Vanessa Van Edwards: How do you know you talk too much? So, first thing is non-verbal cues. Someone is checking out if they are opening their mouth as if to say something. I call it like the open fish. And that's a subtle cue that you talk too much.

Host: Do you think they're listening right now and think [ __ ] that's me?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yes.

Host: And there was a recent study where they found that 95% of people have worked with someone who talks too much.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Well, I have a do you talk too much test?

Vanessa Van Edwards: So, there's five questions here and if you answer more than three times, you're probably an overtalker.

Host: Yeah. Cuz my next question is like which one's worse, over talking or underalking?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Well, I have spent the last 20 years studying master conversationalists and I found that it's the vehicle to get what you want and I'm a recovering awkward person and I really struggled with bad conversation for a long time. But I think the next generations will be talking to technology more than they talk to humans. And because we're having less conversations, one in six people worldwide are affected by loneliness. And I now more than ever am sending 9-minute voice notes to my friends. But a voice note, it's the most selfish form of conversation. that in this age of technological change, the people who are masterful at conversation are going to have an advantage. But there's a blueprint to good conversation. And once you know the blueprint, it becomes easier. For example, we devised three different speed networking experiments with 500 speed networkers. And the best conversation starter was actually what was the highlight of your day? Because the moment we asked how are you, what do you do? They ran out of things to talk about. But the worst question in the history of conversations is but I also have a formula to immediately bypass that small talk. Also a secret door to charisma but also there are five archetypes and this is going to impact getting our promotion and finding your soulmate.

Host: We're going to go through all of them but one of the ways to get out of a bad conversation without offending people.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Well, we tend to focus a lot on the first impression, but we don't really think about the end. But it's all really important and I discovered this framework. So

Host: here is a strange fact. Most of the people watching this right now, about 58% of you, aren't yet subscribed to this channel. Statistically, that is probably you. So, could I ask you a small favor? If this channel has ever given you any value at all, please could you do me a favor and hit the subscribe button. It costs nothing. It helps us more than you could know. And the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the more we can invest in the guests and the production. So, thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy this episode.

Vanessa Van Edwards, on page five of your new book, Conversations, you talk about how we're in a connection crisis, and you say that conversations are getting harder, more awkward, and less satisfying. At some level, I feel that too. My question to you is, why did you choose to write this book based on, you know, everything you could have written about, everything we've talked about before? Why is this book needed at this time?

Vanessa Van Edwards: People who are investing in conversation skills right now are creating career insurance. We like to work with people who are great at conversation. We like to be with people who are great at conversation. We like to date people who are good at conversation. And in this age of tremendous technological change, the people who are masterful at conversation are going to have an advantage. So, I wrote this right now because we are slowly losing our ability to connect. And I think this is the last generation that will learn about conversation via human. I think the next generations will be talking to technology more than they talk to humans.

Host: Is it possible to be great at conversation? And if I become great at conversation through what we're about to talk about today, what is the advantage that you're speaking about there? What advantage will I experience in my life? For everybody listening now, what advantage will they see in their life relative to where they are now?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Conversation is the vehicle to get what you want, right? If you want a promotion and you can chat with your boss where they connect with you, you're more likely to be thought of for that promotion. If you want to meet your soulmate, you have to have deep, connected, meaningful conversation to truly get to know each other. If you are lonely, finding friends that are actually fulfilling and give you the joy of conversation is going to give you a longevity boost. I think that the mistake that we have made is we think of conversation as extra. You know, we sort of put it second. I know leaders focus on this a lot where they're focused so much on their idea, on their technology, on their business, but they forget about the human element.

Vanessa Van Edwards: And I think we have to start thinking about conversation almost like going to the gym. You know, we focused a lot on our physical health, but our social health is critical to our emotional health, right? If we are doing conversation reps, if we can truly become good at conversation and conversation, I think is a skill to learn. I don't think it you're born with it or you're not. I think you can learn to be good at conversation. And it's the one skill that keeps on giving.

Host: Do people tend to know if they're good or bad at conversation? Like are there symptoms one experiences when they when they're not good at conversation? Are they aware of that?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yes, there is symptoms of being a bad conversationalist. And by the way, I should back up. As you know, I'm a recovering awkward person and I really struggled with bad conversation for a long time. And I realized it was because I was asking the wrong questions and I was approaching conversation the wrong way. And the wrong way to approach conversation is trying to impress, not discover. If you're trying to impress people, conversation becomes performative. And that is so deeply unfulfilling. Right? That is when small talk becomes soul crushing. I have spent the last 20 years studying master conversationalists. Master conversationalists, they live differently in the world, and I only know this cuz I wasn't one for a long time. They are not only more joyous, but they're also more confident. They're more authentically assertive. They get more energy from interactions, whether they're an introvert or extrovert, because their conversations are giving them energy, not taking energy. The symptom of bad conversation and I I hate to give someone a label of being a bad conversationalist, an exhausted conversationalist is you dread it.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Dread is a really important emotion. If you open your calendar and you see only dread or you feel only dread, there's something wrong, right? Conversation like boosts us, gives us energy. So you feel dread in social interactions. Um you feel overwhelmed when you're in conversation. So if you're in conversation and you're social overthinking, you cannot turn your brain off. All you're worried about is what you're going to say next. It's actually just because you probably haven't learned the mechanics of conversation blue. There's a blueprint to good conversation. We're going to talk about it. Once you know the blueprint, it becomes easier. And the last symptom of bad conversation is that you leave feeling misunderstood. You leave feeling like I was the worst version of myself or I wasn't able to be my best self. I think really good conversationalist people leave conversation with them thinking, wow, after talking to you, I feel like I understand myself better. And that's a very different way of thinking about oh I want to impress somebody.

Host: So how long have you spent doing the research that feeds into what we're going to talk about today and feeds into this new book.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay. So accidentally I've been doing research for this my whole life because I was very bad at conversation for 20 years. Then 20 years ago I realized that there are these hidden blueprints behind our interactions. I wasn't quite sure what they were but I could see that very good conversationalists they were following some kind of plan. Then eight years ago, this is when the real research began. And it started with an

Vanessa Van Edwards: ...experiment. I call it my speed networking experiment. This fundamentally changed the way I think about conversations. So here's what we did. I knew there was some secret the conversationalists had and I was like, I'm going to find it. So we devised three different speed networking experiments with 500 speed networkers. We brought them in these rooms and we had cameras set up in all four corners of the room because good conversation looks different. Really good conversation. You've seen—do you ever like, you know, show a lot of restroom, like are they having a bad day?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Um, so you know a good conversation is a lot of gestures, a lot of leaning. It, you know, has that high energy. You see a lot of vocal charisma. The volume goes up. In a bad conversation, it sort of sounds like this. Like it has like very low energy, like apologetic facial expressions, like low volume.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Then I assigned these networkers six conversation starters. Now, I picked these conversation starters. I'm going to tell you what they are very carefully. Three of them I thought could do really well and three of them I wasn't sure about. I wanted to see. We gave them these six conversation charters and we asked them after each timed conversation to rate the quality of it. One being that was the worst, most awkward conversation I've ever had to five being that was the best conversation I ever had. I want to marry this person or I want to connect with them on LinkedIn. Then we took all these ratings and we ranked them and there were clear winners and clear losers.

Vanessa Van Edwards: The losers, the conversations that produced the worst connection, the most awkwardness were last choice. Want to guess what last choice was?

Steven Bartlett: Last—in terms of an opener?

Vanessa Van Edwards: In terms of just a question. A typical question you ask my first minutes.

Steven Bartlett: Number five, that was the fifth worst.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Very close to the bottom. Sixth was...

Steven Bartlett: Something about the weather.

Vanessa Van Edwards: That "What do you do?"

Steven Bartlett: "What do you do?" That was the worst.

Vanessa Van Edwards: The worst.

Steven Bartlett: Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Why? So these last two, "How are you?" and "What do you do?" They're very socially scripted, right? The moment we ask those questions, our brain goes into autopilot. So, uh there's a lack there—there is more of a performance. There's a lack of like excitement in the conversation and they ran out of things to talk about. They're fact-based questions and this is the trap of what we'll call level one conversation which is you are trapped in fact. "Where are you from?" "Got any kids?" "Married?" The facts are dead ends, right? So, they're there—it's very hard for someone to break out of that fact because they're stuck in that social—that social script.

Vanessa Van Edwards: The best conversation starter was actually a sneaker. I was like, interesting that this one did best by lot. It was, "What was the highlight of your day?"

Vanessa Van Edwards: Now, what this question does psychologically, it sounds casual. Well, first of all, it's not too deep. A mistake that extroverts can make is they ask too deep—too question too quickly, right? They they're like, "What is your greatest goal in life?" And you're like, "I don't know you." Right? So, it's not too deep, but it's a subtle replacement for how are you? You're actually asking the other person's brain to search for optimism. You're literally inviting their brain to think like what was good and then they think well highlight of my day. So one we just broke autopilot. The most—the moment someone goes oh and they're thinking for the first time their brain goes oo we get to we get to do something new. So they got to think of something new and it was immediate like it wasn't like a too big of a question.

Steven Bartlett: The second question was have anything exciting you're working on.

Vanessa Van Edwards: This is kind of a subtle replacement for what do you do? Right? Right? If someone likes what they do, they're going to talk about it, but they're going to reframe it in something exciting. And if someone someone isn't defined by what they do, they're going to share something better. The third question, very, very simple, was do you have any fun plans coming up? These questions, the three first three are literally searching for good. You're inviting other person to only think about good things and we're juicing excitement for other parts of their life.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Now, the fourth question, the middle one, almost broke my data. And this is where things really got interesting for me as a researcher. This fourth question, people either loved it or they hated it. They either gave it a five, that was like the most connective thing I felt all week, or a zero. And a zero wasn't even an option on my scale. It was the question, what's your story? Now, what's your story? Have you ever been asked that question, by the way?

Steven Bartlett: Derivatives of that question.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay. So extroverts tend to default to that question because they want to go a little bit deeper. But actually that is a level three question. It is way too advanced for someone who's introverted or someone who has never like framed their story that quickly. They're immediately put into cortisol. They're immediately put into fight or flight. They're like what's my story? Like how can I give that to you so quickly? So you're by accident putting them into conversational fear.

Vanessa Van Edwards: This is when I realize there's a hierarchy. We have to move through our conversations with different levels, right? This is why we have this.

Steven Bartlett: So for anyone that can't see because you're listening on Apple Music or Spotify or whatever, we have a three tier little stage in front of us. Tier one, tier two, tier three. What are these three tiers?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay, so Dr. Dan McAdams found that conversation is actually not as fluid as we would like to think. that actually when we're trying to connect with someone else, we are trying to move through three distinct levels.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Level one is called general traits. This is why in those first few minutes you're basically trying to Google fact check someone like where are you from? What do you do? Married? Where do you live in LA? Right? Like you're trying to ask all those questions because there's a sort of social hierarchy. Our brain processes social facts from least least intimate to most intimate. So we cannot get to know someone on their deepest dreams and worries if we don't know the basic facts about them. So that is why we often fall into that trap of those fact-based questions.

Vanessa Van Edwards: The key here is that really good level one question is taking those facts but adding story but adding emotion. So the the best way to to do level one better is you're swapping out those bad questions, right? How are you? What do you do with looking for a story? I truly believe a fact is a is a is a stop sign. A story is a doorway.

Steven Bartlett: Give me an example of both.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay. So, um one of them we're actually we can place it on here is what's your personal passion project? Okay. Now, what's your personal passion project is actually a hunt for stories, right?

Steven Bartlett: And would you open with that? Is that what you're saying? Or is it doesn't really matter?

Vanessa Van Edwards: It has to come it can come in the first few minutes. Now, I probably wouldn't walk into a room and be like, "What's your personal passion project, Stephen?" Right? It's it's a little bit much. We have to do our basic first impression and we can talk about you know first 10 words in a little bit but as an opener question it's better than how are you and I have to pause here and say everything I'm going to share takes a little bit of conversational courage.

Vanessa Van Edwards: It's really safe to ask how are you really safe to ask what do you do but if you want to be memorable if you want to actually spark connection those won't serve you so it does take a little bit of courage to ask this but the answers you're going to get are incredibly interesting you're going to get stories you're going to a hint at values. If you want to know if they're married or have kids, they probably will tell you by accident. So, it's like a hunt for stories.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Same with, right, I mentioned this one in the study. So, working on anything exciting these days. This is again one of my favorite swap questions cuz you're hunting for something good. Now, when I think about conversation in level one, you're trying to gift someone a chemical cocktail a little bit. And I think in level one, these two questions are doing a lot of heavy...

Guest: ...lifting. They are now competing with your feed. I went uh to a PTA meeting recently and those are torture if you've ever been to one for any parents. PTA meeting. Oh, a parent teacher meeting.

Host: Okay.

Guest: Right. So, a bunch of other parents in the room and I wanted to go meet other moms cuz I just moved across the country to try to meet more people. And I was like excited. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to meet more moms. Here we go." And I walk in the room and everyone's scrolling. Everyone's on their feed. And I realized, wow, conversation now is not just about a way for me to make friends. It actually has to compete with that feed.

Host: Mhm.

Guest: I have to make my questions and my answers so dopamine worthy that they're actually going to beat that feed. Otherwise, they're going to go right back to their phone. That is why these have to do more lifting. Because if I want to compete with the feed, I have to produce dopamine, a little bit of excitement, a little bit of motivation. I also have to create what I would call, forgive me for this word, but conversational confetti. This is like we got to we got to lift a little bit more in our conversations because otherwise someone's going to go right back to scrolling. Their brain is somewhere else. Either their brain is in their email list or their brain is on their feed.

Guest: In this research when I was studying amazing conversationalists, one of the people I studied is Howard Stern. So, however you feel about Howard Stern, he is a master conversationalist. I mean, he can carry on long, very interesting [conversations]. He gets people to say things that I could never imagine. So, I analyzed thousands of transcripts of his interviews and I found one pattern. He does a very good job of creating information gaps. So, he'll say, "What's the weirdest thing you've ever done?" Or he'll say, "The most surprising thing I heard that happened to me yesterday. You want to hear what it was?" And your brain doesn't like not knowing. So, when it hears the most surprising, the weirdest, the biggest, the worst, the most embarrassing, the brain creates this gap. Like this is information gap where the brain is like I have to know.

Host: What is the weirdest thing.

Guest: So also what happens with these kinds of questions is we're creating these little information gaps and actually saying and using in conversation these phrases is a way that we can create more intrigue and interest. And I know that sounds like what? But think about this. If something crazy happened to you yesterday and you walk into dinner and you're like, "Guys, the craziest thing happened to me yesterday." Everyone's like phone's down.

Host: Mhm.

Guest: Right. Now, I couldn't say something boring. I couldn't be like, "I was stuck in traffic" unless you want to be funny. But I think that looking for opportunities to create that little bit of conversational confetti, they come up with questions like this.

Host: This is the last one.

Guest: So, "Have any fun plans coming up?" Now, the reason why this one is important, and I agonized over this, over this third question, cuz there's three questions for each level, is "Have any fun plans coming up" is a subtle way to bring up potential shared future. Psychologically speaking, we bond with someone when we feel like we could do something fun with them or they're doing something fun that I would also like to do. I think that part of these questions is being known for asking better questions, like being known for searching for hunt or hunting for excitement, because what will happen is with people who know you at work or your work friends or uh outside of work friends is they'll bring these things to you. They know that you're going to ask about personal passions. So next time you get to say, "Hey, last time we were talking you mentioned XYZ. How's that going?" So they also become your call backs. They make conversation easier later.

Host: Everybody's starting from a remarkably different place here, aren't they? In in terms of both skill, but also like will...

Guest: ...and energy and like willing to do it.

Host: Energy. Like I think there'll be a lot of uh one might say introverts listening right now that just think what's the [ __ ] point? Like...

Guest: ..."You know I don't like people anyway and it's so much energy and I've got to ask these questions and pretend to be interested. This is going to drain me."

Host: Oh my gosh. I I agree. And two things can be true. It's very exhausting in the sense of you're trying, right? Like we're putting energy into conversation, but it's also exhausting to have really shallow small talk.

