Speaker 1how do you know you talk too much so first thing is non-verbal cues someone is checking out if they are opening their mouth as if to say something i call it the open fish and that's a subtle cue
Speaker 2that 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 when they found that 95 percent of people have worked with someone who talks too much well i have a do you talk too much test so there's five questions here and if you answer more than three times you're probably an over talker yeah because my next question is
Speaker 1like which one's worse over talking or under talking 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 one in six people worldwide are affected by loneliness and i now more than ever i'm sending nine minute voice notes to my friends but a voice note it's the most selfish form of conversation but in this age of technological technology it's the most selfish form of conversation but in this age of technological conversation 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 good conversation and once you know the blueprint it becomes easier for example we devised three different speed networking experiments with 500 speed networkers and the best conversation starter was actually what was the highlight of your day because the moment we asked how are you what do you do they ran out of things to talk about but the worst question in history of conversations is but i also have a formula to immediately bypass that small time also a secret also there are five archetypes and this is going to impact getting our promotion and finding your
Speaker 2soulmate and we're going to go through all of them but what are the ways to get out of a bad
Speaker 1conversation 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
Speaker 2guys i've got a favor to ask before this episode begins it's 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 five of your new book conversations you talk about how we're in a connection crisis and you say that conversations are getting harder more awkward and less satisfying at some level i feel that too my question to you is why did you choose to write this book based on you know everything you could have written about everything we've talked about before why is this book needed at this time
Speaker 1people 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
Speaker 2is 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
Speaker 1in 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 want to meet your soulmate you have to have deep connected meaningful conversation to truly get to know each other if you are lonely finding friends that are actually fulfilling and give you the joy of conversation is going to give you a longevity boost i think that the mistake that we have made is we think of conversation as extra you know we sort of put it second i know leaders focus on this a lot where they're focused so much on their idea on their technology on their business but they forget about the human element and i think we have to start thinking about conversation almost like going to the gym you know we've 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 and 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
Speaker 2conversation like are there symptoms one experiences when they when they're not good at conversation are
Speaker 1they aware of that yes there is symptoms of being a bad conversationalist and by the way i should as you know i'm a recovering awkward person and i really struggled with bad conversation for a long time and i realized it was because i was asking the wrong questions and i was approaching conversation the wrong way and the wrong way to approach conversation is trying to impress not discover if you're trying to impress people conversation becomes performative and that is so deeply unfulfilling right that is when small talk becomes soul-crushing i have spent the last 20 years studying masterminds and i've been doing a lot of research on masterminds and i've been doing a lot of research on masterminds and i've been doing a lot of research on masterminds and conversationalists master conversationalists they live differently in the world and i only know this because 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 hate to give someone a label being a bad conversationalist an exhausted conversationalist is you dread it you're not going to be able to 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 right conversation like boosts us gives us energy so you feel dread in social interactions um you feel overwhelmed when you're in conversation so if you're in conversation and you're social overthinking you cannot turn your brain off all you're worried about was what you're going to say next it's actually just because you probably haven't learned the mechanics of conversation blue there's a blueprint to good conversation we're going to talk about it once you know the blueprint it becomes easier and the last symptom of bad conversation is that you leave feeling misunderstood you leave feeling like i was the worst version of myself or i wasn't able to be my best self i think really good conversationalist people leave conversation with them thinking wow i 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
Speaker 2impress somebody so how long have you spent doing the research that feeds into what we're going to
Speaker 1talk about today and feeds into this new book okay so accidentally i've been doing research for this whole life because i was very bad at conversation for 20 years then 20 years ago i realized that there are these hidden blueprints behind our interactions i wasn't quite sure what they were but i could see that very good conversationalists they were following some kind of plan then eight years ago this is when the real research began and it started with an 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 the conversationalist had and i was like i'm going to find it so we devised three different speed networking experiments with 500 speed networkers we brought them in these rooms and we had cameras set up in all four corners of the room because good conversation looks different really good conversation you've seen do you ever like you know of course are they having a bad day yeah um so you know a good conversation is a lot of gestures a lot of leaning it you know has that high energy you see a lot of vocal charisma the
Speaker 3how we know right like it has like very low energy like apologetic facial expressions like
Speaker 1low volume then i assigned these networkers six conversation starters now i picked these conversation i'm going to tell you what they are very carefully three of them i thought could do really well and three of them i wasn't sure about i wanted to see we gave them these six conversation starters and we asked them after each timed conversation to rate the quality of it one being that was the worst most awkward conversation i've ever had to five being that was the best conversation i ever had i want to marry this person or i want to connect with them on linkedin then we took all these ratings and we ranked them and there were clear winners and clear losers 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 in terms of just a question a typical question you ask how are you number one question number two question number five that was the fifth worst very close to the bottom sixth was something about the weather that what do you do what do you do that was the worst the worst okay why so these last two how are you 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 there's it aids more of a performance there's a lack of like excitement in the conversation and they ran out of things to talk about they're fact-based questions and this is the trap of what we'll call level one conversation which is you are trapped in fact where are you from got any kids married the facts are dead ends right so they're there it's very hard for someone to break out of that fact because they're stuck in that social that social script the best conversation starter was actually a sneaker i was like interesting that this one did best by lot it was what was the highlight of your day now what this question does psychologically sounds casual first of all it's not too deep a mistake that extroverts can make is they ask too many questions too deep too question too quickly right they they're like what is your greatest goal in life and you're like i don't know you right so it's not too deep, but it's a subtle replacement for how are you. You're actually asking the other person's brain to search for optimism. You're literally inviting their brain to think like, what was good? And then they think, well, highlight of my day. So one, we just broke autopilot. The 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. 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 going to talk about it, but they're going to 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 three, are literally searching for good. You're inviting the other person to only think about good things, and we're doing it for them. So you're inviting the other person to only think about good things, and we're doing it for them. So you're inviting the other person to only think about good things, and we're doing it for them. So you're inviting the other person to only think about good things, 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 fourth question, people either loved it or they hated it. They either gave it a five, that was like the most connective thing I felt all week, or a zero, and a zero wasn't even an option on my scale. It was the question, what's your story? Now, what's your story? Have you ever been asked that question, by the way? Derivatives of that question. Okay. So extroverts tend to default to that question because they want to go a little bit deeper. But actually, that is a level three question. It is way too advanced. For someone who's introverted or someone who has never 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 get 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, right? This is why we have this. So for anyone that can't see,
Speaker 2because you're listening on Apple Music or Spotify or whatever, we have a three-tier little stage in front of us. Tier one, tier two, tier three. What are these three tiers?
Speaker 1Okay. So Dr. Dan McAdams found that conversation is actually not as fluid as we would like to think. That actually, when we're trying to connect with someone else, we are trying to move through three distinct levels. Level one is called general traits. This is why in those first few minutes, you're basically trying to Google fact check someone. Like, where are you from? What do you do? Married? Where do you live in LA? Right? Like you're trying to ask all those questions because there's a sort of social hierarchy. Our brain processes social facts from least intimate to most intimate. So we cannot get to know someone on their deepest dreams and worries if we don't know 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 one question is taking those facts, but adding story, but adding emotion. So the best way to do level one better is you're swapping out those bad questions, right? How are you? What do you do? With looking for a story. I truly believe a fact is a stop sign. A story is a doorway. Give me an example of both. Okay. So one of them, actually, we can place it on here is what's your personal passion project. Okay. Now what's your personal passion project is actually a hunt for stories, right? 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, it's a little bit much. We have to do our basic first impression and we can talk about, you know, first 10 words in a little bit, but as an opener question, it's better than how are you? And I have to pause here and say, everything I'm going to share, it takes a little bit of conversational courage. 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. Cause you're hunting for something good. Now, when I think about conversation in level one, you're trying to gift someone a chemical cocktail a little bit. And I think in level one, these two questions are doing a lot of heavy 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, 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 like excited. I was like, okay, I'm going to meet more moms. Here we go. And I walk in the room and everyone's scrolling. Everyone's on their feed. And I realized, wow, conversation now not is not just about a way for me to make friends. It actually has to compete with that feed. I have to make my questions and my answers so dopamine worthy that they're actually going to beat that feed. Otherwise they're going to go right back to their phone. That is why these have to do more lifting because if I want to compete with the feed, I have to produce dopamine, a little bit of excitement, a little bit of motivation. I also have to create what I would call, forgive me for this word, but conversational confetti. This is like, we gotta, we gotta lift a little bit more in our conversations because otherwise someone's going to go right back to scrolling. Their brain is somewhere else. Either their brain is in their email list or their brain is on their feed. In this research, when I was studying amazing conversationalists, one of the things that I found was that when I was studying amazing conversationalists, the one 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. I said, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't 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. 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, phone's down. Right? Now, I couldn't say something boring. I couldn't be like, I was stuck in traffic. Unless you want to be funny. But I think that looking for opportunities to create that little bit of conversational confetti, they come up with questions like this. This is the last one. So have any fun plans coming up now? The reason why this one is important, I agonized over this sort of question, because there's so many questions. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't three questions for each level, is have any fun plans coming up is a subtle way to bring up potential shared future. Psychologically speaking, we bond with someone when we feel like we could do something fun with them, or they're doing something fun that I would also like to do. I think that part of these questions is being known for asking better questions, like being known for searching for 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 out 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.
Speaker 2Everybody's starting from a remarkably different place here, aren't they? In terms of both skill, but also like will. Do you know what I mean? And energy, and like 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? Like, you know, I don't like people anyway. And it's so much energy. And I've got to ask these questions and pretend to be interested. This is going to drain me.
Speaker 1Oh my gosh. I agree. And two things can be true. It's very exhausting in the sense of you're trying, right? Like we're putting energy into conversation, but it's also exhausting to have really shallow small talk. I find it exhausting to stand at an event or be schmoozing with people backstage and be talking about nothing. Do you want to have very boring, predictable conversation where you're less memorable and they're less memorable and you're just waiting 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 going to break a script, right? I'm going to try to do level one better. I'm going to try to, you know, trigger a little bit of dopamine. I'm going to try to learn something that I didn't know before, which is going to maybe, just maybe, bring joy. If you get a really great answer, by the way, there's two sides of conversation, talking and asking.
