These Questions Are Charisma Killers

You say that you're a recovering awkward person. I watched your TED talk. 6.3 million views, by the way. It's an amazing TED Talk. So help me and help our listeners. How do we ask better questions and how important is that?

The number one way to kill your charisma is to ask an autopilot social script. That.

Is.

How are ya? How's it going? What's up? What do you do? Where are you from?

Yeah.

When you ask those questions, you are literally telling the other person's brain, stay asleep, stay on autopilot. This is gonna be like every other conversation you've ever had. They are killers of charisma. That's the very first thing is stop asking script questions because you're gonna trigger the autopilot response number two. Then you have a choice. You can ask warmth related questions like, have any fun plans coming up this weekend? You're soliciting, you're gathering warm. Another warm question. What personal passion project are you working on? Do you have any side hustles? Like, more warmth, excitement, passion, competence? What's your big goal for 2026? Do you have a big goal this month? And by the way, my highly competent folks, I encourage them to ask warmth questions at the start of meetings. You're about to go into a very technical presentation. You're about to pitch a really a big idea. I have a lot of entrepreneurs who follow me. They do a lot of pitches to like, VCs or prospective clients. And I'm like, if your presentation is high in competence, you have to start with warmth. My favorite, my default questions are a blend of both asking, working on anything exciting recently is a perfect blend of warmth and competence. It's work, but also exciting. And if someone loves what they do, they will tell you.