Guest: I find it exhausting to stand at an event or be smoozing with people backstage and be talking about nothing. Do you want to have very boring, predictable conversation where you're less memorable and they're less memorable and you're just waiting to get home to Netflix? That's one hard. That's not what I would choose. Or do we choose the hard of I'm gonna break a script, right? I'm gonna try to do level one better. I'm going to try to, you know, trigger a little bit of dopamine. I'm going to try to learn something that I didn't know before, which is going to maybe, just maybe, bring joy. If you get a really great answer, by the way, there's two sides of conversation, talking and asking.

Host: I I think even for those introverts, they have really, really big goals in their life that they care about. Yeah.

Guest: Cuz if you can tell me how asking have any fun plans coming up is going to help me become a better CEO or founder or...

Host: ...whoever I want to be, father, mom, daughter, whatever, then I'm in.

Guest: Yes. Okay. So, let's talk about founders and CEOs specifically. There is a mistaken belief and I work with a lot of companies, right? I work with a lot of founders. They believe that conversation is anti-productive. They worry that I don't know if I want my employees to talk a lot. You know, I can't waste time on small talk. The research shows the opposite. And also, logically, if you think this through, connected people collaborate better. Engaged employees work better together. We are more productive when we feel good.

Guest: And in fact, the key word here is friction. When you have a company that has a lot of communication friction, you have employees who doubt themselves. You don't have psychological safety. They have a really hard time brainstorming. You have people who withhold information. You have more information silos. Communication friction cost companies money. And so if you have a community of employees who have very easy level one, they don't need to get to level three. Like you don't need to get to level three with everyone in your company. You don't need to get to level three with your Uber driver. But if you have really easy small talk, easy banter where someone knows, oh yeah, I know exactly what their personal passion project is. I know who they are. I know what fun plans they have coming up. The first 5 minutes of your meeting becomes not only frictionless but actually pleasurable.

Guest: People show up on time. People are more productive. People want to be there because they actually want to connect and and collaborate with her and this is remote or in person, right? Because they know they have these very loose ties and loose ties actually make us more productive and so we are looking for frictionless communication and that happens at level one. In fact, work conversations should be really ideal level ones.

Host: Is this in part also the fastest way to get to connection?

Guest: Yes.

Host: Because these CEOs or founders or you know busy people generally are very time poor...

Guest: ...for sure.

Host: So they don't have, you know, 30 minutes to move their way to connection. But are you saying that...

Guest: ...this is these are shortcuts. Okay.

Host: Right. So like what's it's way worse for a co to be like, shoot, I've been told I better be warmer.

Guest: I have a lot of like most of my students are brilliant, very talented, very smart, but a little awkward and want to get it done, right? They're much more focused on the confidence and the warmth. So they try to do warmth because they they feel like they should.

Host: And they're like, "How are those kids?" And then it's like a social script. Good. Or how are you? Good, busy, busy, but good. And they're like, "It's not working. It was anti-productive." No, I'd rather you skip ahead.

Speaker A: Make this level quick and good. Right? So, like the team intervention that I encourage every virtual or in-person team to do is once a week at the start of a meeting, start with "tell me something good." Very, very quickly, everyone goes around very quickly and they share one win or something good. It can be small, it can be big. That can take less than 3 minutes, less than 5 minutes, depending how big your team is. We do it on our Tuesday team calls at my team. What it does is you've just created a safe, very contained space for good level one. It's only good. So otherwise, otherwise people will accidentally complain, right? They'll be like, "Oh, the weather, traffic," right? But you're putting a frame around it that's good. You're time boxing it, right? Everyone goes around really quickly, but you're very quickly creating these team connections. So creating time in your meetings, but also in your culture to ask slightly better questions. All of these level one things have one thing in common which is they provoke a positive search and response.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker B: So that's really the crux of level one. It's just a question that's producing a positive...

Speaker A: It's not always positive. I do believe in toxic positivity and toxic positivity can kill a conversational vibe very quickly. What we're actually looking for is emotion and story.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Right. So I might say—and by the way, my introverts, I love my introverts. They always say, "Well, what if someone says they don't?" That you ask them, "What's your personal passion project?" And they say, "I don't have one." Well, great. What an opportunity. If someone doesn't have a personal passion project or they're going through a hard time, they're having a bad day, you have an opportunity to connect even better. So, sometimes, it doesn't have to be positive. You're looking for any kind of real emotion. So, then someone says, "You know what? I've been really going through a hard time and I haven't had much energy to work on personal passion these days." And then you have the choice: you can say "Wow, is there anything I can do to help?" or you can say "Do you want to talk about it?" So it's not always positive; it's looking for authentic emotions and ideally story.

Speaker A: And this is another one of the other master conversationalists I study who is excellent at level one is Jerry Seinfeld. So Jerry Seinfeld has a little conversational trick—and this is in level one of the book—which is he often meets people after his event and they're so starstruck by him that they don't know what to say and conversation is really awkward. He's developed a trick, and this works really well for CEOs and introverts, which is ask a numbers-based question. So instead of "How are you?" or "Where do you live?", ask: "So how long have you two been together?" And then if it's 38 years, you say, "Oh, what's been the highlight of your 38 years?" If it's really short, "Oh, you're in the honeymoon phase. That's the best part." So, it's a numbers question and this works really well for introverts as well is because it's fact-based. So, it's like an opener and then usually from there it's a jumping off point to a story. So, it's not that level one should always be positive. That's great if it can be, but practically speaking it actually more is that there's a small emotion or a small story.

Speaker B: Okay. So the other day I was in Las Vegas and I was doing this sort of like step and repeat meet and greet thing after the event, and people come up and they're kind of ushering them through very quickly. So I always want to, you know, say something to learn a little bit about a person in that time. What would you recommend? And this might be applicable for networking generally, but what would you recommend?

Speaker A: Okay. So I always whenever after speaking about books I say, "What was your favorite part?" or "What did you learn the most?" So I immediately ask a question that I want them to take home with them and that's actually level two which we can—we're not going to skip too far ahead, but "What have you always wanted to learn?" or "What are you learning?" is actually going to level two. So you can ask it, especially if someone's just spent an hour listening to you.

Speaker B: Well, what's the difference between level one and level two?

Speaker A: Oh, sorry. Yes, we skipped ahead. Okay, so we'll put a pin in this. One of the thing I want to say about that question is I read about Dan McAdams' framework and I was doing this conversation research, and then I got invited to a party—one of the weirdest parties I've ever been invited to. And I get in and they tell me to take off my shoes, so I'm committed, right? I can't leave. Yeah. And then they go, "Guess what? We have a rule for this party." I'm like, "What?" They're like, "You cannot talk about what you do." Now, this was a party of, I think, very other successful people. And all of us are like, "What?" Cuz I don't know about you, but I'm pretty defined by what I do. I talk about it, I love it. So, I start to panic because I'm like, "What do you even talk about if you don't talk about that?" because so many of our conversations veer into work. And so one, my brain was flipped off autopilot immediately and I had to get more creative with my questions and I was like, "I'm just going to discover things, I'm going to try to figure out what they do by not asking." And that was an aha moment of we should treat level one, these bottom questions, as a treasure hunt. That if you're going into it looking for some kind of conversational gold, your questions have much different intention. And especially what I ended up asking was, "What do you talk about when you don't talk about work?" Which was sort of this freedom it gave us, this freedom in conversation where I want to give everyone permission that really good conversation does not have to stick to the same old boring topics. It does not have to be what you do; it can be about anything that is engaging you or exciting you in that moment. That is level one.

Speaker A: Level two, so we have general traits, we must start there. We cannot skip too quickly to level two. Level two is called personal concerns. Personal concerns is where we begin to connect deeply. This is our motivations, our goals, our values, our worries.

Speaker B: And I'm assuming you do level two once you've got past level one connection.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: So, this is us going deeper with the person.

Speaker A: Exactly. Or leveling up as you wish. Right. As you wish. So, the mistake traps people make is they skip level one. They try to go too deep too quickly and people feel like it's invasive. Right? Especially when you're like, "Whoa, slow down." Or it can feel like an interrogation. So, we must know those basics first, as long as we do them better. Like, we don't do them in autopilot way. Level two is when you start to understand what motivates someone. The kind of mental trick that I use is, you know you're on level two with someone if you know what gets them up in the morning—like what goal is driving them all day—but you also know what keeps them up at night...

Speaker B: What worries them.

Speaker A: What worries them. I encourage people as they're reading, like think of the five people you interact with most and place them on a level. Like, do you only know the basic facts about them? Are you all the way at level three, which we're going to get to? It's sometimes helpful. You'll notice patterns. Like, I don't know about you, but I love level two. Like, I want to get through level one as quickly as possible. I want to get to your motivations. I want to get to your secret side hustle. I want to get to your dreams and passions. I want to know what keeps you up at night, but I can sometimes jump too fast. Mhm.

Speaker B: Level two is about making someone feel heard and understood.

Speaker A: And this is different than discovering treasure. And the biggest skill that we can do in level two is what I call dream building. So dream building is everyone has like a secret desire, a secret dream, a secret side hustle, a secret passion. Can you be there and help them uncover it? That's the...

Guest: ...goal of level two.

Host: So give me an example of dream building.

Guest: Okay. So before we started, I said to you, I have a new goal, right? Like I'm pitching a TV show. That's like my secret side hustle. That's level two for me. It's something that I've been working on secretly and quietly. And if we were at lunch, I would have told you all about it. We double clicked on it. So like that's an example of one.

Another example to think about is what does someone daydream about, right? Like what is occupying their mind in a good way?

The other framework that I give for folks is a pet or pest project. So, what is someone's pet project? Like a pet at home, you kind of think about it, you dream about it, you hope about it. Like, what is someone hoping to achieve or find or do? And what is their pest project? Like, a pest in the attic. It worries you. You wonder like, how can I get rid of that pest? How can I um eradicate it? And they want help with it, but they're too afraid to ask. Pest projects have a lot of shame.

On level two, people have to feel safe enough to expose what they feel shame about. But pet projects, the things they love, have a lot of pride. And so you're trying to figure out in conversation, could you let someone feel safe enough to share either one?

Host: And are there questions that evoke dream building?

Guest: ...goal of level two.

Host: So give me an example of dream building.

Guest: Okay. So before we started, I said to you, I have a new goal, right? Like I'm pitching a TV show. That's like my secret side hustle. That's level two for me. It's something that I've been working on secretly and quietly. And if we were at lunch, I would have told you all about it. We double clicked on it. So like that's an example of one.

Another example to think about is what does someone daydream about, right? Like what is occupying their mind in a good way?

The other framework that I give for folks is a pet or pest project. So, what is someone's pet project? Like a pet at home, you kind of think about it, you dream about it, you hope about it. Like, what is someone hoping to achieve or find or do? And what is their pest project? Like, a pest in the attic. It worries you. You wonder like, how can I get rid of that pest? How can I um eradicate it? And they want help with it, but they're too afraid to ask. Pest projects have a lot of shame.

On level two, people have to feel safe enough to expose what they feel shame about. But pet projects, the things they love, have a lot of pride. And so you're trying to figure out in conversation, could you let someone feel safe enough to share either one?

Host: And are there questions that evoke dream building?

Guest: Yes. Okay. So "what have you always wanted to learn?" is an interesting question because it triggers growth mindset, right? So growth mindset is when someone believes they can change themselves, change who they are, change their trajectory, learn something new.

So we like this question because you're asking, "Are you willing to grow with me? What have you always wanted to learn?"

The other easy one is, "What is your biggest goal right now?" So "what is your biggest goal right now?" is a great question, and you can also time anchor it. Anytime someone has a birthday, you can ask, "What's your big goal this year?" That's actually a level two question, right? You're leveling them up in a safe way because they're talking about their birthday.

Around New Year's, January and December, I ask everyone I know, "What's your biggest goal right now?" New quarter, new performance review. When we talk about goals, it activates a part of our brain that triggers dopamine. When we think about our future self, it activates a part of ourselves that wants to get motivated.

And so level two is also giving someone motivation that in conversation, they're actually discovering an aspect of themselves. They're tapping into their own resource for motivation.

Host: It gives them permission to dream a little bit and to...

Guest: Yeah. And you're giving them the motivation that they already have, but you're bringing it into the conversation.

I think recently we are so into intrapersonal. Like a lot of what you see on social media right now is mindset and mantra and affirmation and productivity. And I love all of those things. But that means that people are actually using all that excitement alone when they're journaling or when they're meditating or when they're working on their to-do list. We have forgotten, I've noticed, to bring those goals into conversation. We're almost like embarrassed.

I don't know if you've noticed this, but it's almost like people are embarrassed to talk about their secret side hustle or they're embarrassed to talk about their secret passion. If we give someone permission to bring in what they have been motivated about privately into conversation, you get to be an ally.

Host: ...with a dead end when you ask these kind of level two questions.

Guest: Well, then you get to answer...

Host: ...because some people haven't quite figured out what their biggest goal is.

Guest: Absolutely. Especially also sometimes introverts in conversation—and I've asked these questions to thousands of people and all different kinds of things happen when I do that. Introverts also need more time to process. So you might ask them, you know, "What are you learning right now?" or "What's your biggest goal?" And they might in the moment not know. They just need a little bit of time to process. And so two things can happen is if they don't have it yet, that's okay. You also have opportunity to share.

Host: But what if I, you know, I ask, I'm thinking because, you know, I know a lot of taxi drivers listen to this podcast cuz I get in taxis and we talk about it.

Host: Taxi drivers, you know, they're conversationalists, often very good ones. Um, but sometimes I guess a taxi driver might be faced with the scenario where the person in the back seat doesn't want to talk and they might hit them with one of these, you know, level ones and then the level twos and they're just getting brick walls.

Guest: Then I would respect that, right? If someone doesn't want to talk to you...

Host: ...do you just back out?

Guest: Yeah.

Host: Okay.

Guest: Because then they're going through their own thing, right? Like you have to have also courage to be disliked, right? Like you can try your best in conversation. You can bring the best questions, but if someone is not your person or they are not ready to connect, why would you waste your energy on that?

So, I also think that asking some of these are like bids. It's like a bid to see like, can we can we do this? You want to banter with me? Should we have level one? Should we even dip into level two? Great. If not, cool. They're not your person. It's not their day.

Host: So, if they don't take the bait...

Guest: ...it's okay.

Host: Okay.

Host: The taxi drivers usually ask me, um, got anything exciting today?

Guest: "Are we going anywhere exciting?" Great. That's a great swap for level one. I should say by the way these questions are suggestions. If you can modify them to fit what you are doing even better.

Like for example, you and I are in book signings or we are meeting after speaking events. It makes sense for us to modify the learning or goal question to say, "Hey, you know, what did you learn or did you learn anything new or what was your favorite part?" Right? We're modifying that for us. A taxi driver is going to modify it for, "Are we heading anywhere exciting? Doing anything exciting today?"

So like these are not prescriptions, right? They are guidelines to try to make the research applicable. You know, I've spent most of my career looking at research, reading academic studies, and some of them are 30 pages of jargon with one nugget. And Dan McAdams research is so incredible, but when I first read it, I did not know how to use it. I was like, general traits, personal concerns, like level one, I wasn't sure.

So, a lot of these are just ways to activate the behavioral research, the guideline that's driving all of our interactions, but you get to have flexibility with it as it works for you.

The goal in level one: treasure hunt. Put someone at ease. Ask them about what they love. Harvest story.

The goal of level two is to give someone permission to share a dream, a secret desire, or a secret worry.

And level three we get to get to in a little bit when you're ready. Oh, we have one more level. Level three. Hold on. Level two question...

Host: ...on these questions. Do you have to actually care about the answer? Do you have to authentically care about what their biggest goal is right now or what their personal passion project is? Does it matter if you don't actually care?

Guest: There have been times in conversation where I'm not sure if I care yet. So, I would say you don't care yet. What if you ask the question and you're not sure, you're not bought in yet, but then you hear an answer that deeply resonates with you or you deeply care about.

I think we don't know always if we're going to care about someone cuz we've just met them. But maybe you will, right? Like, you never know who's going to be your next best friend, right? You never know when you're going to hear an aha moment that's going to change your business. Like so many of the pivot points in my business have been from random conversations where I happen to ask the right question and someone gives me a brilliant piece of advice.

Host: So is it okay to pretend to care?

Guest: If you're asking the question, you care enough to try. Right? If you're listening to this...

