Vanessa Van Edwards is a national bestselling author and founder of Science of People.
Vanessa is renowned for teaching science-backed people skills to audiences around the world.
On this episode, Vanessa shares tangible skills to improve interpersonal communication and leadership, including her insights on how people work.
Get ready for Vanessa to go over her methods for turning “soft skills” into actionable, masterable frameworks that can be applied in daily life.
Key Takeaways
Vanessa’s love for human behavior began with her fascination with the ‘cool kids’ at school that had effortless people skills. A college professor completely changed how she thought about people and she was then put on her career path to human behavior.
● “Study for people, like you study for science” ●
Her tips for understanding yourself better begin with taking the Big 5 Personality test and figuring out whether you are a high consciousness or low consciousness person.
● “If you know how you are wired, you are better able to act authentically” ●
While everyone is navigating the new normal of countless Zoom calls, Vanessa explains how you can still create a sense of belonging with a team through remote work.
Her advice: create shared team rituals.
● “The power of shared rituals are so important for the chemical connection” ●
2:39 Vanessa’s Daily Routine
Vanessa aims to start every day reading psychology feeds for about 20 minutes, she has 10 different websites that she rotates through.
For stress relief, Vanessa takes 5/7 days of the week to take really long walks. She credits these long walks to help her to really address any problems and challenges she’s having.
5:08 How Your Gut Determines Your Personality
Vanessa dives into her love for gut research.
Hypothesis: your personality comes from your gut → determines how extroverted/introverted you are
Tested with mice through a fecal transplant and the hypothesis was found to be correct!
7:54 Vanessa’s Interest in Human Behavior
Vanessa describes herself as a ‘recovering awkward person.’
She was never a confident kid socially and was always observing the ‘cool kids’.
In college, a professor taught her that people skills can be learned, debunking her belief that people are either born with people skills or not
She slowly began to take notes on conversations and body language.
Look for the patterns, follow frameworks, make formulas.
● “Study for people, like you study for science” ●
12:28 Human Behavior Lab
When Vanessa was first out of college she was using all of her people skills strategies personally, just trying to get her first job.
She would submit articles to science websites and soon learned that article submissions with your own additional research would pay more money.
Vanessa would try out psychological experiments with herself and write about her experience.
15:58 Academic Research Process Phase
Vanessa has a team of writers and they typically follow this research process:
First they do keyword research to find what their readers are searching for
They gather 15-30 keywords
This is the outline of the article
Then the team begins to use all the databases they can find
They look for patterns among all the studies they come across
30-40 pages of literature review on the studies they find and organize them by subheadings
Next, they look at which studies are actual frameworks that someone can practically do themselves
19:33 Understanding Ourselves Better
Vanessa says there are two main things to start with when it comes to understanding yourself better:
Big 5 personality trait test
● “If you know how you are wired, you are better able to act authentically” ●
Determine your type of consciousness – how you approach details
High consciousness: love details
Low consciousness: details box you in and drain you, big idea person
● “Instead of trying to force yourself to be something you’re not, it’s actually accepting who you are, and leveraging it” ●
22:01 Personality Trends
A lot of traits remain the same throughout our life, Vanessa says.
She refers back to the importance of our gut, where 95% of our serotonin is held which is what gives us a sense of belonging.
Vanessa talks about a fascinating study that looked at the observed personality traits of a 3 year old, and then looked at that same person’s reported personality traits as a 26 year old, and they were found to be the same.
25:02 First Impression Tips
Most people like to believe that our first impression starts when we start talking. However, Vanessa explains that a first impression happens when someone first sees you – even over video calls.
● “You can produce the chemical for connection through a webcam” ●
Vanessa Tips for Video Calls:
Have your setup ready to go
Make immediate eye contact with the camera, not yourself
Always wave
Say a nicety
● “The moment I hit “open zoom” I am ready for my first impression because I know it’s going to be within the first few seconds” ●
29:23 Shark Tank Experiment
Vanessa and her team analyzed 400 pitches on Shark Tank, coding them for different cues, from their walks, waves, smiles, nods.
The most successful entrepreneurs entered the tank immediately made eye contact, a nice wave palm open, and then launched into their pitch
30:16 Sense of Belonging Remotely
Vanessa believes that the easiest way to create a sense of belonging with a team through remote work, is through shared rituals
● “The power of shared rituals are so important for the chemical connection” ●
Shared rituals produce both serotonin and oxytocin.
● “Every one of my team meetings we start with ‘tell me something good’” ●
33:21 Long Term Effects of Remote work
One long term effect of remote work that Vanessa talks about is that people are going to be more discriminatory against who is worth getting germs from.
She talks about how physical touch is going to be reserved for people you feel very deserving
● “Physical intimacy is going to be guarded and considered a gift” ●
37:31 Hardest element of Human Behavior to Change
Vanessa says that the hardest element of human behavior to change is vocal power.
Vocal power is very hard to change because while you can see your body language, it’s proven that the way we hear ourselves is different from the way others hear us
Self diagnosis is hard and it’s hard to change the power of our vocal range.
● “Vocal power is so impactful but one of the harder things to change” ●
40:38 Vanessa’s Resources
Captivate: a book for high achieving professionals and want to activate their people skills more
People School is an online training through video courses, and is what Vanessa wishes she had going through school
41:53 Final Question
If Vanessa could interview anyone dead or alive, not a family member, who would she want to interview?
Lucille Ball because of her impressive business, how she was able to make people laugh and create hundreds of episodes that people still watch today.