Vanessa Van Edwards On How To Be Engaging On Video, Email, And Online

Have you ever been with someone and felt like this person gets me? Mmm. We just click. I really like her. She makes me feel good. That's actually oxytocin course in your bloodstream. And oxytocin is a very complicated chemical, but for our purposes, social interactions, the moment we handshake or cheek kiss or fist bump or high five or hug, we get a burst of a chemical that we need to connect. What do we do on video? I am Mission La Chiani, founder of Mind Valley, the School for Human Transformation. You're listening to the Mind Valley podcast where we'll be bringing you the greatest teachers and thought leaders on the planet. To discuss the world's most powerful ideas and personal growth for mind, body, spirit and work. We're talking about one of my favorite topics, charisma. And not just being charismatic in person, but being charismatic digitally. And luckily, don't worry. All the tips I'm going to share with you, you can use both online and offline. I don't know about you, but I've spent a lot of the last 16 months or so in back to back to back to back to back to back to back video calls. Right? Just like zoom meetings for as far as the I could see on my calendar. And if I could sum this up in one word, I would sum it up right here, which is this is how I felt at the very beginning of my endless video calls. This is a picture of my daughter on her second day of virtual preschool. She devised a little clever technique where she just went to sleep. So as soon as the video camera went on, she just put her head down and went to sleep. Here's the good news. Very clever, by the way. Very clever way to get out of virtual preschool. Not all video calls have to feel like this. My mission today is to help you get more energy from your virtual interactions. In fact, I think that what we don't realize is that virtual interactions are not simply a replacement for in person. That's the mistake that we often make is we think, oh, an in-person interaction is going to be the same on video, just a digital. But what we found is that digital interactions drain us faster. So for all my introverts watching, and you wonder, gosh, why am I so tired at the end of the day after all these video calls? I don't have any energy for them. It's because video calls take a certain amount of stamina. And actually in a way, it can be different or harder than in person. So here's my mission. My mission is how can we make our virtual engagements energy-giving, not energy draining? So I want to make it so that we actually look forward to our video calls because we have some tools and tactics that we can use. But also, I want to make sure that we're getting energy from our virtual engagements. And we can do this with our chemistry. So stick with me here. If you're not a chemistry person, I'm going to convince you today we're going to talk about what happens behind the scenes in our body. Why does video calls drain us differently than in person? And how can we begin to understand human behavior, leverage human behavior to hopefully make it so that video calls give us energy? So here is the very first thing I want us to think about. A lot of the times when we approach video calls, we think that they have different rules than in person. For example, if I'm on a video call, I don't have to wear pants. If I'm on a video call, I can wear slippers. If I'm on a video call, I can look cute from here up, but horrible from here down. Today, I wore a jumpsuit because then I didn't have to wear a real pants. So we tend to think of different rules for online interactions. But actually, when it comes to hearing behavior, we're better off thinking of the same rules. We're better off using the same rules that we use in person on video. When we don't, that's when we get into trouble. Here's what I mean. What most of us don't realize is that all humans across Genders and races use spatial boundaries. Most people use four different spatial zones. So when we're in person, we're interacting in an environment, we use these space rules to gauge intimacy. So for example, the very first space zone is called the intimate zone. So the intimate zone is 0 to 18 inches from us. So 0 to 18 inches is about this far. So if you're this close to me, we have to be pretty comfortable, right? If you're this close to me, we're going to hug, we're going to cheat kiss. I have to be comfortable with you. Next zone, the next zone is called the personal zone. So the personal zone is a foot and a half to five feet apart. And by the way, these ranges are a little bit different based on culture. So that's why they're sort of big ranges. So it's about 0 to 18 inches and then about a foot and a half to five feet. In the personal zone, that's what we like to talk to people. That's what we like to have our friendship. It's what we like to have business engagements. Here's the problem. Most people get on a video call and they all start like this. See if this looks familiar. Okay, we're going to pretend that we're on a video call together. Ready? Hold on. Can you see me? Can you hear? Oh, oh, hi. Does that look familiar? That that ever happened to you. So here's what happens. When you are accidentally in someone's intimate zone. So when I start like this, can you see me? Can you see me? Can you hear me? You're like, whoa Vanessa, whoa, back it up. I know, I'm sorry. That was too