Guest: ...podcast, you already care enough to be like, "I know I should..."

Host: Yeah.

Guest: "I know I should be a master conversationalist." Like so many leaders who I work with, they might not feel warm, but they know they need to be warm. I think that's intent enough, right? We just got to find the ones that work for you.

Host: And you talked a second ago about these questions that lead to dead ends, which are like...

Guest: "What do you do? What are the other examples you gave?"

Host: Okay. Yeah.

Guest: Right. Like...

Host: "Been busy?" What do you do when you're on the receiving end of those kinds of questions?

Guest: Yes.

Host: What how do I counter that? Cuz I'm going to get that everywhere forever. So, how do I counter that?

Guest: Okay. So, every time, first of all, boring questions make you boring. We know this. But boring questions asked of you are an opportunity. In fact, I think you can really surprise and delight someone by breaking the script on their boring question. You are going to be asked a lot of boring questions. Let's talk about two buckets here. The first bucket is when you're asked "what do you do?" and you're going to be asked a lot. You better have a great answer. I think having a great answer to "what do you do?" is creating opportunities for yourself. What most people make the mistake of with "what do you do?"—and I have an entire chapter about it in the book—is when you're asked "what do you do?", they're looking for something, right? They're trying to understand who you are. Maybe they're even asking, "What are you worth?"

Host: Mhm.

Guest: Maybe. So now the ball's in your court to break the script and to surprise them. You want to give an answer that explains exactly what you do, but then gives them a little bit of a hook...

Host: As in like creates that curiosity gap?

Guest: A little bit of a little bit of information gap, a little bit of curiosity. And we don't want to overcomplicate or be vague. So for example, I was sitting in a coffee shop. I was researching this book and I was eavesdropping on everyone's conversations because that's the best way. You know, if you listen to conversations in the wild, oh, the things you hear are great. And I was on my computer and I heard, she said, "So what do you do?" I think they were on like a date and he goes, "Oh, I have a system for maximizing achievement in young learners." And she was like, "What?" And he goes, "Yeah, I work with fifth grade students and I have a system for how they can learn math and reading." And she goes, "Oh, you're a teacher." He goes, "Yeah, I'm a fifth grade teacher." And I was like, wow. The intention there was to be interesting, right? He didn't want to say, "I'm just a fifth grade teacher." But he gave the brain too many calories, like conversation calories. The brain wants the simplest, easiest road possible. If we want to put people at ease, what doesn't put people at ease is acting like you're reading your resume.

Host: Mhm.

Guest: If your answer to "what do you do?" sounds like you're reading your resume, you are turning people off, right? It's either jargon-filled or it feels too formal or too complex.

Host: So that answer that he gave was vague. It was...

Guest: Complex.

Host: Complex.

Guest: And it didn't give me the social hierarchy of facts. I have to know what you do before I can know your how.

Host: So what should he have said?

Guest: Okay, what he should have said is not the how but the what. I love why, but I think that that needs to come second. What he should have said is, "I'm a fifth grade teacher and I've been working for the last 10 years. I developed this really unique system that speeds up reading." Now we're talking because my brain went, "Got it. Check. Fifth grade teacher. Got it." Then I got to hear the how. "Wow. 10 years." That answered another question that we always have: "How long have you been doing that?", right? You're trying to skip ahead. And then it added this hook of "I figured out how to get students to read faster." So when you think of what to do, I have a little formula if you're willing to play around with it. And again, a formula, always take it loosely, make it fit: "I do [blank] for [who] by [how]." That is like a gift to the other person. You're giving them a very clear label of what you do so they can put you in a box. And I hate being put in a box, but unfortunately our brains need it. Especially if it's very easy to understand "by who?", because people always want: "Can you help me? Can you help my friend? Is it for my sister?" And then if it fits, your how.

Host: A lot of people listening now are more multi-hyphenated than ever before.

Guest: Love a multi.

Host: They do a this, a that, a violin, a creator, a LinkedIn thing, a speech, a dance, an improv. So how do those people answer when they're multi-hyphenators?

Guest: Oh, I love it. Okay. So, two things. We understand complexity as humans. We get it. So, you can say, you know, "I daylight as a fifth grade teacher, but I moonlight as a cinematographer," right? You can literally say you're hyphen. If you're in a career pivot—we have a lot of students who come to us who are mid-pivot. We love a hero story, right? So, you can say, you know, "I've been working in marketing for the last 20 years, but I'm thinking about going back to school for psychology," right? Like we think that people can't handle it, but conversation can handle a lot and it doesn't take a long time.

Guest: Now, I do want to make a note here, the mechanics of conversation. So, there's two aspects of conversation. There's the art, right? Like weaving in excitement and harvesting story, and I love that, but there's also the mechanics. So, let's talk about that first. The Candor Corpus is a huge research study on the mechanics of conversation. So, how long do you think a typical turn should take in conversation? Like how long should our turns take?

Host: 15 seconds.

Guest: Wonderful. 15 to 30 seconds.

Host: Okay.

Guest: So, in average conversation, we like 15 to 30 seconds. 45 seconds is okay, but we start to turn to a monologue.

Host: By this, you mean how long we speak for each...

Guest: Before I let you speak.

Host: Yes. Before we start to feel like "I'm talking too much, it's not my turn."

Guest: So, 15 to 30. And by the way, if you want to go listen to previous Zoom conversations, it can be helpful to know if you're an overtalker or an undertalker. Under 15 seconds you might be actually creating conversational scarcity, like not asking enough, not talking enough.

Host: Which one's worse do you find?

Guest: Well, I'm an overtalker so I'm going to say undertalking...

Host: Cuz I'm an overtalker, so I'm going to say it's worse. I'm going to say undertalking.

Guest: By the way, can I take a hit at podcast for just a second?

Host: Sure.

Guest: So the other reason I wrote this book is I think the art of conversation is being systematically stripped away piece by piece and it's well-intentioned. This is not a natural conversation, right? Like I'm in an interview. I would never normally take this long on turns if we were having dinner. You're reading notes. I have notes. But more and more of our off time is listening to podcast conversations, but those are not real conversations. Those are interviews. So one is we are hearing conversations that are not real. They are a bit performative, right? And they're not following the mechanics of conversation. That is affecting our conversational muscle in our brain. Second is we're having more and more asynchronous conversations. I now more than ever am sending 9-minute voice notes to my friends.

Host: Damn. Wow.

Guest: Right. They send them back to me. What a voice note is, is not a conversation. A voice note is a monologue. And when you're giving a voice note, I don't get the, "Oh, it's my turn. Me too. How dare you. I don't like that. I don't agree." Like, there's no back and forth. In fact, it's the most selfish form of conversation. And this is from someone who sends a lot of voice notes because I don't get... I don't...

Vanessa Van Edwards: ...need to hear your opinion. I get to go as long as I want. I don't have to worry about whatever you're doing. And I'm usually multitasking, right? I'm listening to my best friend's voice note while I'm cleaning or cooking or exercising. So that has skewed it because we then get into real conversation and it feels hard because our muscle has been atrophying with this asynchronous. And then we are also conversing less. You know, only three in 10 Americans socialize on a day-to-day basis. Only three in 10 Americans socialize on a daily basis. Meaning they're having more time alone and they are conversing less. And that is because we're able to do so much work asynchronously. We also spend so much time on our self-care, our longevity, our workouts that we are just doing less with other people. And one in six people worldwide are affected by loneliness. And I think that is because we are having less conversation. And if we're having it, it's happening asynchronously or and this is the last hardest point is we are now talking to technology more than talking to each other. And I don't just mean through technology. Yes, we've been talking through technology for a long time, but only recently are we talking to technology. And when I talk to my technology, it sounds different than when I talk to you. Like I was sitting next to my husband and he was working and he was like talking to his AI and he was like, "Do better. That's terrible work. Do better." And then I asked him a question. He turned to me and I was like, "You better not tell me to do better." You know, and that is because we're talking to technology in a way that we would never talk to other humans, but our brain doesn't always know the difference. And so I think this muscle is atrophying. And on this point of like knowing whether you are a good conversationalist talker, um there was a recent study of over a thousand Americans and they found that 95% of people have worked with someone who talks too much. These chatty co-workers spend an average of 90 minutes of their workday just talking and 71% of respondents said talkative co-workers prevented them from getting their work done.

Steven Bartlett: Yes.

Vanessa Van Edwards: How does one know if they are the person that talks too much? First is let's do an intervention on this is go back if you have recorded Zoom calls and just time yourself. There is a kind of appropriate right 15 to 45 seconds, 45 seconds the most. Second non-verbal cues someone is checking out if they are opening their mouth as if to say something. That is a subtle cue that someone wants a turn but they are going to wait. So if someone is opening their mouth I call it like the open fish. It means they want to turn. Like you did it to me earlier and I totally stopped.

Steven Bartlett: Yeah you did. Yeah.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yeah. Cuz I was I was like, "Oh, he wants to say something."

Steven Bartlett: Yeah. No. So, I do I actually do give people cues that I want to say something

Vanessa Van Edwards: sometimes. And some of them see them and some of them just do not.

Steven Bartlett: And I was like fully distracted. I was like,

Vanessa Van Edwards: you you're on this more sensitive end of the scale where you're almost watching what I'm doing. And it's and you know,

Steven Bartlett: having done what 700 of these interviews now, it's really fascinating to me that some people I have to like remain completely utterly still because they are surveilling me for cues that they're doing a good job or they want them. And so if I move or like look away, they immediately change. Whereas other people don't even know I'm here, which is actually what I prefer because then I can like graze these notes and look in the books and I can like go to the toilet and come back and you know, it's just easier.

Vanessa Van Edwards: And this is why this is not natural conversation. But I think people like you are better at conversation because you see conversation not as a megaphone in which you're shouting through. You see it as continual feedback. And that's why I have to sometimes be on edge with people like you cuz

Steven Bartlett: Yeah.

Vanessa Van Edwards: I know that you're taking cues from me, right? And also like I'm looking for your eyebrow raises.

Steven Bartlett: Yeah.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Right. Like one is Neil deGrasse Tyson says that every book is every eyebrow raising thing he's ever said because he'll go on airplanes. He'll just talk to people and when they go that he writes it down. And so I'm doing the same thing for you is I'm looking at your eyebrows very closely. Don't ever get Botox. It'll be so hard to read you. And so if you raise your eyebrows, I want to double click on it. Right? Because you're you're the taste maker, right? I know I'm I'm saying things interest me but might not interest you. So if you say something if you raise your eyebrows I'm going to go deeper or give you an example or tell you a story and and this is like this is why this is not a normal conversation and conversation will go like this those moments go viral.

Steven Bartlett: Mhm.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Right. Like when you go

Steven Bartlett: like those are like the replayed parts

Vanessa Van Edwards: like the amputee thing

Vanessa Van Edwards: right and and and unfortunately we're all here cuz we're trying to to reach people right and so if you are going and you raise your eyebrows and I'm going to double click. So, if no one is doing that to you, if you're in a conversation back and forth and there are no eyebrow raises and there's no ooh ah wow and they are either looking away or having that open mouth, and by the way, that's also how I can interrupt someone. If I want to interrupt someone politely, I'll go,

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Steven Bartlett: I'll be honest, Vanessa, I was thinking about um someone that I might consider to be in the overtalking category.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yeah.

Steven Bartlett: And when they talk, I don't think they have any concept that there's anybody else in the room.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yeah.

Steven Bartlett: I think they they might as well have their eyes completely closed. That's kind of I was just thinking about it the other day when I was with this person and they might as well be sat there like this

Guest: ...and they're just, and they're going to finish when they feel like they've run out of things. Okay, there are two types of conversational people: there's entertainers and appreciators.

Steven Bartlett: One of the biggest questions I get is how do I talk to VIPs? How do I talk to my boss?

Guest: And this is exactly this. And I don't know if they're a VIP or not. It actually doesn't matter. They are an entertainer. The way I discovered this framework is I was in the green room for a speaking event and a very famous person came in. I can tell you who it was later. Very, very famous.

Steven Bartlett: Who was it?

Guest: We're going to cut this. No, we keep it in.

Steven Bartlett: I think he's pretty famous.

Guest: Massively famous.

Steven Bartlett: Okay. Okay.

Guest: He comes in and we have like a little bit downtime before he has to go up. And I watched person after person try. You know what? You know when you watch someone try—and this is the same thing when someone's approaching their boss or a VIP—and they all tried the same way. Either a compliment or a question. "Oh, I love your stuff so much. I've been watching you since I was a kid. Oh my gosh, you changed my life," right? Compliment or question. "Oh, what's the best thing you've ever done? I won't get too specific, you know? Do you have any advice for me as a young person?" right? It was either compliment or question. He was just not having it. "Yeah. Yeah. Nice to meet you," right? Like quick selfie, just not engage.

Guest: And I was like, wow, that's what I would have advised back then. Either go with a compliment or a question. No. Then one person came up. It was actually one of the AV guys, so he was going to mic him. And he said, "Can I tell you the funniest story?" And you could literally see him was like, "Yeah." And this guy begins to tell him hilarious stories about the first time he watched one of his movies, hilarious stories about him and his siblings playing sports and you know, he's laughing. The guy is laughing and then he starts asking him questions. And I realized he wants to be entertained. He doesn't want to entertain him.

Guest: So what I realized was there are certain people who want to entertain. They speak longer so they're more at risk of talking too much. They want you to laugh at their jokes. They want to share their stories. Their love language in conversation that what gives them energy is other people giving them adoration or listen to their stories, listen to their ideas. They love giving advice. They talk more in conversation. The other type of person, and I think this is you, and actually this is me, even though it doesn't look that way on podcasts, we are appreciators. I talk all day long for my work. The last thing I do when I want to go to dinner is talk. In fact, when people ask me deep questions, I sometimes I'm like, "Can we go back to level one and can you just tell me everything?"

Guest: Appreciators talk less. They love to laugh at other people's stories. They love to hear interesting, awe, weird, surprising, embarrassing things. They are much more hesitant to open up about themselves. Like, as long as we've been talking, we are not personally on level three, right? Like we are able to hide that because we keep it back. It is critical when you're talking to bosses or VIPs to know which one you're talking to. Entertainers want questions, but appreciators want people to tell them stories, right? They don't want a lot of questions. So, your friend is an entertainer. So, you get to make the choice of are you going to go into their superpower and let them just entertain you and keep going and keep talking as much as they want, or do you want the ball?

Steven Bartlett: What if the thing they're saying is—because when you hear entertainer, I interpret that as you're coming up to someone and sharing something that is fun and interesting and whatever. But there's some people that roll up and they say—

Guest: They're boring.

Steven Bartlett: They talk about themselves and that's what they want to talk about. They want to, you know, could be a self-esteem issue. They want to convince you that they are whatever.

Guest: Conversational narcissist.

Steven Bartlett: Okay. Is that a thing?

Guest: Yeah. So, these are people in conversation and this is when the levels still hold. In fact, sometimes a conversational narcissist will take themselves... they'll walk themselves right up all three levels. They'll answer for themselves in level one. They'll tell you all about their goals and they'll tell you the most deepest things that you did not want to know. And that's when you get like verbal vomit, right? Like someone just like they won't stop talking and they're just telling you things you didn't even want to know. You have a choice. You can either try to teach them that that's not the way that they should be in conversation and you can literally say, "Is it my turn yet? Do you want to hear about mine? Do you want to hear about my goal?" Right? Like if this is a person you're going to invest in and you care for and you like, you have to stand up for what you want to share.

Steven Bartlett: In your experience, where does that conversational narcissism come from? Like—

Guest: Insecurity.

Steven Bartlett: Yeah.

Guest: Right. This person's insecure. I don't even know them. They are insecure. And also my bet is they're trying to impress you.

Steven Bartlett: My bet is they're trying to find something to raise your eyebrows, but they don't realize that the more they talk, the more you're like, "Can I go home?"

Steven Bartlett: Do you think they know that they're a conversational narcissist? Do you think they're listening right now and think, "Fuck, that's me," or do they not have that level of... cuz the person that I was referring to, they know they talk too much cuz they say it, and they've had the feedback multiple [times], and they literally will say, "I talk too much," but then they can't seem to stop because it's so deeply ingrained in them from their childhood.

