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Likeability Expert: Stop Doing This, It’s Why People Quietly Avoid You! | Vanessa Van Edwards | The Diary Of A CEO Transcript

Likeability and conversation expert Vanessa Van Edwards interviewed by Steven Bartlett on The Diary of a CEO

Steven Bartlett interviews Vanessa Van Edwards, author of Conversations: How to Connect with Anyone and Make Every Interaction Count, about the science and practice of great conversation.

Summary

Steven Bartlett interviews Vanessa Van Edwards, a behaviour researcher and self-described recovering awkward person, about her new book on conversation. Van Edwards argues that conversation is a learnable skill and that society is in a connection crisis driven by asynchronous communication, technology, and declining in-person socialising. She presents a three-level framework for conversation — from surface-level facts to personal concerns to self-narrative — and provides specific questions, techniques, and archetypes to help people connect more deeply. She also addresses overtalking, charisma, vocal tone, listening cues, and how to exit a conversation gracefully, arguing throughout that conversational skill is now a form of career and relationship insurance.

Key Takeaways

Conversation is a learnable skill with measurable career and relationship advantages. Van Edwards argues that connected people collaborate better, are more productive, and are more likely to be promoted — and that conversational friction costs companies money in the form of information silos, reduced psychological safety, and poor collaboration.

The worst conversation openers are "How are you?" and "What do you do?" A speed networking study with 500 participants found these questions triggered autopilot responses and dead-end exchanges. The best opener was "What was the highlight of your day?" — which breaks autopilot and invites the brain to search for optimism.

There are three levels of conversation depth, and skipping levels causes damage. Level one covers general facts and should be done with story-hunting questions. Level two uncovers personal concerns — dreams, goals, and worries. Level three involves self-narrative, which should be reserved for close relationships. Jumping too quickly to deeper levels creates discomfort or vulnerability regret.

Conversational narcissism stems from insecurity and fear of silence. People who overtalk are often terrified of awkward silences rather than of rejection. The antidote is assertive curiosity — asking genuine, probing follow-up questions — and the overtalker can be helped by being made to feel understood, chosen, and liked.

There are five conversational archetypes based on self-narrative: the ambitious hero, the contented pragmatist, the selfless helper, the creative disruptor, and the unlucky struggler. Each archetype has distinct conversational needs, relationship patterns, and workplace behaviours, and knowing someone's archetype helps predict how to connect with them.

Asking "Are you lucky?" is a deceptively powerful diagnostic question. The speed and nature of the answer reveals a person's internal locus of control, gratitude, optimism, and likely life outcomes. People with redemption narratives — who feel lucky and believe they can overcome hardship — live longer, have stronger immune systems, and report greater happiness.

Charisma and aura are built on being easy to talk to, not impressive. Signalling warmth clearly, using maximum vocal resonance, taking up physical space, and making the other person feel liked are more effective than listing credentials. The most charismatic people in a room are often the easiest to approach, not the most accomplished.

Voice and body language carry as much weight as the words themselves. Speaking at maximum resonance point — the lowest natural end of one's vocal range — signals calm and confidence. Eye contact should be around 60–70%, not constant, as intense eye contact prevents complex thinking. Listening cues such as nodding, head tilting, leaning, and lower-lid flexing signal warmth and deep attention.

The conversation crisis is being accelerated by technology. Voice notes are monologues, not conversations. Talking to AI trains people to communicate in ways they would never use with humans. Only three in ten Americans socialise daily, and one in six people worldwide are affected by loneliness — trends Van Edwards connects directly to declining conversational skill.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

The connection crisis and why conversation matters now

Steven Bartlett: 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? Why is this book needed at this time?

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

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Conversation is the vehicle to get what you want. 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 we have made is we think of conversation as extra. We sort of put it second. I know leaders focus on this a lot — they're focused so much on their idea, on their technology, on their business, but they forget about the human element. And I think we have to start thinking about conversation almost like going to the gym. We focused a lot on our physical health, but our social health is critical to our emotional health. 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.

Symptoms of bad conversation

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yes, there are symptoms of being a bad conversationalist. And by the way, I should back up — as you know, I'm a recovering awkward person and I really struggled with bad conversation for a long time. I realised 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. That is when small talk becomes soul-crushing.

I have spent the last 20 years studying master conversationalists. Master conversationalists 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 of being a bad conversationalist — is dread. Dread is a really important emotion. If you open your calendar and you see only dread, or you feel only dread, there's something wrong. Conversation should boost us and give us energy. So you feel dread in social interactions. You feel overwhelmed when you're in conversation. If you're in conversation and you're socially overthinking, you cannot turn your brain off — all you're worried about is what you're going to say next. That's actually just because you probably haven't learned the mechanics of conversation. There's a blueprint to good conversation. 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. Really good conversationalists — people leave conversation with them thinking, "Wow, after talking to you, I feel like I understand myself better." And that's a very different way of thinking about trying to impress somebody.

The speed networking experiment

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Accidentally, I've been doing research for this my whole life because I was very bad at conversation for 20 years. Then 20 years ago I realised 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 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 conversations.

Here's what we did. I knew there was some secret that great conversationalists had, and I was like, I'm going to find it. So we devised three different speed networking experiments with 500 speed networkers. We brought them into 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 it. You know a good conversation by a lot of gestures, a lot of leaning, high energy, a lot of vocal charisma, the volume goes up. In a bad conversation, it sounds like this — very low energy, apologetic facial expressions, low volume.

Then I assigned these networkers six conversation starters. I picked these very carefully. Three of them I thought could do really well and three of them I wasn't sure about. 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 connect with them on LinkedIn." Then we took all these ratings and ranked them, and there were clear winners and clear losers.

The losers — the conversations that produced the worst connection, the most awkwardness — want to guess what last place was?

Steven Bartlett: Something about the weather?

Vanessa Van Edwards: That was fifth worst. Sixth — the very worst — was "What do you do?"

Steven Bartlett: The worst. Why?

Vanessa Van Edwards: "How are you" and "What do you do" are very socially scripted. The moment we ask those questions, our brain goes into autopilot. There's a lack of 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 — you are trapped in fact. Where are you from? Got any kids? Married? The facts are dead ends. It's very hard for someone to break out of that social script.

The best conversation starter was actually a surprise to me. It was, "What was the highlight of your day?" Now, what this question does psychologically — first of all, it's not too deep. A mistake that extroverts can make is they ask too deep a question too quickly. They're like, "What is your greatest goal in life?" And you're like, "I don't know you." 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, "What was good?" And the moment someone goes "oh" and they're thinking for the first time, their brain goes, "We get to do something new." So they got to think of something new, and it wasn't too big a question.

Steven Bartlett: The second question was "Have anything exciting you're working on?"

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

Now, the fourth question 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 the most connective thing I felt all week" — or a zero, which wasn't even an option on my scale. The question was, "What's your story?"

Have you ever been asked that question?

Steven Bartlett: Derivatives of that question.

Vanessa Van Edwards: 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 give that to you so quickly?" So you're accidentally putting them into conversational fear. This is when I realised there's a hierarchy. We have to move through our conversations with different levels.

The three levels of conversation

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Dr. Dan McAdams found that conversation is actually not as fluid as we would like to think — that 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 — where are you from? What do you do? Married? Where do you live? You're trying to ask all those questions because there's a sort of social hierarchy. Our brain processes social facts from least intimate to most intimate. So we cannot get to know someone on their deepest dreams and worries if we don't know the basic facts about them. That is why we often fall into that trap of those fact-based questions.

The key here is that a really good level one question takes those facts but adds story, adds emotion. The best way to do level one better is to swap out those bad questions — "How are you? What do you do?" — and look for a story. I truly believe a fact is a stop sign. A story is a doorway.

Steven Bartlett: Give me an example of both.

Vanessa Van Edwards: One of them is "What's your personal passion project?" Now, "What's your personal passion project?" is actually a hunt for stories. And would you open with that?

Steven Bartlett: Is that what you're saying? Or does it not really matter?

Vanessa Van Edwards: It can come in the first few minutes. I probably wouldn't walk into a room and be like, "What's your personal passion project, Steven?" It's a little bit much. We have to do our basic first impression first. But as an opener question, it's better than "How are you?" And I have to pause here and say — everything I'm going to share takes a little bit of conversational courage. 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 these questions, 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'll probably tell you by accident. So it's like a hunt for stories.

Same with "Working on anything exciting these days?" — one of my favourite swap questions because you're hunting for something good. Now, when I think about conversation at level one, you're trying to gift someone a chemical cocktail. These 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. A bunch of other parents in the room, and I wanted to go meet other moms because I'd just moved across the country. I was excited. I walk in the room and everyone's scrolling. Everyone's on their feed. And I realised, wow, conversation now is not just 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 questions 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 — conversational confetti. We've got to lift a little bit more in our conversations, because otherwise someone's going to go right back to scrolling.

Howard Stern and information gaps

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

What also happens with these kinds of questions is we're creating these little information gaps. Using these phrases in conversation is a way to create more intrigue and interest. 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 phones go down.