intimate. And so all of a sudden in our first impression, I just triggered a little bit of adrenaline. When I get into your intimate zone without warning without any kind of intimacy beforehand, it triggers your amygdala where you process fear. And so your body goes, whoa, I don't know if I trust this person. So right off the bat, your first impression is filled with anxiety with nervousness. And so without realizing it, I think a lot of us are starting our video calls. And we don't realize why they're awkward. And it's because we're accidentally creeping into someone's intimate space. The moment I take a step back and by the way, on the floor, right here on the floor, I have a little piece of blue tape, a little piece of blue tape. Because, you know why, I'm a close talker. You know what I mean? A close talker. As I get closer and closer, I can't help it. I want to get really close to the camera. But that's terrible. It's terrible for my charisma. It makes you feel really anxious. So I have blue tape on the floor to keep my toes back here to make sure that right now. So right here, if I'm a foot and a half, I'm still not at it yet. But this distance, some distance between me and the camera is perfectly in the personal zone. It perfectly fits in that three feet. So when I'm here, we're comfortable. We're talking, we're following the same rules in person than we are virtually. The next zone, just so you know, is social zones. The social zone, this only happens in person typically is more five to seven feet away. Five to seven feet away is when we're thinking, oh yeah, hey, how are you? Good to see you. Come on over. I'd love to talk. And the last zone, of course, is the public zone. We are subconsciously aware of these zones when we're interacting in person. Virtually though, we tend to throw them out the window. And I want to bring them back. So make sure I want you to actually right now, if you don't mind. The way to try to touch your camera, and I want you to try to measure how far is your finger, is your face from your camera. If it's a foot and a half or closer, back up, you're too close. Take a little bit of a step back, because that's going to put you in the sweet spot. So right now, make sure that you're more than a foot and a half way. That's going to immediately take away awkwardness from your first impression. A little example for you. So further back, also then we can see more body language. So I'm going to talk a little bit later about hand gestures and body language, my favorite topic. So the other benefit of being a foot and a half to five feet away from the camera, three feet away from the camera, is that you get to see more of my body language. You get to see more of my hand gestures. You get to see more of my meaning. So that's the other benefit. It is more too close to the camera. We lose meaning. Have you ever tried to have a video call where it's just like faces, just like face after face after face, you see no hand gestures? It's hard to get more meaning. We love to look at hand gestures for meaning, which we're going to talk about. I want to talk about how experiment we did. And I haven't yet published this full research. This was an experiment that my lab did where we looked at Shark Tank. So if you haven't seen the show Shark Tank, they have different versions around the world. It's Dragon Lids layer in the UK. So Shark Tank is a very simple show where entrepreneurs come into the Shark Tank to pitch their business idea to a panel of sharks or investors. And these investors then pick their favorite ideas to invest their money in. What I love about this show is a very interesting look at how to sell ideas. It's a very interesting look at charisma. So my team and I wanted to know were there patterns? Why is it that some people walk into that Shark Tank and you instantly want to get to know them? And you instantly want to hear idea and they get tons of bites from the sharks. Whereas other entrepreneurs with pretty good ideas, walk in and you think, oh no, this isn't going to be a good one. And all the sharks drop out one by one and they don't get any deal. I wanted to know if there was different patterns. So I partnered with my research partner Jose and we watched 495 pitches on Shark Tank. 495 pitches on Shark Tank and my research partner Jose Pina coded all 495 pitches. We were looking for patterns. We wanted to know why there were differences. So we looked at everything from hand gestures to gender to the color of clothes that we wore to how they walked into the tank. We clocked the amount of seconds smiling. We looked at the verbal content of the pitch and we found patterns. So here's what we found. What was the biggest difference? A little test here. So think about what you think the answer is here. What do you think had the greatest effect on the success of an entrepreneur? Was it a color of close, B, interactivity of the pitch. C, edible products. D, getting the sharks to laugh. Do you think about that? So we found the biggest difference between the most successful pitchers and the least successful pitchers was the interactivity of the pitch. In fact, this blows my mind. 81% of successful deals had some kind of interaction. action. Why? What was happening there? I want to break this down from human behavior perspective. Watch this. If you look at the shark tank, so this is an image of shark tank, you can actually measure out the four