Speaker 2I 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 one stuff to those high, to the highest goals is like critical for the behavior to occur and for it to like net out in the incentive equation has been worthwhile. Because if you can tell me how asking, have any flip fund plans coming up is going to help me become a better CEO or founder or whoever I want to be, father, mom, daughter, whatever, then I'm in. Yes. Okay. So let's talk
Speaker 1about that a little bit. founders, they believe that conversation is anti-productive. They worry that, oh, 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 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 one, they don't need to get to level three. Like, you don't need to get to level three with everyone in your company. You don't need to get to level three with your Uber driver. But if you have really easy small talk, easy banter, where someone knows, oh, yeah, I know exactly what their personal passion project is. I know who they are. I know what fun plans they have coming up. The first five 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 her. And this is remote or in person, right? Because they know they have these very loose ties. And loose ties actually make us more productive. And so we are looking for frictionless communication. And that happens at level one. In fact, work conversations should be really ideal level ones.
Speaker 2Is this in part also the fastest way to get to connection? Yes. Because these CEOs or founders or, you know, busy people generally are very time poor. For sure. So they don't have, you know, 30 minutes to move their way to connection. But are you saying that?
Speaker 1This is, these are shortcuts.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1Right. So like, what's, it's way worse for a CEO to be like, shoot, I've been told I better be warmer.
Speaker 4Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1I have a lot of like, most of my students are brilliant, very talented, very smart, but a little awkward and want to get it done, right? They're much more focused on the confidence and the warmth. So they try to do warmth because they, they feel like they should. And they're like, how are those kids? And then it's like a social script. Good. Or how are you? Good, busy, busy, but good. And they're like, it's not working. Ah, it was anti-productive. No, I'd rather you skip ahead, make this level quick and good, right? So like the team intervention that I encourage 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 three minutes, less than five 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 one. It's only good. So otherwise people will accidentally complain, right? They'll be like, oh, the weather, oh, traffic, right? But you're, you're putting a frame around it. It's good. You're time boxing it, right? Everyone goes around really quickly, but you're very quickly creating these, these team connections. So creating time in your meetings, but also in your culture to ask slightly better questions.
Speaker 2All of these level one things have one thing in common, which is they provoke a positive search and response. Yes. So that's really the crux of level one. It just a question that's
Speaker 1producing a positive response. 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, right? So I might say, and by the way, the, the, my introverts, I love my introverts. They always say, well, what if someone says they don't that you ask them, what's your personal passion project? And they say, I don't have one. Well, great. What an opportunity. If someone doesn't have a personal passion project, or they're going through a hard time, they're having a bad day. You have an opportunity to connect even better. So sometimes it doesn't have to be positive. You're looking for any kind of real emotion. So then someone says, you know what? I've been really going through a hard time and 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, uh, one of the other master conversationalists I study who is excellent at level one is Jerry Seinfeld. So Jerry Seinfeld has a little conversational trick, right? This is in level one 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 to me. 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 as because it's fact-based. So it's like an opener. And then usually from there, it's a jumping off point to a story. So it's not that level one should always be positive. That's great if it can be, but practically speaking, it actually more is that there's a small piece, a small emotion or a small story. Okay. So the other day I was in Las Vegas
Speaker 2and I was doing this sort of like step and repeat meet and greet thing after the event and people and they're kind of ushering them through very quickly. So I always want to, you know, say something to learn a little bit about a person in that time. What would you recommend? And this might be applicable for networking generally, but what would you recommend? Okay. So I always,
Speaker 1whenever after speaking about book sending, I say, what was your favorite part or what did you learn the most? So I immediately ask a question that I want them to take home with them. And that's actually level two, which we can, we can skip it. We're not going to skip too far ahead, but what are you learning is actually going to level two. So you can ask it, especially if someone's just
Speaker 2spent an hour listening to you. What's the difference between level one and level two?
Speaker 1Okay. 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, um, I read this framework. I read about Dan McAdams framework and I was doing this conversation research and then I got, got invited to a party. One of the weirdest parties I've ever been invited to. And I get in and they tell me to take off my shoes. So I'm committed, right? I can't leave. Yeah. And then they go, guess what? We have a rule for this party. I'm like, what? They're like, you cannot talk about what you do. Now, this was a party of, I think very other successful people. And all of us are like, what? Cause I don't know about you, but I'm, I'm pretty defined by what I do. I talk about it. I love it. So I start to panic cause I'm like, what do you even talk about? If you don't talk about that? Cause 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 gonna try to figure out what they do by not asking. And that was an aha moment of we should treat level one, these, these three bottom questions as a treasure hunt. That if you're going into it, looking for some kind of conversational gold, your questions have much different intention. And especially what I ended up asking was, what do you talk about when you don't talk about work? Which was sort of this freedom. It gave us this freedom in conversation where I want to give everyone permission that really good conversation does not have to stick to the same old boring topics. It does not have to be what you do. It can be about anything that is engaging you or exciting you in that moment. That is level one, level two. So we have general traits. We must start there. We cannot skip too quickly to level two. Level two is called personal concerns. Personal concerns is where we begin to connect deeply. This is our motivations, our goals.
Speaker 2Our values, our worries. And I'm assuming you do level two once you've got past level one connection. Exactly. So this is us going deeper. We're going deeper. Exactly. Or, or leveling up
Speaker 1as you wish, right? As you wish. So the mistake traps that people make is they skip level one. They try to go too deep 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. We don't do them in autopilot way. Level two is when you kind of mental trick that I use is, you know, you're on level two with someone if you know what gets them up in the morning, like what goal is driving them all day, but you also know what keeps them up at night. What worries them? I, you know, I, I encourage people as they're reading, like think of the five people you interact with most and place them on a level. Like, do you only know the basic facts about them? Are you all the way at level three, which we're going to get to? It's sometimes helpful. You'll notice patterns. Like, I don't know about you, but I love level two. Like I want to get through level one as quickly as possible. I want to get to your motivations. I want to get to your secret side hustle. I want to get to your dreams and passions. I want to know what keeps you up at night, but I can sometimes jump too fast. Level two 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 two is what I call dream building. So dream building is everyone has like a secret desire, a secret dream, a secret side help them uncover it. That's the goal of level two. So give me an example of dream building. Okay. So before we started, I said to you, I have, I have a new goal, right? Like I'm, I'm pitching a TV show. That's like my secret side hustle. That's level two for me. It's something that I've been working on secretly and quietly. And if we were at lunch, we would have, I would have told you all about it. We would 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, what is occupying their mind in a good way? The other way that I, a framework that I give for folks is a pet or pest project. So what is someone's pet project? Like a pet at home, you kind of think about it, you dream about it, you hope about it. Like what is someone hoping to achieve or find or do? And what is their pest project? Like a pest in the attic, it worries you. You wonder like, how can I get rid of that pest? How can I eradicate it? And they want help with it, but they're too afraid to ask. Pest projects have a lot of shame. On level two, people have to feel safe enough to expose what they feel shame about. But pet projects, the things they love, have a lot of pride. And so you're trying to figure out in conversation, could you let someone feel safe enough to share either one?
Speaker 2And are there questions that evoke dream building?
Speaker 1Yes. Okay, so what have you always wanted to learn is an interesting question because it triggers growth mindset, right? So growth mindset is when someone believes they can change themselves, change who they are, change their trajectory, learn something new. So we like this question because you're asking, are you willing to grow with me? What have you always wanted to learn? The other easy one is, what is your biggest goal right now? So what is your biggest goal right now is a great question. And you can also time anchor it. Anytime someone has a birthday, you can ask, what's your big goal this year? That's actually a level two question, right? You're like leveling them up in a safe way because they're talking about their birthday. Around New Year's, January and December, I ask everyone I know, what's your biggest goal right now? New quarter, new performance review. When we talk about goals, we talk about goals. New quarter, new performance review. It activates a part of our brain that triggers dopamine. When we think about our future self, it activates a part of ourselves that wants to get motivated. And so level two is also giving someone motivation that in conversation, they're actually discovering an aspect of themselves. They're tapping their own resource for motivation.
Speaker 2It gives them permission to dream a little bit.
Speaker 1Yeah, and you're giving them the motivation that they already have, but you're bringing it into the conversation. I think recently we are so into intrapersonal. Like a lot of what you see on social media right now is mindset and mantra and affirmation and productivity. And I love all of those things. But that means that people are actually using all that excitement alone when they're journaling or when they're meditating or when they're working on their to-do list. We have forgotten, I've noticed, to bring those goals into conversation. We're almost like embarrassed. I don't know if you've noticed this, but it's almost like people are like 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.
Speaker 2What if you're met with a dead end when you ask these kind of level two questions?
Speaker 1Well, then you get to answer.
Speaker 2Because some people haven't quite figured out what their biggest goal is.
Speaker 1Absolutely. Especially also sometimes introverts in conversation, I've asked these questions to thousands of people and all different kinds of things happen when I do that. Introverts also need more time to process. So you might ask them, you know, what are you learning right now? Or what's your biggest goal? And they might in the moment not know. They just need a little bit of time to process. And so two things can happen. It's if they don't have it yet, that's okay. You also have opportunity to share.
Speaker 2But what if I, you know, I ask, I'm thinking because, you know, I know a lot of taxi drivers listen to this podcast because I get into taxis and we talk about it. I love it. Taxi drivers, you know, they're conversationalists. They are. 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 know what they're doing. Doesn't want to talk. And they might hit them with one of these, you know, level ones and then the level twos. And they're just getting brick walls.
Speaker 1That I would respect that, right? If someone doesn't want to talk to you.
Speaker 2Do you just back out?
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1Because then they're going through their own thing, right? Like if you have to have also courage to be disliked, right? Like you can try your best in conversation. You can bring the best questions. But if someone is not your person or they are not ready to connect, why would you waste time? Why would you waste your energy on that? So I also think that asking some of these are like bids. It's like a bid to see like, "Can we do this? You want to banter with me? Should we have level one? Should we even dip into level two? Great. If not, cool. They're not your person or it's not their day."
