Show notes
Whether we’re interacting with colleagues, clients, friends, family members or strangers, conversations are the way most of us build — or break — relationships. And yet we don’t often think deeply about how to approach this type of casual communication. Alison Wood Brooks, associate professor at Harvard Business School, has studied what it takes to create a great conversation and offers research-backed tips for improving your skills. Brooks is the author of the book Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves.
Snips
[04:02] ⭐️ Nature vs. Nurture in Conversation
🎧 Play snip - 2min️ (02:28 - 04:02) Nature vs. Nurture in Conversation
- Conversational ability isn’t solely determined by personality.
- How you feel during conversations and your micro-decisions impact your conversational skills more.
📚 Transcript
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Alison BeardSo we all know people who are just fabulous, fluid conversationalists and others who just aren’t that good. How much of that is due to just an extroverted, confident, warm personality or the way you were brought up in a talkative family or just having lots of interesting things to say versus Being a more shy or self-conscious person, growing up in a less chatty environment or just not having that much to contribute to the conversation?
Alison Wood BrooksI think at the heart of your question is, you know, how much of our conversational ability is from nature versus nurture? When we think about things like personality, extroversion, and introversion, or even other parts of individual differences in the ways that our brains work with. If you’re on the autism spectrum, if you have ADHD, all of it matters in terms of who you are and how your brain works. But ultimately, what really matters is how are you feeling when you’re talking to other people and how are those things influencing your behavior, your little micro decisions that You make at every moment of every conversation. Some introverts are fabulous conversationalists. Some extroverts are terrible. What really matters is what are you thinking about? How are you feeling? And how is it affecting your choices as your conversations unfold? So it seems like you’re saying that anyone can learn to be a good conversationalist? Absolutely. You can learn to be a better conversationalist. You can also learn and change your preferences around conversation over the trajectory of your life and even from one moment to the next.
[05:17] Conversation as a Coordination Game
🎧 Play snip - 1min️ (04:02 - 05:17) Conversation as a Coordination Game
- Conversations are complex coordination challenges involving many micro-decisions.
- Coordinating with another person’s mind adds layers of complexity.
📚 Transcript
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Alison BeardMentioned micro decisions. You also say in the book that conversations are a unique coordination challenge each time. So explain what you mean by those two things. Why are they so complicated and complex?
Alison Wood BrooksIt’s so funny. We learn to have conversations starting around the age of one and a half when we’re toddlers. So by the time we get to adulthood, it feels like conversation is one of those things that’s second nature and that we should be great at it and that it should be easy. And then it’s this task we’re doing all the time. But when you start to look under the hood of what’s going on in people’s brains when they’re talking to each other and what about all of these little choices that we’re making at every Moment of every conversation, when you look under the hood, conversation is so much more complex than it first appears. In fact, it’s sort of a miracle that humans learn to have dialogue, to take turns speaking and listening with each other in pursuit of goals like information exchange and connection And fun. And so I call it a coordination game because you’re coordinating hundreds of thousands of little decisions together with another human mind that you don’t have control over.
[09:28] Topic Prep
🎧 Play snip - 1min️ (08:00 - 09:28) Topic Prep
- Try “topic prep” by spending 30 seconds brainstorming potential conversation topics beforehand.
- This can lead to smoother, more enjoyable conversations and reduced anxiety.
📚 Transcript
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Alison BeardYou’re actually able to accomplish. So what’s an exercise that I might do to get better at picking topics and switching between them?
Alison Wood BrooksSo I teach a course at Harvard called Talk, and there are a number of exercises that I have my students do to practice. A great exercise is to try topic prep. Some people do this naturally, and other people are like, what are you talking about? It’s a terrible idea. It’s going to make my conversation awful and rigid and scripted. But don’t knock it till you try it. In our research, we find that people who spend even 30 seconds thinking ahead about possible topics they could talk about leads to more enjoyable, less anxiety-ridden, smoother conversations. So you can push yourself to try and come up with a list of like two to three bullet points of ideas of things that you might talk about. And not just with work colleagues for, you know, a 20 or 30-minute meeting, but also for people you’re really close to. Like when you call your mom or your best friend, think ahead about what they’re going to find fun to talk about or important. What’s been going on in their life that you should ask them about? What did you see in the world that reminded you of them? And maybe you’ll have the chance to bring that up and make them feel really loved and seen. So topic prep helps in all of these ways. In the experience of topic prep, the fears about it making the conversation seem scripted or rigid turn out to not be true. It actually usually makes a conversation feel more exciting and more smooth.
[10:46] Topic Switching
🎧 Play snip - 1min️ (09:28 - 10:46) Topic Switching
- Practice frequent topic switching during conversations to maintain engagement.
- Don’t be afraid to switch even when a topic is interesting to keep things fresh.
📚 Transcript
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Alison Wood BrooksAnother idea and another exercise I have my students do is about topic switching once the conversation is underway. You know, whether you’ve done topic prep or not, once you’re in the conversation, you’re making these choices on the fly about, well, should we stay on this topic or switch to something Else? Topics more than jumping around too quickly. It’s more common that you have a lull and you start saying things you’ve already said or having long pauses because usually because people are polite and they feel weird switching to A new topic. But in those moments, it’s really important to be courageous and confident and switch to something else. So an exercise I have my students do is like take a list of a lot of topics, maybe 10 or 12, and just challenge yourself to switch more frequently. Anytime it seems like your partner’s not interested or you haven’t landed on something like that’s dazzlingly exciting. Or there’s even if you have landed on something exciting, push yourself to sort of switch more frequently than you naturally would and see how it goes. Most people are pleasantly surprised to learn that it just makes their conversation more exciting and more interesting and actually doesn’t feel as rude as you think it might.