proxemic zone, the four space zones on the ground. So when a picture first walks in, they start in the public zone. They start all the way from the end of the hallway. They walk in and they're in the public zone. Then as they start their pitch, they're in the social zone. They're kind of talking. Then as the interactivity increases as they do demos, as they hand the sharks items, they go into the intimate zone and you'll notice that the pictures get a lot better as soon as that entrepreneur closes the space gap. So an entrepreneur will say, here, I have some great trail mix for you. Here, you want to try that? Okay, great. Thanks. And have it, Laurie. Here, I have a really cool sticky ball here. You want to try one of them. And they very, very slowly enter into the sharks intimate zone just for a second with permission. What that does for the brain, that the rules about how this happens is, ah, the sharks go, wow, they slowly moved from public to social to personal to now. We're getting to know each other. And you'll notice if you watch that that's when the deals take a turn. The pictures that don't have an activity, they never get the intimacy. They never build the charisma. And that's because they never leave the social zone. It's like the sharks can't get a real bite. And that's because it's very hard to bond with someone when they're five feet away. It doesn't matter how great their pitch is, it is really hard to connect with someone when they're over five feet away. From a human behavior perspective, we think, well, if we like someone, we let them closer. The second reason, so the space is the first reason why I think interactivity worked so on the shark tank. The second reason is extremely important for us. And it has to do with a little chemical called oxytocin. So the moment that we physically touch, we produce a chemical called oxytocin. I love oxytocin so much. I have it on my wall. I just love these chemicals. And that is because oxytocin is the chemical feeling of connection. It makes us feel the warm and fuzzy. It makes us feel trust. We just click. I really like her. And oxytocin is a very complicated chemical. But for our purposes, social interactions, the moment we handshake or cheek kiss, or fist bump, or high five, or hug, we get a burst of a chemical that we need to connect. So this is my biggest concern. I thought, my gosh, all these video calls, how am I going to get oxytocin? What am I going to do with the oxytocin? So don't worry. We have an answer here. So oxytocin is a neurotransmitter that helps us feel connected and feel close to others. It also makes us more memorable. So when we have oxytocin interaction, we're more likely to remember the interaction. And that's because we like to be around people who make us feel calm, collected, and connected. We like people who give us a burst of oxytocin because we think, yeah, I'm heard. I'm seen. I'm valued. I'm felt. So really fascinating science. I have to show you here. So this science is actually mind-blowing. So mind-blowing. So I'm a recovering awkward person, as was mentioned in my introduction. So I struggle with some social anxiety. And so what I didn't realize is that oxytocin is the antidote to anxiety. Here's what they found oxytocin does when it's in our bodies. The moment we have oxytocin through a handshake or a high five, we immediately increase trust, but it also increases social cognition. Social cognition is a magical skill. Social cognition is your ability to communicate. It's your ability to read emotions. So if you want to go on a date, go on a pitch, go on an interview, go on a negotiation, and you want to be able to read the room, read the person you're with, understand what they're thinking and feeling. The chemical oxytocin literally makes you better reading faces. They found that when they give people nasal sprays of oxytocin, yes, you can actually be a little nasal spray of oxytocin. I wouldn't recommend it. Make sure you do it in the lab. When they gave people a nasal spray of oxytocin, they were more accurate at reading facial expressions. So that handshake, that cheek is at high five, is essential for your ability to communicate better. The next thing they found is that the more oxytocin that's flowing via bloodstream, the less anxiety you have, the less social stress you have, and for someone like me, any of my introverts, any of my recovering awkward people, anyone struggling with social anxiety, we need this chemical. It's like a little superpower for our interactions. Here's the best part. This is the best part. Oxytocin is not just from touch, it's also from eye contact. So not only does a handshake or a high five produce oxytocin, but every second that you and I are making eye contact, and yes, even through a webcam, researchers have found that produced oxytocin. They have found the more amount of time that I look right at you, right at the camera, I am gifting you oxytocin, which is hopefully making you feel good, making you feel the woman fuzzies. So the great news is, is we don't have to be in person to get this oxytocin, but just like in person, we have to harvest it. We have to seek it. So the next thing I want you to think about is how in your online interactions, can you create oxytocin? Oxytocin is the key to video burnout. It's the key to giving energy, because we feel pumped with oxytocin. I'm hoping you're going to leave this call and be