Vanessa Van Edwards says generic small-talk questions like "How are you?" kill your charisma. Replace them with script-breaking questions: warmth-focused ones like "Any fun plans this weekend?" build rapport, while competence-focused ones like "What's your big goal for 2026?" draw out expertise and spark real conversation.
Script-breaking questions are charismatic. The number one way to kill your charisma is to ask an autopilot social script. That is, how are you? How's it going? What do you do? Where are you from? When you ask those questions, you are literally telling the other person's brain, stay asleep, stay on autopilot. This is going to be like every other conversation you've ever had. So first, we have to take away autopilot questions from our repertoire. They are killers of charisma. I want you to stop doing this. I want to go on a small talk diet. That's the very first thing. Number two, then you have a choice. You you can ask warmth-related questions like, have any fun plans coming up this weekend? You're soliciting, you're gathering warmth. Competence. What's your big goal for 2026? Hey, what's your ritual every morning? I actually think that's a competence question. Agendas, rituals, goals, expertise, competence. So you have a choice. You can do warmth questions if you wanna trigger warmth. If your presentation is high in competence, you have to start with warmth versus let's say that you are actually trying to trigger a little bit of competence on your team call. I have a lot of leaders, you know, you wanna trigger that competence, ask competence. My favorite, my default questions are a blend of both.
