Making Small Talk Meaningful

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My Guest: Vanessa Van Edwards is a behavioral researcher, Harvard instructor, and founder of Science of People. Her books Captivate and Cues have been translated into 18 languages, and her work reached more than 300 million people last year. Her new book is Conversation: How to Connect with Anyone and Make Every Interaction Count.

Key Learnings

Small talk is required for big talk. You can't skip it. You can do it better. Conversation is a skill with micro skills underneath it, and small talk is one chapter.

Two traps make small talk painful. Autopilot (asking questions without actually connecting) and going for facts instead of stories.

Awe is the best small talk ingredient. "Wow, that's amazing," or "What is that?" Positive awe is wow. Negative awe is compassion: "Everything okay? Can I help?" Both solicit stories. Both work only if you mean it.

Awe beats a compliment. A compliment lands. Being visibly wowed by something invites the story behind it.

Be story ready. When someone asks how you are, don't hand back good, fine, busy. Have something loaded: "Today the craziest thing happened." You break the script with your answer before anyone has to break it with a question.

Flip your questions into story hunters. Not "how are you" but "What's been good?" or "Tell me something good." Slight change, big shift toward optimism.

Or check in on something specific from before. "I noticed you dedicated the book to your daughters. How old are they now?" The update question does the work that the generic one can't.

Katie Couric never asks "what do you do?" She asks "What do you like to do?" Vanessa found it in Couric's memoir. One-word swaps have major potential.

Turn small talk into a treasure hunt. Everyone has gold. You don't know what it is yet. Your job is to ask the questions that find it.

Treasure hunting also kills the awkwardness. Vanessa calls herself a recovering awkward person. Her problem for years was that her goal in conversation was to be impressive. No good conversation comes from that.

Curiosity has to be innate. Vanessa thinks nearly everything is teachable. Not this. If you aren't actually curious about the person, the techniques will read as manipulative, and eventually you get found out.

The rule on using someone's name: if you're already thinking about it, use it. If you're not thinking about it, don't. That's the whole test.

Three levels of connection, and you have to go in order. From Dr. Dan McAdams. Level one is general traits: occupation, hometown, family status. Level two is personal concerns: goals, motivations, values, what drives and worries someone. Level three is self-narrative.

Put your work relationships in level two. That's the practical instruction. Most people stall at level one and assume level two isn't work-appropriate. It is, and conversations get more engaged, collaborative, and productive once you're there.

Level three is about frames, not facts. Two people can have identical facts and completely different stories about what those facts mean.

Self-narratives are self-creating. People who see themselves as lucky approach the world as lucky people. They spot more opportunities, think more laterally, and create more surface area for good things. Unlucky people do the same thing in reverse.

Narratives are editable. They're not Enneagram or Myers-Briggs. They shift, usually on an annual scale, most often through conversation with someone you trust. Journaling alone rarely does it.

The five re-storying questions. Who am I now? Who do I want to be? How do I get from here to there? How do I make change stick? Who can help me?

Be a loud liker. A friend asked Vanessa to assess a date named Tim. Her read: meh. Before she could say so, the friend told her Tim had loved her, thought she was fun, and bought all her books. Vanessa's opinion of Tim reversed on the spot. She was embarrassed by how fast.

The lesson from Tim: when someone clearly likes you, you feel at ease, you feel more likable, and you like them back. Very few of our impressions of people are fixed.

You can't like too loudly if it's authentic. Vanessa's hot take. Gushing is fine. The only failure mode is inauthenticity, or liking so loudly you prevent the conversation from happening.

Warmth, then competence. Susan Fiske's research, quoted directly: "Competence without warmth leaves people feeling suspicious." Leading with data and numbers reads like you're hiding something. Warmth is the lubricant that lets people accept your competence.

Powerful people get informal fast. BJ, a CEO I hadn't seen in a year, leaned into the camera on a Zoom and said, "This makes me so happy." Straight past the formality. The myth is that power requires sterility. The most powerful people have enough confidence in their status to give likability away.

Proxemics: we read physical space as emotional space. Four zones. Public is five to seven feet. Social is four to six. Personal is a foot and a half to three feet. Intimate is under 18 inches. Leaning toward the edge of someone's intimate zone signals that you want to be close, and it works on camera too.

Let your body do what it wants when you like someone. It already wants to lean in, make eye contact, get closer. Most of us hold it back.