And "Have any fun plans coming up?" — the reason why this one is important is it's 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. Part of these questions is being known for asking better questions, being known for hunting for excitement. What will happen is that people who know you — at work, or outside of work — will bring these things to you. They know you're going to ask about personal passions. So next time you get to say, "Hey, last time we were talking you mentioned XYZ — how's that going?" So they also become your callbacks. They make conversation easier later.

Introverts and the energy of conversation

Steven Bartlett: Everybody's starting from a remarkably different place here, aren't they — in terms of both skill, but also will and energy and willingness to do it. I think there'll be a lot of introverts listening right now that just think, "What's the point? 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."

Vanessa Van Edwards: I agree. And two things can be true. It's very exhausting in the sense of you're trying — you'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 and 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 to get home to Netflix? That's one kind of hard. Or do we choose the hard of — I'm going to break a script, I'm going to try to do level one better, I'm going to try to trigger a little bit of dopamine, I'm going to try to learn something I didn't know before, which is going to maybe, just maybe, bring joy?

And I think even for those introverts, they have really big goals in their life that they care about. If you can tell me how asking "Have any fun plans coming up?" is going to help you become a better CEO or founder, or father, or mother, or daughter — then you're in.

Steven Bartlett: Yes. Okay. So let's talk about founders and CEOs specifically.

Vanessa Van Edwards: There is a mistaken belief — and I work with a lot of companies, a lot of founders — they believe that conversation is anti-productive. They worry, "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 logically, if you think this through — connected people collaborate better. Engaged employees work better together. We are more productive when we feel good. 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.

So if you have a community of employees who have very easy level one — they don't need to get to level three with everyone in their company, they don't need to get to level three with their 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. And this is remote or in person. Because they know they have these very loose ties, and loose ties actually make us more productive. So we are looking for frictionless communication, and that happens at level one.

In fact, the team intervention I encourage every virtual or in-person team to do is once a week, at the start of a meeting, start with "Tell me something good." Very quickly, everyone goes around and shares 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. What it does is you've just created a safe, very contained space for good level one. It's only good. Otherwise, people will accidentally complain — "Oh, the weather, the traffic." But you're putting a frame around it that's good. You're time-boxing it. Everyone goes around really quickly, but you're very quickly creating these team connections.

All of these level one things have one thing in common, which is they provoke a positive search and response. That's really the crux of level one — a question that's producing a positive response.

But 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.

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

Jerry Seinfeld's numbers-based question

Vanessa Van Edwards: Another master conversationalist I study who is excellent at level one is Jerry Seinfeld. He often meets people after his events and they're so starstruck by him that they don't know what to say and conversation is really awkward. He's developed a trick that works really well for CEOs and introverts, which is to ask a numbers-based question. So instead of "How are you?" or "Where do you live?" — "How long have you two been together?" And then if it's 38 years, you say, "Oh, what's been the highlight of your 38 years?" If it's really short, "Oh, you're in the honeymoon phase — that's the best part." So it's a numbers question, and it's a jumping-off point to a story. It's not that level one should always be positive. More practically, it's that there's a small emotion or a small story.

Steven Bartlett: The other day I was in Las Vegas and I was doing this sort of step-and-repeat meet-and-greet thing after an event, and people were being ushered through very quickly. I always want to say something to learn a little bit about a person in that time. What would you recommend?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Whenever I'm speaking about books, I say, "What was your favourite 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 get to. "What have you always wanted to learn?" or "What are you learning?" is actually going to level two. So you can ask it, especially if someone's just spent an hour listening to you.

The no-work party and the treasure hunt

Vanessa Van Edwards: One thing I want to say is — I read Dan McAdams' framework and I was doing this conversation research, and then I got invited to one of the weirdest parties I've ever been to. I get in and they tell me to take off my shoes, so I'm committed — I can't leave. And then they say, "Guess what? We have a rule for this party." I'm like, "What?" They say, "You cannot talk about what you do."

This was a party of very successful people. And all of us are like, "What?" Because I'm pretty defined by what I do. I talk about it. I love it. So I start to panic because I'm like, "What do you even talk about if you don't talk about that?" So many of our conversations veer into work. And so I had to get more creative with my questions. I was like, "I'm just going to try to figure out what they do without asking." And that was an aha moment — we should treat level one as a treasure hunt. If you're going into it looking for some kind of conversational gold, your questions have much different intention. And what I ended up asking was, "What do you talk about when you don't talk about work?" — which gave us this freedom in conversation. 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 about what you do. It can be about anything that is engaging or exciting you in that moment.

Level two: personal concerns and dream building

Vanessa Van Edwards: That is level one. Level two is called personal concerns. Personal concerns is where we begin to connect deeply. This is our motivations, our goals, our values, our worries.

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Exactly. Or levelling up, as you wish. The mistake people make is they skip level one. They try to go too deep too quickly and people feel like it's invasive. We must know those basics first, as long as we do them better — not in an autopilot way. Level two is when you start to understand what motivates someone. The mental trick I use is: you're on level two with someone if you know what gets them up in the morning — what goal is driving them all day — but you also know what keeps them up at night, what worries them.

I encourage people as they're reading to think of the five people they interact with most and place them on a level. Do you only know the basic facts about them? Are you all the way at level three? I love level two. I want to get through level one as quickly as possible. I want to get to your motivations, your secret side hustle, your dreams and passions, what keeps you up at night. But I can sometimes jump too fast.

Level two is about making someone feel heard and understood. And the biggest skill we can develop in level two is what I call dream building. Everyone has a secret desire, a secret dream, a secret side hustle, a secret passion. Can you be there and help them uncover it? That's the goal of level two.

Steven Bartlett: Give me an example of dream building.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Before we started, I said to you, "I have a new goal — I'm pitching a TV show." That's my secret side hustle. It's something I've been working on secretly and quietly. If we were at lunch, I would have told you all about it. We would have double-clicked on it. That's an example.

Another framework I give is a pet or pest project. What is someone's pet project? Like a pet at home — you think about it, you dream about it, you hope about it. 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 how you can get rid of it. 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. So you're trying to figure out in conversation: could you let someone feel safe enough to share either one?

Steven Bartlett: Are there questions that evoke dream building?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yes. "What have you always wanted to learn?" is an interesting question because it triggers growth mindset — when someone believes they can change themselves, change their trajectory, learn something new. We like this question because you're asking, "Are you willing to grow with me?"

The other easy one is "What is your biggest goal right now?" You can also time-anchor it. Anytime someone has a birthday, you can ask, "What's your big goal this year?" Around New Year's, January and December, I ask everyone I know, "What's your biggest goal right now?" When we talk about goals, it activates a part of our brain that triggers dopamine. When we think about our future self, it activates a part of ourselves that wants to get motivated. So level two is also giving someone motivation — in conversation, they're actually discovering an aspect of themselves. They're tapping into their own resource for motivation.

Steven Bartlett: It gives them permission to dream a little bit.

Vanessa Van Edwards: 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 the intrapersonal. 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 people are using all that excitement alone — when they're journaling, when they're meditating, when they're working on their to-do list. We have forgotten to bring those goals into conversation. We're almost embarrassed. I've noticed it's almost like people are embarrassed to talk about their secret side hustle or their secret passion. If we give someone permission to bring what they've been motivated about privately into conversation, you get to be an ally.

Steven Bartlett: Well, then you get to answer — because some people haven't quite figured out what their biggest goal is.

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

Steven Bartlett: But what if — you know, I know a lot of taxi drivers listen to this podcast because I get in taxis and we talk about it. Taxi drivers are often very good conversationalists. But sometimes a taxi driver might be faced with the scenario where the person in the back seat doesn't want to talk, and they might hit them with one of these level ones and then the level twos and they're just getting brick walls.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Then I would respect that. If someone doesn't want to talk to you, you back out. Because they're going through their own thing. You have to also have the courage to be disliked. You can try your best in conversation, you can bring the best questions, but if someone is not your person or they are not ready to connect, why would you waste your energy on that? So I also think that asking some of these is like a bid — it's like a bid to see, "Can we do this? You want to banter with me? Should we have level one? Should we even dip into level two?" Great. If not, cool. They're not your person. It's not their day.

Steven Bartlett: So if they don't take the bait, it's okay.

Vanessa Van Edwards: The taxi drivers usually ask me, "Going anywhere exciting? 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. A taxi driver is going to modify it to "Are we heading anywhere exciting? Doing anything exciting today?" These are not prescriptions. They are guidelines to try to make the research applicable.

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.

Do you have to actually care?

Steven Bartlett: 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?

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

Steven Bartlett: So is it okay to pretend to care?

Vanessa Van Edwards: If you're asking the question, you care enough to try. If you're listening to this podcast, you already care enough to be like, "I know I should be a master conversationalist." So many leaders I work with might not feel warm, but they know they need to be warm. I think that's intent enough. We just have to find the questions that work for you.