like, yeah, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling, I want you to be hyped up on that oxytocin. It's a free chemical that we can create for ourselves, so it gives energy. So easiest thing is make sure to look here, not here. So I have my whole setup, my whole rig, so that I am delivering right to you right at eye contact, and I try really hard, forgive me if I do sometimes, to not look down too much. In fact, when I'm on video call with a person, I make their video, I shrink their video down so that it's as close to the camera as possible so that I can see their face in the camera, and it's like I'm barely even leaving the camera. And that way I can see their facial expressions, and they can see me without me having to break, break oxytocin. So super easy, make as much eye contact with that camera as possible. Here's the other good news. The second thing I wondered in the midst of being on a lot of video calls last year is I wondered, what if we can't give a handshake, but I want to give a handshake. Could saying handshake be the equivalent of a handshake? In other words, if I say that I want to give you a hug, if I say I want to give you a fist bump, could it be the same as an actual fist bump? So I partner with Dr. Paul Zach, Dr. Paul Zach is an incredible researcher on oxytocin. He runs immersion neuroscience, and he also was curious about this. He wondered, okay, on a video call, could we say sending a hug without doing the exact same thing? Here's what we did. So we tried to devise an experiment that would actually test this. I went on camera, and I recorded five oxytocin statements. These were statements that I was hoping would trigger the equivalent of what I would do in person. So if I met someone in person, I would either handshake them, I'd give them a hug, I'd give them a high five, I would definitely be making eye contact. So I read five statements like this, so sending you a virtual hug. I don't know if you remember at the beginning of this session, I sent you a virtual hug, giving this is my horrible wink. That was because I was trying to produce oxytocin because, spoiler alert, it works. So I recorded these warm statements, and then I recorded five positive but neutral statements. So still friendly, what I would say at the beginning of a video call. Good to see you. It's great to see you and catch up. I like your background. I wanted to know if there was a chemical difference between positive and neutral and positive and warm, positive and oxytocin. So here's what we did. We had people watch these two videos, so 10 statements total, while wearing a smartwatch that measured their response. So this is a software that Dr. Paul's at created that the smartwatch actually measures the amount of skin conductance, the amount of engagement that someone has while they're wearing their watch. We found just these five statements a massive difference in engagement. So my warm statements had a 71 awesome index. In other words, when I mention those oxytocin words, it produced a 71 percent engagement, meaning just saying handshake, just saying hug created the feeling, the chemical reaction of a hug or handshake versus the initial statements which only got 35. So really easy take away, right? A really easy take away here is when you're in person and you can and you feel safe, handshake, high five, fist bump, give a hug if you're comfortable, make eye contact. I love the in person oxytocin. But if you're on video, say you wish you could give it handshake, say you wish you could give a hug, say you wish you could give a cheek kiss, it actually produces more feelings of oxytocin, more feelings of engagement. Super easy, right? So I start all my video calls, if you remember with a little wave and then I wish I could hug you in person. And that was my way of sending one of things I realized after conducting well over a thousand interviews with the world's greatest thought leaders in everything from entrepreneurship to spirituality, the health and wellness to relationship is that life is enormous and there are so many ways we can make our life better and better in every way in every single day. If you're successful in just one area of life, you might just suck in another. I've known billionaires whose romantic lives were in shambles, I've known incredibly emotionally intelligent people who just couldn't make money. And that's totally fine. It doesn't matter where you are, like doesn't have to stay the same forever. You're not cursed or destined to be miserable or unlucky in love or struggling to make ends meet. You would just never thought how to have it all, how to do things differently, how to master the human experience from a mind, body and soul perspective. This is where mind-value membership comes in. When you become a mind-value member, you are coached by the greatest teachers in the world. You get to live a life beyond your wildest dreams and learn the best systems, protocols, methods, step by step by step in just 20 minutes a day to get there. You become the man or woman that you've always aspired to be. And this happens in the easiest, most effective way because of the mind-value transformational model. Go to mindvalley.com/now. Don't settle for ordinary. Don't settle for your life the way it is now. Espire to step into your greatness. Can you a little gift of oxytocin? A little bit of warmth. The next thing. So after we talk about engagement, I