow your instinct. There are 96 cues in the book. It's like a recipe. There are some ingredients you're not going to like, and I don't want you to do cues that you don't like. For example, one of the cues I teach is a steeple. It's when you just touch your fingers together and you make a church steeple. If you watch Shark Tank, Kevin O'Leary loves this gesture. Yes. Some people love it, some people hate it. If you love it, great. If you don't, discard it. So when I'm about to share cue-wise, I want you to make sure that you actually like it before using it. You're able to use different ingredients. That's actually a good I totally forgot what the question was.

No problem. Actually, let me ask you this one. What are the danger zone cues on a virtual meeting? What should you never do?

Okay, so great. Okay, so danger zone cues in a virtual meeting. One, I always, always, always, always want you to front with the camera. So research is very, very clear on this.

What does that mean front with the camera?

Okay, so when we are aligned on parallel lines with someone, our likes it. So fronting is when I angle my toes, my torso, and my top towards the camera. Research has found that if I were to give the entire interview with one shoulder angled back and my toes angled out, it would actually make it hard for you to believe me. It would make it really hard for you to open up to me. And so a mistake that I often see on Zoom calls is people will either angle out or the worst of the worst, they have their camera on their side and they're typing like this. Oh, yes.

I hate that. I hate it. I'm like, just turn the damn camera off.

Yes, I would rather. So one thing I want you to make sure of is your set up. Not only are you a foot and a half away, you are on parallel lines with the other person. So you're angling your toes, your torso, and your head towards them. This is both on Zoom and in person. Even in person, when someone is angled out and they're trying to talk to you, you can literally feel the disengagement. The reason for this is because our toes are secret windows into the soul, that's what I like to call them. Your toes, the way that they're pointed, usually indicate a secret direction that you want to go. I have noticed anecdotally, that when someone is ready to leave a conversation, you're at a networking event or at a holiday party, and they have to go to the bathroom or they're done, they will angle their toes towards the exit. Their body is like, We got to go. We want to go. So if I'm angled away from you with my toes angled towards the exit, you're subconsciously picking up on the fact that part of me is left the conversation.

You know what I'm realizing? That's stage one of me trying to get my husband, Chris, to leave a party. I go up and walk up to him, but I'm angled toward the door like, let's go. And I do that physically without realizing it before I put my hand on my back and you're like, let's go.

So interesting.

Okay, so we know danger zone. You You got to face the camera. You got to be pointed at the camera, toes at the camera. Otherwise, you're signaling lack of interest and not that competent either. If you're not paying attention.

Another danger zone cue is a facial cue that I just want to point out. So resting bothered face, right? Resting bothered face is when at rest, our face looks bothered. I have resting bothered face rather badly, and that is important to understand about yourself because sometimes Sometimes at rest, people will say, Are you angry? Are you tired? You should know what your resting face looks like. For example, if your resting face, my resting face looks like sadness. So sadness is a universal micro depression. So sadness is when the corners of our mouth turn down into an upside down you, and when our eyelids droop, and sometimes even our eyebrows pinch together. When I'm at rest, I tend to look a little sad because that's how my mouth points. This is important for me to know because if you look sad at rest, people are going to assume you're disappointed, you're low energy. How about anger? What if you have anger? So anger is a different look. I don't have this, but I know people who do. I do. People who have anger at rest, they pinch their eyebrows so that these two vertical lines appear in between their eyebrows.

They might be concentrating, but they look a little irritated, a little frustrated, a little angry. Now that these are right or wrong, but it's important to know how people might be perceiving you when you're just listening. Since I know that I look sad, I work hard, especially when I'm listening to someone and trying to encourage them to dial up warmth. If you know that you look angry at rest, it's really important for you to dial up making someone feel reassured, making someone feel like they're not frustrating you, that you're really happy with them. That way, verbally, you're overcoming that resting face.

Yeah. So like the three head nod. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Okay. See, I just got rid of the bitch face, and now I'm signaling more. There you did. Exactly. I'm taking the cues here. This is great.

All right. Now, what are strategies for dialing up charisma and influence, warmth and competency in emails?

Okay. Emails, yes. So I love an email. The most important thing you have to do in an is break social scripts. So what happened in an email, we're so overloaded with emails. So I love running tests on our email newsletter. So we have an email newsletter, and I can actually see what's getting open rates, what's getting click rates. And Now, one thing that we found is any time we trigger someone's autopilot is when we use a subject like follow-up, or information, or update, or next week's You are telling the other person to go to sleep. Go to sleep.

So are you saying we can have fun in work emails?

Yes. Now, fun, what I mean is use charisma verbal cues. So they This is art, not science. Certain words trigger an emotional response. What? Okay, so one study, this is a really interesting study. What they did is they wanted to know if achievement-oriented words could make people achieve more. So achievement-oriented words are words like win, success, master, achieve, compete, race. Even me just saying the word win could actually change the way your brain thinks. Here's what they did, very simple experiment. They brought people into their lab. They split them up into two different groups. The first group got an intelligence test with a very simple set of directions. These directions were completely autopilot, socially scripted, sterile. Please take the following test. To the best of your ability, you have 10 minutes to complete it. Please use a pencil. Very, very basic directions you've read a million times before. The second set of directions was the same word count, so not longer, not shorter, but they sprinkled in, they swapped in a couple of achievement-oriented words. So please perform well on this achievement test. The more answers you can win correctly, the better. Please succeed with a pencil.

They just sprinkled in a couple of achievement-oriented They found that just three or four achievement-oriented words not only made them perform better on the intelligence test, it doubled the participant's desire to keep working on the test.

Wow. That's pretty cool.

It's so cool because it means in your emails, you can gift behavior change.

Okay. So for Charisma, which impacts influence and income and interest or whatever the heck they are, impact.

So for email, what words do we want to use?

Are we throwing in emojis and gifs? How does this work? Obviously not all caps and tons of explanation points. No.