The worst question in conversation history

Steven Bartlett: You talked a second ago about questions that lead to dead ends. What are the other examples?

Vanessa Van Edwards: I have a question that I hate a lot. I want it to leave our vocabulary. It's the worst question in the history of conversation. It is "Been busy?"

Steven Bartlett: What do you do when you're on the receiving end of those kinds of questions? How do I counter that?

Vanessa Van Edwards: First of all, boring questions make you boring. We know this. But boring questions asked of you are an opportunity. In fact, 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. The first bucket is when you're asked "What do you do?" — and you're going to be asked a lot. You better have a great answer. I think having a great answer to "What do you do?" is creating opportunities for yourself.

The mistake that most people make with "What do you do?" — when you're asked that question, they're looking for something. They're trying to understand who you are. Maybe they're even asking, "What are you worth?" So now the ball's in your court to break the script and surprise them. You want to give an answer that explains exactly what you do, but then gives them a little hook — a little information gap, a little curiosity. And we don't want to over-complicate or be vague.

For example, I was sitting in a coffee shop researching this book and eavesdropping on everyone's conversations. I heard — I think they were on a date — she said, "So what do you do?" And he goes, "Oh, I have a system for maximising achievement in young learners." And she was like, "What?" And he goes, "Yeah, I work with fifth-grade students and I have a system for how they can learn math and reading." And she goes, "Oh, you're a teacher." He goes, "Yeah, I'm a fifth-grade teacher." And I was like, wow. The intention there was to be interesting. He didn't want to say, "I'm just a fifth-grade teacher." But he gave the brain too many calories — conversation calories. The brain wants the simplest, easiest road possible. If we want to put people at ease, what doesn't put people at ease is acting like you're reading your resume. If your answer to "What do you do?" sounds like you're reading your resume, you are turning people off.

Steven Bartlett: So that answer he gave was vague, complex, and it didn't give me the social hierarchy of facts. I have to know what you do before I can know your how.

Vanessa Van Edwards: What he should have said is not the how but the what. I love why, but I think that needs to come second. What he should have said is, "I'm a fifth-grade teacher, and I've been working for the last 10 years. I developed this really unique system that speeds up reading." Now we're talking — because my brain went, "Got it. Check. Fifth-grade teacher. Got it." Then I got to hear the how. "Wow, 10 years." That answered another question we always have: how long have you been doing that? And then it added this hook of "I figured out how to get students to read faster."

So when you think about what to do, I have a little formula. I do blank for who by how. That is doing some heavy lifting — 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 know, "Can you help me? Can you help my friend? Is it for my sister?" And then if it fits, your how.

Steven Bartlett: A lot of people listening now are more multi-hyphenated than ever before. They do this, a that, a violin, a creator, a LinkedIn thing, a speech, a dance, an improv. So how do those people answer?

Vanessa Van Edwards: We understand complexity as humans. We get it. So you can say, "I daylight as a fifth-grade teacher, but I moonlight as a cinematographer." You can literally say you're hyphenated. 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. So you can say, "I've been working in marketing for the last 20 years, but I'm thinking about going back to school for psychology." We think that people can't handle it, but conversation can handle a lot and it doesn't take a long time.

The mechanics of conversation: turn length and overtalking

Vanessa Van Edwards: Now, I do want to make a note here about the mechanics of conversation. There's two aspects of conversation — there's the art, like weaving in excitement and harvesting story, and there's also the mechanics. The Cander Corpus is a huge research study on the mechanics of conversation. How long do you think a typical turn should take in conversation?

Steven Bartlett: 15 seconds.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Wonderful. 15 to 30 seconds. In average conversation, we like 15 to 30 seconds. 45 seconds is okay, but we start to turn to a monologue. Under 15 seconds, you might actually be creating conversational scarcity — not asking enough, not talking enough.

Steven Bartlett: Which one's worse, do you find?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Well, I'm an overtalker, so I'm going to say undertalking is worse. But can I take a hit at podcasts for just a second?

Steven Bartlett: Sure.

Vanessa Van Edwards: So the other reason I wrote this book is I think the art of conversation is being systematically stripped away piece by piece, and it's well-intentioned. This is not a natural conversation. 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 we are hearing conversations that are not real. They are a bit performative, and they're not following the mechanics of conversation. That is affecting our conversational muscle in our brain.

Second is we're having more and more asynchronous conversations. I now more than ever am sending nine-minute voice notes to my friends.

Steven Bartlett: Wow.

Vanessa Van Edwards: They send them back to me. A voice note is not a conversation. A voice note is a monologue. 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." 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 — listening to my best friend's voice note while I'm cleaning or cooking or exercising. So that has skewed things, because we then get into real conversation and it feels hard because our muscle has been atrophying with this asynchronous communication.

And we are also conversing less. Only three in ten Americans socialise on a daily basis. Meaning they're having more time alone and they are conversing less. And that is because we're able to do so much work asynchronously. We also spend so much time on our self-care, our longevity, our workouts, that we are just doing less with other people. And one in six people worldwide are affected by loneliness. And I think that is because we are having less conversation. And if we're having it, it's happening asynchronously — or, and this is the last hardest point, we are now talking to technology more than talking to each other.

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. I was sitting next to my husband and he was working and he was 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." Because we're talking to technology in a way that we would never talk to other humans, but our brain doesn't always know the difference. And so I think this muscle is atrophying.

The overtalker test

Vanessa Van Edwards: On this point of knowing whether you are a good conversationalist — there was a recent study of over a thousand Americans and they found that 95% of people have worked with someone who talks too much. These chatty co-workers spend an average of 90 minutes of their workday just talking, and 71% of respondents said talkative co-workers prevented them from getting their work done.

Steven Bartlett: How does one know if they are the person that talks too much?

Vanessa Van Edwards: First — do an intervention on this. Go back if you have recorded Zoom calls and just time yourself. There is an appropriate range: 15 to 45 seconds, 45 seconds at the most. Second, non-verbal cues. Someone is checking out if they are opening their mouth as if to say something. That is a subtle cue that someone wants a turn but they are going to wait. So if someone is opening their mouth — I call it the open fish — it means they want a turn. Like you did it to me earlier and I totally stopped.

Steven Bartlett: Yeah, you did. Yeah. So I do give people cues that I want to say something sometimes. And some of them see them and some of them just do not.

Vanessa Van Edwards: And I was like fully distracted — I was like, "Oh, he wants to say something." You're on the more sensitive end of the scale where you're almost watching what I'm doing. And having done what, 700 of these interviews now, it's really fascinating to me that some people I have to remain completely utterly still because they are surveilling me for cues that they're doing a good job. And so if I move or look away, they immediately change. Whereas other people don't even know I'm here.

And this is why this is not natural conversation. But I think people like you are better at conversation because you see conversation not as a megaphone through which you're shouting. You see it as continual feedback. That's why I have to sometimes be on edge with people like you, because I know that you're taking cues from me. I'm looking for your eyebrow raises. Neil deGrasse Tyson says that every book is every eyebrow-raising thing he's ever said — because he'll go on aeroplanes, he'll just talk to people, and when they go like that, he writes it down.

So I'm doing the same thing for you. 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. Because you're the taste-maker. I know I'm saying things that interest me but might not interest you. So if you raise your eyebrows, I'm going to go deeper or give you an example or tell you a story. And this is why this is not a normal conversation. In normal conversation, those moments go viral. Like when you go — those are the replayed parts.

Entertainers vs. appreciators

Steven Bartlett: I'll be honest, Vanessa — I was thinking about someone that I might consider to be in the overtalking category. And when they talk, I don't think they have any concept that there's anybody else in the room. They might as well have their eyes completely closed. They're just going to finish when they feel like they've run out of things.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay, this is interesting. 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 it.

The way I discovered this framework is I was in the green room for a speaking event and a very famous person came in. He comes in and we have a little bit of downtime before he has to go up. And I watched person after person try. You know when you watch someone try? This is the same thing when someone's approaching their boss or a VIP. 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." Or, "What's the best thing you've ever done? Do you have any advice for me as a young person?" It was either compliment or question. He was just not having it. "Nice to meet you." Quick selfie. Just not engaged.

Then one person came up — it was actually one of the AV guys who was going to mic him. And he said, "Can I tell you the funniest story?" And you could literally see this person go, "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 the famous person is laughing. And then he starts asking questions. And I realised — he wants to be entertained. He doesn't want to entertain others.

So what I realised was there are certain people who want to entertain. They speak longer, so they're more at risk of talking too much. They want you to laugh at their jokes. They want to share their stories. Their love language in conversation — what gives them energy — is other people giving them adoration, 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 want to do when I go to dinner is talk. In fact, when people ask me deep questions, I'm sometimes 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, weird, surprising, embarrassing things. They are much more hesitant to open up about themselves.

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. They don't want a lot of questions.