Steven Bartlett: So, I'm wondering if they, you know, they're listening now and they go, "Okay, that's me." Cuz my next question is like how do they fix it?

Guest: Curiosity.

Steven Bartlett: Okay, that's an easier question.

Guest: I actually don't think there's a hard and fast rule. Some conversational narcissists are aware of it and hate themselves for it.

Steven Bartlett: Like they literally know they're doing it and they're like, "Why? Stop talking." Like they literally know what's happening and they're like, "Why? Why am I doing this?" But they can't stop cuz they're so scared of the awkward silence.

Guest: And by the way, we asked, you know, a couple thousand people, what is your greatest conversational fear? I thought it was going to be rejection or judgment. No, it was awkward silences or not knowing what to say. Very mechanical, and I thought, "Wow, 4,000 people, their biggest conversational fear is not being rejected." That was one of the options on the multiple choice. It's running out of things to say. So, the reason they're talking too much is cuz they are terrified of that moment where they're sitting with Steven Bartlett and there's a silence and then you're like, "Bye."

Steven Bartlett: I like the silence. I mean, as a podcast, you have to come to terms with the fact that the guest might stop talking at any moment and you might not have anything else to say.

Guest: That's why I don't have a podcast. I don't have a podcast. So, and then the way that they fix it is curiosity, right? I do believe in like assertive curiosity. Like not just the followup like "tell me more," but like the what, the how, the why, the when. I think that those—like what, how, why, when—that assertive curiosity of like let's actually dig into this dream. Like let's really talk about it.

Steven Bartlett: Wait, I'm confused. So, if we had a conversational narcissist here...

Guest: Yeah.

Steven Bartlett: ...are you telling me how they would recover from that?

Guest: They would recover from it by being aggressively or assertively curious about you.

Steven Bartlett: Okay. But they know, they know. I feel like they know that. I feel like they know they talk too much.

Guest: Okay. Then I'm going to say something you're not going to like. Maybe you're not giving them enough to be curious about. What I would ask next time is, are you curious about me or do you not feel the curiosity? Because saying "do you want to know my answer" or "is it my turn"...

Vanessa: ...yet is a way of being like is there curiosity there?

Host: M.

Vanessa: I think that's really important like I think in relational patterns like there are conversational patterns that we can have. So we're talking a lot about newish people but how about the people you've known for a long time. My goal my deepest wish for this podcast is that you will go have a cornerstone conversation with someone and ask all nine questions. Now, if you're in a conversational rut, and this can happen in friendships, it can happen with people who are used to being the overt talker in the relationship. It can happen in marriages or marriages where you only talk about logistics. This is going to break the rut because the whole point of this is turn taking. So, I would be just so curious if you go to dinner with this person and you're like, "Hey, my friend Vanessa came on the pod and she gave us nine questions. Do you want to do them together? I'll go first." Could she do it? It's a she, right?

Host: He.

Vanessa: he could he do it. Right. Could he do it? And so that this is how you can break that rut to see if there's actual curiosity there because I have I I always assume the best in people. I'm hoping that this person is very well-intentioned, just has deep insecurity.

Host: It is that it is the case.

Vanessa: If you were to give a framework, it can sometimes break you out of a conversational rut with someone.

Host: H I remember I think it was you that said to me that the key to great conversations or interactions was being interested not interesting.

Vanessa: Yeah. After Dale Carnegie. Yes. I wish I had created with it. So Dale Carnegie is sort of the the person who allowed me to think about being less selfish. I think that if you go into a conversation thinking all about yourself, how can I be impressive? How can I be smart and funny? And how can I get them to like me? That's okay. But it's quite selfish and it's a lot of pressure. It's a lot of pressure. When I started thinking, how can I go into conversation putting this person at ease? How can I make them feel like they can impress me? How can I be interested so to make them interesting? And by hopefully that has a rebound effect of making me interesting. That is a very selfless conversational generosity. One small goal for the book was to create more conversational generosity. that if you're in conversation and someone is overtalking, you can be generous enough to either say, "Hey, can I have a turn or to let them entertain you cuz they're entertainers?" or to ask even more questions.

Host: And you said to me last time that there was a study that found the most liked people were those that were interested in others in conversation.

Vanessa: The most popular kids were the kids who had the longest list of people they liked. Meaning, if you want to be likable, you have to go around assertively and aggressively liking as many people as possible. Because if you go into conversations thinking, "How could I like you? How could I like you? How could I like you more?" It's less about you and you're asking questions that are setting them up to be likable. I wonder and I wish I could take a crack at this conversational narcissist that you know, if I were to ask more questions of them, like really set them up to entertain me, to get deep, to actually let them go to level two and maybe even level three if they want to, would they calm down? Would their insecurity feel I'm understood? I'm chosen. I'm loved. I think, and this is just you're an intimidating person, right? Like I I thank goodness have confidence, but if I was dinner with you, I think I would feel a little bit nervous, too. Maybe not anymore, but when I first met you, for sure two years ago, my guess is that this person doesn't feel liked, doesn't feel understood by you, and doesn't feel chosen by you. And the quieter you become when you're just trying to respect them, the quieter you become, the more they don't feel those three things as they keep talking. So, I would try to ask better, deeper questions, like lean into it and see if that can get them calm enough to be like, "Oh, he chose me. He loves me."

Host: What's interesting is I observe with um people like that that that they step more into the conversation narcissism with certain people.

Vanessa: Yes. Yes.

Host: So, with certain individuals. So, for example, in this case, if I was a beautiful woman,

Vanessa: Uh-huh.

Host: Uh, this individual would would be fullblown like word vomit, like it would fully come out, you know?

Vanessa: Yeah.

Host: Or just women generally, even if it's a a platonic relationship, becomes even more like intent on

Vanessa: wants to be understood, chosen, and loved by that beautiful woman.

Host: Yeah.

Vanessa: Right. Like such a deep desire. And so I I wonder if you could disengage it with actually answering those three questions for them, like putting them at ease. I also think it's important to talk about an aspect of bad conversation is making the driver of the conversation feel like they're a bad driver, right? This person is driving conversation, right? Like they know they're an overtalker and they're driving and all the passengers are like, "Oh my gosh, this person's so bad." And what does the bad driver do? They get even more tense.

Host: Mhm.

Vanessa: They get even worse at it. And so the flip side of that is how can you make them feel like a better driver? And one way that we accidentally the opposite of dream building is dream killing. So dream killing is when we shut down a dream. We make someone feel not liked, make them feel not understood. I think that very smart people have an accidental effect where they dream kill with

Host: logic.

Vanessa: Mhm. Yeah. You know, I I call it my my lovely smart leader is I say you're fact-checking, not gut-eing. Right. If you're fact-checking all the time, if you're, you know, trying to accuracy kill, but they're not there yet, you're actually creating a a conversational scarcity that's going to make them feel like, I have to prove myself. I have to dig in. Now, I'm going to talk you more cuz I want to convince you. And so, I think um the opposite of dream building is dream killing. And very smart people tend to dream kill by accident. And it shuts down connection completely. Like, not only will you not get to level two and not you'll you'll bounce on level one or you won't have a relationship with that person. I was just thinking about in my previous company, we interviewed somebody and they were extremely extremely intelligent and it was really obvious to me how intelligent they were like unbelievable. Their credentials unbelievable and then they went through the interview process and the interview feedback from the people that met them was like neutral or negative.

Host: I remember thinking, do you know what it is? This person is so obsessed with the pursuit of truth that they put being liked or being pleased or whatever to the side. They just care if what you're saying is true or not.

Vanessa: That's it. And that in some respects might hold them back. It's also like why I think that this person is amazing, but getting through like an interview process, all those sort of social dynamics would would be really tough, right?

Vanessa: And this takes us back to why conversation is essential. Very smart people think all about their ideas, their knowledge, the facts. But you can be the smartest person in the room, but if people don't feel connected to you, they don't believe your smarts. That comes directly from the research. Competence without warmth is likely to leave us feeling suspicious. So you could be incredibly smart, but if you cannot manage the mechanics of connective conversation, people feel suspicious. It literally triggers a part of their brain that goes, "I don't know about this person." And so the reason why level one is so critical, but we can't skip it, is what we're doing is we're trying to create ease. That's another way of saying warmth, right? We're trying to make it so someone feels like they can be understood with us. And then if they're understood, they're chosen. And if they're chosen, they're loved, right? like it's a three. And this actually brings me to the third. I'm so bad at this. Let's see. I was like that. So, I struggled with this uh what are we on?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Sixth question, because... there by the way, I started this research with over 100 questions and I was testing them. I mean I was making everyone try every different kind. I was using my students. They were trying them. I was seeing also I wanted to make sure they worked at work. They worked at home and they worked with kids, right? Right? Like you can do a lot of the, and you have to alter them slightly, but I want to make sure they work across the board. And the sixth question is actually a signature question. So this is taking a step back and thinking, what do you love to talk about? What do you love to talk about in conversation? What do you love to talk about in conversation?

Steven Bartlett: When you're talking,

Steven Bartlett: what do I love to talk about?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yeah. Not hear about necessarily, but talk about.

Steven Bartlett: Oh gosh.

Vanessa Van Edwards: We're going to reverse engineer it. This sixth question is about reverse engineering your love.

Steven Bartlett: I like to talk about psychology of people and stuff.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay. Okay. So, great. Okay. So, we you would want to reverse engineer questions about how and why. If you love psychology and behavior, you're going to want to ask someone why did you make that choice? You know, what made you choose that path? You're going to want to ask more behavioral questions.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Even in an interviewing perspective, let's talk about this for a second. So, I believe in behavioral interviewing. I believe in interview questions that actually let you know about someone's behavior, not just their opinions.

Steven Bartlett: Mhm.

Vanessa Van Edwards: So, for example, interviewers will make the mistake of asking, "What's your greatest weakness?" It's not a good question because they're going to answer with a prepared answer. It's not going to be real. It's not going to tell you much. I would rather you ask, "What would your last manager say is your greatest weakness?" That's a very different question. First of all, it's not going to be as practiced. Maybe after now it will be, but you're asking the person to step outside themselves from a behavior perspective. When we step outside of ourselves and think about someone else's opinion, we see different things even about ourselves and likely they're going to call your previous manager.

Steven Bartlett: Mhm.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Right. So, they can confirm that in a in a phone call. And you could even say, you know, when I call your previous manager, what would your previous manager say is your greatest weakness? You're going to get a juicy answer, right? And you can go verify it.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Another behavioral technique, which is why I like behavior so much, is not just asking, "Tell me about a recent time that you managed a project." Right? Right? We always ask for examples in interview. That's okay, but not great cuz they're going to pick the best one. What you're better off saying is, tell me about the most recent time you managed a project. It should be in the last 3 months, 2 months, not a year or two ago. So asking for recency, asking for other people's opinions. The reason why I say this is because that would be crafting a type of answer that you want, trying to craft information about a previous experience that is real and not rehearsed. So for you, you'd be wanting to ask more behavior questions when you're at dinner, when you're here, obviously because that's what you love.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Many successful people have signature questions. Like I know Amy Poehler at the end of her podcast, she always asks, "What are you laughing about? What's making you laugh recently?" That's her signature question. Example I use in the book is Ginny Yurich has a challenge, a Thousand Hours Outside, which is spending a thousand hours with her kids outside playing more outside off of screens. And she asks everyone on her podcast, "What was your favorite outdoor memory?" because she loves talking about outdoors and childhood nostalgia. So the sixth question is inviting: What do you love to talk about? How can we engineer that in your conversations by looking for opportunities to bring it up?

Steven Bartlett: So at this stage I would turn to somebody when I feel like I've got that depth with them and I'd say, "What do you love to talk about?" And they might say, "Do you know, I really love talking about sports." And then are you saying that opens a door and gives me a clue as to how to connect with them so future conversations with them should orientate towards sports or psychology or whatever their answer was?

Vanessa Van Edwards: No, it would be... you can ask what do you love to talk about, it would be you, Steven, love to talk about behavior, so you are going to ask more behavioral questions of them, so you get to create your sixth question.

Steven Bartlett: Right. So like right now, because I'm talking about conversation, my signature question is, "What's your favorite conversation starter?"

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Right. When I was researching cues, it was, "Who's the most charismatic person you know?"

Steven Bartlett: Mhm.

Vanessa Van Edwards: When I was researching Captivate, it was, "What's your favorite body language cue?" Right. Or do you ever think about body language? So, it can change based on your interest, but you're creating it for yourself.

Steven Bartlett: Okay. So, this one's a bespoke one. You get to write this one yourself.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

Steven Bartlett: Got you. So, I'm interested in psychology. So, this one would be psychology related topics for me,

Vanessa Van Edwards: Right? Or like what drives you, behavioral.

Steven Bartlett: I actually think that some of the level three questions might interest you, but I'm curious. Okay,

Steven Bartlett: let's see. All right, level three. Are you ready?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Wait, before we do level three, just want to close off on this uh do you talk too much test?

Steven Bartlett: Okay, so

Vanessa Van Edwards: I have a do you talk too much test in the book. It's right here. So, you're going to ask yourself, I leave a conversation realizing I don't know much about the other person.

Steven Bartlett: Okay,

Vanessa Van Edwards: that's a secret curiosity question. So, there's five questions here. And if you answer often more than three times, you're probably an overtalker. That's it. And all of them secretly, Stephen, are saying, "Are you curious enough?"

Steven Bartlett: Okay?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Right? Because we know that curiosity is the antidote. So I put this right at the end of level one because you really can't go to level two if you're talking too much.

Steven Bartlett: Okay?

Vanessa Van Edwards: You're not curious enough. You're not going to learn their dream.

Steven Bartlett: So question one. So if I say yes to three of these, then I'm probably an overtalker. Correct? So first one is I leave the conversation realizing I didn't know much about the other person. I'd say rarely. After I finish speaking, people nod politely, but don't always respond.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Sometimes.

Steven Bartlett: I love telling long detailed stories, especially when people are too polite to interrupt.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Do you ever tell a long detailed story?

Steven Bartlett: Only when I'm on stage and someone has paid me to.

Vanessa Van Edwards: That doesn't count. Okay.

Steven Bartlett: Doesn't count. Sometimes I'd say, um, I've been told gently or not so gently that I talk a lot.

Steven Bartlett: Rarely. I've never been told that. Number five, while I'm midstory, I notice people glance around the room sometimes.

Vanessa Van Edwards: So, you pass.

Steven Bartlett: Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Now, I could have told you that also, but yeah, you pass. So, those it's really important because it might be creating conversational friction, right? Especially at work. And the best muscle you can do is asking more, talking less. And a challenge, a very specific challenge,

Steven Bartlett: please do a yap challenge. Do you know what a yap challenge is?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Oh, a yap challenge. A yap challenge is you open up your phone camera and you teach something or share an opinion about something without notes and you hit record. If you go naturally 15 or 30 seconds, you're probably good. If you're hitting 45 seconds, that's the max. If you're up to a minute or 2 minutes, you probably talk too much.

Steven Bartlett: About yourself or just

Vanessa Van Edwards: about yourself about like that. That your typical answering length is longer than conversationally appropriate

Steven Bartlett: to a question about you. A yap challenge could be share your opinion about veganism.

Steven Bartlett: Damn, I didn't think I could get that done in 15 seconds.

Vanessa Van Edwards: What's your answer?

Steven Bartlett: No, not to veganism. Just generally like if it's an idea, everything in my head is a story first. So, it's like,

Vanessa Van Edwards: you know what though? Introverts can.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Introverts absolutely can. And they'll often go too short.

Steven Bartlett: Okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Like for example, I'll give I'll give you a yap challenge that I was just thinking about the other day and

Speaker A: We're going to do it on social media. We'll do it together. Yap challenge. Someone recently asked my friend out by asking for her Instagram handle, not her number. Agree or disagree?

Speaker B: It depends on her vibe. How, what energy was she giving and what was the context? Was that after a 2-hour date? Was that just meeting her on the street?

Speaker A: Rolled up on the street.

Speaker B: I think it's actually I agree then because it's less invasive. It's like I will earn your number.

Speaker A: Oh. Oh wow.

Speaker B: Give me the chance to earn your number.

Speaker A: Okay. You just convinced me. That's interesting. So, by the way, I think that was what, 12 seconds.

Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, maybe.

