Vanessa Van Edwards’ Cues lists and explains the nonverbal and verbal signals that influence how people perceive us by dividing them into two main dimensions: warmth, affecting trust and likability, and competence, affecting power and authority.
Exec Summary
- Be both high warmth and high competence
- Calibrate competence and warmth to situation and people, depending on whether you need more competence or warmth/connection
- Avoid the extremes of no warmth/no competence
FULL SUMMARY
About the Author:
Vanessa van Edwards holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree from Emory University and started her entrepreneurial journey with children and writing children’s books under the pseudonym ‘Vanessa van Patten’.
She later moved to teach social skills from her point of view ‘recovering awkward person’, authoring several books and courses on social skills, including Captivate, Body Language of Love, and her main course People School.
Intro
The book categorizes warmth and competence cues into different aspects of communication: body language, vocal tone, verbal cues, and facial expressions.
Below is a breakdown of each type of cue according to warmth and power.
Body Language Cues
❤️ Warmth Cues (Trust and Connection)
- Leaning In – Shows engagement and interest.
- Don’t lean when disagreeing, with toxic people
- Open Body Language – Uncrossed arms and a relaxed posture signal approachability.
- Head Tilt – Slightly tilting the head makes you appear more empathetic. Especially good when listening
- Authentic Smiling – A genuine smile, especially one that reaches the eyes, fosters connection.
- Savor smiles take longer to spread across someone’s face. Researchers found that they are seen as more attractive.
- Mirroring – Subtly copying someone’s gestures creates rapport.
- Palms Up Gestures – Signifies openness and honesty.
Common palm-flashing gestures include:- Pre-Handshake: Hold your hand out with a palm up in a greeting and you’re asking for a handshake.
- Pre-Hug: Hold both hands out with palms facing toward the other person and you’re asking for a hug.
- Get Excited: Hold your hands up with palms facing up and move your hands up and down toward the sky (Think about “raise the roof” gesture.)
- Calm Down or sit: Hold your hands out with palms facing down and move your hands up and down toward the ground
- Stop: Hold your hand up and show someone your palm
- Tell Me More: Hold your hands out with palms up and gesture toward someone
- Let Me Explain This: Hold out one hand with a palm up and gesture while speaking to punctuate you’re explaining something
💪🏼 Competence Cues (Confidence and Authority)
- Expansive Posture – Taking up more space conveys confidence.
- Shoulders relaxed and pulled down. Anxiety causes us to tense our shoulders to protect our neck and “turtle” our head down. Pull your head up, shoulders down
- Feet spaced apart. Place your feet 10cm wider than you normally would to feel more grounded. If you’re a leg crosser, that’s fine. Just take a note from Kennedy and keep one foot firmly planted and the other relaxed. And if you can, angle them toward the person you’re with
- Hands relaxed and away from your torso. Create some space between your arms and torso
- Stillness – Moving with purpose rather than fidgeting signals control.
- Strong Eye Contact – Direct but non-intimidating eye contact asserts dominance.
- Magnetic eye contact: tense your eyelids for intensity, signal attention, and attractiveness
- Hand Steepling – Pressing fingertips together conveys authority.
- Purposeful Gestures – Controlled hand movements reinforce your message.
- Standing Tall – Good posture with shoulders back enhances presence.
Hardening our lower lid, called “flinty eyes,” “steely eyes,” or “narrowed eyes. is a signal of intensity, judgment, and scrutiny -Vanessa says it signals interest and it’s what attractive men do–
👨🏼🏫 Explanatory Gestures
- Numbers: emphasize your numbers by showing it on your hand.
- Big or Small: small or no big deal, hold your fingers an inch apart. Big or important, hold your hands as if holding a beach ball.
- Me vs. You gesture: your opinion or something personal, gesture toward yourself, sometimes even touching your heart. When encouraging the audience or speaking about a call to action, gesture toward the audience.
- Link body parts with meaning: Highly competent speakers show two different opinions or two different groups with their hands. For example, left hand talking about liberals; right hand when talking about conservatives.
The audience knows who the speaker is referring to with body language alone
Vocal Cues
❤️ Warmth Cues
- Varied Vocal Tone – A dynamic voice makes conversations more engaging.
- Warm, Relaxed Pitch – A slightly lower but soft tone conveys warmth.
- Encouraging Sounds (“Mm-hmm,” “Ah”) – Shows active listening.
- Pauses – Allowing others to respond makes interactions feel balanced.
And I add:
- Address the desire to bond
Ie.: ‘Sorry I can’t shake your hand’ or ‘Sending you a hug from here’
💪🏼 Power Cues
- Lower Voice Tone – Deeper voices are perceived as more authoritative.
- Steady, Controlled Speech – Avoiding filler words (“um,” “uh”) shows confidence.
- Well-Placed Pauses – Strategic pauses add weight to your words.