Steven Bartlett: Your friend is an entertainer. So you get to make the choice — are you going to go into their superpower and let them just entertain you and keep talking as much as they want? Or do you want the ball? Because when you hear "entertainer," I interpret that as someone coming up and sharing something fun and interesting. But there are some people that roll up and they're boring. They talk about themselves and that's what they want to talk about. Could be a self-esteem issue. They want to convince you that they are whatever.

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

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Insecurity. This person is insecure. And 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 realise that the more they talk, the more you're like, "Can I go home?"

Steven Bartlett: Do you think they know that they're a conversational narcissist? Do you think they're listening right now and think, "That's me"? Or do they not have that level of awareness? Because the person I was referring to — they know they talk too much because they say it, and they've had the feedback multiple times. They literally will say, "I talk too much," but then they can't seem to stop because it's so deeply ingrained in them from their childhood. So I'm wondering if they're listening now and they go, "Okay, that's me." Because my next question is — how do they fix it?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Curiosity. I actually don't think there's a hard and fast rule. Some conversational narcissists are aware of it and hate themselves for it. They literally know they're doing it and they're like, "Why? Stop talking." They literally know what's happening and they're like, "Why am I doing this?" But they can't stop because they're so scared of the awkward silence.

We asked a couple thousand people, "What is your greatest conversational fear?" I thought it was going to be rejection or judgment. No — it was awkward silences or not knowing what to say. Four thousand people, and their biggest conversational fear is not being rejected. 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 Steven Bartlett and there's a silence and then you're like, "Bye."

Steven Bartlett: I like the silence. As a podcaster, 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.

Vanessa Van Edwards: That's why I don't have a podcast. And the way that they fix it is curiosity — assertive curiosity. Not just the follow-up "tell me more," but the what, the how, the why, the when. Those like — "Let's actually dig into this dream. Let's really talk about it."

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: They would recover from it by being aggressively or assertively curious about you.

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay. Then I'm going to say something you're not going to like. Maybe you're not giving them enough to be curious about. What I would ask next time is — are you curious about me, or do you not feel the curiosity? Because saying "Do you want to know my answer?" or "Is it my turn yet?" is a way of being like, "Is there curiosity there?"

I think that's really important. In relational patterns — there are conversational patterns that we can have. So we're talking a lot about newish people, but how about the people you've known for a long time? My deepest wish for this podcast is that you will go have a cornerstone conversation with someone and ask all nine questions. If you're in a conversational rut — and this can happen in friendships, it can happen with people who are used to being the overtalker in the relationship, it can happen in 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 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 he do it?

Steven Bartlett: He.

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

Steven Bartlett: It is the case.

Being interested, not interesting

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yes. After Dale Carnegie. I wish I had created it. Dale Carnegie is 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? How can I get them to like me?" — that's okay, but it's quite selfish and it's a lot of pressure. When I started thinking, "How can I go into conversation putting this person at ease? How can I make them feel like they can impress me? How can I be interested so as to make them interesting?" — and 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. If you're in conversation and someone is overtalking, you can be generous enough to either say, "Hey, can I have a turn?" or to let them entertain you because they're entertainers, or to ask even more questions.

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: The most popular kids were the kids who had the longest list of people they liked. Meaning, if you want to be likeable, 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 more?" — it's less about you, and you're asking questions that are setting them up to be likeable.

I wonder — and I wish I could take a crack at this conversational narcissist 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 a guess — you're an intimidating person. If I was at dinner with you, I think I would feel a little bit nervous. 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 more they don't feel those three things, and so they keep talking. So I would try to ask better, deeper questions — lean into it and see if that can get them calm enough to be like, "Oh, he chose me. He loves me."

Steven Bartlett: What's interesting is I observe with people like that that they step more into the conversational narcissism with certain people. So with certain individuals — for example, in this case, if I was a beautiful woman, this individual would be full-blown word vomit. Or just women generally, even if it's a platonic relationship — becomes even more intense.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Wants to be understood, chosen, and loved by that beautiful woman. Such a deep desire. And so I wonder if you could disengage it by actually answering those three questions for them — putting them at ease. I also think it's important to talk about an aspect of bad conversation, which is making the driver of the conversation feel like they're a bad driver. This person is driving conversation. They know they're an overtalker and they're driving, and all the passengers are like, "Oh my gosh, this person's so bad." And what does the bad driver do? They get even more tense. 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 do the opposite of dream building is dream killing. Dream killing is when we shut down a dream. We make someone feel not liked, not understood. I think that very smart people have an accidental effect where they dream kill with logic.

Steven Bartlett: Yeah.

Vanessa Van Edwards: I call it — my lovely smart leader — "You're fact-checking, not gut-cheering." If you're fact-checking all the time, 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, "I have to prove myself. I have to dig in. Now I'm going to talk more because I want to convince you." And so the opposite of dream building is dream killing. Very smart people tend to dream kill by accident. And it shuts down connection completely. Not only will you not get to level two — you'll bounce on level one, or you won't have a relationship with that person.

Steven Bartlett: I was just thinking about in my previous company, we interviewed somebody who was extremely intelligent — unbelievable credentials. And then they went through the interview process and the feedback from the people that met them was neutral or negative. I remember thinking — do you know what it is? This person is so obsessed with the pursuit of truth that they put being liked or being pleasing to the side. They just care if what you're saying is true or not. And in some respects that might hold them back.

Vanessa Van Edwards: And this takes us back to why conversation is essential. Very smart people think all about their ideas, their knowledge, the facts. But you can be the smartest person in the room, and if people don't feel connected to you, they don't believe your smarts. That comes directly from the research. Competence without warmth is likely to leave us feeling suspicious. So you could be incredibly smart, but if you cannot manage the mechanics of connective conversation, people feel suspicious. It literally triggers a part of their brain that goes, "I don't know about this person."

And so the reason why level one is so critical — and we can't skip it — is that what we're doing is trying to create ease. That's another way of saying warmth. 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. And this actually brings me to the third level.

Signature questions and level two wrap-up

Vanessa Van Edwards: I started this research with over 100 questions and I was testing them — making everyone try every different kind, using my students, seeing also if they worked at work, at home, and with kids. 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 in conversation?

Steven Bartlett: When I'm talking — what do I love to talk about? Psychology, of people and stuff.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay, great. So you would want to reverse-engineer questions about how and why. If you love psychology and behaviour, you're going to want to ask someone, "Why did you make that choice? What made you choose that path?" You're going to want to ask more behavioural questions.

Let's talk about this for a second. I believe in behavioural interviewing — interview questions that actually let you know about someone's behaviour, not just their opinions. 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. 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 practised. You're asking the person to step outside themselves from a behaviour perspective. When we step outside of ourselves and think about someone else's opinion, we see different things even about ourselves. And likely they're going to call your previous manager, so they can confirm it in a phone call. You could even say, "When I call your previous manager, what would they say is your greatest weakness?" You're going to get a juicy answer, and you can go verify it.

Another behavioural technique is not just asking, "Tell me about a recent time that you managed a project." We always ask for examples in interviews — that's okay, but not great, because they're going to pick the best one. What you're better off saying is, "Tell me about the most recent time you managed a project. It should be in the last three months, two months — not a year or two ago." So asking for recency, asking for other people's opinions. The reason I say this is because you're trying to craft information about a previous experience that is real and not rehearsed.

So for you, you'd be wanting to ask more behavioural questions when you're at dinner, when you're here. Many successful people have signature questions. I know Amy Poehler at the end of her podcast always asks, "What are you laughing about? What's making you laugh recently?" That's her signature question. Another example I use in the book is Jenny Urick — she has the "1000 Hours Outside" challenge, spending a thousand hours with her kids outside playing, off screens. She asks everyone on her podcast, "What was your favourite outdoor memory?" Because she loves talking about outdoors and childhood nostalgia.

So the sixth question is inviting — what do you love to talk about? How can we engineer that in your conversations by looking for opportunities to bring it up?

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: No — it would be that you, Steven, love to talk about behaviour. So you are going to ask more behavioural questions of them. You get to create your sixth question. Right now, because I'm talking about conversation, my signature question is, "What's your favourite conversation starter?" 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 favourite body language cue?" So it can change based on your interest, but you're creating it for yourself.

Steven Bartlett: Okay. So this one's a bespoke one. You get to write this one yourself. Got you. So I'm interested in psychology, so this one would be psychology-related topics for me.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Or like, "What drives you?" Behaviourally. I actually think that some of the level three questions might interest you, but I'm curious.

Steven Bartlett: Okay, let's see. All right, level three. Are you ready? Wait — before we do level three, just want to close off on this "do you talk too much" test.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay, so I have a "do you talk too much" test in the book. You're going to ask yourself: "I leave a conversation realising I don't know much about the other person." That's a secret curiosity question. There are five questions here, and if you answer "often" more than three times, you're probably an overtalker. And all of them secretly, Steven, are saying, "Are you curious enough?" Because we know that curiosity is the antidote. 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. You're not curious enough. You're not going to learn their dream.

Steven Bartlett: So question one — if I say yes to three of these, then I'm probably an overtalker. Correct? First one: "I leave the conversation realising 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. "I love telling long detailed stories, especially when people are too polite to interrupt." Do you ever tell a long detailed story?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Only when I'm on stage and someone has paid me to.