Speaker A: Right. So, you're keeping it tight. I disagree. But that is an interesting nuance. I'm not going to give you my Instagram because my Instagram is performative. Everyone's Instagram is performative. If you are looking at my Instagram, it's like saying, "I don't want to get to know you through conversation. I'm going to look through everything and know everything about you before I decide if I want to take you out." And you take the joy out of discovery. If I'm with you and I'm like, "Do you have any pets?" And you're like, "Yeah, I have a dog." Then I can, "Oh, how'd you get the dog? What's the dog's name? How'd you choose that name?" Versus, "Uh, look, she has a dog named Stewie."

Speaker B: But you know, your number is reserved for people in your like personal professional life. So, what you're saying if you roll up on the street is you're saying, "Let me into your personal and professional environment, stranger." Whereas the public environment, which is Instagram, is I think a much more socially appropriate place to invite oneself into.

Speaker A: Okay, let's fight about this. Okay, if you do that, your conversation is going to be more awkward on your first date.

Speaker B: Because?

Speaker A: Because you feel like you've already learned about the person. So maybe you're discovering more of their public persona, but you've seen their kind of friends, where they hang out, what they do on the weekends, do they hike or not, do they have any pets? Oh, look, there they are at Thanksgiving. They have lots of siblings. This is, I think, why we're having awkward first date conversations, why first dates have gotten even worse, is because you're on the first date, you've already discovered all level one stuff that you think you know. So now, even though you have your very first conversation, you kind of have to go to level two, it's so much harder and it's unnatural. It's unnatural to know all this information that wasn't transmitted human to human that was done in a performative way. And then you have to get in person and it's harder to come up with conversation starters because you already know a lot. I also think what I would say is if someone were—I'm not single. I haven't been single a long time. But if someone were to say, "Can I have your Instagram?" I would say, you know, I have one for just friends and family, but maybe you can get there one day.

Speaker B: You would say that?

Speaker A: Yeah, I would. Because I want you to chat me, right? Like I don't want to show you my Instagram. We're going to see everything and like I'd rather like let's banter, like let's chat. Are you funny? Are you going to ask me good questions? Are you going to be a conversational narcissist? And then ask me at dinner if it's going well over text or over the phone.

Speaker B: So you think less context results in better conversation? So just having their WhatsApp or their iMessage is going to result in more interesting conversations than me knowing that you like hiking and puppies and me being able to be like, "Have you got a Labradoodle, too? Oh my god, my Labradoodle is just given birth to a couple of triplets."

Speaker A: Yes. And less performative context. Like our social feeds are not 100% real. So it's not like you were listening to me talk about something. It's a curated highlight reel of my life. So you feel like you know me. Like people who follow me on Instagram like they might feel like they know me, but my life is quite different than my Instagram in the sense of I show a very small piece of what I do. Same right with you, right? And so I know I'm not single, but if I was single and someone asked for my Instagram, even as a not public figure, I would have no casual level one banter with them that is critical, socially critical for me to understand their basics. And so when we skip level one, we do damage to our potential connection later. We create more awkwardness and more friction for ourselves. Okay?

Speaker B: So my challenge for single people is stop asking for handles and ask for numbers.

Speaker A: Are people going to get mad at me? Well, a lot of them are meeting via dating apps now.

Speaker B: For sure. And that I think that's okay, right? You know, a dating app is much more limited than an endless feed.

Speaker A: It's like I don't know how many photos are on dating apps these days, but still like that's like the most performative. It's like look at me at the gym. Look at this car that I bought. Look at...

Speaker B: But it's not forever. Like you can't go back to someone's Instagram since they were in high school, right? Like it's, you know, it's six images or 10 images. You have these pre-subscribed questions. Like I'm actually okay with I love dating apps. I think that actually they can really connect people very quickly. But you don't know everything about you. You don't feel like you know everything about me.

Speaker A: I feel like people on dating apps hate dating apps.

Speaker B: Of course. Of course. But how else are we going to meet people if we have our AirPods in all the time? You're not going to meet people if you're at the gym. We talked about this last time. If you have your AirPods in at the gym and someone wants to hit on you, you're not going to hear it. So, we have to use dating apps. I think they're the only way that we'll be able to connect. So, I'm actually I'm pro dating app. Of course, I would love for people to approach in person, but I'm not pro not talking first. And I think if someone asks for your handle, you're fair to say it's just for my friends and family. Let's try to get there.

Speaker A: Okay, I concede.

Speaker B: No, I think it makes sense.

Speaker A: Okay, so this is a wonderful level, but it's reserved for your most important people. I think a mistake that people make is they are afraid of going too deep too quickly and they're afraid of going deep in conversation because it feels scary to be vulnerable.

Speaker B: And are they right? They are right.

Speaker A: Okay. If we go too deep too quickly, especially at work, and I wrote this book with work in mind, people are going to think you're weird.

Speaker B: If we share too much too quickly, it's going to be weird. And there is such a thing as vulnerability regret. Vulnerability regret is you shared something too vulnerable and it wasn't a safe space or it wasn't received well. And the heartache that you get from that is soul crushing. Right? If you share something too or you ask something too deep too quickly, you're like, why did I do it's painful. Has that ever happened? Does that happen to you or No, you don't share.

Speaker A: Uh, no. I've walked away from situations and thought actually maybe that wasn't the appropriate situation to share that. But I've also been in situations. I immediately thought of a meeting I had two weeks ago where I was interviewing someone and the first 25 minutes of the interview they shared some really really personal things about their very early childhood that I um I almost had to adjust myself to you know I thought I was going into an interview to like meet them and ask them about work stuff but I almost felt myself pivoting away being like oh my gosh I have to be more of a counselor or something.

Speaker B: Yeah. And so I think that we actually have to gate level three, right? I think we actually have to gate and it's been a little confusing culturally because I think that we are loving vulnerability and that that's really good and authenticity. There's a very fine line there. Like being authentic is great, but being too vulnerable...

Guest: ...too quickly is very awkward and sometimes not safe. So I really share when we talk about level three, I want you to reserve it for your most important people. Okay? So level three is called your self-narrative. Your self-narrative is the story you tell yourself about yourself. It is how you make sense of your journey and purpose in life. And the story you tell yourself about yourself is self-creating. Meaning, if you have a narrative of hardship and being unlucky, you are probably going to see more hardship and create more bad luck for yourself.

Guest: And they've proven that this there's actually two types of selfnarratives. There's a contamination narrative and a redemption narrative. People with a redemption narrative, they have a frame around the facts of their life of no matter what they do, no matter what comes their way, they're going to overcome with hard work and grit and resilience, they can overcome anything. And what's interesting about this in our research is this narrative, it holds across their life. Yes, they're they're facts of their life, but their work, their love, their parenting, they repeat that same redemption narrative in everything they do.

Guest: The other kind of narrative is a contamination narrative. People with a contamination narrative, they feel that all the hardship and all the challenge and the struggle has happened to them and they can't make it through. They can't overcome. That no matter how hard they've worked, their grit, their strength, their resilience, they're a victim of circumstance. they typically feel very unlucky and very out of control. And when you have that kind of narrative, it's less about the facts of your life and more about the frames of your life, how you're seeing those facts.

Guest: When you have a contamination narrative or you're in a relationship with someone with a with a contamination narrative, the only way that I think we can change that, cuz our narratives are changeable. These are not fixed personality traits, is via conversation. So, my secret hope with with level three conversation is when you're in a safe relationship, when you can truly share who you are, when you feel understood, you can maybe rewrite your narrative. You can maybe flip from a contamination narrative, the frame of how you've seen your facts into redemption. And that is my secret goal here.

Host: So, how do we do that?

Guest: Okay, the first thing is beginning to uncover what your narrative is and what someone else's narrative is. So the first thing we have to understand is how our brain works. Our brains are storytellers. Our that's why we love story. And level one, it was kind of a warm-up. Like when we're telling story about our passions and our side hustles, we're also telling a story about ourselves all the time.

Host: Mhm.

Guest: And so we've told a story about ourselves. And there are what I call narrative hints. In conversation, people will leak the kind of narrative that they have. So they might say, "Oh, everyone always zigs and I zag. Gosh, everything bad always happens to me." Oh, of course, of course. Yet another thing. If people have superlatives, always, never, they tend to be more of a contamination person. People who are in that contamination narrative space, they tend to see things as very black and white. They tend to see things as permanent...

Guest: ...versus redemption people tend to leak positive hints and they feel very lucky. They say, "Oh, good things always happen to me." Or, "There's always a silver lining. Oh, yeah. You know, just my luck. I got it." Right? They're saying things about how it's happening. They're leaking their narratives.

Host: Who ends up being more successful, happy, and healthy?

Guest: Absolutely. People with redemptive redemptive narratives. They have found that people with redemption narratives, they live longer. They have better immune systems. They have better connections. They feel happier. And that is because they feel they can handle whatever is thrown at them. They have a great internal locus of control. They feel that no matter what comes at them, they can handle it. And the good news is this is learnable, right? If we begin to talk about our narratives with our children, with our partners, we can begin to teach them actually you have growth here. You have agency over your narrative.

Host: This internal locus of control thing is something that I learned about when I was probably 16 or 17 in psychology class.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: And what does it mean? And what what does the study say about the importance of it?

Guest: So an internal locus of control means that you feel that you're in control. You have agency over your decisions, over what happens to you, that things can happen to you in your life, but you can decide how you interact with them. You can decide how you behave. People with an external locus of control get their worth from outside sources. They feel validated when someone else tells them they look good. They feel good when someone else tells them they're doing good. They're looking for external ways to feel better. They look more at like for example vanity metrics, their likes or their follows, how many friends they have, how often they're invited, are they getting compliments?

Host: I almost the analogy I was thinking of then is it's almost like you either think you're a bird or you think you're on a roller coaster.

Guest: Tell me more.

Host: You know, a roller coaster has a fixed track...

Host: ...really irrespective of what you do. It's going to go up, down, left, right, spin, and you're just holding on and going with it. Whereas a bird feels like it has the agency to go go anywhere. No rail. Yeah. M.

Host: And some people I think do think that they're on a roller coaster.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: On a track.

Guest: I mean, look, I don't want to get too deep, but if we were in a normal conversation, I would ask you about fate. You know, I think there's questions that can we begin to uncover someone's level three. Do you believe in luck? Do you believe you're lucky? Do you believe in fate? I think if you believe in fate, you're more likely to believe that you're on a roller coaster. that you're on a ride that is predetermined and now it's up and then it's going to go down and they're going to have a loop. So, I wonder I don't know if someone has a high belief in faith or predetermined fate if they would feel an external locus of control and maybe that wouldn't be as good for their mental health. I wonder...

Host: I've done almost 700 interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world and one of the things you learn which is unexpected is that vulnerability is the doorway to connection. And after sitting here for 2 three hours with a guest, I feel a deep sense of connection to them. And as they leave, what I get them to do is to write a question in the diary of a CEO. We've taken all of the questions from the diary of a CEO. We have put the question here on this card with the name of the person that wrote it. So you can sit at home as I do with my fiance and my colleagues at work and other people in my life. Whenever we get a minute, we play the diio conversation cards. And it is incredible what happens. These are great if you're in a romantic relationship and you want to connect your partner more. These are also great if you're in a team and you want to bond your team together. And I have to say they're also great for families that want to learn more about each other and that need a good excuse to spend some time in a digital world in the analog environment connecting human to human. It is remarkable what the right question at the right time can do. Go to the diary.com and you can get these conversation cards right now.

Host: So, going back to this idea of these contaminators.

Guest: So, we're listening for narrative hints and we can ask questions like are you lucky? By the way, if you ask this question, it's it's a it's a sneaker because it sounds so casual when you ask are you lucky, but their answer really matters. Either there's three answers for are you lucky. One, oh yes. Yes, I feel lucky. When I asked you this last time, you said yes.

Host: Yeah. I think I I can't look at I feel like I have so much privilege in my life that I feel like I have I am lucky.

Guest: Yes. Yes. I feel the same. I'm just I'm so grateful, right, that I get to have this super unique

Host: ...career. So I feel lucky. You feel lucky. So yes, if someone says yes right away, that tells you a lot about them.

Vanessa: That means they probably have a high amount of gratitude. They probably have a high amount of control or agency. And they also have confidence because the quickness, the speed of their answer matters here.

Then there are people who are going to go, "What? No, I don't think I'm lucky." Now this is a really important thing to know about them, and I don't think you should try to change it. I think that that's a version of toxic positivity, telling someone, "Oh, but you're so lucky. You know, think of all the things that you should be grateful for." Usually that actually makes someone dig in; it makes them feel very misunderstood.

The best thing you can do if someone says they don't feel lucky is to understand it. Why? What are the forces? When did that happen? Did you ever feel lucky before? Sometimes people can flip from lucky to unlucky with a very bad circumstance. And it is crucial that you understand that before you judge it. So curiosity gets engaged. If someone says they're unlucky, I think that's an opportunity to really reach out and meet someone where they're at, because in that moment they might...

Host: Are you going to disagree with me?

Vanessa: No, no, no. I was just thinking about how wonderful of a question that is for when you first meet someone in an interview or a first date. I was like maybe I should ask people in an interview: "Do you think you're lucky?"

Host: You should.

Vanessa: Cuz what is that revealing if they say yes? It's revealing...

Host: Multitudes, right? Their gratitude, their perspective on life, their internal locus of control.

Vanessa: You're an optimist.

Host: Often. Not always, but often. Sometimes it can be realists.

Vanessa: Okay?

Host: Right? Like "I am objectively lucky because I have all these things" — that can be realist. But man, you're going to learn a lot. The whole point of level three is predicting behavior. If you know their luck, you're going to be able to predict a lot of how they are in a relationship, how they are as a friend, how they are going to be at work.

Vanessa: Right? Fate, I think, is an interesting one to ask someone. And then there's other questions that seem silly but actually have tremendous meaning. And level three is all about meaning.

Okay, so the third answer for lucky — thank you — is that person who is afraid to answer. And I have asked this question of thousands of people and you get this bucket of, "Um, well, kind of." Now this is very interesting because this tells you they're probably not that introspective.

So one of two things: they actually don't know. They literally have not ever thought about it and they will say to you, "I've never thought about..." and they're literally sitting in front of you reanalyzing their entire life trying to answer this question for you. They've never considered it. So that's also helpful. That's helpful. You know, if you're in a relationship and someone's not that introspective, that's good to know. Not good or bad, just good to know, especially if you value that. Like introspection is one of my core values. So, you know, that might not bode well for me.

Or second, they don't feel safe with you yet. It can be a hint that you went too fast. If someone says "I kind of" or "I'm not sure," you might have jumped to level three too quickly and they are not ready to share, or they are embarrassed about something. They have shame or they have something in their past that they feel is very unlucky but they don't feel ready to share it.

Host: Have they done studies on this particular question?

Vanessa: I think only we have.

Host: Only you have.

Vanessa: Richard Wiseman has done a lot of research on luck specifically, and there's like a luck test you can give someone. We did this in our lab. So, it's a official luck test to see how lucky you think you are. It's like a 10-question diagnostic and it asks all these different variations of that question. So, it is academically studied.

But I don't think what's studied, at least not yet, is how your answer is going to dictate your life. Like I would love to know — maybe future research in our lab is — if you consider yourself very lucky, do you make more money?

Host: Do you make less money? Is there any income? Are you older? Are you younger? Are you a child of privilege or not? So, I think it's coming. I mean, I think that's where this excitement kind of comes from. At least it gets me excited as a behavior researcher.

Vanessa: I was just looking at that study by Dr. Richard Wiseman. He discovered that people who answer yes, I am lucky actually generate their own good fortune by acting in very specific ways. They have lower anxiety. They have higher extraversion. They tend to talk to lots of people and make lots of friendships and relationships. High openness to experience, relentless optimism. That's very, very interesting.

Host: I have considered — I've really considered this — doing a luck workshop where all I do in the workshop is help you harvest your own feelings of luck. It is so healing. It is so fulfilling to feel lucky to wake up in the day and feel lucky. It's better than gratitude, right? Gratitude is sort of shaming in its own way. I'm like kind of anti-gratitude, but feeling like you're really really lucky is so empowering.

And so I've thought about creating luck labs, like a little luck workshop where you can come and we're going to convince you that you're lucky because it's that good of an investment in your feelings of happiness.