Okay. So what I like in an email is to have, and I have samples of this in the book if you want to read a template, is I want you to have warm words, a couple of warm words. Warm words trigger the warm and fuzzies. So happy to connect with you last week. I'm so looking forward to collaborating in our meeting next week. When people read words like collaborate, they are are literally more likely to be collaborative. So you are actually gifting behavior. What I want you to think about when you're writing an email, this is a really weird way to write an email, but it works. How do I want someone to think, feel, and behave after reading this email? If you want them to be warm and collaborative and open and happy and trustworthy, use those words. You are literally gifting them that feeling. But if you want them to get it done, be productive and efficient, let's brainstorm, let's power through, onward, let's do I want you to gift more competent words. So the perfect email has a balance of let's connect, let's collaborate. I can't wait for the meeting next week, and let's blast through this agenda.

I can't wait to hit our goals. We're going to do everything together on words, Vanessa.

You know what I hear is I hear enthusiasm. I hear confidence in those words. You're displaying that, which then signals to me that I'm on a team that wants to do that. You want to know one word I don't like in an email?

Oh, tell me.

I hate that trend that started a couple of years ago, where people would generically sign everything best. Best to me as a sign-off is It's passive, aggressive, not interested, phony, pretending I give a shit. That's what best means to me.

And it's socially scripted, right? Yes. It doesn't even mean best. It doesn't even mean anything. A little experiment that we did in our newsletters is I was trying different sign offs, and I wanted to know if I could change people's perception of me based on the sign off. And so now I use, after a series of tests, always every sign off on my email is, To your success, Vanessa.

Oh, thank you. Vanessa?

It's like a gift. It's like success. It's gifted.

I love that. And you know what I just noticed? I spoke at the end of my breath. So I was like, Oh, thank you, Vanessa. Vanessa? I went up on that. And I don't know if that means that I was not being... I actually mean it. So now I'm going to breathe. Thank you, Vanessa.

But actually, that was authentic because it was a compliment. It was appeasement. So you were encouraging liking. So you went really high because you loved it. I did. We're around babies and puppies. We go really high like this because we really, really want them to feel good. That's good.

Oh, Oh, that's so nice. But remember, all of our people-pleasers out there, speaking like that around puppies and babies, and when you truly mean it because you want to compliment someone, that's great. Speaking like that all the time because you are seeking reassurance or seeking being liked, that's killing your ability to be respected, and it's also not authentic.

And this works with toddlers, right? I have a toddler, four and a half. She's not even taller anymore. If I'm serious with my toddler, I go real low, right? I'm real low. I'm like, Siena, we are not doing that. And she hears it. So you also can use When you're talking to your baby or your puppy or a toddler, and you're like, Good job. Wonderful job. Don't touch that. There's a big difference. They hear that, too.

Do they ever? Like, when Chris lowers his tone of voice, Everything in this house stops when the three kids are here.

You said there are three types of people who learn to read body language. What are they?

People who are abused. By the way, that was called an open loop. An open loop is when you give a little bit of information and not the rest, and it makes people riveted and it creates an open loop in their head. We still wonder if Chandla and Monica are still married in this pretend world of friends. Did Rachel and Ross ever get married? These open loops. So I love that you brought me back to close this loop for people. One is kids who are abused in some type of way. Two, people like the Secret Service who are trained every single day to look for the anomalies, to look for what doesn't fit. You would think school teachers and therapists and judges would be good at detecting deception, and they are not.

Why?

They're not trained every day to what to look for. They don't know. I'll give you a quick sidebar here. There's a hand gesture that turns agreement to disagreement, and no one's ever told us what it is, Mel. What is it? And it's the easiest thing. So I say to you, Hey, Jeanine, next time I'm in DC, let's go to dinner, right? I don't drink, but maybe you say, Let's get ice tea. And I go, Okay, Mel, that sounds great. And I know in my head, yes. I'm saying yes. But I take my hand and I touch the back of my head at the same time. And I go, Yeah, that sounds great, Mel. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, let's get together. Or that's what men tend to do. Women will go to the neighbor of our neck and we lift our hair up, for those of you who are listening and maybe not seeing us right now. And when someone says yes, and they shake their head yes, but they touch their head at the same time, that's called a high-level pacifier. That's indicating there's something they're uncertain about. So maybe when you say, Hey, when you come to town, when I come to town, Jeanine, let's go out for steak.

And I go, Okay, yeah, that sounds good, but I just became a vegan. Or I do intermittent fasting, and I don't eat three days a week now. It's just telling you my definite yes actually Everybody has a nonverbal maybe. There's a problem. So I say it's like you opened a file cabinet in a file of something I'm not telling you, this top secret file. And all we need to do is say, Maybe I'm wrong here. It seems to me there's something you're uncertain about. Well, I just became vegan, Mel. Can we get something vegan?

Wow.

No one taught us this. This is why judges and teachers and therapists don't know, because no one's teaching us. We're not teaching this emotional intelligence aspect in schools, sadly. One of my big things is I speak to schools for free. I do Zoom calls for schools, middle schools and high schools and colleges for free, because I want human beings to know what I know. So I'm all about kindness and love and positivity. So the third group, people are abused, kids are abused, people are trained, what to look for, like the secret service all day long, what's the anomaly? And the third group is people have had a left brain stroke and the right brain takes over. So people have left brain stroke, the right brain takes over, which is the non-verbals, and sponding these little teeny movements that people make.

Wow.

But you can train yourself to be better at it. I say you can't unsee it, unhear it, unexperience it. So when we're talking Mel and I, And if I share something with you, I want you to try it on. If you're watching, you just saw Mel did it. So everyone, wherever you are in your car, at the gym, just say, Yeah, that sounds really good, Jeanine. I'd love to get together, and pat your head. Pat the back of your head.

You're literally like going, I'm lying to you because I really don't want to. As I'm petting my hair or I'm touching my neck. I bet you see this a lot on first dates where somebody's trying to get it to a second date, and they're like, I think we should do this again. And you probably see people nodding, going, Yeah, that'd be great. And then they go and touch their neck, and that means, Yeah, not really.

