Transcript of Vanessa Van Edwards: The Conversation Habit That Makes Smart People Unlikable

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

Do you think they're listening right now and think, fuck, that's me?

Yes.

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

Well, I have a do you talk too much test.

So there's 5 questions here, and if you answer more than 3 times, you're probably an overtalker.

Yeah.

Because my next question is like, which one's worse, overtalking or undertalking?

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 are having less conversations, 1 in 6 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. But 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 that blueprint, blueprint, it becomes easier. For example, we devised 3 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, or what do you do, they ran out of things to talk about. But the worst question in the history of conversations is, what the fuck? But I also have a formula to immediately bypass that small talk.

Also a secret door into charisma. But also there are 5 archetypes, and this is going to impact getting a promotion and finding your soulmate.

And we're going to go through all of them. But what are the ways to get out of a bad conversation without offending people?

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—

Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know. And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also, it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make this show better. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much. Vanessa Van Edwards, on page 5 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 everything you could have written about, everything we've talked about before? Why is this book needed at this time?

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.

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?

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 wanna 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. 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. And I think we have to start thinking about conversation almost like going to the gym. We've 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, conversation, I think, is a skill to learn. I don't think 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.

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

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. 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. 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 'cause 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. 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.

Conversation boosts us, gives us energy. So, you feel dread in social interactions. 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. 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 conversationalists, 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.

So how long have you spent doing the research that feeds into what we're gonna talk about today and feeds into this new book?

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 8 years ago, this is when the real research began, and it started with an experiment. I call it my speed networking experiment. This fundamentally changed the way I think about conversation. So, here's what we did. I knew there was some secret that conversationalists had, and I was like, I'm going to find it. So, we devised 3 different speed networking experiments with 500 speed networkers. We brought them in these rooms, and we had cameras set up in all 4 corners of the room, because good conversation looks different. Really good conversation, you've seen, do you ever like— Of course.

I love it. Adam West on—

My favorite's like, are they having a bad day? So, a good conversation is a lot of gestures, a lot of leaning, it has that high High energy, you see a lot of vocal charisma, the volume goes up. In a bad conversation, it sort of sounds like this.

Right?

Like it has like very low energy, like apologetic facial expressions, like low volume. Then I assigned these networkers 6 conversation starters. Now, I picked these conversation starters, I'm gonna tell you what they are, very carefully. 3 of them I thought could do really well, and 3 of them I wasn't sure about. I wanted to see. We gave them these 6 conversation starters and we asked them after each timed conversation to rate the quality of it. 1 being, that was the worst, most awkward conversation I've ever had, to 5 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. The losers, the conversations that produced the worst connection, the most awkwardness, were Last choice. Want to guess what last choice was? Last.

In terms of an opener?

In terms of just a question. A typical question you ask after 2 minutes. How are you? Number 5. That was the 5th worst. Very close to the bottom. 6th was—

Something about the weather?

What do you do?

What do you do? That was the worst?

The worst.

Okay.

Why? So these last 2, 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 there's a lack— A, it's more of a performance. There's a lack of excitement in the question. 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 1 conversation, which is you are trapped in fact. Where are you from? Got any kids? Married? The facts are dead ends, right? So, it's very hard for someone to break out of that fact because they're stuck in that social script. The best conversation starter was actually a sneaker. I was like, interesting that this one did best by a lot. It was, what was the highlight of your day? 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 quickly, right? 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 moment someone goes, oh, and they're thinking for the first time, their brain goes, ooh, we get to do something new. So, they got to think of something new and it was immediate.

Mm-hmm.

Like, it wasn't like a too big of a question. The second question was, have anything exciting you're working on? This is kind of a subtle replacement for what do you do, right? If someone likes what they do, they're gonna talk about it, but they're gonna reframe it in something exciting. And if 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 first 3, are literally searching for good. You're inviting the other person to only think about good things, and we're juicing excitement for other parts of their life. 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 4th question, people either loved it or they hated it. They either gave it a 5, that was like the most connective thing I felt all week, or a 0, and a 0 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?

Derivatives of that question.

Okay.

Yeah.

So extroverts tend to default to that question because they want to go a little bit deeper, but actually that is a level 3 question. It is way too advanced for someone who's introverted or someone who has never 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? How can I give that to you so quickly? So, you're by accident putting them into conversational fear. This is when I realized there's a hierarchy. We have to move through our conversations with different levels. This is why we have this.

So for anyone that can't see, because you're listening on Apple Music or Spotify or whatever, we have a 3-tier little stage in front of us. Tier 1, tier 2, tier 3. What are these 3 tiers?

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 3 distinct levels. Level 1 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 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. The key here is that really good level 1 question is taking those facts, but adding story, but adding emotion. So, the best way to do level 1 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 stop sign, a story is a doorway.

Give me an example of both.

Okay, so, one of them, we're actually gonna, 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?

And would you open with that? Is that what you're saying, or is it doesn't really matter?

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, Steven?

Right?

It's a little bit much. We have to do our basic first impression, and we can talk about 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.

Hmm.

It's really safe to ask, how are you? It's 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 get 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. 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 because you're hunting for something good. Now, when I think about conversation in level 1, you're trying to gift someone a chemical cocktail a little bit, and I think in level 1, these 2 questions are doing a lot of heavy lifting. They are now competing with your feed. I went to a PTA meeting recently, and those are torture, if you've ever been to one, for any parents.

What's a PTA meeting?

Oh, a parent-teacher meeting.

Okay.

Right, so a bunch of other parents in the room, and I wanted to go meet other moms 'cause I just moved across the country to try to meet more people, and I was excited. I was like, okay, I'm gonna 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.

Mm-hmm.

I have to make my questions and my answers so dopamine-worthy that they're actually going to beat that feed. Otherwise, they're gonna go right back to their phone. That is why these have to do more lifting, because if I wanna 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 gotta, We gotta lift a little bit more in our conversations because otherwise someone's gonna 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. 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. 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 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 it's this information gap where the brain is like, I have to know.

Mm-hmm.

What is the weirdest thing? 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, phones down.

Mm-hmm.

Right? Now, I couldn't say something boring. I couldn't be like, I was stuck in traffic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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. This is the last one. So, have any fun plans coming up? Now, the reason why this one is important, and I agonized over this third question because there's 3 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 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 callbacks. They make conversation easier later.

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

And energy and willing to do it.

Energy. I think there'll be a lot of, one might say, introverts listening right now that just think, what's the fucking point? You know, I don't like people anyway, and it's so much energy, and I've gotta ask these questions and pretend to be interested. This is gonna drain me.