- Pause after a power move, to highlight it and pressure the attacker
- Speaking in Statements, Not Questions – Avoiding rising intonation when making statements prevents sounding unsure.
Verbal Cues
❤️ Warmth Cues
- Personalized Greetings – Using someone’s name increases connection.
- Inclusive Language – Words like “we” and “together” foster warmth.
- Compliments and Acknowledgments – Sincere appreciation strengthens bonds.
- Warm Greetings & Goodbyes – “Sending a hug”, “Fist-bumping my camera”
💪🏼 Power Cues
- Concise Language – Being direct and clear avoids diminishing authority.
- Definitive Statements – Avoiding hedging phrases like “I think” or “maybe.”
- Command Phrasing – “Let’s do this” instead of “Should we try this?”
- Competence Words such as brainstorm, effective, productive, and science.
Facial Expression Cues
❤️ Warmth Cues
- Eyebrow Raise – A slight lift shows interest and engagement.
- Soft Eye Contact – Gentle rather than piercing gaze increases trust.
- Nodding – Encourages others to continue speaking.
💪🏼 Power Cues
- Neutral, Composed Expression – Avoiding excessive smiling in serious moments maintains authority.
- Slow Blinking – Signals control and patience.
- Head Held High – Avoiding excessive tilting downward keeps a strong presence.
CRITICISM
We sometimes analyze nonverbals differently, see an example here:
Vanessa: She should show more signs
Lucio: Her signs were obvious, he had to lead more
And specifically about the book:
Men beware: power matters more
I agree with Vanessa: both warmth and competence matter.
Vanessa van Edwards leans more towards warmth, making her an excellent role model for women—especially those who prioritize connection in their interactions.
Vanessa’s nonverbals skew more towards warmth. Men who need to gain more power need to keep that in mind
However, for men who want to maximize influence, emphasizing competence and power may be even more crucial.
And that’s even more true for ‘too good men’ who naturally come across as agreeable.
So, in general men ought to prioritize competence and power -and especially nicer men.
Dominant men win elections
Quoting from the Cues itself:
Want to know who will win an election before it happens? Researchers found that voters decide who is more dominant in just one minute of political exchange, and that predicts their vote.
There you have it.
Voters don’t decide who is warmer -or nicer-.
They decided based on dominance.
Some strategies needed more power/dominance
For example, Vanessa advises a manager seeking attention and respect to:
- Start with quick updates so ‘latecomers won’t miss anything crucial’
- Surprise slide with a funny meme
That’s not a high power approach.
A stronger alternative: start with the most important updates—those who arrive late will miss them and will learn next time to be on time.
Avoid over-chit-chatting if work is the priority
Little later in the book, she advises that the ‘high competence’ question while waiting for latecomers is ‘anyone listened to any good podcast recently’ or ‘anyone reading good books’?
This is fair for relaxed workplaces.
But it’s a no-no for high-power executives or highly effective workplaces.
Accepting lateness disempowers you and random chit-chats while the boss waits for latecomers is too warm -including books and podcasts that Vanessa marks as high competence topics-.
TPM’s take: power better represents ‘competence’
Since we first implemented Fiske’s original research on warmth and competence to social skills, we made a decision.
And we decided to replace ‘competence’ with ‘power’.
The name ‘competence’ has a positive frame that makes it naive.
Power is more neutral, encompassing both value-giving and value-taking approaches.
Competence, with its positive frame, runs into some issues.
For example, asked whether Trump’s yank and pull handshakes was high competence or warmth, Vanessa replied ‘neither’.
What she didn’t say, but she probably thought, is that Trump’s handshake was domineering -and bullying-.
However, we don’t run into that issue with the ‘power’ angle.
We easily fit Trump -and any other domineering and bullying approach- into the extreme version of power. Extreme power without warmth = over-dominance = bullying.
Focus on detecting dark triad traits rather than ‘lying cues’
Spotting lies is notoriously unreliable.
It’s as likely to help you as it is to sidetrack you.
That’s why I prefer this approach:
- Focus on character
- Focus on diverging interest. Don’t worry when interests overlap, careful when they diverge
Vanessa mentions some famous examples of public lies.
All of them are interesting, but Armstrong’s example stuck out with me the most.
She says that ‘her gut feeling told her something was wrong’ and lists a couple of cues.
My thoughts were ‘No wonder, the guy is a psychopath‘.
It was easier for me since I had the vantage point of knowing Armstrong’s history better than most -including what I deemed as shameful behavior, even as a teenager-.
Still, the general concept stands.
And I advise to focus on reading characters, rather than single and potentially misleading gestures.
Character is your forest.
Once you see a rotten forest, you know the tree can’t be good.
Some examples left me wondering
The examples make the book engaging and accessible to a wide audience.
Vanessa has mentioned her appreciation for Malcolm Gladwell’s writing, and her storytelling approach reflects a similar effort to make complex concepts digestible.