Vanessa: I would like to ask the audience, I'm just super interested. I would like to ask all the people listening now: do you guys feel lucky? And I would like honest answers in the comment section. And don't — I know you just heard us say that lucky people are going to have better lives. Just be completely honest just for pure research purposes. And do you know what? I know people that don't feel lucky are going to be honest because...

Host: ...they're going to be honest and they're going to tell you exactly why. And they're going to get really mad at us because they're going to say that something really bad happened to them and how dare we tell them that luck is good.

Vanessa: That's what's going to happen cuz I've heard them do it.

Host: Can you get mad at Vanessa and not me? I'm...

Vanessa: No, get mad at him.

Host: No, it's fine. You can get mad at me. It's fine.

Vanessa: I have no shell. But this is why I'm asking because I want to... I'm coming from one perspective from one experience that I've had in my life and I feel like I am grateful and I've been very privileged. So I would like to understand why other people do not feel lucky in their lives and you know, I guess it would also be surprising to hear that some people have been through objectively horrific things but some of them might still feel lucky. So that would be interesting as well. So I'll be reading the comments.

Host: And that is also fact versus frame.

Vanessa: Okay.

Host: Right. So the way that we begin to rewrite our story and I believe so much in self-authorship, right? Yes, there's a story you tell yourself about yourself, but you also are the author of your own life, right? You're the author of your own narrative.

The way that we begin to take up the pen, like become the author of our own life, is we ask ourselves questions about why do I have that idea? What is the evidence for that idea? The facts might be there, but our frame of them is different.

So, for example, take a breakup. And I can almost always find out someone's contamination or redemption narrative if I ask them about a breakup. People with contamination narratives will almost always say, "The breakup nearly destroyed me. I don't trust men anymore. I don't trust women anymore. You know, it just took from me. I feel like a shell of myself." And it stays that way. Everyone has a period of a bad breakup time, but they never get through that. That they feel like that breakup fundamentally changed them for the worse.

Whereas someone with a positive or a redemption narrative, even if it was a horrific breakup, they'll say, "I will never do that again." That...

Speaker A: ...made me stronger. It was horrible. It was one of the worst times of my life, but I know now who not to choose, and I know who to choose. It made me feel stronger. It's that anti-fragile piece.

Speaker B: Would you give someone a second date if on the first date they turned to you and when you asked them the question, "Are you a lucky person?" they went, "Absolutely not." I probably wouldn't. You are going to be so mad.

Speaker A: You are so cooked. They are going to get you. Get it, guys.

Speaker B: You were so single.

Speaker A: You were so cooked.

Speaker B: It's a hypothetical.

Speaker A: It was a trap. That's what it was.

Speaker B: You're so mean. You're like, "Look, throwing us into the fire." Well, don't worry. I got a wine bottle coming. So,

Speaker A: No, I I was thinking I was thinking...

Speaker B: No. Would you—Gosh, I'm going to ask you now. If someone—if I was on a first date and I said, "Are you a lucky person?" and they said to me,

Speaker A: "Absolutely not."

Speaker B: Okay, I'd be curious.

Speaker A: Sure, of course.

Speaker B: And I would want to hear what they—

Speaker A: would leave. I wouldn't leave the date.

Speaker B: But if they were then just like extremely pessimistic, I would probably arrive at this assumption that this is probably not going to be a match cuz that's not my inclination. And it doesn't—it takes too much energy out of me. And that is also because I think this is a beautiful bridge to the next concept. Once you begin to uncover these narrative hints, okay, you're talking about luck, you're talking about redemption or contamination narrative. I believe—and this is more art than science—that there are five archetypes of these stories. So I have harvested hundreds, I wouldn't say thousands, hundreds of narratives. It's actually quite hard to ask someone what is your self-narrative? It's very hard question, but there are questions that we can begin to talk about that do harvest it. I notice patterns. There are the same narratives over and over again, and there are about five of them. I think that we share an archetype. I think we do. Now, maybe I'm flattering myself.

So, the first archetype is the ambitious hero. And I think this is us, but you'll tell me. So, the ambitious hero has had challenges and obstacles, but they feel that their grit and resilience have—they've been able to overcome. They struggle because they are never satisfied.

Speaker A: And what is an archetype? Like what is—

Speaker B: I got excited. Yes. So this is not like a personality type. It's not like Myers-Briggs or Enneagram. Those are quite stable. This is a fluid archetype of how you're seeing your story in this moment. For example, I might ask you if you had to write a memoir, what would the title of your memoir be?

Speaker A: And this is going to impact how I have conversations with people.

Speaker B: This is going to impact how you have conversations with people. How you behave interpersonally, so how you act at work. Like an ambitious hero is going to act very, very differently at work than a contented pragmatist.

Speaker A: And is it going to impact who I'm attracted to platonically and romantically?

Speaker B: Absolutely. It dictates your relationship patterns.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Right. Your conversational patterns, how you converse, how you bond, how you connect, and more importantly, since I'm so interested in work conversations, how you work, how you view effectiveness, how you view efficiency. My founders, right, ambitious hero founders are going to have the same struggles over and over again. They're going to be very different than the contented pragmatist founder.

Speaker A: So the ambitious hero, what's their sort of internal monologue?

Speaker B: Their internal monologue is: I got this. I can do this. Hustle, hustle more,

Speaker A: more, bigger, more, bigger, bigger, more. I can do that better. I can do that bigger.

Speaker B: Right. It's like we—you know, shiny object syndrome is like one of the nicer ways to talk about ambitious heroes. You know, shiny object syndrome.

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: It's like a founder who won't stop trying new initiatives and keeps throwing new ideas on the table when they haven't finished their first one.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Do you have that?

Speaker B: Well, yes, but I have put systems in place.

Speaker A: Ah, yeah.

Speaker B: To make sure that it doesn't sink the company as Jeff Bezos said. Jeff Bezos said, "I've got enough ideas to sink the company," and he has to learn to release them at a cadence that the company can tolerate. So, that's—

Speaker A: love it. And that's beautiful cuz that's self-knowledge and everything that we're talking about is self-knowledge, right? If you're able to talk this through, you have self-knowledge to go to your team: "When I come to you with a new idea next week, say no."

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: "Don't let me do that. It's too much." Right? So behaviorally if you are the ambitious hero you know you dream big, you can burn out because you dream so big. We tend—like I tend to—like work almost regulates me. Like when I'm working I'm like I'm being so productive. We are helping people. Help more people. Help all the people, right? Like it's too much. And so we can burn out from a productivity perspective. We have shiny object syndrome and in conversation, in relationships, people sometimes don't always understand our drive. Like we're so driven. We get accused of hustle culture a lot. We can burn other people out by trying to bring them with us on how fast we want to work, how long we want to work. You know, those are not necessarily bad things, but they're traits. They're behavioral traits. Okay.

And by the way, so this is number one, the ambitious hero. One way that you can kind of suss these out is asking the question, what character are you most like? What book, movie, or TV character are you most like? Not look like—life choices, personality, core values.

Speaker B: And I said Pursuit of Happyness, which is—Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. Which is—

Speaker B: ambitious hero.

Speaker A: Yeah. But why did you choose that character?

Speaker B: Because he—the reason why I chose the character was because when I was 18, 19 years old and I was literally shoplifting food to feed myself. I watched that movie randomly and I was in bed the day that day and it really made me feel like the journey I was on, you know, when he was in the disabled toilet with his kid.

Speaker A: The toilet scene.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I remember like my life in shades felt a little bit like that at the moment. Just, you know, kind of doing things to feed myself that would, you know, and keep the lights on and swerving these landlords cuz my rent was 5 months late and all the kind of games I played to try and just survive. And then he went on to be successful. So it gave me a lot of hope. And he's also black.

Speaker A: Mhm. So it was really important in that interaction that I didn't assume about that character. I asked you why and then you told me a story about what you saw and when you saw it. A really critical part of this exercise is that you ask someone about the character and then you say why. What traits? Because the traits that they say next are going to tell you every single thing about that person.

For example, if I ask someone, you know, what person are you most like? And they say, "Mother Teresa." I say, "Oh, you know, why?" You know, I might not agree with them. Like, maybe I don't see that, but whatever they say next is going to tell me a lot about how they view themselves, whether it's true or not.

Speaker B: And this is the hardest part about level three, and it's the most inconvenient part of level three. You probably won't agree.

Speaker A: Okay?

Speaker B: There's a lot of times where people in my life have told me self narratives, and I'm like, "What?"

Speaker A: What's yours? What character are you most like and why?

Speaker B: Okay, so I relate most with Claire Dunphy from Modern Family, especially in her entrepreneurial years. Most people would be surprised that I actually identify first as a mother, not an entrepreneur. Most of my day is with my kids. I'm a little awkward. I'm very neurotic. And so I resonate most with her. And that ambitious working mom is sort of what I'm constantly struggling with. Constantly. Yeah, especially as an ambitious hero because I want to do both perfectly and I cannot. Yeah.

So, by the way, if you're having trouble with this question, this is the one way that I think AI...

Vanessa: ...can help. You know, I have my own relationship with AI. But AI can be a great brainstorm partner. It can be a great conversational practice partner. It can be a great role-playing partner. And this is actually one way that I like it. So, if you're not sure, if you're like, "Vanessa, I don't know. I don't know what character I am," go to AI and ask this: "What book, movie, or TV character is most like me in the way that I treat you?"

Vanessa: Especially if you have a relationship with your AI. "I am [fill in the blank]"—so for me, it was mom, entrepreneur, neurotic; "My personality is [how to describe a person]; My core values are... what character is most similar to me?" And it will pull a bunch of characters that are those traits. So this is one way that it can help you sometimes brainstorm.

Host: Okay. The ambitious hero, right? We started with that.

Vanessa: Yeah. Archetype number one.

Vanessa: The second one is called the content—I called it the contented pragmatist. Again, these are a little more art than science. The contented pragmatist is somebody who likes it as it is. They are quite content, very happy with where things are. They don't really need to change it if it's not broken. They are not very ambitious cuz they're very grounded in where they are. They love habit and ritual and tradition in conversation relationally. They struggle when people push them to try harder or do more because they're like, "I'm good. Life is good. Why would we change things?"

Vanessa: I have two very specific people in my life who are very annoyed by me as the ambitious hero because I have a new goal every month and I'm constantly like... they're like, "I love smoothies," or they make great granola, and I'm like, "You should bottle it up and sell it at farmers markets!" And they're like, "But why?" And I'm like, "But why not, right?" So relationally, they're often seen as unambitious, but actually they're just quite content.

Host: Mhm. Interesting.

Vanessa: Do you know someone like that?

Host: I do. I was just thinking also about just business generally and how when you're hiring teams or even in relationships, you can get a contented pragmatist holding back an ambitious hero. And I've often had friends come to me and say like, "I've got this big startup idea that I want to launch, but my girlfriend or my husband is telling me to be realistic..."

Vanessa: Yeah, and they tend to be a little bit more fear-based. It's not that they're negative, but they are so contented that they're very, very hyper practical. I also think on a team it is important to know what role will be best served by this: ambitious roles, growth roles, rainmaker roles, leaders who are in an industry of change.

Vanessa: Some like fiduciary—you know, I do a lot of finance conferences and I work with a lot of folks in banking. Sometimes ambitious heroes can really be crushed in those roles because there isn't a lot of fast-moving growth in those companies. A contented pragmatist can do really well in a very stable, traditional industry with a lot of regulation because they are very happy to live in that regulation. You might want someone—might, I say might because it really depends on your company, but in a corporate culture, you know, you might want a contented pragmatist running your books.

Host: Mhm.

Vanessa: They're quite conservative. They're not going to make a big leap here, right? And they're also like, "Let's keep it as it is. Let's know what we're doing. Don't break, don't change if it's not broken," right? So you have to think about your roles as a hiring manager. It depends on what your company is like.

Host: And in terms of conversation tips, are there different tips for different archetypes?

Vanessa: For an ambitious hero, they are going to get so much dopamine talking about goals, talking about new, talking about progress. They are juiced by progress and they want to hear about progress too. So not only are they wanting to... you know, when someone asks me "How are you?", it takes everything in me to not share my metrics. Like I know that's not socially acceptable. So I have to be like, "I am doing great, the business is exploding," and then I just stop, right? Because it would be weird if I was like, "We have 305% growth on Instagram," you know? Because we love ambition.

Vanessa: I also love ambition in others. My gosh, when I hear about my friend's side hustle that's growing, that's all my check-in texts: "I'm just thinking about you, how's the biz? How's the traffic? How are the book sales? How are the movie sales?" Like I want to hear about growth.

Vanessa: A contented pragmatist, they want to talk about ritual. They want to talk about what works. They want to savor life's pleasures. They're very good at savoring. And by the way, this can be a wonderful relationship sometimes. Because sometimes the contented pragmatist reminds the ambitious hero: "Enjoy it."

Host: Enjoy it. You've worked so hard. Like just take in the view for a moment.

Vanessa: And so they love gratitude. They love habit, ritual, routine. They love to be honored for what works. They're the ones who will make a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner and they want to have that three-hour dinner and savor it, and not talk about next year, and not talk about goals, and just savor this moment and talk about what they did last year and the year before that. A little bit different.

Vanessa: Okay. This is I think the most important one to talk about actually. I think it's the least understood of all the archetypes, which is the selfless helper. Okay, this is such a clear narrative. I almost always can predict it within the first few minutes of conversation, and that is because selfless helpers, their entire story is about giving. Their entire reason for being is being of service.

Vanessa: They almost always pick careers that are of service. They almost always pick careers—teachers, coaches, trainers, nurses, doctors. And that is because they are so ingrained that to have worth is to help.

Vanessa: And often times where they can sometimes get into trouble is they don't feel worthy if they are not helping. And so they help so much that there's nothing left. They have compassion burnout or compassion fatigue because they are giving and giving and giving and giving. They cannot say no.

Vanessa: In a relationship they are beautiful to be in a relationship with because they are givers, right? They are nurturers. They are giving. A lot of parents can flip into selfless helpers once they become a parent. I've seen this happen with both moms and dads. The moment they have a baby they flip into selfless helper cuz all of a sudden their purpose is there is to take care of this little person. The problem is that they have a really hard time saying no.

Host: They're people pleasers.

Vanessa: Yeah. They struggle with boundaries. They say yes to too much and they put themselves last. Can be both good and bad in a relationship. And so if you're in a relationship with them, sometimes half of it is just letting them stand up to protect themselves to not give too much.

Vanessa: And I mentioned this very briefly earlier, but I've had many friends who are selfless helpers and they attract takers, right? They attract high conflict people. You know what I mean by high conflict?

Host: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Vanessa: A high conflict person is Bill Eddy's work. He estimates that 10% of the population is a high conflict person. A high conflict person is someone who thrives with drama. They create difficulty in their relationships. They almost like to have difficult conversations. They thrive with that kind of drama. They see in absolutes. So they often speak in like black or white. They see no nuance.

Vanessa: They weaponize emotions. These days they often sometimes use psychology to their advantage by taking advantage of people. And the worst high conflict people—and this is where I've noticed it in my work when I was listening and reading Bill Eddy's work, I was like—they actually are enablers; they can get other people to do their dirty work for them.

Vanessa: So they can sometimes put a seed in a selfless helper's ear and the selfless helper will go, "How dare they!" and they'll go fight for you. And so sometimes selfless helpers, they are roped into things that are not necessarily what they...

Host: ...should be doing because they are standing up for the person they care about. And so if you're dealing with a selfless helper in terms of conversation...

Expert: Yes, sometimes they even think talking about themselves is taking.

Host: Okay.

Expert: So you might sometimes in conversation like you're asking them a question and they're like, "Oh no, no, enough about me."

Host: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Expert: "Oh, let's talk about you. Oh, I want to help you. How can I help you?" It's so funny like my friends who are selfless helpers, I cannot get them to tell me what I can help them with cuz all they want to do is check in on me and I'm like, "No, no, I really do want to hear about you." So sometimes they won't take the ball cuz they're worried it's selfish. And so sometimes getting them to open up can be hard cuz they feel like their needs are not important, but their needs are very important. Like they're such beautiful people. So I think in conversation, the greatest gift we can give a selfless helper is letting them know that you're understood. I value you. And getting to know you is not taking from me. It's giving to me. I have to tell my friends, it makes me feel good to help you. It makes me feel good to hear about what's going on for you. You're actually giving to me by telling me about yourself, not taking from me. So, we have to gift to them. I think we have to be extremely conversationally generous with them.

