Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - The Science of Charisma & Influence | Vanessa Van Edwards - Human Behavior Expert

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Lessons - The Science of Charisma & Influence | Vanessa Van Edwards - Human Behavior Expert · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, discover the science behind charisma and the crucial balance of warmth and
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  competence. Learn why showcasing genuine trust and approachability outshines mere extroversion,
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  and understand how mastering verbal, non-verbal, and visual cues can elevate both personal and
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  professional relationships. Maybe describe for the audience charisma because we just talked about
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  introvert, extrovert, ambivert. How does charisma kind of that? Okay, wonderful. So about nine
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  years ago, I discovered a study that literally changed the way I interact, and I'm hoping now
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  will shick your perspective as well. So this is a research study that was done in 2002. It's
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  a replicated number of times. So it's a very, very good set of research by Dr. Susan Fiss.
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  Now what she discovered is that highly charismatic people, with the recognition of charisma,
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  should all these hypotheses of what charismatic people could be? Are they more extroverted?
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  Are they more attractive? Are they taller? Are they smarter? Are they funnier?
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  But all these different variables that we think of when we think of charisma. But actually what it
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  came down to is none of those things mattered. The true indicator of charisma is that highly
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  charismatic individuals rank off the charts in two specific traits. Work and competence.
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  But these two traits make up 82% of our impressions of people. Not only 82% of people are
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  amberbirds and 82% of our impressions. I better make sure those are utter magic number.
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  Let's say the low 80s. Let's say the low 80s. That we tend to focus while we're going into a
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  boardroom or a presentation or a party or a network event or a date. We're focused on like 10
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  things. I got to be funny. I got to be interesting. I got to be impressive. I got to be smart.
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  I'd be attractive. But actually with the research shows you'd be better off putting all of your
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  energy into showcasing warmth, cues, and competence cues. So it's critical that these are in balance.
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  Warm cues are signals of trust and likeability and affability. Competence cues are cues of
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  reliability, power, and efficiency. What is happening is that highly charismatic people when you
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  first see them on camera, see the LinkedIn profile, meet them in person. They are very quickly
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  answering two questions. And these are the questions that we ask every single person we meet
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  silently. Can I trust you? Can I rely on you? If you can quickly answer those questions with
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  your cues, you are considered more highly charismatic. That is the formula for charisma.
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  And it's still interesting because it actually seems like those two
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  characteristics of charisma could almost be competing at some point.
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  Okay, such a good point. Yes. So what often happens, the reason why charismatic people are so special
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  is because most of us do not have a balance. Most of us are too high and I also want to be clear.
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  This is how you are showcasing your warmth and competence. Not necessarily your actual
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  warmth and competence. So for example, most of my students are high achievers, brilliant,
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  very smart folks who have trouble showcasing their idea. They have great ideas, but they don't
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  get a lot of buy on their ideas. Here's the problem with very smart people. Very smart people are
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  focused on competence. They get really great data, charts, graphs, they have solid background
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  research on their data. They have great slides. But if they forget to showcase or wrap that idea
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  in warmth, it leads people feeling suspicious. And that is directly from the research. The research
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  is found is that you had too much competence. With out of the form, people are suspicious of you
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  and their suspicious of your ideas. So the curse of smart people is they focus so much on their
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  smart. And that's all they're showcasing that no one believes them. So let's, I mean, we're really
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  diving into the weeds of charisma very quickly. So we can keep going down this path. I still want to
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  understand. Actually, let's keep going down this path. I actually really like it a lot. So
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  I want to understand how people can, I think people at least audience members for this particular
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  podcast, they understand competence and they probably over index on that side. And I would assume
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  so. However, when they're listening to you and you're saying, warm past to balance out and there
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  has to be almost this, this, this balance really for lack of a better word of both of both of these
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  components. How does somebody manufacture warmth? Because that's a missing opponent. And I'm just
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  thinking, I get business context, even going on a date, pitching to investors, getting a job,
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  hiring an employee, getting into buy into your company, whatever it is, if you're highly competent,
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  then there's that discord and there's that distrust. And then you're not
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  optimizing the efficiency in that particular engagement. Yes. So this is the number one challenge
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  of all of our students. So in people's school, I have a program where that is exactly what happens.
