Below, Vanessa Van Edwards shares five key insights from her new book, Conversation: How to Connect with Anyone & Make Every Interaction Count.
Vanessa is a behavioral investigator and the founder of Science of People. For more than two decades she has been leading corporate trainings and workshops to audiences around the world, including at SXSW and MIT, and at companies including Google, Nike, and Microsoft. She’s also an instructor in the Department of Professional & Executive Development for Harvard University’s Division of Continuing Education.
What’s the Big Idea?
The secret to great conversations isn’t being the most interesting person in the room. It’s making others feel interesting. When we stop trying to impress people and start getting genuinely curious about them, we unlock deeper, more meaningful connections.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Vanessa herself—in the Next Big Idea App, or buy the book.
1. Go on a small talk diet.
Hard truth: boring questions make you boring. “What do you do?” “Where are you from?” “How’s it going?” “How are you?” These are social scripts, and they almost always end in what I call a conversational cul-de-sac. “What do you do?” “Marketing. You?” “Sales.” Total lull commences. Worse, “What do you do?” often translates into “What are you worth?” The problem with this question is that we’ve answered it so many times our brain just goes into autopilot.
An old friend invited me to a happy hour with one rule: you cannot talk about work. So I asked the woman near me, “What’s your favorite thing to talk about when you can’t talk about work?” Twenty minutes later, we had covered her side hustle making soap that smells like food, my obsession with prepping for the end of the world, and ideas I had for a novel that I had never told anyone. For the first time in my life, I felt interesting. I also learned things I never would have discovered in another boring conversation about work.
That night turned into a decade of research on what I call power questions. Power questions are designed to level up interactions. In our behavior lab, we assign people conversation questions and then we analyze the quality of the conversation. The first three power questions are simple but effective:
- “Working on anything exciting these days?” is a replacement for “What do you do?”
- “Have any fun plans coming up?” is a much better question than “How are you?”
- “What’s your personal passion project?” is so much better than “What’s been going on?”
The words excitement, fun, and passion are intentional—this is called priming. A single word changes what someone’s brain is searching for. In one experiment, strangers playing a game trusted each other 33 percent of the time when the other player was called their “opponent” and 68 percent of the time when that same player was called their “partner.” Words shape how people feel and behave.
2. Hunt for stories, not facts.
I like to joke that I am a recovering awkward person. I wasn’t just asking boring questions; I was also fact-hunting, which is way more boring in conversation. I also walked into rooms trying to impress, and trying to impress is a performance. People don’t want a performance; they want presence. Stop thinking about yourself and ask, how can I put this person at ease?
Treat every conversation like a treasure hunt. Every person is a map, and the right questions are how you find their gold. Katie Couric built a career on this. She never asks, “What do you do?” She only asks, “What do you like to do?” One little word, like, and the question points toward joy instead of a résumé.
When you become a hunter of stories instead of a hunter of facts, the nervousness fades, and also your attention shifts from you to them. Don’t ask questions that Google can answer. Ask for the stories behind their facts.
3. Withholding your likes makes you less likable.
Researchers have documented the liking gap. After a conversation, people consistently underestimate how much the other person actually liked them. This holds for strangers, acquaintances, and even friends.
We’re also terrible at broadcasting. We think our polite smile or our offhand “that’s cool” is as loud as a gong. In reality, it’s barely a whisper. We assume people know that we like them. We feel that being obvious about our liking would be coming on too strong, or too desperate. But clearly, assertively liking people out loud is the kindest thing you can do. In conversation, you can hunt for reasons to like someone out loud. You’re listening for answers where you can say, “I like that. I like you.”
“We like people who clearly and obviously like us.”
One study makes this really vivid. Dr. Monica Moore covertly observed women in social settings and found that women in dating scenarios who were approached most often weren’t the most attractive. They were the ones sending the most availability signals. How many signals did it take? Thirty-five nonverbal signals an hour. Want to be approached more often at work for a new project or promotion? The same basic principle applies.