Well, here's the deal. I'm recently single, got divorced a couple of years ago, by the Grace of God. But we get along great. And when I see a guy doing that on a date, I immediately think to myself, Jeanine Driver, stop talking. I talk nonstop. And my goal for 2023, going beyond, is to be interested more than being interesting. And I find myself often sharing this cool stuff that I know and not being interested. So for the talkers or the extra... I'm an extrovert introvert, but if you're listening, Dr. Phil would say, How's that working out for you? So I want to be interested more than interesting. So when I see Pacifying gestures like this high level, the higher the pacifier, the more stress, anxiety. Brittany Spears lied. Brittany Spears said that Matt Lauer, he's a real peach, but Matt Lauer said, you're pregnant and divorcing. That's what the ragmags say. She said, None of That's true. And rubbed her leg. Two weeks later, she filed for a divorce from her husband at the time, Kevin Federline. So this pacifying happens at all parts of our body. But the higher the pacifier, the more stress and anxiety.

Why? Our brain is in here. These high-level face pacifiers are indicating stress. Think about people rubbing their eyes. So right now, if everyone just touches your eye and your boss says to you or your boyfriend, Hey, let's go to Aruba instead of going skiing this year. And you go, Okay, not a problem. Or your boss says, Hey, can you get this done by Monday? And it's Friday at five o'clock. And you go, Okay, boss, not a problem. And you touch the part of your eye. Babies, when they're crying, Mel, you're a mom, I'm a mom. Maybe you're at home or a mom or you're once a kid for sure. Babies, just before they fall asleep, they rub their eyes. That's right.

They do.

When we touch our eyes, there is a nerve behind our eye. You could Google it. I show it in my class. An fMRI study was done. When you touch your eye, it then affects this nerve that tickles our brain and dumps dopamine in our body. And dopamine has us fall asleep. So when you wake up in the morning, the last thing you should do is rub your eyes, because I know you're not a snooze person. Mel, you don't hit that snooze button. Go, I'll go, right? And you talk about what happens when you go back into... You are even more tired and grumpy and all your amazing information you share with us in the world. So don't rub your eye. The better thing is to throw cold water on your face. You could literally dunk your face in cold water. It's called the scuba diving effect, and it will stimulate you. If you're in a meeting or on a date and someone starts touching their eye, it's likely stress has increased. By the way, Putin even does this. So Putin, this master manipulator people sing his praises about to how great he is at not being spotted when he's deceptive or stressed.

He'll touch his eyes as well under high stress. So in a meeting, it says to me, subconsciously, it connects to us as a baby. We don't realize we're touching our eye, but your brain is getting so stressed in your body that you're dumping dopamine to say it's okay. It's okay. President Obama. If you're on the other side, you're like Trump, right? You see world leaders. You see corporate Titans. When they do this, I show a video of the President of Mexico, when Obama was President here, the President of Mexico said, President Obama and the United States can help us, I believe they can help us curb the cartel problem in our country. And when he says it, he does a bunch of body language that indicates uncertainty and then touches his inner eye. And I show that to my keynote presentations, and I say, How confident is he that Obama and the United States can help? And they burst out laughing.

So you've spent decades studying murderers, liars, world leaders, becoming an expert at decoding this hidden language. What do we need to know in our everyday lives? What are the basics that you want everybody to be equipped with so that we can spot when people are lying, so that we can spot these signals that somebody is giving to us and be more empowered in life? Where do we even begin, Jeanine?

It's a great question, Mel. First, I would start with us before decoding others. Emotional intelligence is self-awareness, social awareness, self-adaptation, motivating others to be the best version of themselves. Let's start with self-awareness. When it comes to ourselves, what is A lot's happening. I call it a behavioral fingerprint. What's your behavioral fingerprint? What's your movement DNA?

I have no idea.

You're so dynamo. Are you kidding? Listen, you're making a bagel in your kitchen or whatever, And then you say some sound bite and it goes millions of people are watching it and lives are being changed because of it. Your body language is great. You're very authentic. And here's why. I love trees. And if you at home can imagine a tree, there's the four stages of how we communicate Cate. And if you think of a tree, Mel and you at home, we're going to start with the roots of the tree. The roots of the tree is what we believe. I spoke at Georgetown University, and someone said, a woman, at the end of my presentation, Excuse me, I have a group interview tomorrow. Five people are interviewing me. Jeanine, is there a question you would ask at the end of the interview? And I said, Yes, I would ask to each of them, what do you consider the ideal candidate to look like, and how do I measure up to your expectation of the ideal candidate? And the woman, had you all been there, you would have seen her and heard her say, oh, I could never ask that.

I would look desperate. And you would have heard me respond, you're right. You would look desperate. I would look confident.

Is that because of the roots?

It's because of the roots of the tree. It's what I believe, because I really want to know that question. For the women who are listening, a lot of us women, we really do ourselves a huge disservice. The men go in and men say, Excuse me, Mel, I just found out my mother's coming to town, fourth of July. I'm taking four days off. Confident, solid body language. Women, we ask the same question that same day. We will often, many of us, come in shoulder shrugging, and we put our shoulders up to our ears. Hey, boss, I I just found out, shoulder shrug, that my mother's coming to town, shoulder shrug. I didn't know she was coming. Could I take the fourth of July off? And your boss says, yes to Bob and no to Jane. Jane, ask me again in June. And we walk away and say, this is what happens. It's a double standard. Now, I'm not saying there's not a double standard with men and women because there is. But there are some areas where we have to take responsibility for the results we're getting. And here's the reason. When we shoulder shrug, we're going to talk about this, hopefully in a bit, but a shoulder A shoulder shrug means uncertainty, and it's also connected to deception, which we'll talk about, hopefully in a minute.

But a shoulder shrug means uncertainty, and we have mirror neurons. You yawn, Mel, or Donna, or Jessie, or Amy, or Andrea, whoever's listening. You yawn, I yawn. Science. Mel, I know you love science. I know you love what's happening in the brain and how the brain and the body are talking to one another because they are. So when I come in uncertain, how am I making my boss feel, Mel?

Uncertain. And they probably don't even realize it. I've been watching a bunch of your Ted talks, and you did this exercise with the audience, and we can do with everybody listening, where simply take a second and say the words, Can I have the fourth of July off while your shoulders are hiked up towards your ears, and you'll realize your entire body and energy is questioning the words that are coming out of your mouth. It's impossible, Jeanine. You're absolutely right. I've never even thought about it. Impossible to even feel confident. If you're talking with your shoulders up at your ears, you're shrugging them up.