Speaker 2So if they don't take the bait?
Speaker 1It's okay.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1Taxi drivers usually ask me, "Got anything exciting today? Are we going anywhere exciting?" Great. That's a great swap for level one. I should say, by the way, these questions are suggestions. If you can modify them to fit what you are doing, even better. 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 tax driver is going to modify it for, "Are we heading anywhere exciting? 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 McAdam's research is so incredible. But when I first read it, I did not know how to use it. I was like, "General traits, personal concerns, like level one, two, I wasn't sure." So a lot of these are just ways to activate the behavioral research, the guideline that's driving all of our interactions. But you get to have flexibility with it as it works for you. The goal in level one, treasure hunt, put someone at ease, ask them about what they love, harvest story. The goal of level two, is to give someone permission to share a dream, a secret desire, or a secret worry. And level three, we get to get to in a little bit when you're ready. Oh, we have one more level three, hold on. Level two question.
Speaker 2- On these questions, do you have to actually care about the answer? Do you have to authentically care about what their biggest goal is right now or what their personal passion project is? Does it matter if you don't actually care?
Speaker 1- 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 gonna care about someone 'cause we've just met them, but maybe you will. Right, like you never know who's gonna be your next best friend, right? You never know when you're gonna hear an aha moment that's gonna 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.
Speaker 2- So is it okay to pretend to care?
Speaker 1- 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. Like so many leaders who I work with, they might not feel warm, but they know they need to be warm. I think that's intent enough, right? We just gotta find the ones that work for you.
Speaker 2- And you talked a second ago about these questions that lead to dead ends. - Yeah. - Which are like, what you do? What are the other examples you gave?
Speaker 1- 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?
Speaker 2- Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1- Right, like--
Speaker 2- Been busy, what do you do? When you're on the receiving end of those kinds of questions. - Yes. - How do I counter that? 'Cause I'm gonna get that everywhere I go forever. So how do I counter that?
Speaker 1- Okay, so every time, first of all, boring questions make you boring. We know this. But boring questions asked of you are an opportunity. In fact, I think you can really surprise and delight someone by breaking the script on their boring question. You are going to be asked a lot of boring questions. Let's talk about two buckets here. The first bucket is when you're asked, what do you do? And you're gonna 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 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 wanna give an answer that explains exactly what you do but then gives them a little bit of a hook.
Speaker 2- As in like creates like curiosity gap.
Speaker 1- A little bit of information gap, a little bit of curiosity. And we don't want to over complicate 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 'cause that's the best way. If you listen to Conversations in the Wild, all the things you hear are great. And I was on my computer and I heard, she said, so what do you do? I think they were on like a date. And he goes, oh, I have a system for maximizing achievement in young learners. And she was like, what? And he goes, yeah, I work with fifth grade students and I have a system for how they can learn math and reading. And she goes, oh, you're a teacher. Yeah, I'm a fifth grade teacher. And I was like, wow, the intention there was to be interesting, right? He didn't want to say I'm just a fifth grade teacher, but he gave the brain too many calories, like conversation calories. The brain wants the simplest, easiest road possible. Like we want to put people at ease. What doesn't put people at ease is having, acting like you're reading your resume. 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.
Speaker 2So that answer that he gave was vague. It was complex.
Speaker 1And it wasn't the social hierarchy. It also 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.
Speaker 2So what should he have said?
Speaker 1Okay, 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 fifth grade teacher and I've been working for the last 10 years. I developed this really unique system system that speeds up reading. Now we're talking. Because my brain went, got it, check, fifth grade teacher, got it. Then I got to hear the how. Wow, 10 years. That answered another question that we always have. How long have you been doing that? Right? You're trying to skip ahead. And then it added this hook of I figured out how to get students to read faster. So when you think of what to do, I have a little formula if you're willing to play around with it. And again, a formula, always take it loosely, make it fit. I do blank for who, by how. That is 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, your how.
Speaker 2A lot of people listening now are more multi-hyphenated than ever before.
Speaker 1Love a multi-hyphen.
Speaker 2They do a this, a that, a violin, a creator, a LinkedIn thing, a speech, a dance, an improv. So how do those people answer when they're multi-hyphenators?
Speaker 1Oh, I love it. Okay, so two things. A multi-hyphenator, we understand complexity as humans. We get it. So you can say, you know, I daylight as a fifth grade teacher, but I moonlight as a cinematographer. Right? You can literally say 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, you know, I've been working. I've been working in marketing for the last 20 years, but I'm thinking about going back to school for psychology. Right? Like, we think that people can't handle it, but conversation can handle a lot, and it doesn't take a long time. Now, I do want to make a note here, the mechanics of conversation. So there's two aspects of conversation. There's the art, right? Like, weaving in excitement and harvesting story, and I love that. But there's also the mechanics. So let's talk about that first. So the candor corpus is a huge research study on the mechanics of conversation. Right? So how long do you think a typical turn should take in conversation? Like, how long should our turns take?
Speaker 215 seconds?
Speaker 1Wonderful. 15 to 30 seconds.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1So in average conversation, we like 15 to 30 seconds. 45 seconds is okay, but we start to turn to a monologue.
Speaker 2By this, you mean how long we speak for each? Each, yes. Before I let you speak?
Speaker 1Yes, before we start to feel like, well, I'm talking too much. It's not my turn. Okay. So 15 to 30. And by the way, if you want to go listen to previous Zoom conversations, it can be helpful to know if you're an overtalker or an undertalker. Right? Under 15 seconds, you might be actually creating conversational scarcity, like not asking enough, not talking enough.
Speaker 2Which one's worse, do you find?
Speaker 1Well, I'm an overtalker, so I'm going to say undertalking, because I'm an overtalker, so I'm going to say it's worse. I'm going to say it's worse if you're an undertalker. Wait, by the way, can I take a hit at podcasts for just 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. Right? Right? 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 a conversation that's not real. Third is we're having more and more asynchronous conversations. I now more than ever am sending nine-minute voice notes to my friends.
Speaker 2Damn.
Speaker 1Wow. Right? They send them back to me. Well, 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 need to hear your opinion. I get to go as long as I want. I don't have to worry about whatever you're doing. And I'm usually multitasking. Right? I'm listening to my best friend's voice note while I'm cleaning or cooking or exercising. So that has skewed it because we then get into real conversation and it feels hard. Because our muscle has been atrophying with this asynchronous. And then we are also conversing less. You know, only 3 in 10 Americans socialize on a day-to-day basis. Only 3 in 10 Americans. Only 3 in 10 Americans socialize on a day-to-day basis. Meaning they're having more time alone and they are conversing less. And that is because we're able to do so much work asynchronously. We also spend so much time on our self-care, our longevity, our workouts that we're 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. That's terrible work. Do better. And then I asked him a question. He turned to me and I was like, you better not tell me to do better. You know? And that is because I, you know, 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.
Speaker 2And on this point of like 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 co-workers spend an average of 90 minutes of their workday just talking. And 71% of respondents said talkative co-workers prevented them from talking to each other. They prevented them from getting their work done. How does one know if they are the person that talks too much?
Speaker 1First is let's do an intervention on this is go back. If you have recorded Zoom calls and just time yourself, there is a kind of appropriate, right? 15 to 45 seconds, 45 seconds is 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.
Speaker 2Yeah, you did. Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah. Cause I was, I was like, Oh, he wants to say something.
Speaker 2Yeah. No, so I do. 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.
Speaker 1And I was like fully distraught.
Speaker 2But you, you, you're on this more sensitive end of the scale where you're almost watching what I'm doing. And it's, and I, you know, having done what 700 of these interviews now, it's really fascinating to me that some people I have to like remain completely utterly skilled 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.
Speaker 5Yes.
Speaker 2Whereas other people don't even know I'm here, which is 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 it's just easier.
Speaker 1And this is why this is not natural conversation.
Speaker 2But 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.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And that's why I have to sometimes be on edge with people like you because I know that you're taking cues. That's from me.
Speaker 1Right. And also like I'm looking for your eyebrow raises.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Right. Like one is Neil deGrasse Tyson says that every book is every eyebrow raising thing he's ever said because he'll go on airplanes. He'll just talk to people. And when they go, oh, but he writes it down. And so I'm doing the same thing for you as I'm looking at your eyebrows very closely. Don't ever get Botox. It'll be so hard to read you. And so if you raise your eyebrows, I want to double click on it. Right. Because you're, you're the tastemaker. Right. I know I'm, I'm saying things interest me. But it might not interest you. So if you say something, if you raise your eyebrows, I'm going to go deeper or give you an example or tell you a story. And, and this is like, this is why this is not a normal conversation and conversation and go like this. Those moments go viral. Right. Like when you go, oh, yeah. Like those are like the replayed parts.
Speaker 2Like the emperor thing.
Speaker 1Right. And, and, and unfortunately we're all here because we're trying to, to reach people. Right. And so if you are going, oh, and you raise your eyebrows and I'm a 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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Speaker 1Yeah. Okay. This is there are two 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 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 about you? I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. What's the best thing you've ever done? I won't get too specific. You know what was your advice for me as a young person? Right. It was either compliment or question. He was just not having it. Yeah. Yeah. Nice to meet you. Right. Like quick selfie. Just not engaged. And I was like wow. That's what I would have advised back then. Either go with a compliment or a question. No. Then one person came up. It was actually one of the AV guys. He was going to mic him. 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 want to entertain. They speak longer. So they're more at risk of talking too much. They want you to laugh at them. They want you to laugh at them. They want you to laugh at their jokes. They want to share their stories. Their love language in conversation. What gives them energy is other people giving them adoration or listening to their stories. Listening to their ideas. They love giving advice. They talk more in conversation. The other type of person and I think this is you and actually this is me even though it doesn't look that way on podcasts. We are appreciators. I talk all day long for my work. The last thing I do when I want to go to dinner is talk. In fact when people ask me deep questions I sometimes I'm like can we go back to level one and can you just tell me everything. Appreciators talk less. They love to laugh at other people's stories. They love to hear interesting, awe, weird, surprising, embarrassing things. They are much more hesitant to open up about themselves. Like as long as we've been talking we are not personally on level three. Right? Like we are able to hide that because we keep it back. It is critical when you're talking to bosses or VIPs to know which one you're talking to. Entertainers want questions. But appreciators want people to tell them stories. Right? They don't want a lot of questions. So your friend is an entertainer. So you get to make the choice of are you going to go into their superpower and let them just entertain you and keep going and keep talking as much as they want
Speaker 2or 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.