Shared language is the key to our hearts. I give my daughter's friends nicknames. Millie is Mill Dog. Georgia gets "What up, G?" Vanessa calls that an inside joke, and inside jokes create belonging. It also proves you remembered them.

Availability is more attractive than attractiveness. In Dr. Monica Moore's bar study, the most attractive women were not approached most. The women who sent the most availability signals were: brief glances, long glances, body angling, smiles. It took roughly 35 signals an hour to get approached.

Never ask "been busy lately?" It invites the other person's brain into pessimism, primes them to search for everything they're behind on, and reminds them they should be somewhere else. Then they complain, and listening to complaining is the most exhausting form of conversation there is.

Bragging about being busy makes you look less competent. The research is counterintuitive. People think volume signals importance. It reads as someone who doesn't have a handle on things.

"Oh, good busy or bad busy?" 90% of the time you get a real story about a project or a goal. The other ten percent opens the door to "What's going on? Can I help?" Either way, you just moved to level two.

Two secret doors into level two at work: goals and learning. A goal taps motivation, core values, and future self. Learning activates growth mindset.

Test yourself on the five people you work with most. Do you know each one's current work goal and personal goal? Vanessa knows who on her team is training for a marathon and what their KPIs are.

Make it a norm, not an occasion. Vanessa's global team opens every weekly call with "tell me something good." One quick win each, personal or professional. It gave wins a place to live that isn't bragging, and it replaced the boring small talk that used to open the call.

The nine power questions, for the most important people in your life. Three per level. 1) Working on anything exciting these days? 2) Have any fun plans coming up? 3) What's your personal passion project? 4) What's your biggest goal right now? 5) What have you always wanted to learn? 6) What do you love to talk about? 7) What book, movie, or TV character are you most like and why? 8) How do you feel most misunderstood? 9) What would you do if you weren't afraid?

Question four is also a secret to strong marriages. Partners discussing shared dreams is vision casting. It reminds you both where you're going and shapes what you do today. Some marriages live in strategy. Most get trapped in logistics.

Question seven is the backdoor to level three. Asking someone their self-narrative directly doesn't work. Asking what character shares their values, choices, and personality gets the richest narrative answers, because it makes them step outside themselves.

If you don't like people, treat it like a social gym. The first few reps hurt and you can only do three. And when you're stuck with someone you don't like, the intention becomes: how do I get to know this person enough to find one thing I authentically like? That's a muscle.

Go to the gym with a plan. Wandering machine to machine is aimless and exhausting. So is walking into a room with no conversational intention. Vanessa's plan is always the same: discover.

Vanessa's champagne moment a year from now: a conversation coach in every company and every school. She thinks the chief conversation officer role is coming. We've moved our small conversations onto Slack, which is transactional, and lost the water cooler. If we want engaged teams and less burnout, someone has to build the safe spaces and the prompts. She has already certified 70 coaches.

Reflection Questions

Who in your life has clearly told you they like you? Now flip it. Who have you been quietly appreciating without ever saying it out loud? Say it this week.

Pick the five people you work with most. Can you name each one's biggest goal right now, at work and at home? If not, that's your next five conversations.

Where are you using a conversational technique as a tool instead of out of genuine curiosity? If you enjoyed this episode with Vanessa Van Edwards, watch our first conversation together, Episode #468 - The Secret Language to Charismatic Communication. (Show notes)

Episode Chapters00:00 Apply for the Learning Leader Circle

01:17 Meet Vanessa Van Edwards

02:37 The Small Talk That Kills Your Soul

03:52 The Two Traps of Small Talk

06:11 Awe Is the Best Opener

09:10 Turn Small Talk Into a Treasure Hunt

11:32 Curiosity Can't Be Faked

12:58 The Rule on Using Someone's Name

16:02 The Pressure to Be Impressive

18:34 Three Levels of Connection

21:18 The Five Re-Storying Questions

24:40 Be a Loud Liker

28:11 The Social Gym

29:33 Warmth, Then Competence

33:01 Proxemics Works on Camera

34:40 Nicknames and Shared Language

36:45 Availability Beats Attractiveness

39:18 Never Ask "Been Busy Lately?"

42:37 Two Secret Doors to Level Two

47:07 What Character Are You Most Like?

49:09 The Champagne Question

50:33 EOPC