"Creating Great First Impressions" - Highlights

Key points from the LinkedIn course Creating Great First Impressions by Vanessa Van Edwards:

We decide if we like someone, trust someone, or would want to work with someone within the first 20 seconds of meeting them.

A strong first impression is like a shortcut to success. What matters:
- the way we look
- what we wear
- how we carry ourselves
- our facial expressions
- our vocal power
- our handshake
- our body language

When someone meets you, they're trying to decide how confident you are. Based on your body language, handshake, posture, and vocal power, they're trying to decipher if you're confident or anxious.

Whether we like it or not, everyone makes a snap judgment when we first see someone. Aim to land in that upper right quadrant -

How do you want to come across? When someone meets you for the first time, what word do you want them to think of in their head? Think of your ideal first impression word, words like authentic, charismatic, captivating, or interesting. Pick your ideal word and keep this front of mind. This should be your focus and goal for every first impression.

Do's and don'ts for coming across confidently -

Do:
- pride pose
- take up space
- hold your head high
- roll your shoulders back
- have an open torso
- lift your chest

Don't:
- defeat pose
- self-touch
- block
- straighten your clothes or jewelry
- cross your arms or crack your knuckles.

In the best first impressions:
- you angle your body towards someone
- make eye contact
- sustain fronting as you speak. Fronting is when you angle your three Ts, your toes, your torso, and your top, towards the person you want to engage. Ideally, your feet and their feet are on parallel lines.

5 steps to giving the perfect handshake
- palm to palm - The first goal of your handshake is to get palm to palm as quickly as possible
- keep the handshake vertical - keep your thumb pointed towards the sky and your pinky pointed towards the ground
- one to three pumps, however do not over-pump

- reciprocate firmness of your handshake and always start with some level of firmness right up front

- dry your hands

How you say something is just as important as what you say. We pick up confidence cues from someone's voice tone and this makes a vocal first impression. Our facial expressions change our voice tone.

Our nonverbal signals are 12.5 times more powerful than our words. 

The perfect opener is one that allows you to casually open a conversation without being overwhelming, distracting, or over the top. 

Options for opening lines:

- Direct and simple

- Transparent openers

Hi, I'm trying to meet some new people tonight. Mind if I join you? 

You look like you're having a great conversation, may I join you?

- Curious openers - This is when you approach someone hoping to satisfy a curiosity or question. The key is to be genuine and simple.This could be as simple as, do you have the time? Or you could ask about something in your mutually shared environment. If you're both in an interesting venue you could ask, have you been here before? Or, what do you think of the food here? 

A social script is when you've been asked the same question and answered the same way hundreds of times before - How are you?

Steps to become a better conversationalist and stimulate fascinating conversations with everyone you meet:

- Avoid or break social script traps 

- Trigger excitement - Small talk and social scripts are full of the typical, boring questions. Big talk is when you ask questions that dig a little deeper, that search for emotion, that trigger excitement. 

So instead of asking what do you do, ask: Working on anything exciting recently? 

Instead of asking how are you, ask: Anything good happen today? 

Use conversation sparkers that spark delight and memorability

Have any vacations coming up? 

Read anything interesting lately? 

Working on any personal passion projects? 

What's the highlight of your week? 

Have any good shows you're watching? 

- Build on the good and the positivity you create. If you ask a conversation sparker and get a great answer, be ready with a sparking answer yourself. Have your own great answers to all the above sparkers. Just in case you ask someone a question and they need a minute to think of the answer, you can pop in with yours. Move the conversation towards excitement and new topics to create a memorable first impression.