Oh my gosh, I, I agree. And 2 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. I find it exhausting to stand at an event or be schmoozing with people backstage and be talking about nothing. Do you wanna have very boring, predictable conversation where you're less memorable and they're less memorable and you're just waiting till you can get home to Netflix? That's one heart. That's not what I would choose. Or do we choose the heart of, I'm gonna break a script, right? I'm gonna try to do level 1 better. I'm gonna try to trigger a little bit of dopamine. I'm gonna 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 2 sides of conversation, talking and asking.

I think even for those introverts, they have really, really big goals in their life that they care about. And so I think connecting this level 1 stuff to their highest goals is critical for the behavior to occur and for it to net out in the incentive equation as being worthwhile. Because 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 whoever I wanna be, father, mom, daughter, whatever, then I'm in.

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, ugh, I don't know if I want my employees to talk a lot. 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. And in fact, the key word here is friction. When you have a company who, 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 costs companies money. And so, if you have a community of employees who have very easy level 1, they don't need to get to level 3. You don't need to get to level 3 with everyone in your company. You don't need to get to level 3 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. People show up on time. People are more productive. People want to be there because they actually want to connect and collaborate with their— 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 1. In fact, work conversations should be really ideal level 1s.

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

Yes.

Because these CEOs or founders or busy people generally are very time poor.

For sure.

So they don't have 30 minutes to move their way to connection. But are you saying that—

These are shortcuts.

Okay. Right?

So it's way worse for a CEO to be like, shoot, I've been told I better be warmer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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 competence than the warmth. So, they try to do warmth because they feel like they should, 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, well, it's not working. It was anti-productive. No, I'd rather you skip ahead, make this level quick and good, right? So, 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 on 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 1. It's only good, so otherwise, otherwise people will accidentally complain. They'll be like, oh, the weather, traffic. Right. But you're putting a frame around it that's good. You're timeboxing 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 1 things have one thing in common, which is they provoke a positive search and response.

Yes.

So that's really the crux of level 1. It's just a question that's producing a positive state.

Sorry. 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.

Okay.

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 or 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, you know, 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. And this is another, one of the other master conversationalists I study who's excellent at level 1 is Jerry Seinfeld. So, Jerry Seinfeld has a little conversational trick, and this is in level 1 of the book, which is he often meets people after his event and they're so starstruck by him, they don't know what to say, and conversation is really awkward.

He has a little awkward. So, 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? You know, where do you live? 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. What'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, 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 1 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.

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 wanna 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?

Okay, so I always, whenever after speaking at book signing, 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 2, which we can skip. 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 2. So, you can ask it, especially if someone's just spent an hour listening to you.

Wait, what's the difference between level 1 and level 2?

Okay. Oh, sorry. Yes, we skipped ahead. Okay, so we'll put a pin in this. One of the things I want to say about that question is I read this framework. 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 yet. 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? Because 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, I had to, one, my brain was flipped off autopilot immediately, and I had to get more creative with my questions.

And I had to also think that I want— I was like, I'm just going to discover things about them. 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 1, these 3 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 1. Level 2. So we have general traits. We must start there. We cannot skip too quickly to level 2. Level 2 is called personal concerns. Personal concerns is where we begin to connect deeply. This is our motivations, our goals, our values, our worries.

And I'm assuming you do level 2 once you've got past level 1 connection.

Exactly.

So this is us going deeper with the person.

Exactly. Or leveling up. As you wish, right? As you wish. So, the mistake traps that people make is they skip level 1. 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 an autopilot way. Level 2 is when you start to understand what motivates someone. The kind of mental trick that I use is, you know, you're on level 2 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, what worries them. I encourage people as they're reading, think of the 5 people you interact with most and place them on a level. Do you only know the basic facts about them? Are you all the way at level 3, which we're going to get to? It's sometimes helpful. You'll notice patterns. I don't know about you, but I love level 2. I want to get through level 1 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. Level 2 is about making someone feel heard and understood. And this is different than discovering treasure. And the biggest skill that we can do in level 2 is what I call dream building. So, dream building is everyone has like a secret desire, a secret dream, a secret side hustle, secret passion. Can you be there and help them uncover it? That's the goal of level 2.

So, give me an example. Of dream building.

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 2 for me. It's something that I've been working on secretly and quietly. And if we were at lunch, I would've told you all about it. We would've 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 way that I— a framework that I give for folks Yeah. 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 eradicate it? And they want help with it, but they're too afraid to ask. Pest projects have a lot of shame. On level 2, 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?

And are there questions that evoke dream building?

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, 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 2 question. Right? You're like, like leveling them up in a safe way because they're talking about their birthday. Any 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 2 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.

It gives them permission to dream a little bit and to—

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 I've, it's almost like you 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 to that person.

What if you're met with a dead end when you ask these kind of level 2 questions?

Well, then you get to answer.

Because some people haven't quite figured out what their biggest goal is.

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, 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 2 things can happen is if they don't have it yet, that's okay. You also have opportunity to share.

But what if I ask— I'm thinking, because I know a lot of taxi drivers listen to this podcast because I get in taxis and we talk about it. I love it. Taxi drivers, they're conversationalists, often very good ones. But sometimes I guess a taxi driver might be faced with the scenario where the person in the backseat doesn't want to talk, and they might hit them with one of these level 1s and then the level 2s, and they're just getting brick walls.

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

Do you just back out?

Yeah.

Okay.

Because then they're going through their own thing, right? You have to have also courage to be disliked, right? 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, could we, could we do this? You want to banter with me? Should we have level 1? Should we even dip into level 2? Great. If not, cool. They're not your person or it's not their day.

So if they don't take the bait?

It's okay.

Okay.

Taxi drivers usually ask me, um, got anything exciting today? Are we going anywhere exciting? Great. That's a great swap for level 1. I should say, by the way, These questions are suggestions. If you can modify them to fit what you are doing, even better. For example, you and I are in book signings, or we are meeting people after speaking events. It makes sense for us to modify the learning or goal question to say, hey, what did you learn? Or, did you learn anything new? Or, what was your favorite part? We're modifying that for us. A taxi driver's going to modify it for, are we heading anywhere exciting?

Sure, sure.

Doing anything exciting today? So, these are not prescriptions. They are guidelines to try to make the research applicable. 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 1, 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 1, Treasure hunt. Put someone at ease. Ask them about what they love. Harvest story. The goal of level 2 is to give someone permission to share a dream, a secret desire, or a secret worry. And level 3, we get to get to in a little bit when you're ready. Oh, we have one more level 3. Hold on. Level 2 question.

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 personal passion project is? Does it matter if you don't actually care?

