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

The Silent Struggle of Smart People I @russellbrunson

7 Apr 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:02

In this solo talk, Vanessa Van Edwards explains that many high‑achieving, intelligent individuals possess strong ideas and results but often fail to convey warmth and competence effectively. She distinguishes between actual warmth/competence and the perceived versions that others judge, arguing that under‑signaling these traits leads observers to doubt and dismiss the speaker. Van Edwards notes that smart people typically focus on content preparation while neglecting delivery practice, resulting in muted social cues. This lack of cues hampers trust, credibility, and charisma, especially in virtual settings where video and audio limit body language, handshakes, and other non‑verbal signals. Consequently, presenters must work harder to intentionally project warmth and competence to be trusted and believed.

Chapters

All of my students are high-achieving, very smart people, but they don't always show it. This is the problem and the curse of very smart people. This is not your actual warmth and competence, it's your perceived warmth and competence. In fact, they have exceptionally good ideas. They're like, my product speaks for itself, my numbers speak for themselves. And so they prepare for the content, but they don't practice the delivery. And so they under-signal competence and under-signal warmth. If you under-signal, you are telling people to doubt and dismiss you because your cues tell others how to treat you. So if you are sending signals of warmth and competence, you will be treated with more trust and credibility. You also inspire it. Charisma— people are very contagious. If you undersignal, you are stoic, you don't show enough of the warmth and competence, people cannot believe you. They're not getting enough of the social signals from you to be able to say, ah, I can trust this person, I can rely on them. And video has made this even harder because on Zoom you can't see my body positioning. We weren't able to handshake or hug. Like, all those things are happening in person. And so when we only have video, or even only audio, we're really limiting the number of signals we're sending. So we have to work even harder to show people you can trust me and you can believe me.