Steven Bartlett: That doesn't count. "I've been told, gently or not so gently, that I talk a lot." Rarely. I've never been told that. "While I'm mid-story, I notice people glance around the room sometimes."

Vanessa Van Edwards: So you pass. Now, I could have told you that also, but yeah, you pass. It's really important because it might be creating conversational friction, especially at work. And the best muscle you can build is asking more and talking less. A very specific challenge — please do a yap challenge. Do you know what a yap challenge is? 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.

Steven Bartlett: About yourself, or just generally?

Vanessa Van Edwards: About yourself — like your typical answering length to a question about you. A yap challenge could be, "Share your opinion about veganism."

Steven Bartlett: Damn. I didn't think I could get that done in 15 seconds. What's your answer?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Not to veganism specifically — just generally, like if it's an idea.

Steven Bartlett: Everything in my head is a story first. So it's like —

Vanessa Van Edwards: You know what though? Introverts can. Introverts absolutely can. And they'll often go too short. For example, I'll give you a yap challenge I was just thinking about the other day. Someone recently asked my friend out by asking for her Instagram handle, not her number. Agree or disagree?

Steven Bartlett: It depends on her vibe. What energy was she giving and what was the context? Was that after a two-hour date? Was that just meeting her on the street?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Rolled up on the street.

Steven Bartlett: I think it's actually — I agree then, because it's less invasive. It's like, "I will earn your number."

Vanessa Van Edwards: Oh, wow. Give me the chance to earn your number.

Steven Bartlett: Okay. You just convinced me. That's interesting.

Vanessa Van Edwards: So by the way, I think that was what, 12 seconds?

Steven Bartlett: Okay, yeah, maybe.

Vanessa Van Edwards: So you're keeping it tight. I disagree. If you do that, your conversation is going to be more awkward on your first date — because you feel like you've already learned about the person. You're discovering more of their public persona. You've seen their friends, where they hang out, what they do on 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. Because you're on the first date, you've already discovered all the level one stuff that you think you know. So now, even though you're having your very first conversation, you kind of have to go to level two, and it's so much harder and it's unnatural. It's unnatural to know all this information that wasn't transmitted human to human — that was done in a performative way. And then you have to get in person and it's harder to come up with conversation starters because you already know a lot.

I also think — I'm not single, I haven't been single for a long time — but if someone were to say, "Can I have your Instagram?" I would say, "You know, I have one just for friends and family, but maybe you can get there one day."

Steven Bartlett: You would say that?

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

Steven Bartlett: So you think less context results in better conversation? So just having their WhatsApp or iMessage is going to result in more interesting conversations than me knowing that you like hiking and puppies?

Vanessa Van Edwards: And less performative context. Our social feeds are not 100% real. It's not like you were listening to me talk about something. It's a curated highlight reel of my life. So you feel like you know me. People who follow me on Instagram might feel like they know me, but my life is quite different from my Instagram in the sense that I show a very small piece of what I do. And so if I was single and someone asked for my Instagram — even as a non-public figure — I would have no casual level one banter with them, which is 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.

So my challenge for single people is — stop asking for handles and ask for numbers.

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: And that I think is okay. A dating app is much more limited than an endless feed. It's not forever. You can't go back to someone's Instagram since they were in high school. It's six images or ten images. You have these pre-prescribed questions. I'm actually okay with dating apps. I love dating apps. I think they can really connect people very quickly. But you don't feel like you know everything about me. I feel like people on dating apps hate dating apps.

Steven Bartlett: Of course. But how else are we going to meet people if we have our AirPods in all the time? You're not going to meet people if you're at the gym with your AirPods in and someone wants to hit on you — you're not going to hear it. So we have to use dating apps.

Vanessa Van Edwards: I'm actually pro dating app. Of course I would love for people to approach in person, but I'm not pro not talking first. And I think if someone asks for your handle, you're fair to say, "It's just for my friends and family. Let's try to get there."

Level three: self-narrative

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

Steven Bartlett: And are they right?

Vanessa Van Edwards: They are right. If we go too deep too quickly, especially at work — and I wrote this book with work in mind — people are going to think you're weird. If we share too much too quickly, it's going to be weird. And there is such a thing as vulnerability regret. Vulnerability regret is when you shared something too vulnerable and it wasn't a safe space or it wasn't received well. And the heartache you get from that is soul-crushing. If you share something too vulnerable or you ask something too deep too quickly, you're like, "Why did I do that?" It's painful.

Steven Bartlett: 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 personal things about their very early childhood. I almost had to adjust myself. I thought I was going into an interview to meet them and ask them about work stuff, but I almost felt myself pivoting — like, "Oh my gosh, I have to be more of a counsellor or something."

Vanessa Van Edwards: And so I think we actually have to gate level three. It's been a little confusing culturally because I think we are loving vulnerability, and that's really good. But vulnerability and authenticity — there's a very fine line there. Being authentic is great, but being too vulnerable too quickly is very awkward and sometimes not safe. So when we talk about level three, I want you to reserve it for your most important people.

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.

There are actually two types of self-narratives. There's a contamination narrative and a redemption narrative. People with a redemption narrative have a frame around the facts of their life that 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 holds across their life. Yes, there are facts of their life, but their work, their love, their parenting — they repeat that same redemption narrative in everything they do.

The other kind of narrative is a contamination narrative. People with a contamination narrative feel that all the hardship and challenge and struggle has happened to them and they can't make it through. 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 I think we can change that — because our narratives are changeable, these are not fixed personality traits — is via conversation. So my secret hope with level three conversation is that 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 into redemption. And that is my secret goal here.

Steven Bartlett: So how do we do that?

Vanessa Van Edwards: The first thing is beginning to uncover what your narrative is and what someone else's narrative is. Our brains are storytellers. That's why we love story. And level one was kind of a warm-up — when we're telling stories about our passions and our side hustles, we're also telling a story about ourselves all the time.

And there are what I call narrative hints. In conversation, people will leak the kind of narrative that they have. They might say, "Oh, everyone always zigs and I zag." Or, "Gosh, everything bad always happens to me." Or, "Yet another thing." If people use superlatives — always, never — they tend to be more of a contamination person. People in that contamination narrative space tend to see things as very black and white. They tend to see things as permanent. Whereas 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." Or, "Just my luck — I got it." They're leaking their narratives.

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Absolutely, people with redemptive narratives. They have found that people with redemption narratives 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. 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."

Steven Bartlett: This internal locus of control thing is something that I learned about when I was probably 16 or 17 in psychology class. What does it mean, and what does the study say about the importance of it?

Vanessa Van Edwards: 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. Things can happen to you in your life, but you can decide how you interact with them, how you behave. People with an external locus of control get their worth from outside sources. They feel validated when someone else tells them they look good. They feel good when someone else tells them they're doing good. They're looking for external ways to feel better. They look more at vanity metrics — their likes or their follows, how many friends they have, how often they're invited, are they getting compliments?

Steven Bartlett: The analogy I was thinking of is — it's almost like you either think you're a bird or you think you're on a roller coaster. 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.

Vanessa Van Edwards: And some people do think that they're on a roller coaster. I mean, I don't want to get too deep, but if we were in a normal conversation, I would ask you about fate. 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 predetermined fate, if they would feel an external locus of control, and maybe that wouldn't be as good for their mental health.

The five narrative archetypes

Vanessa Van Edwards: Once you begin to uncover these narrative hints — talking about luck, talking about redemption or contamination narrative — I believe, and this is more art than science, that there are five archetypes of these stories. I have harvested hundreds of narratives. It's actually quite hard to ask someone, "What is your self-narrative?" 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.

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

Steven Bartlett: And what is an archetype?

Vanessa Van Edwards: This is not like a personality type. It's not like Myers-Briggs or Enneagram. Those are quite stable. This is a fluid archetype of how you're seeing your story in this moment. For example, I might ask you — if you had to write a memoir, what would the title of your memoir be? And this is going to impact how you have conversations with people, how you behave interpersonally, how you act at work. An ambitious hero is going to act very, very differently at work than a contented pragmatist.

Steven Bartlett: And is it going to impact who I'm attracted to, platonically and romantically?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Absolutely. It dictates your relationship patterns, your conversational patterns, how you converse, how you bond, how you connect, and more importantly — since I'm so interested in work conversations — how you work, how you view effectiveness, how you view efficiency. My ambitious hero founders are going to have the same struggles over and over again. They're going to be very different from the contented pragmatist founder.

Steven Bartlett: So the ambitious hero — what's their internal monologue?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Their internal monologue is, "I got this. I can do this. Hustle, hustle more, more, bigger, more, bigger, bigger, more. I can do that better. I can do that bigger." Shiny object syndrome is one of the nicer ways to talk about ambitious heroes. It's like a founder who won't stop trying new initiatives and keeps throwing new ideas on the table when they haven't finished their first one.