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  They come in and they're like, how do I manufacture warmth? I feel all the problems that I have
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  this idea. And so what I always say is, actually, you have warmth. So we're not manufacturing
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  anything. Are you passionate about your idea? Do you really want it to work? Do you think the people
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  can trust you? Great. That's warm. Warmth is about passion, trust, and enthusiasm. No.
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  I occasionally get someone who's like, no, I don't love my idea. I'm going to be hard.
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  It is really hard to manufacture fake form. And people, you can do it for a little bit.
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  But you might want to get into other business. And then I say to them, well, are you passionate
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  about making money? Are you passionate about helping? Well, like, where is there some kind of
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  passion here? So one is that, yes, your idea is really important. Get your slide right, get your
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  data right, get your due diligence right. And then remember, how freaking excited you are,
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  how freaking excited you are to help someone? How freaking excited you are to make money?
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  That is true passion. And then remember that you did the due diligence. And that's where the
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  trust comes from. It comes from, right? It trust leaves people competent, but reliability
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  are competent. Okay. Then we come down to the manufacturing part. What I would say is showcasing.
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  You have the passion. You have the trust. And you have the competence. How do you signal both?
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  They, it comes down specifically to the different channels of communication. I simplified about
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  four channels of communication. There's lots of ways we do this. This is a kind of a framework
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  to think about it because me as an awkward person, I was like, I need this simple. I need knowing
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  exactly what to do to showcase warmth. So we showcase warmth before channels. First, our words,
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  the kinds of words we use. I'll give an example of each in a second. Second, our body language,
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  our gestures, our facial expressions, our posture. Third, our voice tone. How we deliver our words,
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  how we sound as we deliver our volume, our pace, our cadence. Last one, smallest one is our
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  ornaments or imagery, the kinds of colors we wear, how we wear our hair, our facial hair,
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  what's behind us in our Zoom background, the signals, the images on our website. Okay, those are
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  four channels. People are constantly looking through those four channels to try to find warmth
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  and competence signals. So let's look at body language first, for example, very highly charismatic
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  people. When you first see them, they have a perfect balance of non-verbal warm cues. They're
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  signaling you and non-verbal competence cues are signaling you. So for example, a warmth
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  cue might be a head tilt. So a head tilt is the universal sign of engagement across cultures,
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  genders, races. When you ask someone, do you hear that? They expose their ear literally a sign
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  of I'm listening. So there's studies that show that even in a LinkedIn profile picture, if I were
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  to have a slight head tilt, people will rate me as would work. So a highly warm person or highly
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  charismatic person might have a head tilt in their profile picture, it's even sick to static profile
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  picture. They have a head tilt and they're also making direct eye contact with the camera,
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  and they're also fronting with the camera. So they're angling their torso, their hips, and
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  their toes toward the camera. We also like people who are full fronting with them if you like to be
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  aligned with them. Those cues balance each other out. Once you stack all these different cues,
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  I've identified 97 different cues. It's like a recipe. You get to sprinkle in the warm
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  cues that you like and the cops will cues you like. So when you're going through your life,
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  obviously there's 97 different cues. That's a lot of things to remember. What are the main,
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  what are the sort of like the introduction to being charismatic and to integrating these cues
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  into your day to day? What are the things that people should first start to think about?
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  It's sort of like step zero. Okay, step zero is actually words. The reason for that is because
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  as humans typically, we think about what to say. We're less focused on our body language. I always
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  like to start with words. Also, so much of our, so many of our questions are happening over
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  you know, or on LinkedIn. So actually words is one that we can focus on. It's the easiest. So
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  here's step zero is in your LinkedIn profile picture. Do you have a balance of warmth and
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  competence, verbal use? And there's a very interesting study that shows you how powerful this is.