Speaker 1Conversational narcissist.
Speaker 2Okay. Is that a thing?
Speaker 1Yeah. So these are people in conversation and this is when the levels still hold. In fact, sometimes a conversational narcissist will take themselves, they'll walk themselves right up all three levels. They'll answer for themselves in level one. They'll tell you all about their goals and they'll tell you the most deepest things that you did not want to know. And that's when you get like verbal vomit. Right? Like someone just like they won't stop talking and they're like, 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, is it my turn yet? Do you want to hear about mine? Do you want to hear about my goal? Right? Like if this is the person you're going to invest in and you care for and you like, you have to, you have to stand up for what you want to share.
Speaker 2In your experience, where does that conversational narcissism come from?
Speaker 1Insecurity.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Right? 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?
Speaker 2Do 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, because the person that I was, 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 deep. They ingrained in them from their childhood. So I'm wondering if they, you know, they're listening now and they go, okay, that's me. Cause my next question is like, how do they fix it?
Speaker 1Curiosity. 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. Like they literally know they're doing it. And they're so, they're like, why stop talking? Like they literally know what's happening and they're like, why, why am I doing this? But they can't stop because they're so scared of the awkward silence. And by the way, we, we asked, you know, a couple thousand people. What is your greatest conversational fear? I thought it was going to be rejection or judgment. No, it was awkward silences or not knowing what to say. Very mechanical. And I thought, wow, 4,000 people, their biggest conversational fear is not being rejected. That was one of the options on the multiple choice. It's running out of things to say. So the reason they're talking too much is because they are terrified of that moment where they're sitting with Stephen Bartlett and there's a silence. And then you're like,
Speaker 2I 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.
Speaker 1That's why I don't have a podcast. So, and then the way that they fix it is curiosity, right? I do believe in like assertive curiosity, like not just the follow-up, like tell me more, but like the what, the how, the why, the when I think that those like what, how, why, when that assertive curiosity of like, let's actually dig into this dream. Like, let's really talk about it.
Speaker 2Wait, I'm confused. So if we had a conversational narcissist here.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Are you telling me how they would recover from that?
Speaker 1They would recover from it by being aggressively or assertively curious about you.
Speaker 2Okay. But they know, they know. I feel like they know that. I feel like they know they talk too much.
Speaker 1Okay. 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 want to know my answer or is it my turn yet? Is a way of being like, is there curiosity there? I know that's really important. Like I think in relational patterns, like there are really conversational patterns that we can have. So we're talking a lot about new-ish people, but how about the people you've known for a long time? My goal, my deepest wish for this podcast is that you will go have a conversation, a cornerstone conversation with someone and ask all nine questions. Now, if you're in a conversational rut and this can happen in, 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 nine 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 that, this is how you can break that rut to see if there's actual curiosity there, because I have, I, I always assume the best in people. I'm hoping that this person is very well-intentioned, just has deep insecurity.
Speaker 2It is that, it is the case.
Speaker 1And so if you were to give a framework, it can sometimes break you out of a conversational rut with someone.
Speaker 2I remember, I think it was you that said to me that the key to great conversations or interactions is not to be interested, not interesting.
Speaker 1Yeah. After Dale Carnegie. Yes. I wish I had created with it. So Dale Carnegie is sort of the, the person who allowed me to think about being less selfish. I think that if you go into a conversation thinking all about yourself, how can I be impressive? How can I be smart and funny? And how can I get them to like me? That's okay, but it's quite selfish and it's a lot of pressure. It's a lot of pressure. When I started thinking, how can I go into conversation, putting this person at ease? How can I make them feel like they can impress me? How can I be interested to make them interesting? And by hopefully that has a rebound effect of making me interesting. That is a very selfless conversational generosity. One small goal for the book was to create more conversational generosity. That if you're in conversation and someone is 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,
Speaker 2or 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
Speaker 1were the kids who had the longest list of people they liked meaning if you want to be likable you have to go around assertively and aggressively liking as many people as possible because if you go into conversations thinking how could i like you how could i like you how could i like you more it's less about you and you're asking questions that are setting them up to be likable i wonder and i wish i could take a crack at this conversational narcissist that you know if i were to ask more questions of them like really set them up to entertain me to get deep to actually let them go to level two and maybe even level three if they want to would they calm down would their insecurity feel i'm understood i'm chosen i'm loved i think and this is just you're an intimidating person right like i i thank goodness have confidence but if i was with you i think i would feel a little bit nervous too maybe not anymore but when we first met you for sure two years ago my guess is that this person doesn't feel liked doesn't feel understood by you and doesn't feel chosen by you and the quieter you become when you're just trying to respect them the quieter you become the more they don't feel those three things as they keep talking so i would try to ask better deeper questions like lean into it and see if that can get them calm enough to be like oh he chose me he loves me what's interesting
Speaker 2is i observe a lot of people who are like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't observe with um people like that 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 uh-huh uh 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 like intent on wants to be understood chosen and loved by that beautiful
Speaker 1woman yeah right like such a deep desire and so i i wonder if you could disengage it with actually answering those three questions for them like putting them at ease i also think it's important to talk about an aspect of bad conversation is making the driver of the conversation feel like they're a bad driver right this person is driving conversation right like they know they're an overtalker and they're driving and all the passengers are like oh my gosh this person's so bad and what does a bad driver do they get even more tense 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 yeah you know i i call it my my lovely smart leader is i say you're fact checking not gut checking right if you're fact checking all the time if you're you know trying to accuracy kill but they're not there yet you're actually creating a 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 you more because i want to convince you and so i think um the opposite of dream building is dream killing and very smart people tend to dream kill by accident and it shuts down connection completely like not only will you not get to level two but you're going to get to level three and you're going to level two and now you'll you'll bounce on a level one or you won't have a relationship with that
Speaker 2person i was just thinking about in my previous company we interviewed somebody and they were extremely extremely intelligent and it was really obvious to me how intelligent they were like unbelievable their credentials unbelievable and then they went through the interview process and the interview feedback from the people that met them was like neutral or negative 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 like why i think that this person is amazing but getting through like an interview process all those sort of social dynamics would be really tough right and this takes us back to why conversation
Speaker 1is 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 you're smarts that comes directly from the research competence without warmth is likely to leave us feeling suspicious so you could be incredibly smart but if you cannot manage the mechanics of connective conversation people feel suspicious it literally triggers a part of their brain that goes i don't know about this person and so the reason why level one is so critical but we can't skip it is what we're doing is we're trying to create ease that's another way of saying warmth right we're trying to make it so someone feels like they can be understood with us and then if they're understood they're chosen and if they're chosen they're loved right like it's a three and this actually brings me to the third i'm so bad at this let's see i will let that so i struggled with this uh what are we on sixth question because by the way i started this research with over 100 questions and i was touching 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 like you can do a lot of you have to alter them slightly but i want to make sure that they're across the board and the sixth question is actually a signature question so this is taking a step back and thinking what do you love to talk about what do you love to talk about conversation what do you love to talk about conversation when you're talking what do i love to talk about yeah not hear about this talk about oh gosh we're going to reverse engineer it this six questions about reverse engineering your love i like to talk about psychology huh of people and stuff okay okay so we you would want to reverse engineer questions about how and why if you love psychology and behavior you're going to want to ask someone why'd you make that choice you know 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 first 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 right so they can confirm that in a phone call and you can even say you know when i call your previous manager what would your previous manager say is your greatest weakness you're going to get a juicy answer right and you can go verify it 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 you managed a project. It should be in the last three months, two months, not a year or two ago. So asking for recency, asking for other people's opinions. The reason why I say this is because that would be crafting a type of answer that you want, trying to craft information about a previous experience that is real and not rehearsed. So for you, you'd be wanting to ask more behavior questions when you're at dinner, when you're here, obviously, because that's what you love. Many success 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 a thousand hours outside, which is spending a thousand hours with her kids outside, playing more outside off of screens. And she asks everyone in her podcast, what was your favorite outdoor memory? Because she loves talking about outdoors and childhood nostalgia. So the sixth question is inviting, what do you want to do? And the answer is, what do you want to do? And the answer is, what do you want to do? And the answer is, what do you want to do? And the answer is, what do you want to do? And the answer is, what do you want to do? And the answer is, what do you love to talk about? How can we engineer that in your conversations by looking
Speaker 2for 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 are you saying that opens a door and gives me a clue as to how to connect with them? So future conversations with them should orientate
Speaker 1towards sports or psychology or whatever their answer was. No, it would be, you can ask, what do you even love to talk about behavior? So you are going to ask more behavioral questions of them. So you get to create your sixth question, right? So like 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.
Speaker 2I spoke 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?