You're planting pumpkin seeds and expecting tomatoes to grow.

It's true.

It begins with the roots, though. It's not our fault. It's not your fault because no one is teaching us this. We just want to be liked. We don't want to be inconveniencing people. We don't know if we're bothering. But if you look at many of the men are in confident alpha women. They just come in unapologetically. That's the roots of the tree? What is it that you're planting? Because what you're planting is going to grow whatever the seed is connected to. So get to those roots of the tree. It's what do you believe?

What's the second part? The trunk. Okay, what's the second part?

The trunk of the tree is body language. Now, this is interesting because After body language comes the branches. The branches, Mel and you at home, the branches are thought. So this means body language comes before thought. And here's the deal. It comes up to five seconds before thought. Mel, do you think five seconds is a good advantage for the military? Would five seconds matter?

It's life or death, I would think.

Do you think five seconds matter with an athlete?

It's winning or losing.

Can five seconds with you, with your 10 second rule, can five seconds make a difference? Can I jump out of bed at five seconds?

Yes.

With understanding what I'm talking about now, first is the intention, the roots of the tree, then Then body language, and then thought. This means you get a five second advantage to know how someone else feels before their brain knows how they feel. This is why when I say, Hey, Mel, I can't come and join you for Thanksgiving this year. And you go, Not a problem, Jeanine, and your lips disappear. Everyone pull your lips in and just say, Not a problem. I don't mind. And pull your lips in.

Okay? Make them disappear.

Make them disappear. And so Mel goes, Not a problem, Jeanine. I say, when we don't like what we see or hear, our lips disappear. Or a lip roll is emotional control.

What's a lip roll look like?

That's this.

Oh, so- Lips disappearing.

Rolling those lips in.

Okay.

So Mel says, not a problem. I now have a five second advantage. I know that there is a problem because Mel's lips disappear. And when we don't like what we see or hear, our lips disappear. So I know there is a problem. I know my dad's a hothead. When I see my dad's lips disappear, I've got five seconds to get my kids in the truck and get the heck out of Maine in my dad's cottage before my kids see the angry dad that I grew up with because they don't believe he exists, right? So I have a five second of. We got to go, go, go. Move on out. It's like the Indy 500 fixing the tires. Really quick. So I might stick around and say, Mel, maybe I'm wrong here. It seems that you're disappointed or there's something you're not saying. Five seconds later, I'm going to tell you what that person is going to say. Yeah, I am mad because Because last year you were supposed to come and you backed out three days before then. You have a five-second head start if you can decode body language, because the body language people are showing you.

Their brain doesn't realize how they feel just yet. Body language shows up before the branches, before that thought. And the last one are the leaves. The leaves of the tree, Mel, are the words. And words matter because words plant the next seed. The words matter. What falls off the tree is planting that next seed. I recently heard on TikTok, and by the way, my friend said, You don't say you saw it on TikTok, you say you read it in the New York Times recently. So I told my sons, my three sons, I go, I recently read in the New York Times, and Jackie, he's my wise guy, the little one, he goes, Yeah, I heard Terry Moore tell you when you see something on TikTok to say you read it in the New York Times. So what you're about to tell us, did you really see it on TikTok, mom? I'm like, Damn you, Jackie, and your wiseness. So here's what I heard on TikTok, and maybe your listeners have heard it, and maybe you've said it, too. Have you talked about the bees and the flies?

No.

So the bees are not flying around, trying to convince the flies that honey tastes better than shit. So I'm going to repeat that. The bees are not wasting time convincing flies that honey tastes better than shit. I I want a tribe of bees. I still want to inspire and influence the world, but only for the flies who are interested in tasting the honey. I recently broke up with a guy that was dating named Jimmy. He's amazing. I'm 5'9 I'm thick. He's 6'6. He's an animal, right? It's the first time I ever felt small. I finally started eating carbs again dating Jimmy. I'm like, I can date carbs. I'm dating this giant. And I had to break up with him because of what my mother would call his stinking thinking. He is planting these seeds of a negativity. He's like, people are going to take advantage of your... They're going to mistake your kindness for weakness. He's planting the wrong seeds for me. I want to be. I don't want to fly. So he's a fly. So someone said to me last night, so you've been single for two years and you're in these dating apps.

What's going on? How come you're still single? I said, because I'm looking for bees. I'm looking for bees or flies that want to hang out with bees. That's what I'm looking for. So it It goes back to the power of our words is creating what's coming next, right? It's what are you planting? What are you planting? Get out of your thinking. You have 17 seconds to stop complaining. And research says after 17 seconds, you have to bring yourself esteem back up. You have to say at least five positive things about yourself. And after 17 seconds, if you add on a negative thing, another negative thing, you create momentum. And when you create momentum, then it's hard to stop the negativity. And you may talk about this, so Excuse me if you do.

No, I'm just fascinated listening to everything that you're saying. I want, though, to focus on how we can become better at spotting when somebody's lying to us, at spotting. Because I think that there's a lot of... In the work that you and I do, you often find somebody after the heartbreak, after the cheating, after somebody has lied to you. And what I would I love for you to help us understand is how can we get better at spotting the signs that based on decades of research, based on your expertise, the signs aren't lying. We can lie to ourselves, and we can make excuses for the way people are treating us, and we do all the time. And you always say, Stop listening to what people are saying and start looking at how they're treating you because that's the truth about how they feel about you. But the signs don't lie. And half the time people shrugging their shoulders or holding in their lips or sending these body language signals, they don't even realize they're doing it because the signs don't lie. And so what are the big ones that we have to be aware of?

If I can just put a cap on that last part of understanding yourself. There are body language moves you can do to be seen as confident and powerful. One is I'm doing it now. If you're seeing me, it's called steepeling, and you'd see Mr. Burns do this. It's fingertips to fingertips making a church steeple. When we steeple people, we intimidate people. The higher the steeple, the more intimidation. So it's a sign of confidence. So a nice low steeple, especially if you're a woman in a meeting and men are over-talking you, instead of saying, Let me finish with a calm down gesture like you're the police on a raid in telling people to get on the ground. If you just lean back and steeple, someone else at the table will quiet down the people who are interrupting you. So when we steeple people, we intimidate people. It's a sign of confidence.

