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Once upon a time, a boy named Harry was teased for wearing thick glasses and having a bookish streak. When the time came to apply to college, he took jobs as a timekeeper in a railroad construction company and as a shelf duster in a pharmacy to support his family. No one would have guessed that this shy boy would one day become the thirty-third president of the United States.
The story of Harry S. Truman is surprising because he doesn’t fit the stereotypical booming presidential personality. On July 19, 1944, this posed a problem. Truman was facing the biggest opportunity of his career. He was vying for the vice presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention. The odds were not in his favor. Then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt had already publicly supported his contender, Henry Wallace, a gifted public speaker and the current vice president.
Truman was not a gifted public speaker—and he knew it. His team had to draw the battle off the main stage to make the convention work to Truman’s strength: one-on-one rapport building. All day, they pulled delegates into a private, air-conditioned room underneath the platform, called Room H. The convention hall was stiflingly hot, so delegates literally breathed a breath of fresh air as they listened to Truman’s pitch and began to cool off. Then he spent hours standing at the end of the hallway, shaking hands with passing members. Instead of waiting for the results in his hotel room (which is what Henry Wallace and most of the candidates tended to do), Truman ordered a hot dog and sat with his wife in the audience.
In the first ballot, Wallace had 429.5 votes and Truman received 319.5 votes. A second ballot was called immediately. Truman had to win friends and he had to win them fast. Instead of making a grand speech, Truman and his team kicked into full gear, working party leaders, delegates, and influential members of the crowd one by one. He worked a solid connection with the right person and then let them convince their people for him.
At 8:14 p.m. the results were announced. Truman led with 1,031 votes to Wallace’s 105. He gained 712 votes in a matter of hours. A few minutes later, Truman gave one of the shortest acceptance speeches in history. He stood patiently at the bank of microphones, and when the audience had finally quieted down he said, “Now, give me a chance.”
1
Truman understood his strengths and played to them. He optimized his interactions for success, and so can you.
Imagine it’s your dream to play professional basketball. You’re fast and have great ball-handling skills. You also happen to be six feet two inches tall. You have two choices: You could play center, but the average height of an NBA center is six feet eleven inches. 2 If you went for center, you would have to fake your height by wearing lifts during games and spending a ton of extra hours after practice working on your vertical jump. Or you could play point guard, where the average height is six feet two inches. 3 You wouldn’t have to make up for extra inches with your jump—you could just focus on playing.
Feigning extroversion is like trying to play center with lifts on. Trying to socially fake it until you make it burns a whole lot of extra energy and doesn’t really work. It also comes across as inauthentic.
In a Science of People survey, we asked 1,036 of our readers the following question: 4
Which of these people habits annoy you the most?
Can you guess which won? “C. People who are fake” led the board by far with 63 percent. “D. People who show off” was a distant second (22 percent).
Fake doesn’t just happen when you’re trying to be something you’re not. If you don’t like someone, they will feel it. If you are unhappy at an event, people will sense it. Pushing through, faking it, trying to make it work—simply doesn’t work.
Dr. Barbara Wild and her associates found that our emotions are infectious. First, her team showed people pictures of happy or sad faces. Then they gave them a series of mood tests. They found they could “infect” participants with the emotions in each image. Very simply, after viewing a happy face, participants felt more positive. After viewing a sad face, participants felt more negative. 5 Here’s what’s crazy: They only flashed each image for 500 milliseconds! Only 500 milliseconds is barely enough time for participants to even register they had seen a face, and they still caught the emotion.
Dr. Wild even found that our smile muscles unconsciously tend to mimic the smiles around us. We are happier around happy individuals, and we thrive with thriving people. 6 When you force yourself to go to events you are dreading, you are not only miserable, but your misery is contagious .
Think you can just fake it until you make it? Think again! We can spot a fake smile a mile away. Over 4,361 people have taken our virtual Body Language Quiz to test their nonverbal intelligence. In one question we show participants a genuine smile hidden among three fake smiles. Over 86.9 percent of participants are correctly able to pick out the genuine smile.
Researchers at the University of Finland showed one group images of fake smiles and another group images of real smiles. 7 Like this:
Can you guess which smile is real and which is the fake? Image A shows a fake smile, and Image B shows a genuine smile.