Speaker 1you're all yeah i actually think that some of the level three questions might interest you but i'm curious okay let's see all right level three are you ready wait before we do level three yes just
Speaker 2want to close off on this uh do you talk too much test okay so i have a do you talk too much test in
Speaker 1the 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 five questions
Speaker 2here and if you answer often more than three times you're probably an overtalker that's it
Speaker 1and 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 one because you really can't go to level two if you're talking too much okay you're not curious enough you're not going to
Speaker 2learn their dream so question one so if i say yes to three of these then i'm probably an overtalker correct so first one is i leave 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 um i've been told gently or not so gently that i talk a lot rarely i've never been told that number five while i'm mid-story i notice people glance around the room sometimes so you pass okay now i could have told you that
Speaker 1also but yeah you pass okay so those it's really important because it might be creating conversational friction right especially at work and the best muscle you can do is asking more talking less and a challenge a very specific challenge please do a yap challenge do you know what a challenge is oh yeah 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 two minutes you probably talk too much about yourself or just about yourself but like that 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
Speaker 215 seconds what's your answer no not to veganism just generally like if it's an idea everything in
Speaker 1my 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 okay like for example i'll give you i'll give you a yap challenge 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
Speaker 2her vibe was what how what energy was she giving and what was the context was that after a two-hour date was that just meaning you're 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 oh wow give me the chance
Speaker 1to earn your number okay you just convinced me that's interesting so by the way i think that was what 12 seconds okay yeah maybe right so like you you're keeping it tight i disagree but that is an interesting nuance you i'm not going to give you my instagram because my instagram is performative everyone's instagram is performative if you are looking at my instagram it's like saying i don't want to get to know you through conversation i'm going to look through everything and know everything about you before i decide if i want to take you out and you take the joy out of discovery if i'm with you and i'm like do you have any pets and you're like yeah i have a dog then i guess 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
Speaker 2but 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 is i think a much more socially appropriate place to invite oneself into okay let's fight about this okay
Speaker 1if you do that your conversation is getting 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 one stuff that you think you know so now even though you have your very first conversation you you kind of have to go to level two it's so much harder and it's unnatural it's unnatural to know all this information and it's so much harder to know all this information and it's so much harder to know all this information and it's so much harder to know all this information that wasn't transmitted human to human that was done in a performative way and then you have to get in person and it's harder to come up with conversation starters because you already know a lot i also think what i would say is if someone were i'm not single i haven't been single a long time but someone say can i have your instagram i would say you know i i have one for just friends and family but maybe you can get there one day you would say that yeah i would if i could know 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 like let's banter like let's chat are you funny are you going to ask me good questions are you going to be a confrontational narcissist and then ask me at dinner if it's going well over text or over over the phone
Speaker 2so you think less context results in better conversation so just having their whatsapp or their i message is going to result in more interesting conversations than me knowing that you like hiking and puppies and me being able to be like have you got a labradoodle too oh my god my labradoodle is just giving birth to a couple of triplets yes
Speaker 1and 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 it's a curated highlight reel of my life so you feel like you know me like people who follow me 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 say no i'm not single i would have no casual level one banter with them that is critical socially critical for me to understand their basics and so when we skip level one we do damage to our potential connection later we create more awkwardness and more friction for ourselves okay so my challenge for single people is stop asking for handles and ask for numbers are people gonna get mad at me well a lot of them are meeting via dating apps now for sure and that i think that's okay right you know a dating app is much more limited than an end-to-end dating app and i think that's okay but i think that's okay
Speaker 2it's like i don't know how many photos are in dating apps these days but yeah it's still like that's like the most performative it's like look at me at the gym look at this car that i bought
Speaker 1but it's not forever like you can't go back to someone's instagram since they were in high school right like it's you know it's six images or 10 images you have these pre-subscribed questions like i'm actually okay with i love dating apps i think that actually they can really connect people very quickly but you don't know everything about you 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 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
Speaker 2for my friends and family let's try to get there okay i concede okay no i think it makes sense it
Speaker 1makes sense 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 deep in conversation because it feels scary to be vulnerable and are they right they are right okay if we go too deep too quickly especially at work and i wrote this book with work in mind people are going to think you're weird right 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 to save space or it wasn't received well and the heartache that you get from that is soul crushing right if you share something to do or you ask something too deep too quickly you're like why did i do it's painful has ever happened does
Speaker 2that happen to you or no you don't share uh no i've walked away from situations and thought actually maybe that wasn't the appropriate situation to share that but i've also been in situations i immediately thought of a meeting i had two weeks ago where i was interviewing someone and the first 25 minutes of the interview they shared some really really personal things about their very early childhood that i um i almost had to adjust myself to a you know i thought i was going into an interview yeah to like meet them and ask them about work stuff but i i almost felt myself pivoting away being like oh my gosh i have to be yeah more of a yeah a counselor or something yeah and so i think that
Speaker 1we actually have to gate level three right i think we actually have to get and and it's been a little confusing culturally because i think that we are loving vulnerability and that that's really good and vulnerability and authenticity there's a very fine line there like 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 three i want you to reserve it for your most important people okay so level three is called your self-narrative your self-narrative is the story you tell yourself about yourself it is how you make sense of your journey and purpose in life and the story you tell yourself about yourself is self-creating meaning if you have a narrative of hardship and being unlucky, you are probably going to see more hardship and create more bad luck for yourself. And they've proven that this, there's actually two 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 going to overcome. With hard work and grit and resilience, they can overcome anything. And what's interesting about this in our research is this narrative, it holds across their life. Yes, they're 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 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 change that, because our narratives are changeable, these are not fixed personality traits, is by a conversation. We can't change that. We can't change that. We can't change that. We can't change that. So my secret hope with level three conversation is when you're in a safe relationship, when you can truly share who you are, when you feel understood, you can maybe rewrite your narrative. You can maybe flip from a contamination narrative, the frame of how you've seen your facts into redemption. And that is my secret goal here. 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 do we change that? How do we change that? How do we change that? And the second thing we have to understand is how our brain works. Our brains are storytellers. That's why we love story. In level one, it was kind of a warmup. Like when we're telling a story about our passions and our side hustles, we're also telling a story about ourselves all the time. And so we've told a story about ourselves. And there are what I call narrative hints. In conversation, people will leak the kind of narrative that they have. So they might say, oh, everyone always zigs and I zag. Gosh, everything bad always happens to me. Oh, of course. Of course. Yet another thing. If people have superlatives, always, never, they tend to be more of a contamination person. People who are in that contamination narrative space, they tend to see things as very black and white. They tend to see things as permanent versus redemption. People tend to leak positive hints and they feel very lucky. They say, oh, good things always happen to me. Or there's always a silver lining. Oh yeah. You know, just my luck. I got it. Right. They're saying things about how it's happening. They're leaking their narratives.
Speaker 2Yeah. Who ends up being more successful, happy and healthy?
Speaker 1Absolutely 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 can handle whatever is thrown at them. They have a great internal locus of control. They feel that no matter what comes at them, they can handle it. And the good news is, this is learnable, right? If we begin to talk about our narratives with our children, with our partners, we can begin to teach them, actually, you have growth here. You have agency over your narrative.
Speaker 2Internal locus of control thing is something that I learned about when I was probably 16 or 17 in psychology class. And what does it mean? And what does the study say about the importance of it?
Speaker 1So 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, you know, they're not going to be 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?
Speaker 2I was, 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 anywhere. No rail, yeah. And some people, I think, do think that they're on a roller coaster, on a track.
Speaker 1I mean, look, I don't want to get too deep, but if we were in a normal conversation, I would ask you about fate. You know, I think there's questions that can, let me start, begin to uncover someone's level three. Do you believe in luck? Do you believe you're lucky? Do you believe in fate? I think if you believe in fate, you're more likely to believe that you're on a roller coaster, that you're on a ride that is predetermined, and now it's up, and then it's going to go down, and they're going to have a loop. So I wonder, I don't know, if someone has a high belief in faith or predetermined fate, if they would feel an external locus of control, and maybe that wouldn't be as good for their mental health. I wonder.
Speaker 2I'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 two, three hours with a guest, I feel a deep sense of connection to them. And as they leave, what I get them to do is to write a question in the diary of a CEO. We've taken all of the questions from the diary of a CEO. We have put the question here on this card with the name of the person that wrote it. So you can sit at home, as I do with my fiance and my colleagues at work and other people in my life, whenever we get a minute, we play the 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.
Speaker 1So 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 three answers for, are you lucky? One, oh yes. Yes, I feel lucky. When I asked you this last time, you said yes.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think I can't look at, I feel like I have so much privilege in my
Speaker 1life that I feel like I have, I am lucky. Yes. Yes. I feel the same. I'm just, I'm 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. The quickness, the speed of their answer matters here. Then there are people who are 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, right? Like I think that that's a version of toxic positivity telling someone, oh, but you're so lucky. You know, think of all the things that you should be grateful for. Usually that actually makes someone dig in. It makes them feel very misunderstood. You're 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 different perspective. And I think that's 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
Speaker 2me? 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.
Speaker 1Yeah. Multitudes, right? Their gratitude, their perspective on life, their internal locus of control.
Speaker 2You're an optimist?
Speaker 1Often, not always, but often. Sometimes it can be realists.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1Right? Like, I am objectively lucky because I have all these things that can be realists too. But man, you're going to learn a lot. The whole point of level three is predicting behavior. If you know their luck, you're going to be able to predict a lot of how they are in a relationship, how they are as a friend, how they are going to be at work. Right? Fate, I think, is an that seem silly, but actually have tremendous meaning. And level three is all about meaning. Okay. So the third answer for lucky, thank you, is that person who is afraid to answer. And I have asked this question of thousands of people. And you get this bucket of, um, well, kind of. Now, this is very interesting because this tells you they're probably not that introspective. So 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. That's helpful. You know, if you're in a relationship and someone's not that introspective, that's good to know. Not good or bad, just good to know. Especially if you value that. Like, introspection is one of my core values. So, you know, that might not be bode well for me. Or second, they don't feel safe with you yet. It can be a hint that you went too fast. If someone says, I kind of, or I'm not sure, you might have jumped to level three too quickly and they are not ready to share. or they are embarrassed about something. They have shame, or they have something in their past that they feel is very unlucky, but they don't feel ready to share it.
Speaker 2Have they done studies on this, this particular question? I think only we have. Only you have?
Speaker 1Richard Wiseman has done a lot of research on luck specifically, and there's like a luck test you can give someone. We did this in our lab. So it's an official luck test to see how lucky you think you are. It's like a 10-question diagnostic, and it asks all of these different variations of that question. So it is academically studied, but I don't think what's studied, at least not yet, is how your answer is going to dictate your life. Like I would love to know, and maybe future research in our lab, is if you consider yourself very lucky, do you make more money? Do you make less money? Is there any income? Are you older? Are you younger? Are you a child of privilege or not? So I think it's coming. I mean, I think that's where this excitement kind of comes from, at least it gets me. I'm really excited as a behavior researcher.