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 because 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.

So, is it okay to pretend to care?

If you're asking the question, you care enough to try, right? If you're listening to this podcast, you already care enough to be like, I know I should. I know I should be a master conversationalist. 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. We just got to find the ones that work for you.

And you talked a second ago about these questions that lead to dead ends, which are like, what do you do? What are the other examples you gave?

Okay, I have a question that I hate a lot. I hate it a lot. I want it to leave our vocabulary. It's the worst question in the history of conversation. It is, been busy?

Okay.

Yeah. Right?

Been busy? What do you do? When you're on the receiving end of those kinds of questions, how do I counter that? Because I'm going to get that everywhere I go forever. So how do I counter that?

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 2 buckets here. The first bucket is when you're asked, what do you do? And you're going to be asked it 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 Because 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? 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.

As in creates that curiosity gap.

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. 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 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 5th 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 5th grade teacher. And I was like, wow. The intention there was to be interesting, right? He didn't wanna say, I'm just a 5th grade teacher, but he gave the brain too many calories, like conversation calories. The brain wants the simplest, easiest road possible. We wanna put people at ease. What doesn't put people at ease is acting like you're reading your resume.

Mm-hmm.

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.

So that answer that he gave was vague. It was—

Complex.

Complex.

And it wasn't the social hierarchy. And it wasn't interesting. Also, it didn't give me a link, right? Like, the social hierarchy of facts, I have to know what you do before I can know your how.

So what should he have said?

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. So, what he should have said is, I'm a 5th 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, 5th 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? 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.

Mm-hmm.

And again, a formula, always take it loosely, make it fit. I do blank. For who? By how? That is doing some— it's 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 to, can you help me? Can you help my friend? Is it for my sister? And then if it fits It's your how.

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

Love, love a multi-hyphen.

They do a this, a that, a violin, a creator, a LinkedIn thing, a speech, a dance, an improv.

Yeah.

So how do those people answer when they're multi-hyphenated?

Oh, I love it. Okay, so 2 things. A multi-hyphen, we understand complexity as humans, we get it. So you can say, I daylight as a 5th grade teacher, but I moonlight as a cinematographer, right? You can literally say your 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, I've been working in marketing for the last 20 years, but I'm thinking about going back to school for psychology, right? We think that people can't handle it, but conversation can handle a lot, and it doesn't take a long time. Now, I do want to make a note here, the mechanics of conversation. So, there's 2 aspects of conversation. There's the art, like weaving in excitement and harvesting story, and I love that, but there's also the mechanics. So let's talk about that first. So the Kander 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?

15 seconds.

Wonderful. 15 to 30 seconds. Okay, so in average conversation, we like 15 to 30 seconds. 45 seconds is okay, but we start to turn to a monologue.

By this you mean how long we speak for Each. Before I let you speak.

Yes, before we start to feel like, whoa, I'm talking too much, it's not my turn. So 15 to 30. And by the way, if you wanna go listen to previous Zoom conversations, it can be helpful to know if you're an over-talker or an under-talker. Under 15 seconds, you might be actually creating conversational scarcity, like not asking enough, not talking enough.

Which one's worse, do you find?

Well, I'm an over-talker, so I'm gonna say under-talking, 'cause I'm an over-talker, so I'm gonna say it's worse to be under-talker. Wait, by the way, can I take a hit at podcasts for a second.

Sure.

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.

Damn. Wow. Right?

They send them back to me. Well, what— a voice note 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 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. Only 3 in 10 Americans socialize on a day-to-day basis. Only 3 in 10 Americans socialize on a day-to-day basis, meaning they're having more time alone and they're conversing less.

Yes.

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 1 in 6 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.

Do—

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. And that is because we're talking 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 knowing whether you are a good conversationalist talker, there was a recent study of over 1,000 Americans, and they found that 95% of people have worked with someone who talks too much. These chatty coworkers spend an average of 90 minutes of their workday just talking. And 71% of respondents said talkative coworkers prevented them from getting their work Yes. 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 rate, 15 to 45 seconds, 45 seconds the most. Second, nonverbal cues. Someone is checking out if they are opening their mouth as if to say something. That is a subtle cue that someone wants to turn, but they are going to wait. So if someone is opening their mouth, I call it the open fish. It means they want to turn. Like, you did it to me earlier and I totally stopped.

Yeah, you did. Yeah. Yeah.

Because I was like, oh, he wants to say something.

Yeah. No, so I actually do give people cues that I want to say something sometimes, and some of them see them and some of them just do not.

But I was fully distracted.

You're on the more sensitive end of the scale where you're almost watching what I'm doing. And having done, what, 700 of these interviews now, it's really fascinating to me that 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, I— they immediately change.

Yes.

Whereas other people don't even know I'm here. Yes. It's actually what I prefer because then I can like grace 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.

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, because I know that you're taking cues from me.

Right. And also, I'm looking for your eyebrow raises. One is Neil deGrasse Tyson says that every book is every eyebrow-raising thing he's ever said, because he'll go on airplanes and he'll just talk to people. And when they go, oh, then 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'd be so hard to read you. And so, if you raise your eyebrows, I want to double-click on it, right? Because you're the tastemaker, right? I know I'm saying things that 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 this is why this is not a normal conversation. A conversation doesn't go like this. Those moments go viral, right? Like, when you go, oh.

Yeah.

Like, the replayed part.

Like the Amber Heard thing.

Right. And unfortunately, we're all here because we're trying to reach people, right? And so if you are going, ah, ooh, ah, and you raise your eyebrows, then 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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That's pro.fiverr.com. I'll be honest, Vanessa. I was thinking about someone that I might consider to be in the over-talking category.

Yeah.

And when they talk, I don't think they have any concept that there's anybody else in the room. I think 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. And they're just— and they're going to finish when they feel like they've run out of things. Okay.

This is, there are 2 types of conversational people. There's entertainers and appreciators. One of the biggest questions I get is, how do I talk to VIPs? How do I talk to my boss? 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.

Who was it?

We're going to cut this?

No, keep it in.

I think he's pretty famous.

Massively famous.

Okay. He comes in and we have a little bit of downtime before he has to go up. And I watched person after person try. 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. Compliment or question. Oh, what's the best thing you've ever done? I won't get too specific. What was your— do you have any advice for me as a young person? It was either compliment or question. He was just not having it. Yeah, nice to meet you. Quick selfie, just not engaged. And I was like, wow, that's what I would've 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 who was going to mic And he said, can I tell you the funniest story? And he was like— 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. So what I realized was there are certain people who wanna entertain. They speak longer, so they're, they're more at risk of talking too much. They want you to laugh at their jokes. They wanna share their stories. Their love language in conversation, that what gives them energy is other people giving them adoration or listening to their stories, listening to their ideas. They love giving advice. They're, they talk more in conversation. The other type of person, and I think this is you, and actually this is me, even though I know 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 wanna go to dinner is talk. In fact, when people ask me deep questions, I sometimes am like, can we go back to level 1 and can you just tell me everything? 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 3, 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?