Host: Mhm.

Expert: Do you know Do you know anyone?

Host: Yes, I do.

Expert: Oh, lovely.

Host: Yeah. And it all tracks with everything you said. So...

Expert: And in corporate, right, all these apply to work. These are great if you have a—not always, but often managers can do great things as selfless helpers because they are so attuned to others, but they are very good at bringing out performance. Not always, but I've seen really amazing managers who, they know the ROI, they know metrics, like they're following their KPIs, but they're so good at finding how does this person need to be helped? How could this person be their best selves? Oh, that person has a great expert power. They're so good at that that they bring up performance in everyone.

Host: But they might avoid the difficult conversation. These people tend to be a little bit conflict avoidant.

Expert: They can be conflict avoidant, but they're very good at framing everything as we're in this together. So yes, they can be conflict avoidant, but the really good managers who are excellent conversationalists, they are able to frame bad news and hard feedback as I want to help you. Mhm.

Host: "The reason I'm giving you this feedback is cuz I so want you to succeed." And the person on the receiving end goes, "I trust you. I know that." Okay.

Expert: So, yes, if they're not excellent conversationalists, it's true. They can be avoidant. But if they learn how to be assertive—and by the way, you know, you can be assertive—then they are tremendous in conversation because people trust them because they come from a good place.

Expert: Okay. The creative disruptor. So, the creative disruptor. This is my most challenging archetype. So, I'm really going to try to talk about this archetype in a positive way. Creative disruptors do not like rules. Their entire ethos is breaking things. They want to disrupt. They want to go anti-norm. They want to be countercultural. They're the ones who are like, "I don't need a blueprint." And them and me in conversation is not always the best. They are probably the ones in the comments who are like, "Well, this doesn't apply to me because of all these reasons," cuz they want to push. They want to challenge. And this is wonderful because they often are the really creative thinkers, right? They often are the ones who are thinking outside the box the most. They're often the ones who are willing to challenge the way something has always been done. The problem is sometimes that can rub people the wrong way. And sometimes these folks can thrive over conflict in the way of it's just fun for them. Like it's fun to negotiate, it's fun to push. Litigators—my litigators who are watching, I find that my litigators tend to fall into this category...

Host: ...or very disruptive entrepreneurs.

Expert: I know there's ones on this show, I've listened to the interviews with them and I go, "Oh, that's a creative disruptor." It's someone who...

Host: ...they're not only building something, but they're not quite an ambitious hero because they want to break things. Like, they want to build it and break it. They want to reinvent the entire system, and they're doing it.

Expert: You know, Edward Snowden is one of the examples I give in the book of like he wanted to change something and also he wanted to like stick it to the man, like he wanted to break the system that he was in.

Host: Mhm. Okay.

Expert: Do you struggle with this? Do you like this interviews? They're very interesting.

Host: They're really good in interviews. I actually interviewed someone the other day that was like that.

Expert: So interesting.

Host: Because they have a contrarian view by nature. Everything they say is like deeply contrarian. Mhm.

Host: But I think having people like that that are challenging around, their default is challenge, is quite useful.

Expert: Yes.

Host: It helps me sort of refine my own points of view...

Expert: ...and they live as dream killers.

Host: Yeah.

Expert: Right. It can be amazing but it can be exhausting. So in conversation it's good to go in prepared to know, "Ah, I need this. I want to get stronger. I want to be anti-fragile." They'll break for you to make you stronger. Or like, "I'm a delicate flower right now. I cannot do the dream killing. I'm exhausted by it." It's a fine line between that and like pessimism.

Expert: Not always, but sometimes they are pessimistic. Not always. We have a creative disruptor friend who I did an Instagram post about this and I said, you know, "I have a friend who always says I hate everything. Texts: I hate everything, I hate everything." And Instagram knew it was him and served him the video and he texted me. He's like, "Is this me?" And I was like, "Yes."

Host: Instagram knew it was him.

Expert: Instagram. How dare you?

Expert: Okay, the last one is one we've actually already touched on, which is the unlucky struggler. So, this is someone with a contamination narrative. And they feel that no matter what they've done, they are unlucky. They are struggling. They often feel stuck. They often feel misunderstood. They often feel overlooked. And the problem with unlucky strugglers, the character you want to think of is like George Costanza from Seinfeld, right? Like, everything is bad for me. They can be hilarious, but they are tortured. They are tortured. And in conversation, it's really hard for ambitious heroes to not try to convince them that they're not unlucky. Like my biggest challenge with my unlucky strugglers in my life is to not try to flip them into something that they're not or try to convince them that they're actually lucky. They also in conversation can be very funny. Like they can make fun of themselves. They're so humble. Their low self-esteem. Some of the best comedians are unlucky strugglers. And so they're beautiful to be around, but sometimes you wish that they had more confidence in—the confidence you see in them, they had it, too.

Host: If you're in a conversation with one of these people that you don't gel with, is there a—I mean, you talk about it a little bit in the book, but what are the ways to get out of a bad conversation without offending people?

Expert: Oh my goodness. It's called a graceful exit. So there's a behavior concept, the peak-end effect, that we remember the first few minutes of a conversation and the last few minutes of conversation, but we tend to focus a lot on the first impression...

Host: Peak-end.

Expert: Like when you're remembering something, you remember the peak of a conversation and the end of the conversation. Okay, yeah, we also of course the first impressions are incredibly important as well, we tend to overindex on the first impression so we think a lot about our first few minutes, our opening line, maybe the highlight, but we don't really think about the end, but actually that's what we leave people with. So I have a formula, you know I love...

Speaker A: ...a formula. This calms my anxiety when I'm in a conversation and it's time to go, right? Either we're not feeling it, like we're not clicking, or like we got to go. One, first is a future cue. So, it's future cue plus compliment or action. So, a future cue is when you ask about or mention something coming in the future. The reason for this is it's a subtle way to shift the brain into not here, later.

Speaker B: Okay, so let's role play.

Speaker A: Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker B: We're at a party. We're having some wine and things get a little bit awkward. We ran out of things to say to each other.

Speaker A: Do you have any fun plans coming up this weekend? Do you have anything fun?

Speaker B: Uh, this wine bar across town that I'm really into, so I'm probably just going to go there, I think, with some friends.

Speaker A: Oh my gosh. Well, I hope it's lovely. Make sure to try... um I love a Chardonnay. I don't know if you like white wine. Be sure to try it. Future cue. So, I just asked you about a future and I'm going to wish you well on it, which already gets us into future mode. And then I'm going to end on a compliment or an action. "It was so lovely talking to you. I hope you have a great time with that wine bar. I'm going to go get some more coffee." Have you got any fun plans coming up?

Speaker B: I have so many fun plans coming up. My daughter's just started school and so we're having a celebratory Labor Day weekend this weekend.

Speaker B: What do you love to talk about? That's the...

Speaker A: That's a signature question.

Speaker B: What have you always wanted to learn? See, what if they just go straight back in though? Cuz that's happened to me before where I've tried to...

Speaker A: Okay, this is where the action and the compliment, that second piece [comes in]. So, the future cue is we mentioned future and you're right. They might keep going with it. The action and compliment is really important. So wrapping up the conversation sounds like, "It's been so wonderful talking to you." And I'm using an exit voice. Do you hear the exit voice? Right. Our tone really matters here. So, "It's been so wonderful talking to you. I hope that that goes great this weekend." Or, "Be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn. I was so happy we were able to trade numbers."

So you're mentioning the action that's going to come later. And it's using that closing voice and then the action. "I'm going to go grab more coffee. I'm going to go say hi to the host. I'm going to run to the ladies room. I'm going to head home." Right? Like then they cannot... right, like you've ended it then, and you also can use non-verbal cues here. So the moment I take a step back, the moment I angle my body towards the door, our brain subtly sees, "Ah, they are literally trying to physically disengage." So usually I pair those with those subtle non-verbal cues of like a slow back up and I angle towards the door.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: And remember you can be assertive with this. The worst kind of last impression is a lingering awkwardness. There is nothing worse than a "Well, this has been good... it's been good for you, it's been good for me. Well, um, so, uh..." Those are the worst. So, be assertive with this. If you want to end it, if you're feeling it's the end, do it. "It's been so great talking to you. I'm going to grab some more coffee. Good luck at the wine bar this weekend. Have so much fun." Right? Like, be assertive with it or else it will linger. And that is just kryptonite for charisma.

Speaker B: On this point of being assertive...

Speaker A: Oh, yes.

Speaker B: I was talking to some friends the other day about people that have aura and rizz.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Who has aura and rizz? Who does?

Speaker B: I don't know. I don't really know what the words mean. I kind of know what aura means, but I don't really know what rizz means. So I'm curious like how you define those terms and like how does one cultivate aura and rizz?

Speaker A: Okay, I think aura and rizz—and the only reason this is front of mind is my daughter asked me. She heard one of my YouTube videos and she said, "What is charisma?" She asked me that and I was like oo like she's eight. I said charisma or rizz or aura is someone that you really want to be around. It's when they walk into a room, you want to go over and talk to them, you want to sit near them, you want to listen to them, you want to work with them, you want to play with them. And I said, "Do you know anyone like that?" And she goes, "Oh, yes." And she named—it was so interesting—she named two kids in her class that I had already identified as very charismatic. Like I knew in my mind who the charismatic kids were in her class. I had popped them, right? I saw them. They were the kids that you really wanted to be around. They have this aura about them, and she named those exact two kids.

So I think that definition works. It's someone that we are drawn to verbally, physically. I think some of it can be physical and there's something hormonal there as well. But it's someone we're drawn to.

Speaker B: Okay. So based on the 20 years of research you've done...

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: ...if you were trying to teach me to have aura and rizz...

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: ...what are like the basics?

Speaker A: Be really easy to talk to.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Right. So the point of level one is to put someone at ease. We like to be around people who are, one, clearly signaling. We don't like people who are mute with their body language. We don't like people who under signal. We like people who clearly like us, right? So we have to be very aloud with our liking.

So saying things like, "It's always so fun talking to you." Or, "Oh, you always have the best stories. Oh, you always make me laugh. I love when you're put on my team."

So clearly signaling like, and verbally I think there's something called signal amplification bias, which is this bias that we have that we think we're being really obvious with our cues, but we are not in fact being obvious. We think that people know that we like them. "Of course they know that we like them," but actually people underestimate liking. Right? The liking gap. So we like people who are very clearly broadcasting likes.

And I have a funny story if I may. So, this hit very embarrassingly to home because of my job. I don't know if this happens to you. My friends often ask me to sus out their partners, like potential partners.

Speaker A: So, like a friend will be like, "Hey, I met a new guy. Can you go out dinner with us and tell me what you think?" Does that happen to you?

Speaker B: Absolutely not.

Speaker A: Oh my gosh. So, I get this a lot and by the way, I'm just a regular person, so I'm always like, "Are you sure you really want to know what I think?" Yes. So, I go on a lot of like second or third little ghosty coffee dates to see, to sus out the guy that...

Speaker B: It makes you feel needed.

Speaker A: "It makes me feel needed." Okay. I also love eavesdropping on like the date conversation. So, she said, "I really want you to meet this guy. Let's call him Schmobbert." Okay.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: And so we go on this dinner. We have like a Mediterranean platter. And you know, he was okay. You know, I was like, "Okay, he's nice, but I wasn't like green flag, green flag." You know, it's kind of like meh.

So the next day I get the call. She's like, "Hey, what did you think?" And I'm about to say it's only okay when she goes, "You know what? He just loved you." Like, "Oh, what?" She said, "Oh, you know, he thought you were so funny and he already bought your Audible book and he just loved talking to you."

Like the most... I started to like him more! Like it was so embarrassing cuz as she was telling me all these things about how he liked me, I was like, you know, Robert, he is a great guy. He's clever. He's so smart. He liked my jokes really. And she's like, "Yeah, he just really had a good time with you."

And I felt like I liked him more in that moment. And I was horrified by my own response. And I realized we so want to be liked that when someone clearly signals liking, it makes us like them more. Right? So we can be charismatic. One is we send clear signals of liking. But also two, and we talked about this a little bit...

Vanessa: Last time, is fundamentally 82% of our impressions of people are based on warmth and competence. So people who are first and is first signaling I'm open, I'm friendly, and then competent, I'm capable, I'm efficient, I'm effective, make us feel like I'm in good hands. In this way, every human being when we first meet, we're trying to answer two questions: Can I trust you? And can I rely on you? So the second thing that charismatic people are doing is they're signaling, you can trust me, and you can rely on me. I'm gonna get it done. I'm gonna only speak when I know something. I'm going to be assertive. I'm going to carry us through this conversation. I think that sort of the this came after Cues in a good way because Cues was very much about picking your signals.

Host: But conversation is about being a bit assertive about the plan, right? Like if you read this book, you are going to feel in control in conversation. You're going to feel like you're approaching a conversation and you know what you want to do if you have intention. We like that.

Vanessa: Mhm.

Host: Charismatic people like they can they carry us, right? Like they're like we we got this. We're going to do level. I'm gonna ask about this. I'm gonna do dream killing. And if I like you, if I like you, we're going to talk about your character. And so I think that that plan is a secret door to charisma.

Host: Is there anything else that you know people accidentally do that holds them back from being someone of high aura?

Vanessa: Yes, they try to be impressive. Now, I know we talked about this before, but here's what happens when you go into the conversation trying to sound smart, trying to impress people with your accolades and your background is you actually end up creating distance. And I have a story where this felt very very real. So, I was living in Austin, Texas. I moved since then, but I was in Austin, Texas. And I was invited to a VIP party.

Host: She lives down at the beach in LA. So, if anyone wants to do lunch or dinner or breakfast with Vanessa, she is I'll share her number in the comment section. It'll be pinned.

Vanessa: Exactly. So, I was in Austin and I was invited to this VIP party and I was like, "Oh man, like what why am I being invited?" Like, so imposter syndrome. So, we get there and I'm like immed like oh, I know that person's YouTube channel. Like, I know that person. Like, the people I immediately recognized and I'm like, "Wow." And then of course like within the first five minutes the leader of this group says we're going to get in a circle and we are going to introduce ourselves and this is like so we get in a circle and the first person basically is like I'm a billionaire and I invented the internet or something like that and the second person is like

Host: I would love to know what they actually said. I don't that's what you that's what you heard. That's what I I was like invented.

Vanessa: Like it was so impressive. It hurt, you know, and I was like, "Okay, okay." It first person is all right. The second person is like, "I cured cancer, right?" Like like like amazing like and it was just like person after person. It was like getting more and more impressive and like it's slowly coming to me and I was like everyone was trying to be impressive, right? Like they're they were saying things that were meant to to shock and wow and awe you. It gets to me and I was like, "My name is Vanessa and I'm a recovering awkward person and I help smart awkward people with my books and my YouTube channel." And everyone laughed and took a deep breath.

Vanessa: Now, I have other accolades that I could have shared, but I was like, "It's nothing in comparison." And also, I just wanted to be a little vulnerable. So, I said, "And I don't know why I was invited to this party." And everyone laughed, right? There's like a little bit of vulnerability. Every single person after me said, "I'm a recovering awkward person." So like they also were able to feel awkward. So it changed the nature of the rest of the invites, the rest of the introductions. And then afterwards, the circle like breaks up for networking. And most people came over to me, not the billionaire, not the cure of cancer, not the saving the earth climate change guru, but wanted to talk to me about awkwardness and about my YouTube channel and about they're smart, but they feel uncomfortable. And I realized like I was just the easiest person to talk to in that circle.

Host: You have aura, Vanessa.

Vanessa: You have I was the easiest person to talk to in that circle. And so I think that if we

Host: Do you have aura, Vanessa? You parlay that out.

Vanessa: Maybe when my makeup is done.

Host: Do you have aura?

Vanessa: When my makeup is done. Maybe.

Host: Maybe when my makeup is done.

Vanessa: Yeah. I mean, I don't I maybe

Host: I don't know. Do I? you do have a workout.