Let me ask you a question about that. So just so everybody listening gets this, because I think this is critical, you're in a meeting at work, or you're at a family dinner, or you're out with a bunch of girlfriends or whatever, and people are talking over you. You're saying that instead of raising your hand or stop talking over me or continuing to talk, if you lean back, you put your fingertips together and make a church steeple or a triangle, and you lean back in your chair, and then you stare at the person who is talking over you, or what do you do?

Well, you can either stop looking at them or look at their forehead, and you would think that they don't feel it. But when someone's being disrespectful, if you look at their forehead, it can change it. I don't want to get into some advanced stuff, but I'll tell you this. When we talk to people, I talk out of my right eye into your left eye because you're opposite me, right? So I'm talking primarily out of my right eye. All human beings, it doesn't matter if you're right or lefty. We talk out of our right eye into your your left eye. If I want to intimidate you because I don't like your behavior or the inappropriate things you're saying, my right eye will go diagonal to your right eye. And you can do this to a waitress, and they come to take your order, and you just focus your right eye to their right eye. So you're going to go diagonal, and they'll start to pacify. You'll see them fix their hair, touch their throat, because it's this little hidden power that we have. So you can look at someone's forehead. You can look out of your predominant right eye here as you're talking to someone's left eye, diagonal, crossing, and then that's steeple, or just stop looking at them altogether and stop giving them your attention.

And the steepling someone else at the table, whether it's professional or personal, say, Hey, Mike. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Susan, stop interrupting her. Let her finish. I like to say, Do you want to be right or do you want to be effective? In the old days, I would be mouthy, and I'd be like, attitudey. But I would always leave. I was always the bad guy walking out of the meeting, and I got sick of being the bad guy. And I'm like, Okay, I need to be more effective here. My mother taught me steepling. She was a nurse. She since passed, and I had a boss that used to point, and she'd be like, Richard, my office now, Marjorie, should walk into this pool of people at desks. And they became cartoon figures. Their eyes popped out of their head, and they looked full of fear. And I called my mother. I was 25. I was in the World Trade Center in New York. And I go, Mom, my boss does this aggressive thing. If she does it to me, I'm mouthy. I'm going to lose my cool job with ATF. My mother was a nurse for elderly homeless people, Mel, in Boston, Committee to End elderly Homelessness, and at Mount Robin Hospital in Cambridge.

I went home, 5'2, I'm 5'9, she's a peanut. She goes, I want you to do this. This is before I knew it was called steepling. And Fingertips to fingertips. And I go, What's that call? She goes, I have no idea. I just know when a doctor says, my mom was Lorraine. Lorraine, can I talk to you about the last patient? She's always feel like I'm in trouble. So lo and behold, Coleen, my boss at the World Trade Center, did it to me two months later. Jeanine, my office. She pointed at me, was aggressive. I pulled out mom's move, which I now know is called steepling. Oprah Winfee does it all the time. I walked casually behind Coleen with my steeple. When I went into her office, had you been there, you would have heard her say, Do you know why I called you in my office. And with my steeple in hand, I responded the way mom told me. I said, I have a pretty good idea, Colleen. She was, Why? I go, I'm exceeding all your expectations. As you might imagine, she's like, What? I'll do that at the end of the year in an evaluation.

I got to spread it out. I love attention from my boss, still steepling. Every now and then, call me in, and I'll come skipping in. I come in early, I stay late. I know I'm exceeding your expectations. Isn't that why you call me in? She didn't know what to do. I worked for her for three and a half years. She never called me in her office again. The reason she had called me in that day was to bully me. And when I said, Why did you call me in? She said, Oh, I just want to see how you're enjoying living in New York City. She was a bully boss. So if you have bully bosses and bully people in your life, pull out that steeple, because when you steeple people, you have power over people.

Does it work with a spouse or somebody you're dating that's bullying?

Yes, and kids. They feel like they're in trouble. So if you want to make them feel like they're in trouble and then you're not going to be pushed around easily. A hundred % steeple.

Steeple. I love it. It's almost like a little she force field that you're creating. It's like you can become your own superhero superpower when you steeple. It's like Wonder Twins Unite, and they used to hit their fist. You're now creating a force field. You are in charge when you put the steeple up. I Absolutely love that.

I love it. Do you know Desiree Gruber? Have you ever met her?

No.

She's in New York City. She came up with the idea marketing company of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show back in the day. And by the way, Victoria's Secret initially didn't want it. And then when they had it, it blew out the Internet. It was the first time the Internet crashed was the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. And Victoria's Secret wasn't happy at first. And then the publicity exploded, Victoria's Secret Fashion Show with the wings and the linger. Well, she once sent me a picture. She She's a client, and she sent me a picture of her steepling in the oval office in the White House because she said she was nervous with all those heavy hitters. So she brought her steeple out in the oval office. Nancy Pelosi, all these people were there. That's pretty cool. And so when you're nervous, steeple, you can fake it there. And the other move I wanted to say is a chin grab. Indra Nui is the former CEO of PepsiCo. I love Indra Nui. Google her if everyone doesn't know who she is. Indian. She was raised in India. She has a sister. Her mother used to, every night at the dinner table, have her and her sister debate.

You're running for President of the United States. You're running for Prime Minister of Australia. And they would debate. She grows up, becomes a female CEO of PepsiCo. Wow.

Maybe that's what I did wrong. I've just been going, get your elbows off the table. To your kids.

So when she does an interview, look at Indra Nui, she grabs her chin. And I say, when we grab our chin, we're about to win. Take a picture of yourself. How do you normally sit? And now take a picture of yourself holding your chin. Look how much more intelligent we look. We look like we have a master's degree. We look like we have it all figured out.

I literally look like I just won the Pulitzer Prize. And see, here I figured I was holding my chin because it's very pointy. I don't really like it, so I'm hiding it, but it does look very- Can I tell you what your pointy chin means? Yeah. What is my pointy chin? It's like a shovel.

And a pointy chin, you can take something on the chin. And a pointy chin is like a shovel, and that you will fight for people. You will fight. You will have that determination is that chin right there.