want to talk about trust. So, I have a little quiz for you here. So, when you first see someone on video, what part of the body do you think you notice first? So, you can just guess here what do you think when you first see someone on video where you look first? So, most people guess the eyes, the mouth, the face. That's what most people guess. But actually, the very first place we look or want to look if we can see them is our hands. Our hands are incredibly important for trust. The moment you can't see my hands, if let's imagine that I gave my entire presentation kind of close, I know this is going to be rough. And I didn't do any hand gestures. Two things would happen. First, it would be very hard for me to teach and be charismatic. Second is your brain would have a harder time rocking or understanding my concepts, because I'm only speaking to you on one track. The moment I take a step back, I bring my hands and camera, your brain goes, "I can see, I can feel, I get intention." A really interesting examination of court cases found that when defendants in the American court system put their hands under the table, jurors rate them as more sneaky and untrustworthy. This is terrible news for our criminal justice system, right? We're supposed to be looking at jurors, we're looking at evidence, there's supposed to be looking to evidence. But when we can't see someone's hands, we have trouble trusting people. We noticed this was the next biggest pattern on Shark Tank. So after interactivity, the next pattern we found was the best pictures were handsy. They were so handsy. All the best pictures you can almost predict which pictures are going to go well based on how many hand gestures they use in the first minute. So the best pictures walked on the Shark Tank like this, I'll show you this. Hey, Shark's, today I'd like to pitch you in an idea that I think is going to rock your socks. So if you ever seen this show, that's what they do. They usually have some kind of a wave. They're very hands forward. They're demoing. They're gesturing. They're using a lot of palms. It's a lot of palms. And this is because the moment we see someone's hands, we trust them more. It engages our brain a little bit faster. We also noticed this, our team at about seven years ago, we coded thousands of hours of TED Talks, looking for patterns between the most viewed TED Talks and the least viewed TED Talks. And again, when you lined up these TED Talks side by side, when you compared the most popular and the least popular TED Talks side by side, we noticed a huge difference in hand gestures. So the most popular TED Talks, when you look at them, we coded hand gestures, smiling, vocal pace, vocal power, stage movement. We coded a ton of variables looking for patterns. The most obvious one we found is that the most popular TED Talks use an average of 465 hand gestures in 18 minutes. It's a lot of hand gestures. Whereas the least popular TED Talks use an average of 272 gestures in 18 minutes. Massive difference. Why? What's happening is twofold is the best TED Talks, they get on stage and they are very hands first. So most TED Talks, they get on that little red dot and they say, "Good morning. Today I want to share with you a big idea. I'm going to break that idea down into three different things that are going to change your life." That's all TED Talks start. And what they're doing there is they're making their hands visible. They're saying, "You can trust me." But they're also saying, "I know my content so well that I can speak to you on two tracks. I can speak to you with my words and my hands." On video, again, we get lulled into this sense of difference, this false sense of difference. We're in person, we typically gesture quite a lot. But on video, we tend to forget about our hand gestures. And so we get to our point in the presentation and we're like, "Okay, I'm going to read some notes." So today, we're talking about is XYZ and ABC. And we lose all of our hand gestures. And so the biggest mistake that people make is they take away hand gestures on video. But the best way that you can prevent video burnout is adding gestures on video, is adding another dimension to our words. So if I'm talking about a big idea, I'm talking about a big idea. I'm talking about a small idea. I'm talking about small idea. Three things, five things. How can I about growth, talking about growth, talking about a and b, all of those things help. It's like giving the brain mental snacks. The brain is like, "Yay, visuals." It's like when you were a little and you saw pictures and a storybook, we always looked forward to the pictures. Hand gestures are the exact same way. So make sure that you're keeping them above the desk on camera and a little bit explanatory. So you're using your gestures purposefully, not as jazz hands, but purposefully. Some gestures that we noticed from our TED Talks, I'll list them out for you here. We noticed listings whenever anyone mentioned a number on TED Talks, they always showed it. We noticed that when TED Talkers got something that was personal to them, something that meant a lot to them, they typically gestured towards their heart region. And that was the way that people went, "Ah, heart." We noticed that the best TED speakers when they had two concepts, they would talk to you about this concept and then this concept. They actually outlined along with their words, they would say, "We're