These 7 things make smart people sound less competent. A behavioral expert shows how to fix it.

It all comes down to the “3 S’s Rule.”

By Heather Wake

Codie Sanchez—an investor, entrepreneur, business strategist, and former journalist—knows a thing or two about winning at conversation. From spending time on Wall Street to helping everyday people build unconventional wealth, she’s learned at least this: “You can be the smartest person in the room and still lose it entirely because of the way you speak.”

She explains in a YouTube video that when it comes to first impressions, everyone is “immediately” graded on the “warmth and competency” of what they’re saying, with the latter being especially crucial in business settings.

And over the years, she noticed that many intelligent people with great ideas get overlooked because of “how that intelligence is delivered.”

Worried you’re boring? 5 conversation tricks that can make you more fun to talk to.

Avoid awkward or boring interactions with some simple habit changes.

By Annie Reneau

Are you ever in social situations where the conversation drags and you’re not sure what to do about it? Is it that the other person isn’t engaging, or is it that you’re not interesting? Social anxiety might have you questioning everything in these moments, but what if there were skills you could learn to make conversations more fun for everyone involved, including you?

Charisma on Command shared a video on YouTube outlining five mistakes people make in conversations that make them seem boring, and five things to do instead that make them more fun to talk to.

Her smile did not disappear!

Social skills expert shares 3 ‘magic phrases’ that make you more likable

Sometimes, we need to overcommunicate how we feel about others.

By Tod Perry

A familiar misstep people make when trying to be likable is trying to impress others. They want to show they are funny, intelligent, and a great storyteller. They think being the life of the party is the road to likability. However, study after study shows that it’s a lot easier to be likable. All you have to do is show interest in others. To put it simply: If you like people, you will become more likable.

There’s a slight wrinkle in the notion that liking more people makes you more likable. Many people you like aren’t sure that you like them. The psychological phenomenon known as signal amplification bias says it best. We tend to overestimate how clearly we broadcast our feelings and intentions towards others. So, the person we like and who likes us may not know the feeling is mutual.

“We think our signals are obvious,” Vanessa Van Edwards told Steve Bartlett on the Diary of a CEO podcast. “If we like someone or if we’re having a good time, we think, ‘Oh, they for sure know it.’ They don’t.”

American shares his 9 realizations about the U.S. after 13 years abroad and it’s eye-opening

“If you’ve never left, you can never understand what it’s really like…”

By Annie Reneau

Evan Edinger moved to London over 13 years ago to study abroad but never planned on staying overseas permanently. His goal was to get his degree, return to the United States, start his career, and make a life for himself. He thought of his time in London as a “temporary adventure.”

But when he finished his degree, he found himself in an unexpected situation: He didn’t want to go back. “The longer I stayed in London,” Edinger shares on his YouTube channel, “the more I began to notice all of the assumptions that I’d grown up believing in America, the things I was brought up to believe were undeniably true and just the way the world worked—it turns out they weren’t true at all.”

One of the benefits of living in another country is seeing your country of origin through different eyes. That perspective can cause you to appreciate some things and question other things. Edinger shares nine realizations he’s had about the U.S. since he left, starting with one of the most quintessentially American realities he found himself questioning.