Speaker 2I 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.
Speaker 1I have considered, I've really considered this, doing a luck workshop. Where all I do in the workshop is help you harvest your own feelings of luck. It is so healing. It is so fulfilling to feel lucky, to wake up in the day and feel lucky. It's better than gratitude, right? Gratitude is sort of shaming in its own way. I'm like kind of anti-gratitude. But feeling like you're really, really lucky is so empowering. And so I've thought about creating luck labs, like a little luck workshop, where you can come and we're going to convince you that you're lucky because it's that good of an investment in your feelings of happiness.
Speaker 2I would like to ask the audience, I'm just super interested. I would like to ask all the people listening now, do you guys feel lucky? And I would like honest answers in the comment section. And I know you just had to say that lucky people are going to have better lives. Just be completely honest. Just for pure research purposes. And do you know what? I know people that don't feel lucky are going to be honest.
Speaker 1They're going to be honest. And they're going to tell you exactly why. And they're going to get really mad at us because they're going to say that something really bad happened to them and how dare we tell them that luck is good. That's what's going to happen. Because I've... I've heard them do it.
Speaker 2Can you get mad at Vanessa and not me?
Speaker 6No, get mad at him.
Speaker 2No, it's fine. You can get mad at me. It's fine. I have no shell. But this is why I'm asking. Because I want to... I'm coming from one perspective, from one experience that I've had in my life. And I feel like I am grateful and I've been very privileged. So I would like to understand why other people do not feel lucky in their lives. And, you know, I guess it would also be surprising to hear that some people have been through objectively horrific things. But some of them might still feel lucky. So that would be interesting as well. So I'll be reading the comments.
Speaker 1And that is also fact for society. This is frame. 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, let's take a breakup. And I can almost always... I can almost always find out someone's contamination or redemption narrative if I ask them about a breakup. People with contamination narratives will almost always say, the breakup nearly destroyed me. I don't trust men anymore. I don't trust women anymore. You know, it just took from me. I feel like a shell of myself. And it stays that way. Everyone has a period of a bad breakup time, but they never get through that, that they feel like that breakup fundamentally changed them for the worse. Whereas someone with a positive 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 anti-fragile piece.
Speaker 2Would 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.
Speaker 1I probably wouldn't. You're going to be so mad.
Speaker 2You are so cooked. They are going to get you. Get out, guys. You are so cooked. I'm not single. You are so cooked.
Speaker 1It's a hypothetical. It was a trap.
Speaker 2That's what it was.
Speaker 1You're so mean. You're like, let's throw Vanessa into the fire. Oh, don't worry. I got a wine bottle coming.
Speaker 2I was thinking. I was thinking.
Speaker 1No, would you? Gosh, I'm asking you now.
Speaker 2If 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.
Speaker 1Sure, of course.
Speaker 2And I want to hear what they meant. I wouldn't leave.
Speaker 1I wouldn't leave the date.
Speaker 2But 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.
Speaker 1And that is also because I think this is a beautiful bridge to the next concept. Once you begin to uncover these narrative hints, okay, you're talking about luck, you're talking about redemption or contamination narrative. I believe, and this is more art than science, that there are five things that you can do and there are five archetypes of these stories. So I have harvested hundreds, I wouldn't say thousands, hundreds of narratives. It's actually quite hard to ask someone, what is your self-narrative? It's a very hard question, but there are questions that we can begin to talk about that do harvest it. I notice patterns. There are the same narratives over and over again, and there are about five of them. I think that we share an archetype. I think we do. Now, maybe I'm flattering myself. So the first archetype is the ambitious hero, and I think this is us. But you'll tell me. So the ambitious hero has had challenges and obstacles, but they feel that their grit and resilience, they've been able to overcome. They struggle because they are never satisfied.
Speaker 2And what is an archetype? Sorry, I got excited. Yes.
Speaker 1So this is not like a personality type. It's not like my art brig or Enneagram. Those are quite stable. This is a fluid archetype of how you're seeing your story in this moment. For example, I might ask you if you had to write a memoir. What would the title of your memoir be?
Speaker 2And this is going to impact how I have conversations with people.
Speaker 1This is going to impact how you have conversations with people, how you behave interpersonally. So how you act at work, like an ambitious hero is going to act very, very differently at work than a contented pragmatist.
Speaker 2And is it going to impact who I'm attracted to platonically and romantically?
Speaker 1Absolutely. 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 do efficiency, my founders, right? Ambitious hero founders are going to have the same struggles over and over again. They're going to be very different than the contented pragmatist founder.
Speaker 2So the ambitious hero, what's their sort of internal monologue?
Speaker 1Their 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 can 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.
Speaker 5No.
Speaker 1It'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. Yeah.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1Do you have that?
Speaker 2Well, 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.
Speaker 1Love it. So, 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.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 1Don't let me do that. It's too much. Right. So behaviorally, if you are the ambitious hero, you know, you dream big, you can burn out because you dream so big. We tend, like, I tend to like work almost regulates me. Like when I'm working, I'm like, I'm being so productive. We are helping people help more people help all the people, right? Like it's, it's like, it's, it's too much. And so we can, we can burn out from a productivity perspective. We have shiny objects and in conversation relationships, people. Sometimes don't always understand our drive. Like we're so driven. We get accused of hustle culture a lot. We can burn other people out by trying to bring them with us on how fast we want to work, how long we want to work. You know, those are not necessarily bad things, but they're traits, they're behavioral traits. Okay. And by the way, so this is, um, number one, the ambitious hero. Um, one way that you can kind of suss these out is asking the question, what character are you most like? What book movie or TV character are you most like not look like? Life choices, personality, core values.
Speaker 2And I said, pursuit of happiness, which is, yeah, which is ambitious hero.
Speaker 1Yeah. But why did you choose that character?
Speaker 2Because he, he, the reason why I chose the character was because when I was 19, 18, 19 years old and I was literally shoplifting food to feed myself, I watched that movie randomly and I was in bed the day that day. And it really made me feel like, like the journey I was on, you know, when he was in the, he was in the like disabled toilet with his kid scene. Yeah. 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 were, you know, and keep the lights on and swerving these landlords because my month, my rent was five 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 was, it gave me a lot of hope. So, and he's also black.
Speaker 1So 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. 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 three. And it's the most inconvenient part of level three. You probably won't agree. Okay. There's a lot of times where people in my life
Speaker 2have told me self-narratives and I'm like, what? What's yours? What character are you most like?
Speaker 1Okay. So I relate most with Claire Dunphy from Modern Family, especially in her entrepreneurial years. Most people would be surprised to 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. I have my own relationship with AI, but AI can be a great brainstorm partner. It can be a great conversational practice partner. It can be a great role-playing partner. And this is actually one way that I like it. So if you're not sure, if you're like, Vanessa, I don't know. I don't know what character I am. Go to AI and ask this. What book, movie, or TV character is most like me in the way that I treat you, 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 a person? My core values are what character is most similar to me. And it will pull a bunch of characters that are those traits. So this is the one way that it can help you sometimes brainstorm. Okay. The ambitious hero, right? We started with that.
Speaker 5Yeah.
Speaker 1Archetype number one. The second one is called the content. I called it the contented pragmatist. Again, these are a little more art than science. The contented pragmatist is somebody who likes it as it is. They are quite content, very happy with where things are. They don't really need to change it if it's not broken. They are not very ambitious 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 two very specific people in my life who are very annoyed by me as the ambitious hero because I have a new goal every month. And I'm constantly like, they're like, I love smoothies or they make great granola. And I'm like, you should bottle it up and sell it at farmer's 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.
Speaker 2Interesting.
Speaker 1Do you know someone like that?
Speaker 2I do. I was just thinking also about just business generally and how when you're hiring teams or even in relationships, you can... 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 and my husband is, yeah, telling me to like be realistic and...
Speaker 1And they tend to be more a little bit, 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, like fiduciary, you know, I do a lot of finance conferences and I work with a lot of folks in banking. Sometimes the ambitious heroes can really be crushed in those roles because there isn't a lot of fast-moving growth in those companies. A contented pragmatist can do really well in a very stable traditional industry with a lot of regulation because they are very happy to live in that regulation. You might want someone, might, I say might because it really depends on your company, but in a corporate culture, you know, you might want a contented pragmatist running your books. 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 break, 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 like.
Speaker 2And in terms of conversation tips, are there different tips for different archetypes?
Speaker 1An 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, I, 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. 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 contended pragmatist, they want to talk about ritual. They want to talk about what works. They want to savor life's pleasures. They're very good at savoring. And by the way, this can be a wonderful relationship sometimes. Because sometimes the contended pragmatist reminds the ambitious hero, enjoy it. Enjoy it. So hard, like just taking 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 want to have that three-hour dinner and savor it and not talk about next year and not talk about goals and just savor this moment and talk about what they did last year and the year before that. A little bit different, okay? Okay. This is, I think, the most important one to talk about, actually. I think it's the least understood of all the things that I've done. 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 are so engaged in giving. And they're so engaged in giving. 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 there's nothing left. They have compassion burnout or compassion fatigue because they are giving and giving and giving and giving. They cannot say no. In a relationship, they are beautiful to be in a relationship with because they are givers, right? They are nurturers. They are givers. They are givers. They are givers. You know, 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 because 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.
Speaker 2That people pleases.
Speaker 1Yeah. 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 a sometimes half of it is just letting them stand up to protect themselves. It's 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, right? They attract high conflict people. You know what I mean by high conflict? 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 is not willing to give too much. 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 an absolutes. So they often speak in like 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, 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, oh, 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 are standing up for the person they care about.