When participants looked at the real smiles, they felt a positive mood change. But when participants looked at the fake smiles, their mood remained the same. (For more on how you can tell the difference, turn to Chapter 6.)
Faking it until you make it is not worth the effort. Happy people make us happy, 8 but fake happy people—they are forgettable. The first step in winning the social game is to control the situations you play in. Only interact in places where you don’t have to fake it. No matter how many behavior hacks you learn, if you go to events that make you unhappy, it will be incredibly difficult to increase your memorability.
When you feel great, other people pick up on it and want in on it. When you drag yourself to an event because you feel like you “should make an appearance,” you are the party pooper. And you smell up the event.
This is why you need to have a Social Game Plan.
Confidence is contagious and so is lack of confidence, and a customer will recognize both.
—Vince Lombardi
Here’s the worst piece of advice I was ever given: Say yes to everything. Say yes to networking events, coffees with strangers, and random conferences, because you never know what opportunity might come your way. As the science shows, this is a big smelly sack of baloney.
Unfortunately, it took me years to figure this out. When I first started my blog, I was trying to find any paid writing gig I possibly could. So almost every weeknight, I trudged out to the professional circuit. I prepared for these networking events like I was going into battle, loading up on fat stacks of business cards, fistfuls of no-nonsense pens, and multiple personalized name tags. My uniform consisted of sensible shoes, casual professional attire, perfume, and a news anchor smile.
I fought. For attention, for business, for a break from the interminable boredom of having the same conversation over and over again. After three years of this nonsense (and at least ten pounds from eating so many platters of pigs in a blanket), I threw in the towel. I wasn’t making any real connections, I wasn’t drumming up business, and I certainly wasn’t having a good time.
Why? I wasn’t working to my strengths. Like Truman, I do much better in one-on-one situations. I get overwhelmed by loud rooms with lots of people. Trying to cover up my anxiety with fake smiles just made me come across as inauthentic—and that’s the problem.
What I needed was a game plan.
HACK #1: The Social Game Plan
Take control of your interactions and play by your social rules.
Who says you have to play by other people’s rules? Not me! I want you to create your own.
Your Social Game Plan will help you find the position that’s perfect for you: where you play your best, feel the most comfortable, and are set up for the greatest success.
Most people skills books try to force you into one approach—the bubbly extrovert. They want you to fake it until you make it. They expect you to be “on” all the time with everyone you meet. This is impossible.
You can get along with anyone, but you don’t have to get along with everyone. The Social Game Plan isn’t just about mapping out your strategy, it’s also about leveraging your social strengths. Athletes aren’t expected to play every position on a team, so you shouldn’t try to engage in every social role. Play to your position. This will also make it easier to try all of the hacks you’ve learned.
At our human behavior lab, “The Thrive Test” asks participants about their favorite places to socialize. Before seeing the results, fill out your answers below.
Check off all the places where you greatly ENJOY spending time with other people —and feel free to fill in your own at the bottom. We’ll call these your thrive locations:
____ Bars
____ Nightclubs
____ Restaurants
____ House Parties
____ Cafés
____ Boardrooms
____ The Gym
____ Office Meetings
____ Conferences
____ Coffee Shops
____ Phone Calls
____ E-mail Check-ins
____ Video Chats
____ IMs
____ Nature
____ Pool Parties
____ Dinner Parties
____ Movie Nights
____ Casinos
____ Concerts
____ Black-Tie Events
____ Cocktail Parties
____ Backyard Barbecues
____ Theme Parks
____ Festivals
____ Networking Events
____ Sporting Events
Check off all the places where you greatly DISLIKE spending time with other people —feel free to fill in your own at the bottom. We’ll call these your survive locations:
____ Bars
____ Nightclubs
____ Restaurants
____ House Parties
____ Cafés
____ Boardrooms
____ The Gym
____ Office Meetings
____ Conferences
____ Coffee Shops
____ Phone Calls
____ E-mail Check-ins
____ Video Chats
____ IMs
____ Nature
____ Pool Parties
____ Dinner Parties
____ Movie Nights
____ Casinos
____ Concerts
____ Black-Tie Events
____ Cocktail Parties
____ Backyard Barbecues
____ Theme Parks
____ Festivals
____ Networking Events
____ Sporting Events
Can you guess which answer was the most popular?