talking about this now, and now this, which was a great way to keep organization." We saw any kind of growth on Shark Tank. This was a really big one. We saw a lot of this kind of growth and all of this kind of growth. And that emphasizes our words. We also noticed that the "how important," so this was kind of another one that was interesting is when people said something that was really important, they literally kind of held it like a, like a really beautifully important, like, like a little ring. And we noticed a lot of the TED Talkers would say, "This is so important," or, "I can't wait to share with you this one amazing piece of knowledge." It's right here, right at the tip of my fingers. And you really wanted to learn it. So that was kind of some fun gestures. Now, I love hand gestures, but don't go overboard. Right, so no jazz hands. No just hand gestures for the sake of hand gestures. Be sure to keep them purposeful and expressive. The last big step here is using our voice. So I think on video, we think about our content, what we want to say. We sometimes give some energy to our body language or how we look. What we often forget about is our vocal power. So what's really important about this is we are constantly listening to vocal signals for competence, warmth, and trust. This is an incredible study. So I have to drink some water before I do a demo for you in a second. So what they did is they took doctors and they have them record 10-second voice tone clips. So it sounds like this. It's a little demo for you. So doctors had to say their name, their specialty, and where they worked. So it sounded like this. Hi, my name is Dr. Edwards and I work at Children's Presbyterian Hospital, I specialize in oncology, something like that. They took those clips and they warbled the words. You could hear the volume, the pace, the cadence, but not the actual words being said. So that sounded like this. They took these clips of gobbledygook and they asked people to rate these doctors on warmth and competence to characteristics that are essential for our charisma. What they found was the doctors who got rated the lowest in warmth and competence just from their voice tone had the highest rate of malpractice lawsuits. This indicates that we don't just sue doctors based on their skills. We sue doctors based on our perception of their skills and that happens in the first few seconds of hearing them. That when we hear someone say hello or so good to see you, we're not looking at their body language listening to the words. We're listening to the cues in their voice and here is the very first pattern they found. The doctors who got rated the lowest in competence used what's called the question inflection. So the question inflection is when we go up at the end of our sentences, their voice tone clips sound like this. Hi, my name is Dr. Edwards and I specialize in oncology and I work at Children's Presbyteria and Hospital. Going up at the end of our sentences. The problem is that when we use the question inflection on a statement, it's like we're telling someone, "I'm questioning what I'm saying and you should too." I do tons of sales trainings and this is the number one mistake I see in sales. A salesperson will be doing great when they get to their price, when they get a little nervous, they give away their nervousness with the question inflection. So I say this. Hey there, we'd love to have your business, we'd love to work with you and the cost of the product will be $5,000. If you ask your prices, you are begging people to negotiate with you. The next time you're negotiating for a car at a garage sale for your desired salary, for your new rate, when you're selling something, I want you to make sure that you are saying, not asking, that you're saying your price. If you ask your price, you are begging people to push you. It also happens because we often hear that liars will use the question inflection. We do a lot of live-action research in our lab. We found that liars are asking if they believe you. So when my daughter had a little toddler ask her, "Did you take the cookies?" She said, "No." She asks me to know, "Is if no, do you believe me?" So we know intuitively that if we hear the question inflection, you might not believe what you're saying. So one is always ask. The second thing that we found was that the doctors who were rated the highest in competence used the lowest and low. of their natural tone. Now I have a lot of YouTube tutorials on how we use our voice, but everyone has a natural range. For example, I'm working really hard to keep my voice in the lowest end of my natural range. When I'm talking to my daughter and talking to my husband, I go a little higher in my vocal tone and I talk like this. Now this is okay, this is still my natural range, but if I gave my entire presentation in this tone of voice, it would drive you crazy. And that's because we don't like people who are at the top of their voice, it signals anxiety. We like people in their maximum resonance point. That's what's called the lowest end of our tone. It's a famous video from Margaret Baxter, former Prime Minister of the UK, Lawrence Olivier trained her on her voice tone. And he found that if she spoke in a lower tone, she was taken as more credible, more serious. So I found two clips for you. One before her training one after I want you to see if you can hear the difference between her two