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 they're boring. 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.

Conversational narcissist.

Okay, is that a thing?

Yeah. So these are people in conversation, and this is when the levels still hold. In fact, sometimes the conversational narcissist will take themselves, they'll walk themselves right up all 3 levels. They'll answer for themselves in level 1, 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 verbal vomit, right? Someone just, they won't stop talking, and they're just telling you things that 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, say, is it my turn yet? Do you wanna hear about mine? Do you wanna hear about my goal?

Right?

Like, if this is the person you're gonna invest in and you care for and you like, you have to, you have to stand up for what you wanna share.

In your experience, where does that conversational narcissism come from?

Insecurity.

Yeah. Right?

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

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— because the person that I was referring to, they know they talk too much because they say it and they've had the feedback multiple, 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. So I'm wondering if they're listening now and they go, okay, that's me. Because my next question is, how do they fix it?

Curiosity. That's an easier question. I actually don't think there's a hard and fast rule. Some conversational narcissists are aware of it and hate themselves for it. They literally know they're doing it and they're like, why? Stop talking. They literally know what's happening and they're like, why? Why am I doing this? But they can't stop because they're so scared of the awkward silence. And by the way, we asked 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 because they are terrified of that moment where they're sitting with Stephen Bartlett, And there's a silence, and then you're like, bye.

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.

That's why I don't have a podcast. That's why I don't have a podcast. And then the way that they fix it is curiosity, right? I do believe in assertive curiosity, not just the follow-up, like, tell me more, but 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.

Wait, I'm confused. So if we had a conversational narcissist here, are you telling me how they would recover from that?

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

Okay, but they know, they know. I feel like they know that. I feel like they know they talk too much.

Okay, then I'm going to say something. You're not going to like it. 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 wanna know my answer or is it my turn yet, is a way of being like, is there curiosity there?

Mm-hmm.

I think that's really important. I think in relational patterns, 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 them, This podcast is that you will go have a conversation, a cornerstone conversation with someone and ask all 9 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 over-talker in their 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 9 questions. Do you want to do them together? I'll go first. Could she do it? It's a she, right?

He.

He. Could he do it?

Right?

Could he do it? And so, this is how you can break that rut to see if there's actual curiosity there. Because I always assume the best in people. I'm hoping that this person is very well-intentioned, just has deep insecurity. It is the case. And so, if you do that, If you were to give a framework, it can sometimes break you out of a conversational rut with someone.

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

Yeah. After Dale Carnegie. Yes. I wish I had created it with it. So Dale Carnegie is sort of 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 way to think. less conversational generosity. One small goal for the book was to create more conversational generosity, that if you're in conversation and someone is over-talking, you can be generous enough to either say, hey, can I have a turn? Or to let them entertain you because they're entertainers, or to ask even more questions.

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.

The most popular kids were the kids who had the longest list of people they liked. Meaning, if you wanna 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 2 and maybe even level 3 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 thank goodness I 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, 2 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 3 things, and so they keep talking. So I would try to ask better, deeper questions, lean into it, and see if that can get them calm enough to be like, oh, he chose me. He loves me.

What's interesting is I observe with people like that, that they step more into the conversational narcissism with certain people?

Yes. Yes.

So with certain individuals. So for example, in this case, if I was a beautiful woman, this individual would, would be full-blown, like word vomit, like it would fully come out.

Oh. You know? Yeah.

Or just women generally, even if it's a platonic relationship.

Uh-huh.

Becomes even more intent on—

Wants to be understood, chosen, and loved by that beautiful woman.

Yeah.

Right? Such a deep desire. And so I wonder if you could disengage it with actually answering those 3 questions for them, 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. This person is driving conversation. They know they're an over-talker and they're driving, and all the passengers are like, oh my gosh, this person's so bad. And what does a bad driver do? They get even more tense.

Mm-hmm.

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—

Logic.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I call it, my lovely smart leaders, I say, you're fact-checking, not gut-checking. If you're fact-checking all the time, if you're trying to accuracy kill, but they're not there yet, you're actually creating a conversational scarcity that's going to make them feel like, oh, I have to prove myself. I have to dig in. Now, I'm going to talk to you more because I want to convince you. And so I think the opposite of dream building is dream killing. And very smart people tend to dream kill by accident, and it shuts down connection completely. Not only will you not get to level 2, you'll bounce on level 1, 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. Unbelievable. Their credentials, unbelievable. And then they went through the interview process, and the interview feedback from the people that met them them was neutral or negative. 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.

That's it.

And that in some respects might hold them back. It's also why I think that this person is amazing, but getting through an interview process or those sort of social dynamics would be really tough, Right.

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 1 is so critical, why 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 3. And this actually brings me to the third— I'm so bad at this. Let's see. We'll look at that. So, So, I struggled with this, what are we on, 6th question, because, 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? You can do a lot of these, and you have to alter them slightly, but I want to make sure they work across the board. And the 6th 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 when you're talking?

What do I love to talk about?

Yeah, not hear about necessarily, but talk about.

Oh gosh.

We're going to reverse engineer it. This 6th question is about reverse engineering your love.

I like to talk about psychology of people and stuff.

Okay, okay. So great. Okay. 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'd you make that choice? What made you choose that path? You're going to want to ask more behavioral questions, 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. 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 so they can confirm that in a phone call.

And you could even say, when I call your previous manager, what would your previous manager say is your greatest weakness? You're going to get a juicy answer, and then you can go verify it. 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? We always ask for examples in interview. That's okay, but not great because 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 2 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. questions when you're at dinner, when you're here, obviously, because that's what you love. 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 Urich has a challenge, 1,000 Hours Outside, which is spending 1,000 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 6th 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?

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 you saying that opens a door and gives me a clue as to how to connect with them. future conversations with them should orientate towards sports or psychology or whatever their answer was.

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 6th question.

Oh.

Right? So right now, because I'm talking about conversation, my signature question is, what's your favorite conversation starter?

Okay.

Right? When I was researching cues, it was, who's the most charismatic person you know? 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.

Okay, so this one's a bespoke one. You get to write this one yourself.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly. Got you. So I'm interested in psychology, so this one would be psychology-related topics for me.

