Vanessa Van EdwardsScience of People, Science Of People · Behavioral Researcher, Founder, Author, Harvard Instructor

Is Social Perceptiveness the New Career Trend?

4 Mar 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment Vanessa Van Edwards explains how to increase the likelihood of being approached by deliberately wearing items that act as conversation starters. She shares personal examples—such as a Ravenclaw Harry‑Potter shirt, alma‑mater or funny tees, distinctive hats, earrings, and red shoes—and describes how each piece invites comments and opens dialogue. Vanessa also suggests augmenting name tags with a brief, self‑deprecating tagline (e.g., “recovering awkward person”) to give others an easy entry point for conversation. The overall message is a practical, low‑effort strategy for improving social perceptiveness and networking by turning one’s appearance into a built‑in icebreaker.

Chapters

Wear a conversation starter. One of the things you can do if you want to be approached more often is wear something that people might talk to you about. For example, I often wear a Ravenclaw shirt. I love Harry Potter and my house is Ravenclaw. I just love knowledge and learning, so I wear this shirt and I do it to start conversations. I love wearing it to the gym. People always come up and talk to me and they say, oh, I'm a Ravenclaw too, or don't you love those Gryffindors, or, uh, Slytherins. And I get to talk about Harry Potter at the gym all the time, which I love. So think about wearing a shirt, your alma mater, a funny shirt, be cool hat or cool earrings or fun shoes. Sometimes I even wear red shoes. I have red shoes on the COVID of my book Cues, and the red shoes bring people, especially women, over to come and talk to me. And then we can talk about fashion and clothing choices and shoes. We talk about where I got them. So wear conversation starters. You can even on your name tag put a conversation starter below your name. When I have a name tag, I often put my name Vanessa Van Edwards, and then underneath I'll put recovering awkward person, and this always starts great conversation.