voice tones. I've been so busy that I haven't had really much time to think about it. After all, I know I'm still only me and so do my family. But I'm very much aware of the responsibilities and a little bit apprehensive, who wouldn't be when you think of the names that I follow. Let me answer that very deeply because I feel very strongly about it. The greatest divisions this nation has ever seen were the conflicts of trade unions towards the end of a labor government. Wow. You don't even know what she's saying in that second clip, but doesn't it sound important? And that's because she's queuing you by using the lowest end of her voice. When we get anxious, we tend to creep our shoulders up. We take up as little space as possible. We creep our shoulders up. We tense our vocal cords. And so we end up sounding a little bit more like this, a little bit less oxygen. If you hear yourself going into the higher end of your vocal tone, I want you to speak on the out breath. The biggest mistake that I see you'll make is they get on the phone and they answer the phone and they answer a video call at the top of their range so they go like this, hello? Hey, how are you? The problem is when we go up on our voice, it makes us sound really nervous and really incompetent. So what I want you to do instead is I want you to lower your shoulders, I want you to take it a deep breath and I want you to say hello on the out breath. So try this with me. So first, I just wanted to do the wrong way. So take it a deep breath, hunch your shoulders up, cross your arms of your chest. And I want you to say hello at the top of your breasts. Ready? Hello? That right there is the top of your vocal range. If you ever hear yourself sound like that tone of voice, that is what you sound like when you're anxious. That's also the tone that liars tend to use. Liars are really anxious. They tend to lie like this. Like they're not really sure at the very top of their range. I know because I've coded hundreds of lying videos. What I want you to do instead is take your upper deep breaths, rest your shoulders, give me some space. Right now we're going to try answering on the out breath. So I want you to take a deep breath in and say hello as you force oxygen out of your breath as you force your vocal cords to relax. So hello. So now try it back and forth. Hello? Hello? Same person, totally different sound. When you're speaking, I want you to see if you can hear yourself use the lower end of your tone. And every time you hear yourself go a little higher, take a deep breath and speak on the out breath. The other thing that I often hear in sales call is a volume problem. So when we're nervous, when we're anxious, I mentioned that we'd take in a deep breath. So if you ever heard of the const of vocal fry, that sometimes when we are talking, we'll kind of lose oxygen and then we end up talking like this. So we're sort of talking in this tone of voice and vocal fry happens when you have a like a sizzle in your voice. It's horrible. I'm sorry. It's horrible. I know. So vocal fry actually happens because you have a lack of oxygen in your lungs. So the moment you ask someone to speak up, you can get rid of their vocal fry. So if you have someone in your life who uses vocal fry, just be like, I can't hear you, what was that? And then they'll take in a deep breath. Oh, what I was saying was, because the moment we use more oxygen, we get rid of vocal fry. So if you've heard yourself accidentally go into vocal fry, especially at the end of sentences, take a deep breath in and speak on the outbreak. The other thing that can happen here is we drop our volume. So on sales calls, I hear people say, we'd love to have your business. We'd love to work. Oh, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. A job negotiation. Okay, so I love watching people negotiate for salaries because they often give away their confidence by accident. So they'll say, you know, I would love to work in this company. I've been looking forward to working here. It's my dream job to work here. I think I can contribute a lot. But the salary range that I was looking for was $50,000. So on with their nervous, they drop their volume considerably. And that's because more nervous, we lose air. Right, we literally lose air. But I want to make sure that when you have a question that's important to you, when you have hard news, a timeline prices, you say it, you don't ask it, and you use consistent volume. That consistent volume will make you believe in your number, which will make them believe in your number. Oh, please, next time you ask for your rate, really ask for it. The last one I'm going to mention here is emotional warmth. And this is to never start a video call in a bad mood. I did a really interesting experiment, as I was mentioning earlier, that our emotions affect our body, which affects our sound of our voice. So we did a little experiment. This is a really fun experiment. We had actors come into our studio and record six different versions of their hello. So we had them do their normal hello hello, then we had them do a happy hello. So smiling really big thing this minute made them happy. Hello, we have them do a sad hello. So sadist micro expression, which is in my book, captivated if you want to see it or on my YouTube channel is when we pinch up the inner corners of our eyes together, we droop our lids and we bring our mouth into a