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  So in this research experiment, they brought people into their lab, they split them up into two
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  different groups. The first group came into the lab, greeted the researcher. Hello. The research
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  today, you are going to play the Wall Street game and they had them play a prisoner's dilemma type
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  of game. The second group came into the same lab with the same researcher and they were told,
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  hello, today you're going to play the community game and the trick was the games were exactly the
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  same. Everything was the same except for that one word change. Is it some people were told they
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  were playing the Wall Street game and say we were told they were playing the community game?
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  Everyone who was told they were playing the Wall Street game shared an average of one third of
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  their product. Everyone who was told they were playing the community game shared an average of two
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  thirds of their profits. This is an incredible experiment and it's been showed in different ways
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  that even suggesting to someone they're playing the community game activates a part of their brain
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  that literally thinks communally and they take that as behavior to you and then they act more
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  communally. We're people who were told their playing a Wall Street game acted more competitively.
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  I share this because the word that are in your LinkedIn profile, if they are sterile or overly
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  business like jargon, they don't have any behavior queuing at all. And so what I want you to
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  begin to think about is how can you balance the war verbal cues and the confidence verbal cues
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  in your emails your LinkedIn profiles. So for example, war words, this is a little bit more
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  art than science, but war words make us feel the warmen fuzzies. They make us want to connect and
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  communicate their words like happy together, best, both our, um, uh, collaborate, communal,
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  their words like that. Whereas, competent words activate a part of our pre-foto cortex that
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  makes one to get it done. So their words like power, efficient, brainstorm, um, checklist,
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  feed, achieve, master, their words like that. Oh, we hear that our brain goes, oh, we better get to work,
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  we better, uh, get things done. Those words are literally behavior cues. And so the very first
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  grow zero is starting to think about how can you add more of them? Love a lot. Remember,
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  we always have one word to have a massive behavior change in that experiment. How can you begin
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  to sprinkle these in to your emails, your calendar invites, your marketing materials,
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  your social profiles, even you'll notice like on my Instagram, I have a perfect blend of
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  worth a cop since cues in my bio. I have questions about how you set yourself up now,
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  because I know that you put so much into this lot. I'm curious about your background. I'm curious
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  about everything. Yeah. So everything most, everything I do is purposefully not way, because I'm
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  trying to set myself up for success because I am still a recovering awkward person. The more that
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  I feel like I can control the cues, whether that's on social or in my background or things like
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  that, it helps me feel a calmer, like that's my back door into confidence. And so like in
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  Instagram, in my profile, I have like, you know, mom, mom's too. Very warm, right? Yeah.
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  So that I have, whilst you know, that's all you author, very competent, right? That I have
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  recovered awkward person, funny, warm, vulnerable, right? Then I have like career people school,
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  super competent, right? So you can balance is that your profile? Then in my grid, I try to have a
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  balance of a warm and competent post over the course of a month so that could I know there's a
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  rare event. So like super advanced, but I think we have to go here, which is I want you to have a
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  balance. But I also want you to dial it like a thermostat. And this is what very highly
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  charismatic people do is there are certain people who are warmer, right? Like by default, we typically
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  have an imbalance. My warm post appeal to them. I have certain followers that are super competent,
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  like data analysts, researchers, my competent posts appeal to them. So I think it is my job as a
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  creator and as a teacher to meet everywhere they are. And so I'm going to give my warm people their
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  content. I'm going to give my come to their content when I'm giving a keynote, typically have
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  a 60 minute stage presentation. And I count my slides. They are perfectly balanced between
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  war slides and competent slides. War slides, yes, means stories, social proof, one example,
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  competent slides, any kind of data, chart, graph, research, science, and like competent signals,
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  like a credibility marker like Walls Journal. I know that if I want to be a better teacher,
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  I better make my competent both warm and my content both warm and competent. So it's
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  hitting everyone for their reference. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable,
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  don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive
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  deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode.
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  See you in the next one.