So Can you walk? I have to just tell you a quick story. When my husband was in the restaurant business, we couldn't go out to another restaurant and actually have a nice date because the man would be so preoccupied, Oh, there's 40 seats. There's this many waiters. He was just in the language of running a restaurant.

I can reverse engineer what he does with his body language based on you telling me that. Would you want me to tell you what he does with his body language? Yeah.

But what I was going to say is, can you actually be with other people and not be decoding them?

Like that movie where Jim Carrey becomes God, and he turns it into sticky notes, and then he turns it into an email system. Some things I can't unsee. But I have ADD, so sometimes I'm daydreaming and not paying attention. So if you prime me in advance to decode whoever you're with, then I'll see it all. Otherwise, I'm not really paying... I can't unsee what we're about to talk about, detecting deception. I can't unsee the detecting deception hotspots I'm going to share with you. I can't unnotice them. So we'll go over those in a second. But I want to reverse engineer what your husband does. And I've never met him. I don't know him. I know about one business was doing well. He opened up another one and didn't do so well, and another one didn't. And then I know your story about this rocket ship. So I wanted you to do a test. And you at home, anyone who pays attention to all the details like Mel's husband, all these little teeny details, I want you to watch how they drink their water tonight at dinner, or tomorrow at breakfast, or today at lunch, whatever time you're listening to this amazing Mel Robbins podcast.

And I'm going to tell you what they're going to do with their water, these detail-oriented people. And by the way, I am not one of them. Is when they drink their water, Mel, I want you to notice this for your husband. What's his first name? Chris. Chris. All right. He's going to drink his water. When he puts the glass or the bottle on the table, he's going to watch it until it hits the table. When he goes to pick up the bottle, he's going to look at the bottle, keep looking at it as he grasps the bottle. He's going to keep looking at it, grasp the bottle. People like me who are not detail-oriented, what I do is I see the table, I look down where the table is, I grab my bottle of water, but I'm still looking at you. So I look just to see, oh, yeah, my water is still there. I look at the water, and then I look back at you, and I pick it up without looking at the water. And now I'm looking at you, and I put it down without looking at the table. I figured, Gravity and the thing I just it up from are still there.

Detail-oriented people. They have a magnum glass. It's like Inspector Crousseau or Sherlock Holmes. And so when they talk to you, Jimmy Fallon, Amy Schumer, Jennifer Lawrence, they're Their humor, all three of those people, are about the details. They remember words from movies and words from songs. Watch them in interviews. They will talk. They're like smart bombs. So it's not just the water, it's all their energy is directed in one area. So Jimmy Fallon will talk, and his hand points up and his eyes point up. You see Jennifer Lawrence, Hi, nice to meet you, with a handshake in her head. I feel like I can't get away from their energy. If you're talking to me and all of a sudden, if Chris, your husband, was doing this, I'd be like, Whoa, detail-oriented, aren't you? You like to research the research and then recommend more research. And watch how they put the drinks down. I'm speaking today at a company called Paylocity, and two of their big executives, I watched them last night at their little cocktail hour, and I secretly videotaped them.

Oh, my God. Are you going to play it during your keynote?

Oh, yeah. I went up and asked for permission today. But as they drank their water, they watched it till it hit the table as if like, Hi, I'll be right back. You made it. And I said, Are you detail-oriented? Do you love to research the research to executives? They go, Yes. How do you know that? I go, Simply by how I watched you drink your water. I said, If I put a coaster on the table, and it was crooked, would you adjust the coaster? Both said 100 %. So in meetings, if you're listening in your business person, especially sales, make sure you have coasters crooked on the table. Now, some people who aren't detail-oriented may just fix it because it's irritating. But watch if they watch their glass when they put it all the way till it hits the table. Someone like me, when it hits the table, my eyes are back on you. It's not even looking at where it's going.

What does that tell you about how to sell to them?

It says they want lots of... Two things. One, they're going to want lots and lots of details. That's number one. Number two, in your emails, if you're detail-oriented, your emails are probably too long. In someone like me, I'm never going to read your I'm going to pick up the phone and call and say, Okay, what do I need to know about this event? What's the dress code? Where is it? What you need to do if you're detail-oriented in your emails or text messages at the top, think like Twitter. Here's what you must know. Here's the three things you must know. Additional information is below. Someone like me who's not motivated by details, I don't look at the water when I put it down or pick it up. I need to do the opposite. Here's what you need to know. Boom, boom, boom. Here's a link to additional information if you'd like to explore on your own. Fun things to do while you're in Orlando, here's a link. Hotels you can stay in Orlando, here's the link. Broadway shows you can see in New York. So if you understand people's behavioral fingerprints, and there's a bunch of things, maybe I'll come back and play again and answer questions.

You can sell to them differently. You can raise the kids differently. You can understand them. There's seven or eight billion in the world, 26 billion different behavioral fingerprints.

Oh, my God. Now I'm overwhelmed. You know which ones I want to focus on? Yeah. Deception. Deception.

Here we go. Shoulder shrug. A shoulder shrug we talked about earlier is uncertainty. When I say, Hey, Mel, what do you want for lunch? A salad of BLT? I don't know. What do you want? A shoulder shrug makes sense there. Your verbal says, I don't know, and your nonverbal says, I don't know. It's congruent. But when I say, Hey, Mel, your favorite TED talk of mine is blank. And I shoulder shrug, it does not mean I don't like that talk, but it does indicate there's something I'm uncertain about. Ask me if I ever cheated on my husband when I was married to him.

Did you ever cheat on your husband when you're married to him? No.

Now, I said no. And for people who are listening, I shrugged at the same time, and that's why Mel's laughing. But it doesn't mean I cheated. See, that shrug means, Mel, you opened a file in a cabinet that says top secret of something I don't want to share with you. And maybe what I don't want to share is that he cheated on me, and I'm called the human lie detector. Hypothetically, he cheated on me. Hypothetically, he went on Tinder two days before Christmas, and my friend told me because he showed up in her couch, hypothetically. So this shoulder shrug doesn't mean I'm canceling what I'm saying, but it does mean there's something I'm uncertain about. And I may not even realize it yet. Why? Because you have a five second advantage over my brain. I don't even realize I'm uncertain about something right now. But if you can spot it, you can simply say, I call it M-I-W formula. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong here, Mel, but it feels to me that you're uncertain about something. And then let the person say, Well, yeah, I just was in the bathroom. And I overheard a woman saying her significant other stepping out on her, and she's devastated.

