The Power of Verbal and Vocal Cues in Communication

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The speaker emphasizes the importance of being contagious through verbal and vocal cues to influence not only how others think of the speaker, but also how others feel about themselves and take the speaker's advice. One powerful charisma cue discussed is the lean, which has been found to activate a specific part of the brain associated with pre-action when participants lean forward slightly. This activation is attributed to the tendency of leaning in to activate one of the five senses, such as seeing, smelling, or touching.

Note: This is a rebroadcast.

Charisma can make everything smoother, easier, and more exciting in life. It’s a quality that makes people want to listen to you, to adopt your ideas, to be with you.

While what creates charisma can seem like a mystery, my guest today, communications expert Vanessa Van Edwards, says it comes down to possessing an optimal balance of two qualities: warmth and competence.

The problem is, even if you have warmth and competence, you may not be good at signaling these qualities to others. In Vanessa’s work, she’s created a research-backed encyclopedia of these influential signals, and she shares how to offer them in her book
Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication. Today on the show, Vanessa and I discuss some of the verbal and nonverbal social cues that make you attractive to others, and keep you out of what she calls the “danger zone.” She explains what the distance between your earlobes and shoulders has to do with looking competent, how using uptalk and vocal fry sabotages your ability to convey power, how to put more warmth in your voice, how to trigger the right response with a dating profile picture, and more.