Steven Bartlett: Yeah. Okay. Do you have that?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Well, yes, but I have put systems in place to make sure that it doesn't sink the company. As Jeff Bezos said — he's got enough ideas to sink the company, and he has to learn to release them at a cadence that the company can tolerate.

Steven Bartlett: Love it.

Vanessa Van Edwards: And that's beautiful because that's self-knowledge. And everything that we're talking about is self-knowledge. If you're able to talk this through, you have self-knowledge to go to your team and say, "When I come to you with a new idea next week, say no. Don't let me do that. It's too much."

Behaviourally, if you are the ambitious hero, you dream big. You can burn out because you dream so big. Work almost regulates me — when I'm working, I'm like, "I'm being so productive. We are helping people. Help more people. Help all the people." It's too much. And so we can burn out from a productivity perspective. We have shiny object syndrome. And in conversation and in relationships, people sometimes don't always understand our drive. We get accused of hustle culture a lot. We can burn other people out by trying to bring them with us on how fast we want to work, how long we want to work. Those are not necessarily bad things, but they're traits. They're behavioural traits.

One way that you can kind of sus these out is asking the question, "What character are you most like? What book, movie, or TV character are you most like?" — not in terms of looks, but personality, core values.

Steven Bartlett: And I said The Pursuit of Happyness, which is —

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yeah. Ambitious hero. But why did you choose that character?

Steven Bartlett: Because when I was 18, 19 years old and I was literally shoplifting food to feed myself, I watched that movie randomly. I was in bed that day and it really made me feel like — the journey I was on, when he was in the disabled toilet with his kid — I remember my life in some ways felt a little bit like that at the moment. Just kind of doing things to feed myself that would, you know, keep the lights on, swerving landlords because my rent was five months late, all the kinds of games I played to just survive. And then he went on to be successful. So it gave me a lot of hope. And he's also Black.

Vanessa Van Edwards: So it was really important in that interaction that I didn't assume about that character. I asked you why, and then you told me a story about what you saw and when you saw it. A really critical part of this exercise is that you ask someone about the character and then you say why. What traits? Because the traits that they say next are going to tell you every single thing about that person. For example, if I ask someone, "What person are you most like?" and they say, "Mother Teresa," I say, "Oh, why?" I might not agree with them — maybe I don't see that — but whatever they say next is going to tell me a lot about how they view themselves, whether it's true or not.

And this is the hardest part about level three, and it's the most inconvenient part. You probably won't agree. There are a lot of times where people in my life have told me self-narratives and I'm like, "What?"

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

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

By the way, if you're having trouble with this question, this is one way that I think AI can help. AI can be a great brainstorm partner, a great conversational practice partner, 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 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? I am fill-in-the-blank. My personality is how-describe-a-person. My core values are what. What character is most similar to me?" And it will pull a bunch of characters with those traits. So this is one way that it can help you brainstorm.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay. The ambitious hero — archetype number one. The second one is called the contented pragmatist. 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 and 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. They make great granola and I'm like, "You should bottle it up and sell it at farmers markets." And they're like, "But why?" And I'm like, "But why not?" So relationally, they're often seen as unambitious, but actually they're just quite content.

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: And they tend to be a little bit more fear-based. It's not that they're negative, but they are so contented that they're very 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 ambitious heroes can really be crushed in roles where there isn't a lot of fast-moving growth. 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. In a corporate culture, you might want a contented pragmatist running your books. They're quite conservative. They're not going to make a big leap. They're like, "Let's keep it as it is. Let's know what we're doing. Don't change if it's not broken." So you have to think about your roles as a hiring manager, depending on what your company is like.

Steven Bartlett: And in terms of conversation tips — are there different tips for different archetypes?

Vanessa Van Edwards: An ambitious hero is 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 share their own metrics — when someone asks me "How are you?" it takes everything in me not to share my metrics. I know that's not socially acceptable, so I have to be like, "I am doing great. The business is exploding." And then I just stop. Because it would be weird if I was like, "We have 305% growth on Instagram." We love ambition. I also love ambition in others. All my check-in texts are, "Just thinking about you — how's the biz? How's the traffic? How are the book sales? How are the movie sales?" I want to hear about growth.

A contented pragmatist wants to talk about ritual. They want to talk about what works. They want to savour life's pleasures. They're very good at savouring. And by the way, this can be a wonderful relationship sometimes, because sometimes the contented pragmatist reminds the ambitious hero — "Enjoy it. You've worked so hard. Just take in the view for a moment." They love gratitude, habit, ritual, routine. They love to be honoured for what works. They're the ones who will make a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner and they want to have that three-hour dinner and savour it and not talk about next year and not talk about goals — just savour this moment and talk about what they did last year and the year before that.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay. This is, I think, the most important one to talk about — and actually the least understood of all the archetypes — which is the selfless helper. This is such a clear narrative. I almost always can predict it within the first few minutes of conversation. 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: teachers, coaches, trainers, nurses, doctors. And that is because they are so ingrained that to have worth is to help. And often where they can get into trouble is they don't feel worthy if they are not helping. And so they help so much that there's nothing left. They have compassion burnout or compassion fatigue because they are giving and giving and giving. They cannot say no.

In a relationship, they are beautiful to be with because they are givers, they are nurturers. 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 to take care of this little person. The problem is they have a really hard time saying no. They're people pleasers. They struggle with boundaries. They say yes to too much and they put themselves last.

And I've had many friends who are selfless helpers and they attract takers — they attract high conflict people. A high conflict person is Bill Eddy's work. He estimates that 10% of the population is a high conflict person. A high conflict person is someone who thrives with drama. They create difficulty in their relationships. They almost like to have difficult conversations. They thrive with that kind of drama. They see in absolutes — often speaking in black or white. They see no nuance. They weaponise emotions. And the worst high conflict people — and this is where I've noticed it in my work — they can actually be 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, "How dare they!" and they'll go fight for you. So sometimes selfless helpers are roped into things that are not necessarily what they should be doing because they are standing up for the person they care about.

And so if you're dealing with a selfless helper in terms of conversation — sometimes they even think talking about themselves is taking. So you might be asking them a question and they're like, "Oh no, no, enough about me." 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 getting them to open up can be hard because they feel like their needs are not important. But their needs are very important. They're such beautiful people.

So I think in conversation, the greatest gift we can give a selfless helper is letting them know that you value them. 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. We have to be extremely conversationally generous with them.

Steven Bartlett: Do you know anyone like that?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yes, lovely. And in corporate — all these apply to work. These are great if you have a manager. Not always, but often managers can do great things as selfless helpers because they are so attuned to others. They're very good at bringing out performance. Not always, but I've seen really amazing managers who know the ROI, they know metrics, they're following their KPIs, but they're so good at finding — "How does this person need to be helped? How could this person be their best self?" They bring up performance in everyone. But they might avoid the difficult conversation.

Steven Bartlett: They can be conflict avoidant.

Vanessa Van Edwards: They can be conflict avoidant, but they're very good at framing everything as "we're in this together." The really good managers who are excellent conversationalists 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, "I trust you. I know that." So yes, if they're not excellent conversationalists, it's true they can be avoidant. But if they learn how to be assertive, then they are tremendous in conversation because people trust them — they come from a good place.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay. The creative disruptor. This is my most challenging archetype, and I'm really going to try to talk about it in a positive way. Creative disruptors do not like rules. Their entire ethos is breaking things. They want to disrupt. They want to go anti-norm. They want to be countercultural. They're the ones who are like, "I don't need a blueprint." And them and me in conversation is not always the best. They are probably the ones in the comments who are like, "Well, this doesn't apply to me because of all these reasons" — because they want to push, they want to challenge. And this is wonderful because they often are the really creative thinkers. They're often the ones who are thinking outside the box the most. They're often the ones who are willing to challenge the way something has always been done.

The problem is sometimes that can rub people the wrong way. And sometimes these folks can thrive on conflict in the way of — it's just fun for them. It's fun to negotiate, it's fun to push. My litigators who are watching — I find that my litigators tend to fall into this category. Or very disruptive entrepreneurs. I know there are 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. They want to build it and break it. They want to reinvent the entire system. Edward Snowden is one of the examples I give in the book — he wanted to change something, and he also wanted to stick it to the man. He wanted to break the system that he was in.

Steven Bartlett: Do you like these interviews? They're very interesting.

Vanessa Van Edwards: They're really good in interviews. I actually interviewed someone the other day that was like that. So interesting, because they have a contrarian view by nature. Everything they say is deeply contrarian. But I think having people like that around — whose default is challenge — is quite useful. It helps me refine my own points of view.

Vanessa Van Edwards: And they live as dream killers. It can be amazing but it can be exhausting. So in conversation, it's good to go in prepared — knowing, "Ah, I need this. I want to get stronger. I want to be anti-fragile. They'll break me to make me stronger." Or, "I'm a delicate flower right now. I cannot do the dream killing. I'm exhausted by it." It's a fine line between that and pessimism.