But it’s difficult to find good and applicable examples, and some of them felt forced.
One above all, NBA player Stockton.
Vanessa says that Stockton’s success is because he used nonverbal cues such as gaze and torso direction to show where he was going to pass the ball.
It didn’t make much sense to me.
The cues seemed basic -what I’d expect any amateur to do, let alone professionals-.
And I’d expect cues to go both ways: as much as your teammates see them, so do the opponents.
Finally, a good player will also fake often.
Just as I expected, artificial intelligence confirmed my doubts:
AI: Yeah, that claim sounds exaggerated or oversimplified
(…) turning your toes, torso, and head toward your passing target is just fundamental basketball technique. Nearly every competent player does it (…) The best passers (including Stockton) don’t always turn fully toward their target. Look-away passes, misdirection, and subtle body movements to manipulate defenders are key parts of high-level play.
I agree that Vanessa may have been highlight one (tiny) element of Stockton’s passing success, but it’s unlikely to be the only -or even main- reason.
Some quoted research left me wondering
For example, discussing Brian’s conversion, she says:
the open posture won by A LOT. Simply switching to the open posture increased Brian’s website conversions by 5.4 percent! That might not sound like much, but in terms of web traffic conversions, it’s phenomenal.
An increase of 5.4% seems misleading to me.
It probably didn’t go from, say, 2% to 7.4%.
It means it went from 2% to 2.1%.
That’s something, but it’s not ‘by A LOT’ -and not ‘phenomenal’-.
Also, looking at the pictures, the open posture of Brian seemed off:
The left side Brian increases conversion by 5.4%. A modest increase, in my opinion, and not too surprising given that Brian, albeit in closed posture, is higher power on the right side.
There was no source to check this.
The popularization of science may come at a scientific cost
I purposefully avoid ‘pop-psychology‘ here because it’s often used pejoratively and Vanessa does a great job.
Sometimes though, the popularizing of science can estrange more rigorous learners.
For example, going after ‘top line’ quantitative numbers impresses readers, but I’m doubtful about how much value they truly add:
Researchers find that nonverbal signals account for 65 to 90 percent of our total communication
(…)
Researchers found that (…) some gestures are so powerful that they carry 400 percent more information!
It’s not so much that researchers find, but most likely a single research found.
Similar to the famous Mehrabian study, I find that top-line quantification add limited value -and may confuse more than enlighten-.
Finally, some sources, including some for ‘studies’, were from newspapers.
Contextualization would add refinement
Vanessa is well aware that power/warmth cues also depend on context, people, and culture.
And she shares several examples and notes on how to adapt the cues.
This is a strength of Cues, and something that I very much appreciated.
In just some cases I’d have added some extra notes as well.
For example, Vanessa says that ‘glasses are an instant symbol of competence’ -based on her internal study-.
|I bet it depends on the glasses type and age bracket.
I guarantee you that thick glasses for a primary school kid aren’t ‘competent’.
They’re dorky.
Same goes for some general advice like ‘be more expressive’.
While that may be valid for most, the APA Handbook of Nonverbal Communication says that moderate levels of expressiveness best convey your message -ie.: abide the law of optimum balance-.
CONS
- References to bonuses on her website, for which you must provide your email
And a few of those quizzes ask your email once again, sometimes then promoting Cues which is the reason why you’re there in the first place.
- The video bonuses could have been time-stamped
To the relevant parts.
PROS
- Highly Practical: Van Edwards provides actionable techniques with real-world applications.
- Well-Structured: I’m not sure if I’d have followed the same categories, but Vanessa’s approach is valid.
- Engaging Writing Style: The examples and anecdotes keep the content lively and relatable.
- Great narrating voice: Vanessa must have been an actress in a previous life -or will be one in her next one-. She’s that good at narrating and mimicking voices -and, in videos, in mimicking various cues-
- Vanessa embodies her own teachings: She’s warm, engaging, contagiously happy, and a pleasure to listen to -and, probably, also just a great person to be close to-
REVIEW
Cues is an excellent resource for assessing and improving one’s presence and nonverbal communication and is backed by the power/warmth framework we also first championed here at TPM.
We use a different system in PU.
We prioritize warmth with character and prosocial cues to provide all the benefits of warmth, without the downsides—warmth and submissiveness can dangerously overlap.
But Vanessa allowed me to extend PU’s nonverbal cues.
And given how demanding I am for Power University, that’s the best compliment I can pay to anyone.
Get this book on Amazon or check the:
Cues Book Summary: The Hidden Language of Power & Warmth
Vanessa Van Edwards’ Cues lists and explains the nonverbal and verbal signals that influence how people perceive us by dividing them into two main dimensions: warmth, affecting trust and likability, and competence, affecting power and authority.
URL: Cues Book Summary: The Hidden Language of Power & Warmth
Author: Lucio Buffalmano
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