Trick question! There weren’t any clear winners. We couldn’t find a statistically significant pattern because the answers were evenly split. Everyone thrives in different scenarios. This is why it’s hard trying to learn how to “work a party” if you don’t actually like parties. It’s silly trying to learn how to “charm people at a conference” if conferences make your skin crawl. That’s like saying a quarterback should also be able to play as a kicker and linebacker. Maybe he could, but it wouldn’t make for a very successful game.
Let’s identify the positions where you thrive and the ones where you merely survive:
My THRIVE Locations: ________________________
My NEUTRAL Locations: ______________________
My SURVIVE Locations: _______________________
Now you know which invites to say yes to and which ones to skip. Put yourself in a position to be successful before you even arrive.
You are much more likely to triumph with each of the behavior hacks if you try them at your thrive locations. And if you have to go to a neutral or survive event, no worries—the next two skills have you covered.
Before you go to an event, imagine drawing your social interactions on a map, from the door you enter through to the location of your first conversation to the location of your last. Many of us follow the same paths over and over again without even realizing it.
At the Science of People, we partner with event organizers who let us film and track people’s movement through the venues. At each event, we assign every attendee a number and then observe his or her interaction patterns. At the end of the night, we count how many connections they made, ask them how many business cards they received, and look at their connections on LinkedIn. We have found that the most successful connectors use specific patterns. In other words, this social map can be hacked.
Here is a map of a typical social event:
Whether you’re at a networking event, holiday party, wedding, dinner at a friend’s house, or in a conference ballroom, most events have this basic setup. There is a check-in area or a table to drop off gifts. You can easily spot the bathroom and the bar or food area. There are usually a few people you recognize—maybe colleagues, friends, or acquaintances gathered and already catching up. And of course, the host or boss is milling around the room.
Let’s reimagine Truman’s social map at the 1944 convention:
An audience sat before a big stage. Private meeting rooms were in the back.
Most of the candidates devoted their energies to getting onstage before roaming through the audience to do obligatory schmoozing. Their map looked like this:
To be effective and win votes, the shy Truman had to avoid both the typically traversed path and his own personal traps. The X s mark potential traps:
Truman did his networking at the end of a long hallway on the side of the stage and in the privacy of Room H. I call locations that work to our strengths social sweet spots. On the next map, a star marks the sweet spot.
All Truman had to do was follow his sweet spots to work the room in his favor.
I want you to do the same thing. Let’s revisit the typical social map. I split every event up into three basic zones: the Start Zone, the Social Zone, and the Side Zone.
The Start Zone is the starting point at all events. Emotionally, it’s the place where nerves are running highest. When people have just arrived, they’re usually juggling lots of thoughts. They are running late, checking in, taking off their coats, surveying the room, seeing if they know anyone, worrying about first impressions, silencing their phones, running to the bathroom, or praying for a good time.
The biggest mistake I see at events is when people hover at the boundary of the Start Zone. It’s a social trap. You’re catching people at a confidence low. We noticed that the people who collected the least amount of business cards tried to pounce on people right in the Start Zone. What they didn’t realize was that they were trying to connect with people who weren’t open to connection yet.
When you approach someone before they get oriented to an event, they are not only more distracted during your conversation, but they will also be looking over your head to scope out the room and find people they know—you’ll have a much harder time engaging in eye contact. They are also more likely to excuse themselves to get their drink, grab some food, say hi to the host, or go to the bathroom—and less likely to be receptive to anything you have to say.
The Side Zone is also filled with secret traps that people often fall into. I call it the Side Zone because we noticed that when people fall into these traps, they become sidelined and don’t get to meet many new people. The first trap in the Side Zone is an easy one to remember: the bathroom. Sure, go to the bathroom, but don’t hover outside it. It’s creepy.