little frown. So we say hello, right? Then we had them do an angry hello. Again, one of the universal micro expressors for anger is we pull our eyebrows together. So these vertical lines appear. We harden the lower lower lids and we say hello. Very harsh voice. We had them do a power posing hello. So we were wondering if standing broadly could change our vocal power and then of course a normal hello at the end just to wrap it up. We wanted to know, do these sound different. What do you think? They sound different. All right, let's try it. Here is the exact same person. One of these is a neutral hello and one of these is a happy hello. I want you to see if you can hear the difference. Are you ready? Okay, here's a hello. Here's b hello. When do you think it's a happy hello? Which one do you think? B, right? Those two hello is same person but different feeling. Can't quite your finger on it, but that second one just sounds happier. The first thing we realize is wow. All of these emotions make them sound totally different. Smiling sounds different than anger, which sounds different than sadness. I wonder if that affects their likability. So we took these recordings and we asked thousands of people on our website and by the way if you were one of the people who precipitated our lab experiment, thank you. Thank you for your clicks. It helps us so much with our research. So we asked thousands of our amazing incredible readers. I like this person. I like this person a little. I do not like this person. We were trying to see if the anger hello would make you like the person less. Okay, so let's try this again. Which one is the angry hello? This one's getting a little bit harder. So here's a hello. Here's b hello. Hard, right? Angers are hard one to hear, but if you got this one right, b is the angry hello. Good job if you got that one. Right, we were curious if people could hear the difference even if they didn't know what they're listening or if they could hear the difference. Let's try one more before I tell you the results. Can you pick out the power posing hello? So can you pick out hello versus hello? Okay, let's see if you can see the difference. Here we go. Here's a hello. Here's b hello. Hard, right? It's getting harder. Okay, the answer was a you got a power posing. So what happened? How the results stack up? Here's what we found is that we can hear different emotions. Not only can we hear emotions, we catch them. So when we hear someone in a happy mood say hello, we not only see them as more likeable, we actually are more likely to catch the happiness. This is an export a lot in my book captivate that we are so powerful that our emotions are contagious. But even the sound of our hello can transmit through the phone can transmit through video. I'll make you guess which got the least likeable rating. Was it a power pose, b, anger, c, happy, d, control or e sad? It was e sad. If you're in a bad mood, if you're feeling sad, let it go to voice mail, reschedule your calls. We can hear that sadness. Actually, whenever I introduce both my mouth, so this is the universe loads question for sadness, I pull my mouth down. It actually changes the entire shape of my mouth and we can hear it. We actually hear it kind of hurts my mouth. Okay, I wanted that for too long. Okay, which got the most likeable rating? Which got the highest like rating? Was it power pose, anger, happy, control, sad? It was happy. Here's my vocal power tips for you. Always breathe out on hello. So, there's ice and relaxed, keeping your vocal cord relaxed. Second, try to record your end of your next conversation, your next video call, your next phone call. I want you to hear if you accidentally use the question inflection. Lastly, if you have a price, a timeline or hard news, don't just practice the verbal content, practice the nonverbal content, practice how you deliver it, what your face looks like, what you sound like, the cues you send to others dictate for them how they should treat you. The cues you send to others change how people treat you. I want to end on one final note. I'm so honored and excited to be here. This is my life's work. I'm a recovering awkward person In school I used to get hives on my arms and my legs and my neck before school. So I had to wear a turtle neck and long clothes to cover them up. These social strategies I'm sharing with you, they help me socially survive. They literally are what get me through these video calls. They are literally what gets me through my interactions. And so I share them with you because I hope they give you confidence. I hope they put you more in control of your cues. I hope that they make you a little bit more excited for your video calls and you have something to try. That's my mission here is to hopefully have your interactions give you energy instead of taking energy. I'm Vision Lacheani and this is the Mind Valley Podcast. If you like the Mind Valley Podcast, take the next step. Become a Mind Valley member. Imagine being coach daily by the greatest teachers on the planet. How quickly would you transform your help, your mindset, your body, your relationships? How quickly would you double the size of your company? How quickly would you see your career grow? How quickly would you eliminate any limiting belief that's holding you back and manifest a life that you once thought beyond your dreams? 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