And it's not my story to tell. But when you asked if I cheated on my husband, you open a file to just cheating in general. So that's why I was uncertain.

I guess where I want to start before we jump into all of the tools and the research. I mean, you just bring it every time I talk to you. Now, why does it matter to either know high achievers or to be one? How does being a high achiever, other than the obvious, your achieving your goals, but why does it matter?

I think that what's really crucial is that I've spent a career studying these high achievers, and I've noticed that they have very specific behavior patterns and communication patterns. And what they do is they take what I call communication shortcuts. Sets. So they are able to say no more easily to difficult people. That is something that I think everyone wants. For sure. They are more easily able to achieve their goals and enjoy the process. So many people, they achieve their goals and have no happiness, no satisfaction, no joy in achieving those goals. High performers, they enjoy the means and the ends. So there's the enjoyment, there's saying no to difficult people easily. And it's also, I think that from my perspective, high achievers very clearly are able to know who they are, and they're able to share it. And so my goal today is to help people achieve those three things.

I love that. The person that is listening to this conversation right now is somebody who is well-educated, they are driven, they are curious, they're looking for ways to improve their life, they want the best for their family and their friends, they want to achieve their goals. And I also notice that we are We are in the Mel Robbins podcast family, a group of people who burn ourselves out, who take on too much. So can you talk a little bit about just being a high achiever versus just finding yourself being too busy or burnt out? What is the distinction here?

Let's be very clear. Burnout is not a sign of success. We are not going to have any more. I hope that maybe we can challenge ourselves. Do not compete for who is busiest. I see so many extremely smart, successful people almost trying to one up themselves or one up others in busyness. Business and burnout is not a mark of success. So being burnt out just means you're saying yes to too much, you're doing too much. I don't think that's a mark of a successful person. I do think it's important to be uncomfortable, though. I think that if you're out of your comfort zone, it means you're pushing yourself. I think high performers are consistently stretching, not their time. They're not burnt out. They're stretching their comfort zones. And so hopefully today we shed that busyness competition and focus more on being assertive with our energy.

I love that. I want to unpack just that last bit. What does it mean to be assertive with your energy?

Okay, this is the first pattern of highly effective people. One thing that I noticed early on is that I think that there are two different types of energy. There's social energy and work energy. Social energy is the energy you spend every day having conversation, managing difficult people, thinking to yourself, I have an idea. How can I communicate this idea? Present your ideas, managing your personal conflict, getting things done with people. That's social energy. Very different is your work energy. Your work energy is how you tackle your tasks. It's when you're breaking down your goals. It's how you're getting through your day. It's how you're checking off all your piles or sorting your papers. Those are two distinctly different types of energy. What most people do, and this is the mistake I think smart people make, is they focus only on work energy. All they're thinking about in the morning is, what tasks do I have? What's my email? What do I have to get done? And they forget how much social interactions can cost us from an energy perspective. And so what I want to think about is, okay, in your day, what are the things that give you social energy?

The people who are like, Oh, they just make you feel so good. The conversations, the interpersonal activities that make you feel good. They are like, plugging into a charger. Okay. What are the things that take your social energy? The people, the interactions, the types of socializing. So it's the same thing? It's different for everyone, right? So for example, for me, I get social energy from one-to-one conversations. I get social energy from teaching. I lose social energy from chit chat. I am allergic to small talk. Even a little bit of small talk drains my battery faster than going right into deep conversation. So even if I'm having small talk with my Uber driver on the way to this interview, exhausting. I'm just like, Oh, I can't I can't talk about the weather. I can't. But this conversation, I'm charging. So that could be different for certain people. Like, introverts might feel that most social things take social energy. So you actually have to think about that list. Work energy is the same. And later we can do a little activity on this of what work tasks fuel you, what gives you flow, what gives you productivity, what do you do?

You're like, I could do this all day. Versus, of course, what tasks and work energy, what work tasks drain you. And this also could be home tasks. It doesn't have to be just work. I don't mind doing the dishes so much. I pop in a podcast, I listen to you, I listen to my audiobook, I love a memoir. I'm in my happy place, whereas other people, they dread it. So I think that what highly effective people do to bring back this is they are relentless. They are assertive in saying no to the social tasks that drain them or boxing them, which you can also do. And they are relentless about grabbing the work that gives them work energy, taking and assertively saying, I want it. So high performers, they are assertive about their social energy and their work energy, and they're very clear about it.

Are you recommending that instead of just waking up and going through your day and scheduling the stuff that you need to do, that you take a beat and you think about, okay, what social stuff drains me and what social stuff energizes me, and what work stuff drains me, and what work stuff energizes me. And I need to get really assertive with how I'm directing my energy and what I'm saying no to.

I need to know it, and I need to ask for it. And the same thing goes for relationships. The relationships that are the most toxic are not the toxic relationships. They're actually the ambivalent relationships. And this is, I think, the problem is with social energy and work energy. It's ambivalence that drains us the most. It's like an app running in the background. It's draining you without even realizing it. Ambivalent tasks and ambivalent relationships are the same. So the hardest category is not just, yes, those work tasks drain It's the task where you're like, I like it. When someone says, I go, That was the flag for you. I don't want you to like it. I don't want you to like someone. It was okay hanging out with them. No. There's that famous adage now, you should be a heck yeah, not a yeah. Let's break that down into some actual tasks and some actual systems. So ambivalence is a problem of our work energy and our social energy. And highly effective people are very good at not having anything ambivalent.

And what does ambivalent mean? It's a big word.

Yes. Ambivalent means you're not sure if you love it or hate it. You could take it or leave it. You feel neutral often when you do it. That is actually more dangerous. I'll give you an example that happens the most with people. Ambivalent relationship structure, the hardest. You might have that friend where you see them on your calendar, you're like, Oh, yeah. Should I cancel? I'm so tired. Or I'm not Really looking forward to it. But we've been friends forever, and it's on the calendar for a long time. And you hang out with them and you wonder, Is this fun? Or as my good friend says, Is this fun or am I just fun? Sometimes really fun people can mask their having fun. Actually, they're just fun, but they're not actually having any fun. So you're wondering, Am I having fun? Or, Are they supporting me? Wait, was that passive-aggressive?

