Small talk
Subject in Self-Improvement
Small talk has come up in 1 episode across 1 podcast in TMT, including The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett. 1 person has made recorded remarks about it.
What people said
Vanessa Van EdwardsBehavioral researcher, bestselling author, and founder of Science of People
Van Edwards cites the peak-end effect to argue that the ending of a conversation matters as much as the first impression.
“So there's a behavior concept, the peak-end effect, that we remember the first few minutes of a conversation and the last few minutes of conversation”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Vanessa Van Edwards: The Conversation Habit That Makes Smart People Unlikable (Sep 10, 2026) · Listen from 1:56:02
Van Edwards contends that communication friction harms company performance and that easy small talk improves productivity.
“When you have a company that has a lot of communication friction, you have employees who doubt themselves”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Vanessa Van Edwards: The Conversation Habit That Makes Smart People Unlikable (Sep 10, 2026) · Listen from 20:32
Van Edwards argues that conversation should seek stories rather than facts.
“I truly believe a fact is a stop sign. A story is a doorway”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Vanessa Van Edwards: The Conversation Habit That Makes Smart People Unlikable (Sep 10, 2026) · Listen from 13:18
Van Edwards argues that scripted questions such as "How are you?" and "What do you do?" push people into autopilot.
“So these last two, how are you and what do you do? They're very socially scripted, right? The moment we ask those questions, our brain goes into autopilot”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Vanessa Van Edwards: The Conversation Habit That Makes Smart People Unlikable (Sep 10, 2026) · Listen from 9:03
Podcasts
- The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett · 1 episode
Episodes
Vanessa Van Edwards: The Conversation Habit That Makes Smart People UnlikableThe Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett · Sep 10, 2026 · 2 h 27 min
Behavioral researcher Vanessa Van Edwards tells Steven Bartlett about her three-level conversation framework, over-talking, self-narratives, five story archetypes and the cues behind charisma.