Vanessa: Um, so I I think that I just share that because we don't have to put so much pressure on ourselves to be impressive. In fact, the really impressive people I I don't know, I haven't met that many billionaires, but the ones I've met, like most of them are quite humble and they're quite like they they downplay how successful they are because they've already made it. And so I think if we all just put less pressure on ourselves to just connect, that would be easier.

Host: It does really track. I was thinking about the people in my life that have aura and they're not the people that have are the most successful, the most accomplished. They are they are the ones that you would most like to spend time with. Yeah.

Vanessa: For whatever reason. Yeah.

Host: Yeah. They're easy.

Vanessa: And and by the way, it's back and forth. Like you can be introverted and and or extroverted. You don't have like people I think think that master conversationalists are extroverted. Actually, that's not usually the case. Sometimes extroverts fall into their own traps with conversational narcissism. Uh ambiverts introverts do really well. But one of the other sort of definitions of aura is the person who I don't know they just seem to take up more space. They they seem to speak slower and be you kind of like see them walk across a room.

Host: What is that? And like how are they cultivating that like that kind of aura?

Vanessa: I think there's I this has been my guess. I have also thought about this when someone walks into a room and you're just like

Host: Michelle Obama was like that.

Vanessa: Oh I've never met her. But I can only imagine

Host: Tony Robbins as well.

Vanessa: He had serious

Host: winner.

Vanessa: I think when certain people walk into a room and they have claimed their space, I think it's internal and external. I think physically and this has been studied. They are physically taking up more space whether they're short or tall in that winners they have more space between their ears and their shoulders. They take up more space between their torso and their arms. they literally claim more space physically, right? So, if I were to like do the entire interview, and I've seen people do interviews in your chair where they're taking up as little space as possible, you you you aren't as drawn to this, right? And so, I think that physical there's a physical taking up space and they're micro movements. Like I it's not walking in like with my arms up. It's it's micro, right? It's like a a slight down of the shoulder. It's a slight up of the head. And when I do that, it affects everything about me. Like, it affects my vocal tone.

Vanessa: One thing that I think about a lot is maximum resonance point. Maximum resonance point is a a part of your voice that is the lowest end of your natural range that signifies pride that signifies calm. So for example, when I'm afraid or or a little bit nervous, like I'll tend to go a little bit higher in my vocal range. And if I were to do the entire presentation in this tone of voice or I was talking to this, it would be horrible, right? You would not want to listen to it. And that's because I'm tightening my vocal cords. And when someone's very anxious, they tighten their shoulders, they tighten their neck, they tighten their chin. It's more of a loser feeling, right?

Host: And you're also speaking a little bit faster then.

Vanessa: Oh, I Oh, interesting. I I didn't even notice it, but yes, I think I was Yeah. rushing. Rushing. Yeah. And I had less breath.

Vanessa: Like I'm actually out of breath after doing that. So, when we don't have breath, we're speaking too quickly. My vocal cords are tense. You can hear it and they're taking up less even vocal space, right? Winners use this maximum resonance point. So, we can actually try it if you want to. So, I want you at the very top of your—going to take in a deep breath and say hello at the top of your breath. So, it sounds like this. Hello.

Host: Okay. I'm a little bit sick, hence why my voice might sound a bit different today. So, I'm a little bit deeper than normal, but um... Hello.

Vanessa: Horrible.

Host: Yeah, that was embarrassing.

Vanessa: Horrible.

Host: Yeah.

Vanessa: Right. But I listen in on Zoom calls and I hear people that's their very first word. Like they literally hold their breath and they say, "Good morning. Hello. Hello everyone. Hi." Who? You are actually giving away your vocal competence because I'm so far away from my maximum resonance point. My maximum resonance point is when I speak on the outbreath. So my vocal cords are relaxed. So now listen to the difference. So here's the high: "Hello" versus "hello". Both me, but you're going to treat me totally differently. So now take a deep breath and say hello on the outbreath.

Host: Hello.

Vanessa: Right now that sounds more like you cuz you usually use your maximum resonance, right? You're very good at that. And I've noticed that in work culture, people who use their maximum resonance point, they are listened to more. They are easy to talk to because we want to listen to them. They take up more aura, more riz because we're like, ah, cuz we can hear their confidence. We can hear their relaxation. And so vocal cues are such an important aspect of charisma. You know, all these questions are beautiful, but how you say your words is just as important as what you say. If I were to ask, so uh like what's your pursue passion project? I guess I can do it. This stuff is so terrible. You know, like my lack of vocal care, you immediately hear and it tunes you out, right? So I can if I don't have good intention here, it does leak out. That's why earlier when you asked me like, "Does intention matter?" I said, "If you have intention to care and try, it's going to matter. But if you don't, if you're not trying, people will hear it. And a lot of that is voice. And I think that very charismatic people, they're imbuing their voice with that winning calm confidence. And we want to catch it.

Host: What about the rest of me? So, we've talked about some of the specific conversational questions at the three stages. We've talked about vocal tone. Is there any other part of being a great conversationalist? And I'm thinking now about I guess we talked about hands and taking up space, but even eye contact. I think about this a lot. It takes a lot of dare I say confidence to for me to like look you in the eyes like this Vanessa and ask you a question.

Vanessa: That is because when we are making eye contact chemically we're producing oxytocin which is great for connection but also you are not able to process as much. The reason why eye contact is quite complicated and I think sometimes the clips on social media have—I don't like clips very much because it takes out the nuance. Eye contact. Yes, universally it's good when we have oxytocin, but also I cannot do complex thinking when I'm doing this with you, right? Like when I'm trying to remember something, I immediately look away. If you were to ask me a complex math problem, I look away. And so in conversation, we actually do not want 100% eye contact. We don't even want 70% eye contact. 60 70% eye contact is is more ideal in Western cultures. But if someone is deep thinking or they are social processing, you actually do want less eye contact because they're they're trying to access their memories. If I'm doing this, I'm purely focused on the connection. But we're in an interview. I want to—what does my work say? What was the research? What was the number? And so that is why it can be sometimes uncomfortable is because it's not allowing your brain to think. It's just about connection.

Host: But when you're delivering like I understand the deliberation, you look away when you deliver. I do that like I'm doing right now. But then when I deliver the point,

Vanessa: oh yeah,

Host: I come back. Is that

Vanessa: you know why? Because one, yes, you're trying to connect. But two, when you are delivering, you want to watch my face to see, do I believe you? Am I raising my eyebrows? Am I showing you disgust? Am I like, I don't believe it. I harden my lower lid. So, the reason why we'll often like we're processing, we're processing, and then we're delivering is because two things are happening at once. We're trying to connect. I want you to hear my point and feel it with oxytocin, but also I want to see, do you believe me or are you raising your eyebrows? Right? I'm making more eye contact with you because I'm trying to see where your interest lies, right? Whereas you're looking at your iPad because you're trying to get to the next question. You want to make sure that we're covering everything. That's why this is not natural. This doesn't usually happen natural conversation. But it's also when you're in conversation, you're better off making eye contact in the first few seconds of an interaction. So, right when you're on that greeting, oh, it's so good to see you hopping on video or in person cuz you're giving that burst of oxytocin. But then you're okay to look away. You're okay to process. You might want to make your eye contact most when you're trying to sus out how is this person receiving this.

Host: Mhm.

Vanessa: That also makes you easy to talk to because if I notice that you're lighting up about something, I can pivot more into that. If I notice you're like, "That's horrible." I want to be easy to talk to by pivoting away from it.

Host: And when you're talking to me, what is the best way to be a good listener? M. So, cuz some people go like they interrupt. They go, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." And then you've got other people who will like nod and like really sort of encourage and cheerlead when you're talking and then you'll have the like some people that they they kind of they don't know they're doing it, but they start to like scowl at you.

Vanessa: I know. I know. Yes. Yes. That really bothers me.

Host: But it it I I struggle with that a little bit just personally cuz I'm a people pleaser. So, when someone's like

Vanessa: I actually have a friend who defaults to the discuss microp expression. He doesn't even realize he's doing it. It's a punctuator. A facial punctuator is a a non-verbal habit. It doesn't actually mean anything emotionally. It's just how they are at rest. I've had to tell myself he doesn't actually feel disgusted. So, you're talking about warmth. All the listening cues are about warmth. So, listening cues are nodding, triple nod. Uh the in India, Bulgaria, and Pakistan, nodding is a little bit different. So, I always try to make that note. A head tilt is a universal warmth signal because we're exposing our ear up to the sky. Um a lean is uh warm and competent. both actually cuz I'm trying to literally get closer to you to understand more deeply. A competent cue where you're listening is a lower lid flex. So if I flex my lower lids at you, this is a universal response. When we flex our lower lids, we're trying to see something better. Right? If I say, "Do you see that over there?" We harden our lower lids. What we're doing biologically is we're hooding our eyes to to block the light so I can see more detail. So when you're speaking and someone goes, they are trying to deeply understand you. It is not positive or negative. It is a cue of intense focus. Take note.

Host: Mhm.

Vanessa: Because whatever you just said has triggered something in their brain that they're going what?

Host: Mhm.

Vanessa: Right. So when I'm giving, you know, a presentation to a seauite and I have a couple or or you know, investors or important people and I see someone do a lower lid flex, I have a choice. I can take note of what I just said and bookmark it or I can stop and do dynamic presenting. We haven't even talked about presenting but I can sw—this make sense are we good any questions here

Vanessa Van Edwards: You know, let me give you another example of this. So you can also look for these cues, which also makes you a pleasure to listen to because I am so deeply listening that I'm trying to respond to your emotional reaction to what I'm saying.

Host: I think that is a really—we sort of touched on that earlier, but I think it's a really unappreciated part of being a good conversationalist is being dynamic based on the cues you're getting back.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yes. Yes. Actually, please let's double click on this for a second because I think my planners who are watching are like, "Okay, I got a plan, Vanessa. I got it. I got my questions." What I don't want you to do is have the plan, ask the question, and then check off to the next one.

Host: Mhm.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Right. The whole point of these is actually to be quite dynamic. It might be that you ask, "What's your personal passion project?" And you spend hours talking about that. What a pleasure. What a delight. That means you're being dynamic in that way, like you both lit up on it. You can go there. You can dive deep. So I want you to have a plan, but I also want you to be dynamic with it. Like both can be true.

Host: Vanessa, of all the things that we have discussed, is there anything we haven't talked about that we should have talked about that appears within your new book, Conversation: How to Connect with Anyone and Make Every Interaction Count?

Vanessa Van Edwards: There is one thing that we didn't get to touch on that I think can help you prepare for good conversation just very practically, which is you are going to be asked boring questions. We talked about this earlier. I want you to, if you are willing, write down the questions you are asked the most often. Everyone kind of gets similar questions depending on their job, their industry, where they are in the world. What are the questions you're asked most often? And how can you do better?

And then think of what are gifts to the other person. Not just interesting for you, right? Like not just like, "Oh well, you know, an interesting fact about me," but like what is a story or an anecdote or an answer that's going to let the other person be like, "Oh, me too," or "Really? What got you into that? Or why did you do that?" Because then your answer is doing two things. It's interesting, but it's also conversationally generous.

Host: You're not creating a dead end for yourself.

Vanessa Van Edwards: And this is so true because there is a most interesting thing about everybody. And that most interesting thing will get the same set of questions. Yes.

Host: There's someone that I know and she has a very interesting career, but in one part of her career, she went to Bible school for a couple of years, and I've never met anybody that went to Bible school for three years. So, I imagine this person always gets asked about Bible school for three years because everybody wants to know about three years of her life.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yeah. Yeah. So I remember I was just thinking then like that's the question that everybody, when you introduce it, they were like, "Bible school?"

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yeah. And I give this example in the book is my friend Jason, he can't smell or taste.

Host: Mhm.

Vanessa Van Edwards: And he's always at dinners with people. That's all he does all the time. He's the editor of Entrepreneur magazine. And so he is always at dinners. And he brings it up on purpose. People say, "What are you ordering?" People ask about food all the time. And he goes, "Well, actually, I have no sense of taste or smell. So what's your favorite thing? What should I taste? If I could taste something, what would you have me taste?" And it produces incredible conversations.

So much so that I was talking to my friend Nicole Lapin. She goes, "I know Jason." And she began to tell me about his interesting stories.

Host: She remembered his interestingness from that answer.

Vanessa Van Edwards: So even like where are your settings? Are you doing coffee? Is there interesting coffee anecdotes? Are you always at meals? Right? So you can also set yourself up and them up for success with those interesting answers.

Host: So have a script for the questions that you get asked the most that offer gifts to those that are on the receiving end of that answer.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yeah. And the last thing I would say is this is a plan. And the entire goal of this is for you to feel more in control, for you to feel more confident. You know, I think as someone who wasn't confident for a long time and who had very awkward conversations for a long time, just knowing that I had a good intent helped me a lot. So, this is the plan. But also, feel free to totally deviate from the plan. That when you're in the moment, if you're feeling excited and interested and engaged, go with it. If you're feeling "I don't like this person, I don't feel this person, we are off," you can leave the conversation.

Host: Who did you write this book for, Vanessa? So if they've gotten to this stage in the conversation and they're thinking, should I get that book or not? Who is it for?

Vanessa Van Edwards: This is for people who want to stop dreading small talk. Dread was a real motivation for me because so many of my students would say, "Oh, I have to go to the networking event. I'm dreading talking to my boss. I hate those first five minutes of my team call. Oh, I don't know what to talk about on a date." And first dates are horrible. First dates can be fun if you have a conversational plan. Even if it's not your person, they can still be fun.

Conversation can be not awkward. It can be great at the start of a meeting if you know how to do it. And so I would like to get rid of the dread in your life. I would like to get rid of the awkwardness in your life. And the deeper meaning is we are in a loneliness epidemic. And I think if we don't remember how good the joy of conversation is, we won't do it. And so if I can take away the dread of conversation and give you beautiful conversation with your person or not, you're going to feel less lonely.

Host: Kind of sounds like it's for all of us. I think it's for all of us.

Host: What a wonderful book and what a perfectly timed book at a time when AI and computers are, you know, robbing us of the joy of human conversation. And I think increasingly kids are going to struggle with conversations. I mean, people are saying this already. Teachers say to me that, you know, they see their kids in class and they don't know the basic skills of how to relate to each other through conversation. So, a great book I think for—

Vanessa Van Edwards: It was meant to be now. It was meant to be now.

Host: It was meant to be. It took you a long time, right?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yeah.

Host: Many years. 20 years. Wow. Well, I'm glad it's here. Conversation: How to Connect with Anyone and Make Every Interaction Count. And I'm going to link it below if anyone wants to go and buy it right now.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Thank you.

Host: What a wonderful book, Vanessa. Congratulations.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Oh my goodness. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's finally here. Thank you for helping me bring it into the world.

Host: It's okay. You deserve everything. You're such a phenom.

Vanessa Van Edwards: My gosh, I'm obsessed with people. That's it.

Host: We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is, do you feel like there are things you sacrificed in your personal life to build your success that you regret and wish you could now get back?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yes. Um, you know, I briefly mentioned that I moved and I moved to be closer to family. And that was because I think I sacrificed friendship and family relationship in the hustle. You know, we moved to Austin for work. I moved to Austin for work and I left my family and I don't regret Austin cuz I had some great growth there, but I regret being away from my family when my children were very, very little. It was really hard to have babies without my mom, without my sister. And so I wish I could have figured that out a little bit differently, but I'm here now.

Host: And what is it you wish you could get back?

Vanessa Van Edwards: I felt very alone as a new mom, and I don't think that helped me or my children. I wish I could get back that time to feel more communal. You...

Vanessa: You know, having a baby is such a beautiful thing for family and friends. And it was very lonely cuz I just didn't have a lot of people around me.

Host: And now you're here.

Vanessa: I know. By the beach in LA.

Host: I'm back. My sister is at my house right now.

Vanessa: Oh, really?

Host: With my kids. Yes.

Vanessa: It's good to have you in town.

Host: I'm so excited. And I will come maybe.

Vanessa: I don't believe you. You don't have to say it. You don't have to say it. I'm not going to invite you to anything.

Host: Conversation, how to connect with anyone and make every interaction count. Please do go buy this book. Very important to Vanessa and also very important to me by way of that. And it's a brilliant, brilliant book. One I think that we all need. Vanessa, thank you. We're done.

Vanessa: Thank you.

Host: Thanks. YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior. And the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check this video out and I bet you you might love