The second Side Zone trap is making a beeline for the food and then floating around it all night. This isn’t a terrible trap, but it isn’t a great place to plant yourself. Not only will you eat too much and contend with a food baby all night, but you will also make it hard for other people to get their food and eat. It’s difficult to strike up conversations when people are trying to load up their plates, almost impossible to shake hands, and makes for awkward chatting-while-chewing moments.
The third Side Zone trap is immediately going to people you know. Once you join up with your colleagues, friends, or acquaintances, it is incredibly challenging to get out and meet new people. The best thing to do is wave or give your friends a quick hug when you arrive, and then say you will circle back to them. You can hang out with them as the crowd thins out, but capitalize on your fresh energy at the beginning of an event to hit the Social Zone.
Here are the traps to avoid:
The Social Zone is where the magic happens. First, the best place to start working a room is right where people exit the bar. By the time they’re here, the emotional, high-anxiety feeling of the Start Zone will have died down. Drinks in hand, people are ready to mingle, if not desperate to have someone to talk to. You become their savior if you rescue them from drinking alone.
There are two sweet spots on either end of the bar. At our networking events, we noticed the people who collected the most business cards and had the most connections on LinkedIn dominated these sweet spots (and never ran out of people to talk to). Your opening line can be contextual: “How do you like the wine tonight?” Or just, “Hey, cheers! I’m Vanessa...”
The other great sweet spot in the Social Zone is right near the host. Once you have your drink, you can continue to work the room by saying a brief hello and thank-you to the host. You can also ask them to introduce you around before they carry on greeting people. You can say, “Thank you so much for having me! This looks like a great group. Anyone I should meet?”
After they have introduced you, let them do their hosting duties, but if possible, stay in their line of sight. I do this when I don’t know many people, because the host is more likely to see me while talking to someone and say, “Hey, you should meet my friend Vanessa. Vanessa, come over here!” Score!
While I don’t recommend standing around the food, hidden sweet spots are at the couches or bar tables where people are already eating. They are often hoping for someone like you to set their plate down beside theirs. Something like, “Hey, can I join you while you eat?” works well.
Bonus: If you are an introvert and don’t like big groups, I highly recommend being what I call a Grazer. Instead of hitting the buffet once for a heaping plate, go up first for appetizers, again for the main course, and then again for seconds or dessert. Why? This is an easy way to take a break from a conversation or move to a new one-on-one.
I’m a Grazer myself. If I need a longer break, I’ll go to the bathroom and refill my drink, too. Conserving my social energy helps me have multiple quality conversations in one night.
In summary, work a room by hitting your social sweet spots and avoiding common traps. This map will help you optimize meeting people at events:
Don’t take my word for it. Next time you are at an event, pretend you are on our Science of People observation team. You’ll notice people moving in and out of traps and sweet spots:
Maybe you’ll find even deadlier traps or even smarter sweet spots. And you can always redraw your social map based on your skills and goals. I strongly recommend it.
About two weeks after an online body language course I taught went viral, I got a random e-mail from a guy who wanted to give me some unsolicited advice. He told me—in not very nice words—that he thought I should wear a business suit in my videos (in most of my videos I wear a button-down or a dress). He said I didn’t look “professional enough” and “business wear would appeal to more students.” He also advised against using jokes, as they “distract from the message.”
I panicked. I immediately began to think about reshooting my videos to look more formal. Should I start from scratch? Try to edit out clips piece by piece? Devastated, I asked some mentors for advice.
Right after I told them the story, one of my mentors asked me, “Vanessa, why are you listening to this guy? Is he one of your people?”
I had no idea what he meant by “my people.” He explained, “Your goal is not to reach every person—it’s to reach the right people. If this guy gets distracted by what you are wearing, he is not one of the right people.”
This was a turning point for me and my business. I began to define my ideal student very specifically. Surveys and interviews told me that the people who bought my courses are above average in all areas. They are high performers with above-average intelligence and a super-busy schedule. My goal is simply to help as many of them as possible. Instead of going after every type of student, I started to target my type of student.
With this ideal customer in mind, I began to create short, digestible videos power-packed with actionable tips. If a video wasn’t supercharged with valuable intel or was too wordy, I didn’t post it. Within a few months, our business started snowballing. Our YouTube channel views ballooned to over nine million. Our Twitter following grew by a factor of twelve. As of this writing, we have over 132,000 students in our online courses and over 104,000 in our online community. This only worked because I knew exactly who I was looking for. I found my people.