Speaker 2And so if you're dealing with a selfless helper, in terms of
Speaker 1conversation, yes. Sometimes they even think talking about themselves is taking. Okay. So you might, sometimes in conversation, like you're asking them a question and they're
Speaker 4like, oh no, no, enough about me. Yeah. Oh, let's talk about you. Oh, I want to help you. How can I
Speaker 1help 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 on me. And I'm like, no, no, I really do want to hear about you. So sometimes they won't take the ball because they're worried it's selfish. And so sometimes getting them to open up can be hard because they feel like their needs are not important, but their needs are very important. Like they're such beautiful people. It's I think in conversation, the greatest gift we can give a selfless helper is letting them know that you're understood i value you and getting to know you is not taking from me it's giving to me i have to tell my friends it makes me feel good to help you it makes me feel good to hear about what's going on for you you're actually giving to me by telling me about yourself not taking from me so we have to gift to them i think we have to be extremely conversationally generous with them do you know do you
Speaker 2know anyone yes i do oh lovely yeah and it all it all tracks with everything you said so and
Speaker 1corporate like i write all these apply to work these are great if you have a not always but often managers can do great things as selfless helpers because they are so attuned to others that they are very good at bringing out performance not always but i've seen really really amazing managers who they know the roi they know metrics like they're following their kpis but they're so good at finding how does this person need to be helped how could this person be their best selves oh that person has a great expert power they're so good at that that they bring up performance in
Speaker 2everyone but they might avoid that difficult conversation these people tend to be a little
Speaker 1bit 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 so yes if they're not excellent conversationalists it's true they they can be avoidant but if they learn how to be assertive and by the way learning you know you can be assertive then they are uh tremendous in conversation because they're 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 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 counter-cultural they're the ones who are like i don't need a blueprint and they them and me in conversations is not always the best there's probably the ones in the comments who are like well this doesn't apply to me i don't need a blueprint i don't need a blueprint i don't need a blueprint i don't need to 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 litigators my litigators who are watching i find that my my litigators tend to fall into this into this category or very disruptive entrepreneurs i'm 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 because they want to break things like they want to build it and break it they want to reinvent the entire system and they're doing it you know edward snowden is one of the examples i give in the book of like he he wanted to change something and also he he wanted to like stick it to the man like he wanted to break the system that he was in okay do you struggle with this do you like this interviews they they're very interesting they're
Speaker 2really 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 like deeply contrarian but i think i think having people like that that are challenging around they're like default is challenge is quite it's quite useful yes it helps me be sort of refine my my own points
Speaker 1of view and they live as dream killers yeah and they live as dream killers and they live as dream killers it can be amazing but can be exhausting so in conversation it just it's good to go in prepared to know ah i need this i want to get stronger i want to be anti-fragile they'll break for you to make you stronger or like i'm a delicate flower right now i cannot do the dream killing i'm exhausted by it it's a fine line between that and like pessimism not always but sometimes they are pessimistic not always right we have a creative disruptor friend who i did an instagram post about this and i said you know i have a friend who always says i hate everything texts i hate everything i hate everything and he 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 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 narrative and they feel that no matter what they've done they are unlucky they are struggling they often feel stuck they often feel like they're in a situation where they're they often feel misunderstood they often feel overlooked and the problem with unlucky strugglers that the the character you want to think of is like george costanza from seinfeld right like oh 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 they're not unlucky right like my biggest challenge with my unlucky strugglers in my life is to not try to flip them into something that they're not or try to convince them that they're actually lucky they also in conversation can be very funny like they can make fun of themselves they're so humble 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 than the confidence you see in them they had it too if you're in a conversation with one of these people
Speaker 2that um you don't gel with you're not going to be able to convince them that they're not lucky 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
Speaker 1bad 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 like like 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 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 i have a formula you know i love a formula this calms my anxiety when i'm in a conversation it's time to go right either either we're not feeling it like we're not we're just not clicking or like we gotta go one first is a future cue so it's future cue plus compliment or action so a future cue is when you ask about or mention something coming in the future the reason for this is it's a subtle way to shift the brain into not here later okay so let's role play yeah let's do it we're at a we're at a party we're having
Speaker 2some wine and things get a little bit awkward we ran out of things to say to each other do you have
Speaker 1any fun plans coming up this weekend do anything fun uh it's gonna this is wine bar across town
Speaker 2that i'm really into so i'm probably just gonna go there i think with some friends oh my gosh well i
Speaker 1hope 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 you have a great time with that wine bar i'm gonna go
Speaker 2get some more coffee have you got any fun plans coming up i have so many fun plans coming up
Speaker 1my daughter's just started school and so we're having a celebratory labor day weekend this
Speaker 2weekend what do you love to talk about honestly that's it that's a signature question what have you always wanted to learn see i'm what if they just go straight back in though because that's
Speaker 1happened to me before where i've tried to okay this is where the the action and the compliment that that second piece so the future cue is we mentioned future and you're right they might they 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 but 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 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 gonna go grab more coffee i'm gonna go say hi to the host i'm gonna run to the ladies room i'm gonna let head home right like then they cannot right like 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 are literally trying to physically disengage so usually i pair those with those subtle nonverbal cues of like a slow backup and i 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 been good for you it's it's been good for me well um so uh oh 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 kryptonite for charisma
Speaker 2on this point of being assertive oh yes i was talking to some friends the other day about people that have aura and riz oh yeah who has aura and riz 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 riz means so i i'm curious like how you define those terms and like how does one cultivate aura and riz okay
Speaker 1i think aura and riz 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 like she's eight they said charisma or riz or aura is someone that you really want to be around it's when they walk into a room you want to go over and talk to them you want to sit near them you want to listen to them you want to work with them You want to play with them. And I said, do you know anyone like that? And she goes, oh, yes. And she named, so interesting, she named two 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 two 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.
Speaker 2Okay, so based on the 20 years of research you've done. Yes. If you were trying to teach me to have aura and riz.
Speaker 1Yes.
Speaker 2What are like the basics?
Speaker 1Be really easy to talk to.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1Right. So the point of level one is to put someone at ease. We like to be around people who are, one, clearly signaling. We don't like people who are mute with their body language. We don't like people who under-signal. We like people who clearly like us, right? So we have to be very 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 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. 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 like 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 hurt you at all?
Speaker 2Absolutely not.
Speaker 1Oh my. You're like, nobody asks me. So I get this a lot. And by the way, I'm just a regular person. So I'm always like, are you sure you really want to know what I'm... Yes. So I go on a lot of like second or third little go-see coffee dates to suss out the guy or girl.
Speaker 7I bet you love that.
Speaker 1It makes you 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 go. Let's call him Schmabbert. Okay? Okay. And so we go on this dinner and we have like a Mediterranean platter and he was okay. You know, it's 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, wait, what did you think? And I'm about to say, he's only okay when she goes, you know what? He just loved you. It's 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, Schmabbert, he is a great guy. He's clever. He's so smart. He liked my, he liked my jokes. Really? She's like, yeah, he just, you know, he just really had a good time with you. And I felt like I loved him. I liked him more in that moment. And I was horrified by my own response. And I realized we so want to be liked that when someone clearly signals liking, it makes us like them more, right? So we can be charismatic. One is we send clear signals of liking, but also too, and we talked about this a little bit last time, is fundamentally 82% of our impressions of people are based on warmth and competence. So people who are first and is first signaling, I'm open. I'm friendly. And then competent, I'm capable, I'm efficient, I'm effective, make us feel like I'm in good hands. In this way, every human being we first meet, we're trying to answer two questions. Can I trust you? And can I rely on you? So the second thing that charismatic people are doing is they're signaling, you can trust me and you can rely on me. I'm going to get it done. I'm going to only speak when I know something. I'm going to be assertive. I'm going to carry us through this conversation. I think that sort of this came after cues in a good way because cues was a good way to pick up your signals, but conversation is about being a bit assertive about the plan, right? Like if you read this book, you are going to feel in control in conversation. You're going to feel like you're approaching a conversation and you know what you want to do. If you have intention, we like that. Charismatic people, like they can, they carry us, right? Like they're like, we got this. We're going to do level. I'm going to ask about this. I'm going to do dream killing. And if I like you, if I like you, we're going to talk about your character. And so I think that that plan is a secret door. And to care charisma.
Speaker 2Is there anything else that, you know, people accidentally do that holds them back from being someone of high aura?
Speaker 1Yes, 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 as 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.
Speaker 2She lives down at the beach in LA. So if anyone wants to do lunch or dinner or breakfast with Vanessa, she is, I'll share her number in the comment section. It'll be pinned.
Speaker 1Exactly. 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, 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, and then of course, like within the first five minutes, the leader of this group says, we're going to get in a circle and we are going to introduce ourselves. And this is like, so we get in a circle and the first person basically is like, I'm a billionaire and I invented the internet or something like that. And the second person is like, I would love to know what they actually said.
Speaker 2That's what you heard.
Speaker 1Like, it was so impressive. It hurt, you know? And I was like, okay, okay. This first person is all right. The second person is like, I cured cancer, right? Like, like, 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're, they were saying things that were meant to, to shock and wow and awe you. It gets to me. And I was like, my name is Vanessa. And I'm a recovering awkward person. And I help smart, awkward people with my books and my YouTube channel. And everyone laughed and took a deep breath. 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. It changed the nature of the rest of the invites, the rest of the introductions. And then afterwards, the circle like breaks up for networking. And most people came over to me, not the billionaire, not the cure of cancer, not the saving the earth, climate change guru, but wanted to talk to me about awkwardness and about my YouTube channel and about they're smart, but they feel uncomfortable. And I realized like, I was just the easiest person to talk to in that circle.
Speaker 2You have aura, Vanessa. You have riz.
Speaker 1I was the easiest person to talk to in that circle.
Speaker 2And so I think that if we can have aura, Vanessa, you parlay that.
Speaker 1Maybe when my makeup is done.
Speaker 2Do you have aura?
Speaker 1When my makeup is done. Maybe when my makeup is done.
Speaker 2You're deflecting.
Speaker 1Yeah. I mean, I don't, I, maybe, I don't know. Do I? You do have aura. 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, like, I don't know. I don't know. I haven't met that many billionaires, but the ones I've met, like most of them are quite humble and they're quite, like they, they downplay how successful they are because they've already made it. And so I think if we all just put less pressure on ourselves to just connect, that would be easier.