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay, the last one is one we've actually already touched on, which is the unlucky struggler. This is someone with a contamination narrative. They feel that no matter what they've done, they are unlucky. They are struggling. They often feel stuck. They often feel misunderstood. They often feel overlooked. The character you want to think of is like George Costanza from Seinfeld — everything is bad for them. They can be hilarious, but they are tortured. And in conversation, it's really hard for ambitious heroes to not try to convince them that they're not unlucky. 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 can also in conversation be very funny. They can make fun of themselves. They're so humble. 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 — and the confidence you see in them, you wish they had it too.

Graceful exits

Steven Bartlett: If you're in a conversation with one of these people that you don't gel with, what are the ways to get out of a bad conversation without offending people?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Oh my goodness. It's called a graceful exit. So there's a behaviour concept called the peak-end effect — we remember the first few minutes of a conversation and the last few minutes of a conversation. But we tend to focus a lot on the first impression. We think a lot about our first few minutes, our opening line, maybe the highlight. But we don't really think about the end. And actually, that's what we leave people with.

So I have a formula. This calms my anxiety when I'm in a conversation and it's time to go — either we're not clicking, or we've just got to go. One: a future cue. So it's future cue plus compliment or action. 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."

Steven Bartlett: Okay, so let's role play. We're at a party. We're having some wine and things get a little bit awkward. We ran out of things to say to each other.

Vanessa Van Edwards: "Do you have any fun plans coming up this weekend? Do you have anything fun?"

Steven Bartlett: There's a wine bar across town that I'm really into, so I'm probably just going to go there with some friends.

Vanessa Van Edwards: "Oh my gosh. Well, I hope it's lovely. Make sure to try — I love a Chardonnay. I don't know if you like white wine. Be sure to try it." Future cue. I just asked you about a future and I'm going to wish you well on it, which already gets us into future mode. And then I'm going to end on a compliment or an action. "It was so lovely talking to you. I hope you have a great time at that wine bar. I'm going to go get some more coffee."

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: See, I'm — what if they just go straight back in though? Because that's happened to me before where I've tried to —

Steven Bartlett: Yeah.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Okay, this is where the action and the compliment — that second piece — is really important. So the future cue is we mentioned the future, and you're right, they might keep going with it. The action and compliment is really important. So wrapping up the conversation — "It's been so wonderful talking to you." And I'm using an exit voice. Do you hear the exit voice? Our tone really matters here. "It's been so wonderful talking to you. I hope that goes great this weekend. Be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn. I was so happy we were able to trade numbers." So you're mentioning the action that's going to come later. And it's using that closing voice and then the action. "I'm going to go grab more coffee. I'm going to go say hi to the host. I'm going to run to the ladies' room. I'm going to head home." Then they cannot — you've ended it. And you also can use non-verbal cues here. The moment I take a step back, the moment I angle my body towards the door, our brain subtly sees — "Ah, they are literally trying to physically disengage." So usually I pair those with those subtle non-verbal cues of a slow back-up and angling towards the door.

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

Aura, charisma, and riz

Steven Bartlett: On this point of being assertive — I was talking to some friends the other day about people that have aura and riz. I kind of know what aura means, but I don't really know what riz means. So I'm curious how you define those terms and how does one cultivate aura and riz?

Vanessa Van Edwards: I think aura and riz — and the only reason this is front of mind is my daughter asked me, she heard one of my YouTube videos and she said, "What is charisma?" She asked me that and I was like, "Ooh." She's eight. I 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 — it was so interesting — she named two kids in her class that I had already identified as very charismatic. I knew in my mind who the charismatic kids were in her class. They were the kids that you really wanted to be around. They have this aura about them. And she named those exact two kids.

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

Steven Bartlett: So based on the 20 years of research you've done — if you were trying to teach me to have aura and riz, what are the basics?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Be really easy to talk to. The point of level one is to put someone at ease. We like to be around people who are clearly signalling. 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. So we have to be very loud with our liking. 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 signalling liking.

And there's something called signal amplification bias — this bias that we have where we think we're being really obvious with our cues, but we are not in fact being obvious. We think that people know that we like them. Of course they know that we like them. But actually people underestimate liking. The liking gap. So we like people who are very clearly broadcasting likes.

I have a funny story if I may. My friends often ask me to sus out their partners — like potential partners. So a friend will be like, "Hey, I met a new guy. Can you go out to dinner with us and tell me what you think?" So I go on a lot of like second or third little ghosty coffee dates to sus out the guy. She said, "I really want you to meet this guy. Let's call him Schmobbert." Okay. So we go on this dinner. We have like a Mediterranean platter. And he was okay. I was like, "Okay, he's nice," but I wasn't like, "Green flag, green flag." Kind of like me. So the next day I get the call. She's like, "Hey, what did you think?" And I'm about to say it's only okay when she goes, "You know what? He just loved you." And I was like, "Oh, what?" She said, "Oh, you know, he thought you were so funny and he already bought your Audible book and he just loved talking to you." And I started to like him more. It was so embarrassing because as she was telling me all these things about how he liked me, I was like, "You know, Robert — he is a great guy. He's clever. He's so smart. He liked my jokes — really?" And she's like, "Yeah, he just really had a good time with you." And I felt like I liked him more in that moment. And I was horrified by my own response. And I realised — we so want to be liked that when someone clearly signals liking, it makes us like them more.

So we can be charismatic. One is we send clear signals of liking. But also two — and we talked about this a little bit last time — fundamentally 82% of our impressions of people are based on warmth and competence. So people who are first signalling "I'm open, I'm friendly," and then "I'm capable, I'm efficient, I'm effective" — they make us feel like we're in good hands. In this way, every human being when we first meet, we're trying to answer two questions: "Can I trust you?" and "Can I rely on you?" So the second thing that charismatic people are doing is they're signalling, "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 conversation is about being a bit assertive about the plan. If you read this book, you are going to feel in control in conversation. You're going to feel like you're approaching a conversation and you know what you want to do if you have intention. We like that. Charismatic people carry us. They're like, "We got this. We're going to do level one. I'm going to ask about this. I'm going to do dream building. And if I like you, we're going to talk about your character." And so I think that plan is a secret door to charisma.

Steven Bartlett: Is there anything else that people accidentally do that holds them back from being someone of high aura?

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yes — they try to be impressive. Now, I know we talked about this before, but here's what happens when you go into the conversation trying to sound smart, trying to impress people with your accolades and your background — you actually end up creating distance.

I was in Austin, Texas, and I was invited to a VIP party. I was like, "Oh man, why am I being invited?" Imposter syndrome. We get there and I'm immediately like, "Oh, I know that person's YouTube channel. I know that person." And then 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." 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 cured cancer." Like, amazing. And it was just person after person, getting more and more impressive. And it's slowly coming to me and I was like — everyone was trying to be impressive. They were saying things that were meant to shock and wow and awe you.

It gets to me and I was like, "My name is Vanessa 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. 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. Every single person after me said, "I'm a recovering awkward person." So they also were able to feel awkward. It changed the nature of the rest of the introductions. And then afterwards, the circle breaks up for networking. And most people came over to me — not the billionaire, not the curer of cancer, not the saving-the-earth climate change guru — but wanted to talk to me about awkwardness and about my YouTube channel and about being smart but feeling uncomfortable. And I realised — I was just the easiest person to talk to in that circle.

Steven Bartlett: You have aura, Vanessa.

Vanessa Van Edwards: I was the easiest person to talk to in that circle. And so I think that if we don't have to put so much pressure on ourselves to be impressive — in fact, the really impressive people, the ones I've met, most of them are quite humble and 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 and just connect, that would be easier.

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yeah. They're easy. And by the way, it's back and forth. You can be introverted or extroverted. People think that master conversationalists are extroverted. Actually, that's not usually the case. Sometimes extroverts fall into their own traps with conversational narcissism. Ambiverts and introverts do really well. But one of the other definitions of aura is the person who just seems to take up more space. They seem to speak slower and you kind of see them walk across a room. What is that?

Steven Bartlett: And like how are they cultivating that kind of aura?

Vanessa Van Edwards: I think when certain people walk into a room and they have claimed their space, it's internal and external. Physically — and this has been studied — they are physically taking up more space, whether they're short or tall. They have more space between their ears and their shoulders. They take up more space between their torso and their arms. They literally claim more physical space. And it's micro movements. It's not walking in with arms up. It's a slight down of the shoulder. It's a slight up of the head. And when I do that, it affects everything about me. It affects my vocal tone.

One thing 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. When I'm afraid or a little bit nervous, I'll tend to go a little bit higher in my vocal range. And if I were to do the entire presentation in this tone of voice, it would be horrible. You would not want to listen to it. That's because I'm tightening my vocal cords. When someone's very anxious, they tighten their shoulders, they tighten their neck, they tighten their chin. It's more of a loser feeling.

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Oh, interesting. I didn't even notice it, but yes, I think I was rushing. And I had less breath. When we don't have breath, we're speaking too quickly. My vocal cords are tense. You can hear it. And they're taking up less even vocal space.