Right. Or like what drives you.

Behavioral. Yeah.

I actually think that some of the level 3 questions might interest you, but I'm curious. Let's see. All right. Level 3. Are you ready?

Wait, before we do level 3. Yes. Just want to close off on this, uh, do you talk too much test.

Okay, so I have a do you talk too much test in the book. It's right here. So you're gonna ask yourself, I leave a conversation realizing I don't know much about the other person. Okay, that's a secret curiosity question.

So there's 5 questions here, and if you answer often more than 3 times, you're probably an overtalker.

That's it. And all of them secretly, Steven, are saying, are you curious enough Okay.

Right?

Because we know that curiosity is the antidote. So I put this right at the end of level 1, because you really can't go to level 2 if you're talking too much.

Okay.

You're not curious enough. You're not going to learn their dream.

So question 1. So if I say yes to 3 of these, then I'm probably an overtalker.

Correct.

So first one is, I leave a 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. Sometimes.

Oh!

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

Do you ever tell a long detailed story?

Only when I'm on stage and I'm being— and someone has paid me to.

That doesn't count.

Okay.

Doesn't count.

Sometimes I'd say. I've been told gently or not so gently that I talk a lot. Rarely.

Rarely?

I've never been told that. Number 5, while I'm mid-story, I notice people glance around the room. Sometimes.

So you pass.

Okay.

Now, I could have told you that also, but yeah, you pass.

Okay.

So 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, please do a Yap Challenge. Do you know what a Yap Challenge is?

No.

Ooh, 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.

Hmm. About yourself or just about—

About yourself. Like, that your typical answering length is longer than conversationally appropriate.

To a question about you?

A Yap Challenge could be. Share your opinion about veganism.

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

What's your answer?

No, not to veganism, just generally, like, if it's an idea, everything in my head is a story first. So it's like—

You know what though? Introverts can. Introverts absolutely can, and they'll often go too short. Like, for example, I'll give you, I'll give you a Yap Challenge that I was just thinking about the other day, and we're gonna do it on social media. We'll do it today together. Yap Challenge. Someone recently asked my friend out by asking for her Instagram handle, not her number. Agree or disagree?

It depends.

On?

Her vibe. 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?

Rolled up on the street? I think it's actually— I agree then, because it's less invasive. It's like, I will earn your number.

Oh, wow.

Give me the chance to earn your number.

Okay, you just convinced That's interesting. So by the way, I think that was what, 12 seconds?

Okay, yeah, maybe. Right?

So like, you're keeping it tight. I disagree, but that is an interesting nuance. I'm not gonna 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 wanna get to know you through conversation. I'm gonna look through everything and know everything about you before I decide if I wanna 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 say, oh, how'd you get the dog? What's the dog's name? How'd you choose that name? Versus, oh, look, she has a dog named Stewie.

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 in to your personal and professional environment, stranger. Whereas the public environment, which is Instagram, Yeah. Is, I think, a much more socially appropriate place to invite oneself into.

Okay, let's fight about this.

Okay.

If you do that, your conversation is gonna be more awkward on your first date.

Because?

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 1 stuff that you think you know. So now, even though you have your very first conversation, you kind of have to go to level 2. 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 I also think what I would say is, if someone were to— I'm not single, I haven't been single in 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.

You would say that?

Yeah, I would.

Fucking hell. I've never—

Because I want you to chat me, right? Like, I don't want to show you my Instagram. You're going to see everything. And like, I'd rather like, let's banter. 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 out to dinner if it's going well over text or over the phone.

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 has just given birth to a couple of triplets.

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 perform— 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, my Instagram, even as a Not like public figure, I would have no casual level 1 banter with them that is critical, socially critical for me to understand their basics. And so when we skip level 1, we do damage to our potential connection later. We create more awkwardness and more friction for ourselves. So my challenge for single people is stop asking for handles and ask for numbers. Are people going to get mad at me?

Well, a lot of them are meeting via dating apps now.

For sure. And I think that's okay. A dating app is much more limited than an endless feed.

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

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 6 images or 10 images. You have these pre-subscribe questions. Like, I'm actually okay with it. I love dating apps. I think that actually they can really connect people very quickly, but you don't know everything about— you don't feel like you know everything about me.

I feel like people on dating apps hate dating apps.

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 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.

Okay, I concede. No, I think it makes sense. It doesn't make sense. It's hard to refute.

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.

And are they right?

They are right. 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. 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. If you share something too deep or you ask something too deep too quickly, you're like, why did I do that? It's painful. Does that happen to you or no, you don't share?

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 2 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 almost had to adjust myself to I thought I was going into an interview to 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.

Yeah. And so, I think that we actually have to gate level 3. 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's really good. And vulnerability and authenticity, there's a very fine line there. Being authentic is great, but being too vulnerable too quickly is very awkward and sometimes not safe. So I really share, when we talk about level 3, I want you to reserve it for your most important people. Okay? So level 3 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. And they've proven that this— there's actually 2 types of self-narratives. 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 gonna 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, there are facts of their life, but their work, their love, their parenting, they repeat that same redemption narrative in everything they do. 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 all 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. When you have a contamination narrative, or you're in a relationship with someone with a contamination narrative, the only way that I think we can can change that, 'cause our narratives are changeable, these are not fixed personality traits, is via conversation. So my secret hope with level 3 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.

So how do we do that?

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. That's why we love story. In level 1, it was kind of a warmup. Like, when we're telling story about our passions and our side hustles, we're also telling the story about ourselves all the time. And so we've told a story about ourselves, and there are what I call narrative 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. 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, just my luck, I got it.

They're saying things about how it's happening. They're leaking their narratives.

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

Absolutely people with 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 could handle whatever's thrown at them. They have a great internal locus of control. 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.

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

Yeah.

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

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 could 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?

I always— 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.

Tell me more.

You know, a roller coaster has a fixed track, 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 Anyway, no rail.

Yeah.

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

Yeah.

On a track.

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. I think there's questions that can begin to uncover someone's level 3. 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 that you're on a ride that is predetermined, and now it's up, and then it's gonna go down, and then we're gonna 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.

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, 3 hours with a guest, I feel a deep sense of connection. 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 fiancée and my colleagues at work and other people in my life. Whenever we get a minute, we play the Diary of a CEO 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 thediary.com. And you can get these conversation cards right now. So, going back to this idea of these contaminators.

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 a sneaker because it sounds so casual when you ask, are you lucky? But their answer really matters. Either— there's 3 answers for, are you lucky? One, oh, yes. Yes, I feel lucky. When I asked you this last time, you said, Yeah, I think I can't look at—

I feel like I have so much privilege in my life that I feel like I am lucky.