Why do I feel so tired?

When you leave this friend and you think, I should have just stayed home and watched Netflix. When you leave and you can't remember anything you talked about. When you leave and you question, Do they really like me? Did I learn anything? Did I get asked good questions? That is the ambivalent relationship.

And we pour a ton of energy into them.

A ton. They take more energy than the good relationships and the toxic relationships. And so when you think about the people in your life, and I would highly recommend, make a list of all the people in your life and put a star next to the people who you would drop things to hang out with. You would move some things around and hang out with them. That's a good relationship. Then put a minus sign next to people who you dread hanging out with. Sometimes these are obligatory relationships, colleagues or family relationships you don't really love. That's fine. Know it. Own it. Don't pretend that you like hanging out with them. That's okay. It's okay that we have you that are not our people. Then put a question mark next to the people who you're not sure Or if you would forget if you didn't hang out with them. You know those people that weeks go by and you're like, Man, I haven't even thought about that person. Those question marks, please stop seeing them. Just for a while. Do you miss them? Is your life different not seeing them. I think we have to be really careful with our social energy.

Well, and here's the other thing we don't think about. You're a question mark on somebody else's list.

That's right.

And you wouldn't want somebody to make time and hang out with you if they're sitting there across the table from you going, Is this fun? Do I like this person? And so don't do that to somebody else. Yes. And the other thing that I'm getting from this, because this makes so much sense, is that if you were to take that energy and time and focus it on the people that you really like that you don't see enough of, it would lift your life up and it would make those relationships so much better.

That's You got to say no to the bad to make room for the right.

Vanessa, what does your research show about the top habits of a high achiever?

One is they start their day not just thinking about the to-do list, but thinking about their work and social energy. Second is they use the Pygmalian effect in their day. So the Pygmalian effect is after a Greek myth that Pygmalian made a statue of a beautiful woman, and then he fell in love with the statue, and then he kissed her and she came to life. So this effect is studied and research that if If you set up a good expectation, that expectation will come to life. So highly effective people are constantly using the power of labels instead of expectations. So they use labels for themselves, but they also use labels for others. So if they see someone who is an incredible speaker or presenter or organizer, they are constantly saying, You are such a magician with presentations. I don't know how you do that. Or, You are so good at cooking dinner. Thank you so much for cooking dinner. That expectations also turns people to life, and then everyone's doing better. So being clear in the beginning of the day, Pygmalian effect, no ambivalence. So getting rid of all those ambivalent relationships and those ambivalent tasks.

And the last one I would say is the power of liking. So this is another study that I just love. The study changed my life, changed the way I think about likability. So I talked earlier about how you can be both assertive and likable. And I truly believe that. And here's how we become likable. We've talked a lot about assertiveness, but how do we become likable to pair it? So this is a study that was done by Van Sloan, and he studied high school students. These are the original likable kids, right? He was curious, why are some kids popular and other kids not? So if you were to ask someone, why are kids popular? I probably would have guessed athletes, or maybe they're the funiest, maybe they're the most attractive. So he looked at everything, from athleticism to GPA, to attractiveness, to humor, as many variables as he could think of. And he found that there was, and this was across a variety of high schools and across a variety of grades. So it wasn't just one school. He found there one single pattern amongst all the schools and all the grades. He found that the most liked kids, the most popular kids, had the longest list of people they liked.

Yes.

In other words, yes, we are in control of our likability. That if we find ways to like more people, we become more likable. And in the hallways, when he these really likable kids that everyone put on their like list, they weren't having hours long conversations in the cafeteria. They weren't checking in on everyone all the time. They were just acknowledging every single person in the hallway, usually by name, Hey, Mel. Hey, Greg. Sarah, looking good.

It was these micro moments of likability.

And that really chain of perspective is one, it's not about other people, it's about you. You being likable People is about spreading likability, and it starts with you. But if you can find, and I mean assertively, find ways to like people, you become more likable. And that means the onus is on you. But if you're ambivalent about those people, so those question marks on your list, stop hanging out for a little while. See if you miss them. If you do miss them, here's your next step. Find ways to aggressively and assertively like them. Find the things that you love about each other. Find the commonalities, and make make sure they know it. I think too often as adults, especially, we are too cool to show that we like people. We play it cool. We hold back. We don't want to be the first liker. No. My mission in life is to be first I'm the first liker. I invite people to sit with me at conferences. I'm the first person to ask questions in conversation. If I like someone, I literally tell them, I like you. I like you a lot. I am constantly telling the people I truly like, I really I like you.

I like spending time with you. You're so interesting. Because if I know that I can truly say that, I want to be assertive about it. And so that's the next step, is I think highly effective people, the reason they're so charismatic, is they relentlessly pursue people they actually like, and then they share it.

Oh, yeah.

So I like you, Mel.

I adore you. Okay, I'll take it. I like your brain. I like your takeaways. I like your energy. I like your enthusiasm. I like what is clearly It's really a commitment that you have to helping us be more influential and also enjoy your life. Yeah, that's it. I got really choked up when you said that thing about the kid walking down the hallway. Here I am crying over this silly example.

I felt emotional when you said you adored me. I was like, Oh, it feels so good.

Well, because I think so many of us walk around feeling like shit about ourselves. And so if somebody just walks by and is like, Hey, I love your sweater. You look great today. You're like, Oh, thank you.

Or even, I really like working with you. I don't know if I tell you that enough. I love when you're in a meeting with me. To be able to say that, and that's why it's so critical, that first exercise of knowing who you like and not being ambivalent, because I don't want you to fake that. I only want you to be able to say that if you truly believe it. And so spreading likes, it feels so good. And I also think it prevents our burnout. I think that the way that we prevent burnout is, yes, we can be doing lots of things, but if we're We're working with people we like, and we're doing tasks we like, and we can all feel good about it, it gives energy. It makes you feel so good. And so I think that making that list of people you like, I want that list to get longer. I want you to find ways to like more people because that makes you so likable.

Wow. Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.