Winners use this maximum resonance point. So we can actually try it if you want to. I want you at the very top of your breath — take in a deep breath and say "hello" at the top of your breath. So it sounds like this: "Hello."

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Horrible.

Steven Bartlett: Yeah, that was embarrassing.

Vanessa Van Edwards: But I listen in on Zoom calls and I hear people — that's their very first word. They literally hold their breath and they say, "Good morning." "Hello everyone." You are actually giving away your vocal competence because I'm so far away from my maximum resonance point. My maximum resonance point is when I speak on the out-breath. So my vocal cords are relaxed. So now listen to the difference. 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.

Steven Bartlett: "Hello."

Vanessa Van Edwards: Right. Now that sounds more like you because you usually use your maximum resonance. You're very good at that. And I've noticed that in work culture, people who use their maximum resonance point are listened to more. They are easy to talk to because we want to listen to them. They take up more aura, more riz, because we can hear their confidence. We can hear their relaxation. And so vocal cues are such an important aspect of charisma. All these questions are beautiful, but how you say your words is just as important as what you say.

If I were to ask, "So, like, what's your personal passion project? I guess I can do it. This stuff is so terrible" — my lack of vocal care, you immediately hear it and it tunes you out. So if I don't have good intention here, it does leak out. That's why earlier when you asked me, "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. Very charismatic people are imbuing their voice with that winning, calm confidence. And we want to catch it.

Eye contact and listening cues

Steven Bartlett: What about the rest of me? 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? I'm thinking about eye contact. I think about this a lot. It takes a lot of — dare I say — confidence for me to look you in the eyes like this, Vanessa, and ask you a question.

Vanessa Van Edwards: That is because when we are making eye contact, chemically we're producing oxytocin, which is great for connection, but also you are not able to process as much. Eye contact is quite complicated, and I think sometimes the clips on social media take 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. When I'm trying to remember something, I immediately look away. If you were to ask me a complex maths problem, I look away. And so in conversation, we actually do not want 100% eye contact. We don't even want 70% eye contact. 60 to 70% eye contact is more ideal in Western cultures. But if someone is deep thinking or they are socially 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 know what does my work say, what was the research, what was the number. And so that is why it can sometimes be uncomfortable — it's not allowing your brain to think. It's just about connection.

Steven Bartlett: But when you're delivering — I understand the deliberation, you look away when you deliberate. I do that too. But then when I deliver the point, I come back. Is that —

Vanessa Van Edwards: You know why? Because one, yes, you're trying to connect. But two, when you are delivering, you want to watch my face to see — do I believe you? Am I raising my eyebrows? Am I showing you disgust? Am I hardening my lower lid? So the reason why we'll often process, process, and then deliver is because two things are happening at once. We're trying to connect — I want you to hear my point and feel it with oxytocin — but also I want to see, do you believe me or are you raising your eyebrows?

I'm making more eye contact with you because I'm trying to see where your interest lies. Whereas you're looking at your iPad because you're trying to get to the next question. You want to make sure we're covering everything. That's why this is not natural. But it's also — when you're in conversation, you're better off making eye contact in the first few seconds of an interaction. Right when you're on that greeting — "Oh, it's so good to see you" — hopping on video or in person, because you're giving that burst of oxytocin. But then you're okay to look away. You're okay to process. You might want to make your eye contact most when you're trying to sus out how is this person receiving this.

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

Steven Bartlett: And when you're talking to me, what is the best way to be a good listener? Because some people go, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." And then you've got other people who will nod and really encourage and cheerlead when you're talking. And then you'll have some people that they don't know they're doing it, but they start to scowl at you.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yes. That really bothers me. I struggle with that a little bit personally because I'm a people pleaser. When someone's like — I actually have a friend who defaults to the disgust microexpression. He doesn't even realise he's doing it. It's a punctuator. A facial punctuator is a non-verbal habit. It doesn't actually mean anything emotionally. It's just how they are at rest. I've had to tell myself, "He doesn't actually feel disgusted."

So you're talking about warmth. All the listening cues are about warmth. 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 is warm and competent — both, actually — because I'm trying to literally get closer to you to understand more deeply.

A competent cue where you're listening is a lower lid flex. 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. 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 does that, they are trying to deeply understand you. It is not positive or negative. It is a cue of intense focus. Take note. Because whatever you just said has triggered something in their brain.

So when I'm giving a presentation to a C-suite 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 — "Does this make sense? Are we good? Any questions here? Let me give you another example of this." So you can also look for these cues, which also makes you a pleasure to listen to, because I am so deeply listening that I'm trying to respond to your emotional reaction to what I'm saying.

Steven Bartlett: I think that is a really unappreciated part of being a good conversationalist — being dynamic based on the cues you're getting back.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yes. Actually, please let's double-click on this for a second, because I think my planners who are watching are like, "Okay, I got a plan, Vanessa. I got it. I got my questions." What I don't want you to do is have the plan, ask the question, and then check off to the next one. 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 — you both lit up on it. You can go there. You can dive deep. So I want you to have a plan, but I also want you to be dynamic with it. Both can be true.

What we haven't covered

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: There is one thing that we didn't get to touch on that I think can help you prepare for good conversation — just very practically. You are going to be asked boring questions. We talked about this earlier. I want you to, if you are willing, write down the questions you are asked the most often. Everyone kind of gets similar questions depending on their job, their industry, where they are in the world. What are the questions you're asked most often? And how can you do better? And then think of what are gifts to the other person. Not just interesting for you — not just, "Oh well, an interesting fact about me" — but 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 your answer is doing two things. It's interesting, but it's also conversationally generous.

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: And this is so true because there is a most interesting thing about everybody. And that most interesting thing will get the same set of questions. I give this example in the book — 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 it up on purpose. People say, "What are you ordering?" People ask about food all the time. And he goes, "Well, actually, I have no sense of taste or smell. So what's your favourite thing? What should I taste? If I could taste something, what would you have me taste?" And it produces incredible conversations. So much so that I was talking to my friend Nicole Lapin. She goes, "I know Jason." And she began to tell me about his interesting stories. She remembered his interestingness from that answer.

So even — where are your settings? Are you doing coffee? Is there an interesting coffee anecdote? Are you always at meals? You can also set yourself up and them up for success with those interesting answers.

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yeah. And the last thing I would say is this is a plan. And the entire goal of this is for you to feel more in control, for you to feel more confident. 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. When you're in the moment, if you're feeling excited and interested and engaged, go with it. If you're feeling, "I don't like this person, I don't feel this person, we are off," you can leave the conversation.

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: This is for people who want to stop dreading small talk. Dread was a real motivation for me because so many of my students would say, "Oh, I have to go to the networking event. I'm dreading talking to my boss. I hate those first five minutes of my team call. Oh, I don't know what to talk about on a date." And first dates are horrible. First dates can be fun if you have a conversational plan. Even if it's not your person, they can still be fun. Conversation can be not awkward. It can be great at the start of a meeting if you know how to do it. And so I would like to get rid of the dread in your life. I would like to get rid of the awkwardness in your life. Because the deeper meaning is we are in a loneliness epidemic. And I think if we don't remember how good the joy of conversation is, we won't do it. And so if I can take away the dread of conversation and give you beautiful conversation — with your person or not — you're going to feel less lonely.

Steven Bartlett: Kind of sounds like it's for all of us.

Vanessa Van Edwards: I think it's for all of us.

Steven Bartlett: What 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. Teachers say to me that they see their kids in class and they don't know the basic skills of how to relate to each other through conversation.

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

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Many years. 20 years.

Steven Bartlett: Wow. Well, I'm glad it's here. Conversations: How to Connect with Anyone and Make Every Interaction Count. Thank you. What a wonderful book, Vanessa. Congratulations.

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

Steven Bartlett: You deserve everything. You're such a phenom.

Vanessa Van Edwards: I'm just obsessed with people. That's it.

Closing question from the diary

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

Vanessa Van Edwards: Yes. I briefly mentioned that I moved — and I moved to be closer to family. And that was because I think I sacrificed friendship and family relationship in the hustle. We moved to Austin for work. 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.

Steven Bartlett: And what is it you wish you could get back?

Vanessa Van Edwards: I felt very alone as a new mom, and I don't think that helped me or my children. I wish I could get back that time to feel more communal. Having a baby is such a beautiful thing for family and friends. And it was very lonely because I just didn't have a lot of people around me.

Steven Bartlett: And now you're here.

Vanessa Van Edwards: I know. By the beach in LA. I'm back. My sister is at my house right now.

Steven Bartlett: Oh, really?

Vanessa Van Edwards: With my kids. Yes.

Steven Bartlett: It's good to have you in town. Conversations: 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. And it's a brilliant, brilliant book — one I think that we all need. Vanessa, thank you. We're done.

Vanessa Van Edwards: Thank you.

Polished transcript of The Diary Of A CEO. All views are those of the original speakers. Watch on YouTube ↗

Published by @healthynut

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Summary