Yes, yes, I feel the same. I'm just so grateful that I get to have this super unique career. So, I feel lucky, you feel lucky. So, yes, if someone says yes right away, that tells you a lot about them. 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.

confidence. Right.

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. 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. Are you going to disagree with me?

No, 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?

You should.

Because what is that revealing if they say yes? It's revealing—

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

They're an optimist?

Often, not always, but often. Sometimes they can be realists.

Okay.

I am objectively lucky because I have all these things that can be realized too. But man, you're going to learn a lot. The whole point of level 3 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're going to be at work. 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 3 is all about that. It's 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 it's 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 it. 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, right? 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, 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 3 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.

Have they done studies on this, this particular question?

I think only we have.

Only you have?

Richard Wiseman has done a lot of research on luck specifically, and there's like a luck There's a test you can give someone. We did this in our lab. So, it's an 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. I would love to know, and maybe future research in our lab is, if you consider yourself very lucky, do you make more money? Do you make less money? I don't know. 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.

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 extroversion, 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.

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 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.

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 And I would like honest answers in the comment section. And don't— I know you just heard us say that lucky people are gonna have better lives. Just be completely honest, just for pure research purposes. And you know what? I know people that don't feel lucky are gonna be honest because—

They're gonna be honest.

They're gonna be honest.

And they're gonna tell you exactly why.

Yeah.

And they're gonna get really mad at us because they're gonna say that something really bad happened to them and how dare we tell them that luck is good. That's what's gonna happen, 'cause I've heard them do it.

Can you get mad at Vanessa and not me?

No, get mad at him.

No, it's fine. You can get mad at me. It's fine. No, but this is why I'm asking, because 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 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.

And that is also Fact vs. Frame.

Okay.

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

That 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 antifragile piece.

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 wouldn't. People are gonna be so mad.

You are so cooked. They are gonna get you. Get her, guys.

You are so cooked. I'm not single.

You are so cooked.

It's a hypothetical.

It was a trap. That's what it was.

You're so mean. You're like, let's throw Vanessa into the fire. Oh, don't worry. I got a wine bottle coming. So.

No, but it's true. I was thinking, I was thinking.

No. Gosh, I'm gonna 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, absolutely not. Okay, I'd be curious.

Sure, of course.

And I want to hear what they meant.

I wouldn't leave the date.

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 because 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 5 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 a very hard question, but there are questions that we can begin to talk about that do harvest it, I notice patterns. They're the same narratives over and over again, and there are about 5 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, they've been able to overcome. They struggle because they're never satisfied.

And what is an archetype?

Oh, yeah, sorry.

What is it?

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?

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

This is going to impact how you have conversations with people. 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.

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

Absolutely. It dictates your relationship patterns, 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, 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 So the ambitious hero, what's their sort of internal monologue? Their internal monologue is, I got this, I can do this, hustle, hustle more, more, bigger, more, bigger, bigger, more. I can do that better. I could do that bigger, right? It's like, we— I get, you know, shiny object syndrome is like one of the nicer ways to talk about ambitious heroes. You know shiny object syndrome?

No.

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.

Yeah. Okay.

Do you have that?

Well, yes, but I have put systems in place 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 what I've got.

Love it. And that's beautiful because 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.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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 'cause 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, relationships, people sometimes don't always understand our drive. 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. Those are not necessarily bad things, but they're traits. They're behavioral traits. Okay. And by the way, so this is number 1, the ambitious hero. One way that you can kind of suss these out is asking the question, what character are you most What book, movie, or TV character are you most like? Not look like. Life choices, personality, core values.

And I said Pursuit of Happiness, which is— yeah.

Yeah. Which is?

Ambitious hero.

Yeah. But why did you choose that character?

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 that day, and it really made me feel like, like the journey I was on. You know, when he was in the disabled toilet with his kid?

The toilet scene.

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 because 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. So he's also Black.

Mm-hmm. 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, what person are you most like? And they say, Mother Teresa. I say, oh, why? I might not agree with them. 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. And this is the hardest part about level 3, and it's the most inconvenient part of level 3. You probably won't agree.

Okay.

There's a lot of times where people in my life have told me self-narratives and I'm like, what?

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

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 can help. You know, I have my own, you know, 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? 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 do you describe your personality? 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 the one way that it can help you sometimes brainstorm. Okay, the ambitious hero, right? We started with that.

Yep.

Archetype number 1. 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're 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 because 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? I have 2 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. Mm-hmm.

Interesting.

Do you know someone like that?

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.

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, some fiduciary. 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 contender pragmatist can do really well in a very stable, traditional industry with a lot of regulation, regulation because they're 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 might want a contented pragmatist running your books.

Mm-hmm.

They're quite conservative. They're not going to make a big leap here, right? And they're also, they're like, let's keep it as it is. Let's know what we're doing. Don't change if it's not broken, right? So, you have to think about your roles.

In a hiring manager, it depends on what your company is And in terms of conversation tips, are there different tips for different archetypes? Yes.

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, like, 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'm 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? Like, right? Because we love ambition. I also love ambition in others. Oh my gosh, like, I— when I hear about my friend's side hustle that's growing, like, I'm— that's all my texts, all my check-in texts. I'm just thinking about you is, 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. A contented pragmatist, they wanna talk about ritual. They wanna talk about what works. They wanna 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.

Enjoy it. You've worked so hard. Just take in the view for a moment. 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 wanna have that 3-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. Okay? 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. They almost always pick careers that are of service. They almost always pick careers— teachers, coaches, trainers, nurses, doctors— and that is because they're so ingrained that to have worth is to help. And oftentimes 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're giving and giving and giving and giving. They cannot say no. In a relationship, they are beautiful to be in a relationship with 'cause they are givers, right? They're nurturers, they're 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, 'cause 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.

They're people pleasers.

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

Oh, okay, yeah.

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 black or white. They see no nuance. 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. So they can sometimes put a seed in a selfless helper's ear and the selfless helper will go, oh, how dare they? And they'll go fight for you. And so sometimes selfless helpers, they're roped into things that are not necessarily what they should be doing because they they are standing up for the person they care about.

And so if you're dealing with a selfless helper in terms of conversation—

Yes. Sometimes they even think talking about themselves is taking.

Okay.

So you might sometimes in conversation, like, you're asking them a question, they're like, oh no, no, enough about me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, let's talk about you.

Yeah.

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 because all they want to do is check in And I'm like, no, no, I really do wanna hear about you. So sometimes they won't take the ball 'cause they're worried it's selfish. And so sometimes getting them to open up can be hard 'cause 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 are 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. Do you know anyone?