We like people who clearly and obviously like us. So magnify your likes. “I like you.” Those three little words might be the three most powerful words you can give someone. And if you get used to liking out loud, you also become more likable.
4. Be a dream builder, not a dream killer.
Everyone has secret wishes. And when someone feels safe with you, you might be one of the rare people who gets to hear them. The question that unlocks them is my fourth power question: “What is your biggest goal right now?” It tells someone that you care about what matters to them, and it nudges them to think about their future.
But this question is only half of it. What matters is what you do in the split second after they answer. In every conversation, there are two types of people: dream builders and dream killers. Dream killers aren’t villains. They’re often smart, competent, well-meaning people who put fact-checking before gut-checking.
I once spoke at a conference about side hustles, where attendees stood up to share their ideas about passions or side businesses they could start. Most of the room oohed and cheered, but every so often a stranger would say, “Ah, that idea will never work,” or “Let me Google the competition,” or “Let me look up the market size.” And I literally watched hopes and dreams melt into the floor. Dreams in their early stages don’t need critiques. They need curiosity. Support has to come before strategy.
“Researchers at Harvard Business School found that there’s essentially no such thing as too many questions.”
Now, dream building doesn’t mean agreeing with everything. It means being assertively curious. We do this by asking what, where, who, and why. “Where’d you get that idea?” “Who are you going to help?” “Why’d you start this?” And you really can’t overdo it. Researchers at Harvard Business School found that there’s essentially no such thing as too many questions. They did a research experiment looking at follow-up questions, and they found more questions made people more liked, and there really wasn’t a limit—as long as they were related to the original answer.
My friend Mike really showed me what dream building looks like. One New Year’s, after I texted all my friends about their resolutions, Mike texted back, “So what’s your goal for the year?” And I said I wanted to make more parent friends. I’m a mom of two young girls, and I had just moved, so I was having trouble making some new parent friends. He put a monthly reminder in his own calendar called “Ask Vanessa if she’s made parent friends.” And he texted me every single month, promising to delete it once I had hit the goal. It was the best accountability I’ve ever had, and such an easy way to dream build. And there’s no dream too small.
5. Everyone is telling a story about themselves—learn to hear it.
In every conversation, there are three levels of connection. This is based on some wonderful research:
- Level One: General traits.
- Level Two: Goals and values.
- Level Three: Meaning.
Level three is the deepest level of connection. It is your self-narrative: the story someone tells about who they are, what shaped them, and where they’re headed. Psychologist Dan McAdams found that self-narrative acts like a psychological GPS. And what we found is that self-narratives are self-creating. How you tell your story shapes your story. The best thing we can do in conversation is start uncovering someone’s story.
Most people can’t answer, “What’s your self-narrative?” It’s too abstract. Believe me, I’ve tried. The best question for uncovering self-narrative in the shortest amount of time is my seventh power question: “What book, movie, or TV character is most like you, and why?”
I actually asked my childhood friend Katie. Katie’s a really smart, hilarious mom of three. And I expected her self-narrative would be someone like Lorelai Gilmore or another TV mom. But she thought for one second and said, “Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games.” And I was like, “Katniss Everdeen? But why?” And she said, “I feel like I’m fighting to survive every day. I just want to keep the kids alive.”
“How you tell your story shapes your story.”
Now, what was shocking about this answer is I knew her so well—or I thought I did. We had vacationed together. We had monthly game nights. And I had no idea about this aspect of her day. It completely transformed our friendship. It connected us so much more deeply. And this is when I realized that you can’t accidentally go to meaning. It doesn’t happen by osmosis. So you have to have purposeful, directed conversation to hit it.
When you ask this question, don’t analyze their answer through what you think of the character. When you ask, “Why did you pick that character?”, listen very carefully to the kinds of words they use. Those are the words they want to use to describe themselves. And you might be surprised by what you hear.
I used to say, “I’m an awkward person.” But now I say, “I’m a recovering awkward person.” One word, and I changed my story. That’s what these questions do for the people you talk to, and for you.
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