Speaker 2It does really track. I was thinking about the people in my life that have aura and they're not the people that have, are the most successful, the most accomplished. They are, they are the ones that you would most like, like to spend time with. Yeah.
Speaker 1For whatever reason.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1They're easy. And, and by the way, it's back and forth. Like you can be introverted and extra or extroverted. You don't have, like. People, I think, think that master conversationals are extroverted. Actually, that's not usually the case. Sometimes extroverts fall into their own traps with conversational narcissism. Ambiverts, introverts do really well.
Speaker 2But one of the other sort of definitions of aura is the person who, I don't know, they just seem to take up more space. They, they seem to speak slower and be, you kind of like see them walk across a room. What is that? And like, how are they cultivating that, like that kind of aura?
Speaker 1I think there's, I, this has been my guess. I have also thought about this. When someone walks into a room and you're just like.
Speaker 2Michelle Obama was like that.
Speaker 1Oh, I've never met her. I've never met her. But like, I can only imagine. Rather becoming.
Speaker 2Tony Robbins as well. He had serious.
Speaker 1For sure. 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 are physically taking up more space, whether they're short or tall, in that winners, they have more space between their ears and their skin. shoulders, they take up more space between their torso and their arms, they literally claim more space physically, right? So if I were to like do the entire interview, and I've seen people do interviews in your chair where they're taking up as little space as possible, you 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 it's not walking in like with my arms up, it's micro, right? It's like a slight down 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 point. 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, like I'll tend to go a little bit higher in my vocal range. And if I were to do the entire presentation in this tone of voice where I was talking to you, 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
Speaker 2feeling, right? And you're also speaking a little bit faster then.
Speaker 1Oh, I will. Interesting. I didn't even notice it, but yes, I think I was, yeah, rushing, rushing. Yeah. And I had less breath. Like I'm actually out of breath after doing that. So when we don't have breath, I'm 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.
Speaker 2Okay. I'm a little bit sick. Hence why my voice might sound a bit different today. So I'm a little bit deeper than normal, but, um, hello. Horrible. Yeah. That was embarrassing.
Speaker 1Horrible. Right. But I hear, I listened in on zoom calls and I hear people, that's their very first word. Like they literally hold their breath and they say, good morning. Hello. Hello everyone. Hi. Ooh, 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 cause you usually use your maximum resonance, right? You're very good at that. And I've noticed that in work culture, people who use their maximum resonance point, listen to more. They are easy to talk to because we want to listen to them. They take up more aura, more riz because we're like, ah, cause we can hear their confidence. We can hear their relaxation. And so vocal cues are such an important aspect of charisma. You know, all of these questions are beautiful, but how you say your words is just as important as what you say. If I were to ask, so, uh, like what's your pursuit passion project, I guess. That sounds so terrible. You know, like my lack of vocal care, you immediately hear and it tunes you out. Right. So I can, if I don't have good intention here, it does leak out. That's why earlier when you asked me like, does intention matter? I said, if you have intention to care and try, it's going to matter. But if you don't, if you're not trying, people will hear it. And a lot of that is voice. And I think that very charismatic people, they're imbuing their voice with that winning, calm, confident voice. And I think that's what I'm trying to do. And I think
Speaker 2what about the rest of me? So we've talked about some of the specific conversational questions at the three stages. We've talked about vocal tone. Is there any other part of being a great conversationalist? And I'm thinking now about, I guess we talked about hands and taking up space, but even eye contact, I think about this a lot. It takes a lot of, dare I say, confidence for me to like, look you in the eyes like this, Vanessa, and ask you a question.
Speaker 1That 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 mouth problem, I look away. And so in conversation, we actually do not want a hundred percent eye contact. We don't even want 70% eye contact. 60-70% eye contact is more ideal in Western cultures. But if someone is deep thinking or they are social processing, you actually do want less eye contact because they're 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.
Speaker 2But when you're delivering, like 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?
Speaker 1You 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 hardened my lower lid. So the reason why we'll often like we're processing or processing and then we're delivering is because two things are happening at once. We're trying to connect. I want you to hear my point and feel it with oxytocin. But also I want to see, do you believe? Do you believe me? Or are you raising your eyebrows? Right? So I'm making more eye contact with you because I'm trying to see where your interest lies. Right? Whereas you're looking at your iPad because you're trying to get to the next question. You want to make sure that we're covering everything. That's why this is not natural. This doesn't usually happen after a 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 interest. Burst of oxytocin. But then you're okay to look away. You're okay to process. You might want to make your eye contact most when you're trying to 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, oh, that's horrible. I want to be easy to talk to by pivoting away from it.
Speaker 2And when you're talking to me, what is the best way to be a good listener? Because some people go like they interrupt. They go, oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you've got other people who will like nod and like really sort of encourage and cheerlead when you're talking. And then you'll have the like some people that they kind of they don't know they're doing it, but they start to like scowl at you.
Speaker 1I know. Yes. 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, oh, I actually have a friend who defaults to the disgust micro expression. He doesn't even realize he's doing it. It's a punctuator. Facial punctuator is a nonverbal habit. It doesn't actually mean. It doesn't 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. 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 in is a warm and competent both actually because I'm trying to literally get closer to you to understand more deeply. A competent cue. 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 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're doing, it's not positive. 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, you know, a presentation to a C-suite and I have a couple or, you know, investors or important people and I see someone do a lower lid flex, I have a choice. I can take note of what I just said and bookmark it. Or I can stop and do dynamic presenting. We haven't even talked about presenting, but I can switch. Does this make sense?
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 1Are we good? Any questions here? You know, let me give you another example of this. So you can also look for these cues, which also makes you a pleasure to listen to because I am so deeply listening that I'm trying to respond to your emotional reaction to what I'm saying.
Speaker 2I 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.
Speaker 1Yes. 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 question. What I don't want you to do is have the plan, ask the question, and then check off to the next one, right? The whole point of these is actually to be quite dynamic. It might be that you ask, what's your personal passion project? And you spend hours talking about that. What a pleasure. What a delight. That means you're being dynamic in that, whoa, you like you both lit up on it. You can go there. You can dive deep. So I want you to have a plan, but I also want you to be dynamic with it. Like both can be true.
Speaker 2Vanessa. Of all the things that we have discussed, is there anything we haven't talked about that we should have talked about that appears within your new book, Conversation, how to connect with anyone and make every interaction count?
Speaker 1There 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, 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 two things. It's interesting, but it's also conversationally generous. You're not creating
Speaker 2a dead end for yourself. And this is so true because there is a most interesting thing about everybody. And that most interesting thing will be get 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 three years. So I imagine this person always gets asked about Bible school for three years. Like, like, because everybody wants to know. Three years of her life. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I remember just thinking they're like, that's the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I remember just thinking they're like, that's the question that everybody, when you introduce it, they were like, Bible
Speaker 1school. 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 the editor of Entrepreneur Magazine. And so he is always at dinners and he brings up on purpose. He will say, what are you ordering? Because you'll ask about food all the time. And he goes, well, actually, I have no, 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 conversation. 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
Speaker 2success with those interesting answers. So have a script for the questions that you get asked the most that offer gifts to those that are on the receiving end of that answer. Yeah. And the last
Speaker 1thing I would say is this is a plan. And if you're not, you're not going to be able to do it. So the entire goal of this is for you to feel more in control, for you to feel more confident. You know, I think as someone who wasn't confident for a long time and who had very awkward conversations for a long time, just knowing that I had a good intent helped me a lot. So this is the plan, but also feel free to totally deviate from the plan that when you're in the moment, if you're feeling excited and, 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
Speaker 2book for Vanessa? So if they're, you know, 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?
Speaker 1This is for people who want to stop dreading small talk. Dread is, was a real motivation for me because so many of my students would say, Oh, I have to go to the networking event. I am dreading talking to my boss. I hate those first five minutes of my team call. Oh, I don't know what to talk about on a date. And first dates are horrible. First dates can be fun. If you have a conversational plan, even if it's not your person, they can still be fun. Conversation can be not awkward. It can be great at the start of a meeting if you know how to do it. And so I would like to get rid of the dread in your life. I would like to get rid of the awkwardness in your life because, and the deeper meaning is we're 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.
Speaker 2Kind of sounds like it's for all of us.
Speaker 1I think it's for all of us.
Speaker 2What a wonderful book. And what a perfectly timed book at a time when AI and computers 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, you know, they see their kids in class and they don't know the basic skills of how to relate to each other through conversation. So a great book, I think, for parents.
Speaker 1It was meant to be now. It was meant to be now.
Speaker 2It was meant to be. It took you a long time, right?
Speaker 1Yeah. 20 years.
Speaker 220 years. Wow. Well, I'm glad it's here. Conversation. How to connect with anyone and make every interaction count. And I'm going to link it below if anyone wants to go and buy it right now. Thank you. What a wonderful book, Vanessa. Congratulations. Oh my goodness. Thank you. Thank you. It is finally here.
Speaker 1It's finally here. Thank you for helping me bring it into the world.
Speaker 2It's okay. You deserve everything. You're such a phenom.
Speaker 1Oh my gosh. I hardly. I'm obsessed with people. That's it.
Speaker 2We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next. Not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is, do you feel like there are things you sacrificed in your personal life to build your success that you regret and wish
Speaker 1you could now get back? Yes. You know, I briefly mentioned that I moved and I moved to be closer to family. And that was because I think I sacrificed friendship and family relationship in the hustle. You know, we moved to Austin for work. I moved to Austin for work and I left my family. And I don't regret Austin 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 a 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. I'm back.
Speaker 2Down by the beach in LA.
Speaker 1I'm back. My sister is at my house right now.
Speaker 2Oh, really?
Speaker 1With my kids. Yes.
Speaker 2It's good to have you in town.
Speaker 1I'm so excited. And I will come. And maybe.
Speaker 2I don't believe you. Only if it's good. 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. Bye. Bye.
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