Yes, I do.

Oh, lovely.

Yeah. And it all tracks with everything you said.

And corporate, all these apply to work. These are great if you have a mentor. Not always, but often managers can do great things as selfless helpers because they're so attuned to others that they're very good at bringing out performance. Not always, but I've seen really, really amazing managers who they know the ROI, they know metrics, 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 But they might avoid the difficult conversation, no?

These people tend to be a little bit conflict avoidant.

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

Mm-hmm.

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, learning, you can be assertive, then they're tremendous in conversation because people trust them because they come from a good place. 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.

Okay.

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're probably the ones in the comments who are like, well, this doesn't apply to me because of all these reasons. Because 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, is sometimes that can rub people the wrong way. And sometimes these folks can thrive over conflict in the way of it's just, it's fun for them. Like, it's fun to negotiate, it's fun to push. A litigator My litigators who are watching, I find that my litigators tend to fall into this category, or very disruptive entrepreneurs.

Mm-hmm.

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, they're not only building something, but they're not quite an ambitious hero, 'cause they wanna break things. They wanna build it and break it. They wanna reinvent the entire system, and they're doing it, Edward Snowden is one of the examples I give in the book of, he wanted to change something, and also, He wanted to stick it to the man. He wanted to break the system that he was in.

Okay.

Do you struggle with this? Do you like this? In interviews, they're very interesting.

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

So interesting.

Because they have a contrarian view by nature. Everything they say is deeply contrarian. But I think having people like that that are challenging around— their default is challenge— is quite useful.

Yes.

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

And they live as dream killers.

Yeah, they're dream killers for sure.

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 antifragile. 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 pessimism.

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, I have a friend who always says, I hate everything. He 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.

Instagram knew it was him.

Instagram, how dare you? Okay, the last one is one we've actually already touched on, which is the unlucky struggler. So this is someone with a contamination 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 wanna think of is like George Costanza from Seinfeld, right? Like, ugh, 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, right? 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. They can make fun of themselves. They're so humble, they're 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 this, the confidence you see in them, they had it too.

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?

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.

Peak, end.

So when you're remembering something, you remember the peak of a conversation and the end of the conversation.

Okay.

Yeah. But we also, of course, the first impressions are incredibly important as well. We tend to over-index 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 a formula. This calms my anxiety when I'm in a conversation and it's time time to go, right? Either we're not feeling it, like we're just not clicking, or like we got to go. 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.

Okay, so let's role play. Yeah, let's do it. 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.

Do you have any fun plans coming up this weekend?

Uh, there's this wine bar across town that I'm really into, so I'm probably just gonna go there, I think, with some friends.

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, I just asked you about a future, and I'm gonna wish you well on it, which already gets us into future mode. And then I'm gonna end on a compliment or an action. It was so lovely talking to you. I hope I hope you have a great time with that wine bar. I'm gonna go get some more coffee.

Have you got any fun plans coming up?

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.

What do you love to talk about? I'm not sure that's the—

That's the signature question.

What have you always wanted to learn? See, I'm— what if they just go straight back in though? Because that's happened to me before where I've tried to—

Okay, this is where the action and the compliment, that second piece. 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?

Mm-hmm.

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 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. Then they cannot, right? You've ended it then. And you also can use nonverbal 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're literally trying to physically disengage. So, usually I pair those with those subtle nonverbal cues of a slow backup and an angle towards the door.

Okay.

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, it's been good for you. It's, 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 gonna 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 tonight for charisma.

On this point of being assertive.

Oh, yes.

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

Oh, yeah. Who has aura and rizz? Who does?

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?

Okay. I think aura and rizz— and the only reason this is front of mind is 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, ooh, like she's 8. I said, charisma or rizz or aura is someone that you really wanna be around. It's when they walk into a room, you wanna go over and talk to them, you wanna sit near them, you wanna listen to them, you wanna work with them, you wanna play with them. And I said, do you know anyone like that? And she goes, oh yes. And she named And she named, so interesting, she named 2 kids in her class that I had already identified as very charismatic. Like, I knew, in my mind, I knew who the charismatic kids were in her class. I had popped them, right? I saw them, they're the kids that you really wanted to be around. They have this aura about them. And she named those exact 2 kids. So, I think that that definition works. It's someone that we are drawn to verbally, physically. I think also some of it can be physical, and there's something hormonal there as well, but it's someone we're drawn to.

Okay. Based on the 20 years of research you've done, if you were trying to teach me to have aura and rizz, what are the basics?

Be really easy to talk to.

Okay.

Right? So the point of level 1 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 undersignal. We like people who clearly like us, right? So, we have to be very loud 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 we, 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 close, embarrassingly, to home because of my job. I don't know if this happens to you. My friends often ask me to suss out their partners, like potential partners. So a friend will be like, hey, I met a new guy. Can you go out to dinner with us and tell me what you think? Does that hit you all?

Absolutely not.

Oh my God. You're like, nobody asks me that. So I get this a lot and, and by the way, I, I'm, I'm just a regular person. So I'm always like, are you, are you sure you really wanna know what I'm— yes, they were. So I go on a lot of like second or third little ghosty coffee dates to see, to suss out the guy or gal.

I think I love that.

I, it makes me feel needed. 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 Schmobbart. Okay?

Okay.

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, okay, what did you think? And I'm about to say he's only okay when she goes, you know what? He just loved you. you. I was 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 because as she was telling me all these things about how he liked me, I was like, you know... That's Robert. He is a great guy. He's clever. He's so smart. He 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, as we send clear signals of liking, but also two, and we talked about this a little bit last time, is fundamentally 82% of our impressions of people are based on warmth and 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 2 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 gonna be assertive. assertive, I'm going to carry us through this conversation. I think that this came after Cues in a good way because Cues was very much about picking your signals, but Conversation is about being a bit assertive about the plan. 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. Charismatic people, they carry us. They're like, we got this, we're gonna 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 gonna talk about your character. And so I think that that plan is a secret door into charisma.

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

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.

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 comment section. It'll be pinned.

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, immediately I'm like, oh, I know that person's YouTube channel. Like, I know that person. Like, the people I immediately recognized. And I'm like, whoa. And then of course, like, within the first 5 minutes, the leader of this group says, we're gonna get in 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—

I would love to know what they actually said. That's what you heard. That's what I heard.

I was like, brilliant.

I invented the internet.

It was so impressive it hurt. And I was like, okay, okay, this first person is all right. The second person is like, I cured cancer, right? Like, amazing. 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 were saying things that were meant to shock and wow and awe you. It gets to me, and I was like, my name is Vanessa. 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. 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.