Whether you are trying to find ideal clients, a great partner, or friends who bring out your best self, you have to make sure you are with the right people. You can take the Superman approach, stealthily preventing awkwardness and optimizing your interactions on your own. Or you can partner up. Batman has Robin, Iron Man has Jarvis, and Bert has Ernie. Better yet, you could join the Avengers and have a team to support you.
There is an African proverb that says:
If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.
My question for you is: Who are your people? You can accelerate your learning pace by drawing from the strength of others. We all need supporters in our lives. So let’s take stock of who’s on your team. Read the following prompts and write down the person who pops into your head for each:
Who do you love spending time with? ________________
Who makes you laugh? ___________________________
Who makes you feel valued? _______________________
Who do you go to when you need to strategize? _________
Who do you most look forward to seeing? _______________
Who do you call in a crisis? _________________________
Who makes you feel like your best self? ________________
Who do you wish you could get to know better? __________
Take a moment to look at your answers. Identify the following people:
Your Winger: Did anyone come up more than once? Is there someone who could join you on a social adventure, who could help you be more comfortable as you try out social hacks, and who shares your desire for growth? I call this person your Winger—a gender-neutral form of wingman or wingwoman. Write their name below.
Your Winger: ________________________________
Your Riser: Is there someone you wish was on this list? We all have people in our lives with whom we want to improve our connections. Maybe an office colleague, a new friend, or a potential business contact who could be a career game changer. Use the fourteen behavior hacks with your Riser to level up the relationship.
Your Riser: __________________________________
Knowing what scenarios you thrive in, what positions you’re most comfortable in, and what teammates you trust in will save you both energy and time. Use your thrive list to help you only make social decisions that serve you. Reach out to and rely on the people who truly support you and make you feel valued.
Bottom Line: You do not have to like everyone. It takes far more work to get along with people or try new behavior hacks in a location that makes you nervous or uncomfortable. By controlling where, how, and with whom your interactions take place, you can set yourself up for more success.
I started to say no. I’m not doing that. I don’t want to do that. I’m not taking that picture. I’m not going to that event. I’m not standing by that because that’s not what I stand for. And slowly but surely, I remembered who I am, and then you go home, and you look in the mirror, and you’re like, “Yes, I can go to bed with you every night.” Because that person, I know that person. That person has balls, that person has integrity, that person has an opinion.
—Lady Gaga 9
Whether you are a quiet, contemplative conversationalist or a wild, silly party animal, you can succeed by playing to your strengths.
When Truman was an unknown senator, for instance, he came up with an ingenious plan for climbing the ladder. The obvious strategy was to speak out on the Senate floor, but Truman preferred research to rhetorical flourishes, so he played the cards he had. He wrote in his memoirs: “Sitting as a ‘hearing committee’ is a dull, boresome procedure and it requires patience and persistence, so I soon became the ‘patient and persistent’ member of the subcommittee.” 10
His Social Game Plan was two-pronged. First, he threw himself into researching a topic he knew well from his experience on the railroad: transportation. Then he spent hours in the Library of Congress learning every arcane detail. Second, he built a relationship with a person with similar interests and goals. His Riser was Senator Burton K. Wheeler, the chairman of the Interstate Commerce Committee at the time. As Truman showed off his transportation knowledge in committees, he began to level up his relationship with Senator Wheeler. Finally, after Truman dutifully attended many meetings, Wheeler made Truman a formal subcommittee member. Not long after, Wheeler promoted him to vice chairman of the committee. Other senators noticed his work ethic and unique approach for dealing with people—and it carried him all the way to the White House. Even though Truman might not have been the most traditionally charismatic of individuals, he optimized his skills, mapped out his goals, and worked the right people.
Succeeding with people is about engineering what works for you.
There is no one definition of charisma. There are many flavors of social influence—and that’s a good thing. The world would be incredibly boring (and loud) if everyone were an extrovert. We need you. Use your Social Game Plan, show up on your terms, and interact with people who matter to you. Your confidence is contagious.
My biggest takeaway in this chapter is: _______________