ARE YOU TALKING TOO MUCH?

Only 3 in 10 Americans socialise on a daily basis.

So how good are we ACTUALLY at talking to each other anymore?

Vanessa Van Edwards believes we’re living through a “connection crisis”, where conversations are becoming harder, more awkward and less satisfying, while more of our interactions are moving away from real face-to-face conversation.

Vanessa is a behavioural researcher, international bestselling author and instructor at Harvard University whose work studies how people communicate, connect and understand each other.

And she said something to me early in this conversation that really stayed with me: people who invest in conversation skills now are creating “career insurance”.

She has spent years studying why some conversations seem effortless, why others die within minutes and what the best conversationalists are doing differently.

We discussed things like:

- Why “how are you?” and “what do you do?” can lead to dead-end conversations. - The 3 levels of conversation and how to move from small talk into real connection. - How awkward silence is one of our biggest conversational fears. - The questions that reveal someone’s values, motivations and personality. - 5 self-narratives that can influence how someone behaves at work and in relationships. - Why becoming better at conversation could become increasingly valuable as AI changes how we communicate.

I’ve now had hundreds of conversations for this show and something Vanessa made me think about is that the best conversationalists are constantly paying attention to the person in front of them.

They aren’t blindly working through the things they want to say. They’re watching, listening and adjusting.

That sounds obvious until you start noticing how rarely people actually do it…

Vanessa has a way of breaking human connection down into things you can actually practise, which is probably why every time we speak I leave noticing things about my own behaviour that I hadn’t noticed before.

If you want to become better at talking to people, building relationships and having conversations people actually remember, I really recommend watching this one.

Out now on all platforms ❤️👊🏾