Hmm.

Not the billionaire, not the curer 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.

You have aura, Vanessa. You have rizz.

I was the easiest person to talk to in that circle. And so I think that if we could—

Do you have aura, Vanessa? You parlayed that one out there.

Maybe when my makeup is done.

Do you have aura?

When my makeup is done, maybe. Maybe when my makeup is done. You deflect it. Yeah, I mean, I don't— I maybe— I don't know, do I?

You do have one.

Okay. So 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 don't know, I haven't met that many billionaires, but the ones I've met, most of them are quite humble and they're quite, 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.

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

Yeah, they're easy.

For whatever reason.

Yeah, they're easy. And by the way, it's back and forth. You can be introverted or extroverted. 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. 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 seem to speak slower and be— you kind of see them walk across a room. What is that? And how are they cultivating that kind of aura?

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

Michelle Obama was like that.

Oh, I've never met her. I've never met her, but I can only imagine. Tony Robbins is like that.

Oh, for sure. Yeah.

I think it's winner energy. 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're 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. So if I were 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 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 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. One thing that I think about a lot is maximum resonance Maximum resonance point is 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 a little bit nervous, 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 you in 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?

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

Oh, I didn't even notice it, but yes, I think I was rushing.

Yeah.

And I had less breath. I'm actually out of breath after doing that. So when we don't have breath, 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— you're going to take in a deep breath and say hello at the top of your breath. So it sounds like this. Hello.

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 hello.

Horrible.

Yeah, that was embarrassing.

Horrible.

Yeah.

Right. But I hear, I listen in on Zoom calls and I hear people, that's their very first word. They literally hold their breath and they say, good morning.

Hello.

Hello, everyone.

Hi.

Hi. You were 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 out-breath, 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 out-breath.

Hello.

Right. Now that sounds more like you because you usually use your maximum resonance point, right? You're very good at that. And I'm 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 rizz, because we're like, ah, because we can hear their confidence, we can hear their relaxation. And so vocal cues are such an important aspect of charisma. All these questions are beautiful, but how you say your words is just as important as what you say. So, like, what's your pursue passion project, I guess? Why can you do it? That sounded so terrible. You know, like, my lack of vocal care, you immediately hear and it tunes you out, right? So, 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 gonna 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 wanna catch it.

What about the rest of me? So we've talked about some of the specific conversational questions at the 3 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 for me to look you in the eyes like this, Vanessa, and ask you a question.

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 to 70% eye contact is more ideal in Western cultures. But if someone is deep thinking or they're social processing, you actually do want less eye contact because 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.

But when you're delivering, I understand the deliberation, you look away when you deliberate. I do that, like I'm doing it right now. But then when I deliver the point, I come back. Is that—

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, we're processing, we're processing, and then we're delivering is because 2 things are happening at once. We're trying to connect. I want you to hear my point and fill it with oxytocin, but also I wanna see, do you believe me or are you raising your eyebrows?

Hmm.

So, I'm making more eye contact with you because I'm trying to see where your interest lays. 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 in 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 because you're giving that burst of oxytocin. But then you're okay to look away. You're okay to process. you might wanna make your eye contact most when you're trying to suss out how is this person receiving this? 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 that you're like, ugh, that's horrible, I wanna be easy to talk to by pivoting away from it.

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

I know.

Yes.

That really bothers me. But I struggle with that a little bit, just personally, because I'm a people pleaser. So when someone's like, ugh, I actually have a friend who defaults to the disgust microexpression. He doesn't even realize he's doing it. It's a punctuator, a facial punctuator. is a nonverbal 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, that 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. A lean Uh-huh. Is warm and competent, both actually, because 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 block the light so I can see more detail. So, when you're speaking and someone's goes, they are trying to deeply understand you. It is not positive or negative. It is a cue of intense focus. Take note. Because whatever you just said has triggered something in their brain that they're going, what, what, what, what, what, what, what?

Right?

So, when I'm giving a presentation to a C-suite, and I have a couple, or 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 switch. Does this make sense?

Yeah. Are we good?

Any questions here? 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.

I think that is a really— we sort of touched on it 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.

Yes, yes. Actually, please, let's double-click on this for a second, because I think my planners, 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. The whole point of these is actually to be quite dynamic. It might be that you 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, whoa, 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. Both can be true.

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 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, or what got you into that, or why did you do that? Because then you're actually, your answer is doing 2 things. It's interesting, but it's also conversationally generous. You're not creating a dead end for yourself.

And this is so true because there is a most interesting thing about everybody, and that most interesting thing will beget the same set of questions.

Yes.

There's someone that I know, and she has a very interesting career, but 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 3 years. So I imagine this person always gets asked about Bible school for 3 years because everybody wants to know.

The 3 years of her life.

Yeah. So I remember I was just thinking then, that's the question that everybody, when you introduce it, they were like, Bible school, tell me all about it.

Yeah. Or, and I give this example in the book, is my friend Jason. He can't smell or taste, and he's always at dinners with people. That's all he does all the time. He's editor of Entrepreneur Magazine. And so he is always at dinners, and he brings up on purpose, people say, what are you ordering? Because 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 Lappin. She goes, I know Jason. And she began to tell me about his interesting stories. She remembered his interestingness from that answer. So even like, where are your settings? Are you doing coffee? Is there interesting coffee anecdotes? Are you always at meals? Are you— right? So you can also set yourself up and them up for success with those interesting answers.

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

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. 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.

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?

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 5 minutes of my team call. Oh, I don't know what to talk about on a date. 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. life. I would like to get rid of the awkwardness in your life because, 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.

Kind of sounds like it's for all of us.

I think it's for all of us.

What a wonderful book and what a perfectly timed book at a time when AI and computers are are 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 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 parents.

It was meant to be now. It was meant to be now.

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

Many, many years.

20 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, Thank you. What a wonderful book, Vanessa. Congratulations.

Oh my goodness. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. It's finally here.

It's finally here. Thank you for helping me bring it into the world.

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

Oh my gosh. Hardly. I'm obsessed with people. That's it.

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 sacrifice in your personal life to build your success that you regret and wish you could now get back?

Yes. 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. We moved to Austin for For work. I moved to Austin for work and I left my family. And I don't regret Austin because 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.

And what is it you wish you could get back?

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

And now you're here.

I know.

Down by the beach in LA.

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

Oh, really? With my kids.

Yes.

It's good to have you in town.

I'm so excited. And I will come.

Maybe. 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. 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.

Thank you.

Thanks.