[13:21] Egocentrism and Question Asking
🎧 Play snip - 2min️ (11:40 - 13:21) Egocentrism and Question Asking
- People talk about themselves too much due to egocentrism, forgetting others have valuable perspectives.
- Barriers like fear of appearing incompetent or intrusive hinder question-asking.
📚 Transcript
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Alison BeardLike a good transition to asking questions because that might be another way you can find commonalities. So I think most of us know that this is a path to better communication and understanding, particularly in the workplace. But why do you think so many people still do tend to share more information than they solicit and talk more than they listen in conversations? That’s the worst conversationalist, right? The person who just talks at you and doesn’t ask questions and doesn’t engage you.
Alison Wood BrooksListen, there are like a million ways to be a bad conversationalist, which is part of the challenge in becoming a better one. But certainly talking too much about yourself is a very quick and common way that people fail. One reason that people under ask questions is just that our brain, the human mind was built to be egocentric. We’re most familiar with our own perspective. We’re most interested in our own experience of the world. And so many people, because they’re so focused on their own perspective that they really like forget to ask and realize, oh, I’m talking to another human mind that has had maybe even More experiences and have even more knowledge than I do. And I should be trying to pull that information out of them. You just sort of forget that that’s even possible in the chaos of conversational flow. Another reason is that even if you think to ask people questions, there are lots of barriers there too, right? We worry that by asking, it’ll make us look incompetent or too intrusive or that we’ll ask a question on a topic that they don’t actually want to talk about or is too sensitive.
[15:03] Follow-Up Questions
🎧 Play snip - 2min️ (13:29 - 15:03) Follow-Up Questions
- Ask follow-up questions to show genuine interest and create deeper connections.
- Follow-up questions facilitate information exchange and move beyond small talk.
📚 Transcript
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Alison BeardAs you might imagine, I am the opposite. And very often my husband will be in a conversation in a group setting and he’ll say, you really have to forgive her for asking so many questions. She’s a journalist. But what does your research show about good types of questions to ask people? Yeah.
Alison Wood BrooksSo let me tell you about a specific data set that I think is really illustrative of the power of question asking. We got our hands on this great data set of speed dates. So it was about a thousand speed dates, four minute conversations between strangers on heterosexual speed dates. And there’s all kinds of stuff you can study about their conversations. It had this beautiful outcome of like, does the person want to go on another date with you or not at the end? There’s a very strong and clear effect of question asking such that for both men and women asking more questions means that your partner is more likely to want to go on a date with you, A second date with you. But when you look at that effect, when you dive in and look at the content of what people are asking about, you see that that effect is almost entirely driven by follow-up questions. Follow-up questions are such a superhero because they show that you’re listening to your partner and you care about their answer and then you want to know more. And that’s what psychologists call responsiveness in action, right? Like you are actually listening to them, you actually care, and you actually want to know more. So follow-up questions are such a superhero. They help us get away from small talk, and it helps us share with each other.
[17:08] Open-Ended Questions in Negotiations
🎧 Play snip - 2min️ (15:03 - 17:08) Open-Ended Questions in Negotiations
- Use open-ended questions, especially those starting with “what,” in negotiations.
- These questions promote likeability, trust, and information gathering for creative solutions.
📚 Transcript
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Alison Wood BrooksIt helps you say, look, I really want to hear more from you on this. Like, don’t be afraid to share it with me. In a different data set, we looked at question asking in negotiations. So this is a much more conflictual context compared to dating where your incentives are very much aligned, right? It’s very cooperative. You have a lot to learn about each other. When you’re negotiating and you’re working through disagreement, you could feel like, oh, I shouldn’t ask as much because they’re going to feel like I’m trying to learn information That I’m going to use to exploit them and use for my own gain, right? It’s more competitive. But even there, even in negotiations, we find that people who ask more questions are on average better liked by their counterpart, and they learn more information that helps them identify Creative solutions and value creating solutions and helps them claim more value in the negotiation. And this was particularly true for open-ended questions. So closed questions, of course, have a sort of predetermined set of answers like yes, no. Open-ended questions are more like, what do you think about cell phones? Or what did you have for breakfast this morning? What’s on your mind? They beg for more information, more open sharing from your partner. And in fact, in conversation, by asking an open-ended question, people respond with more than twice the word count when you ask them an open question compared to a closed one. And then we could look at the wording of these questions that negotiators ask each other. And what we saw was really stunning, very helpful in practice. People who asked open-ended questions that start with the word what seem to strike the right balance between relational outcomes like likability, trust, as well as informational Outcomes, so eliciting more information that’s helpful in the negotiation. So what questions strike that good balance compared to, let’s say, a why question? So I say, why did you have cereal for breakfast? Why don’t you like cell phones? Which can feel more accusatory and more threatening.
[22:39] Levity’s Importance
🎧 Play snip - 2min️ (20:25 - 22:39) Levity’s Importance
- Levity, including humor and compliments, is crucial for engagement and combating boredom.
- Levity isn’t just a bonus; it shapes status and relationships.
📚 Transcript
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Alison BeardOkay, the L is for levity. Does this mean telling jokes or finding ways to make the conversation lighter with smiles or laughter or self-deprecation? What are we talking about?
Alison Wood BrooksYeah, you know, there are very obvious killers of conversation like anger and hostility conflict. But the quieter killer of conversation is actually boredom and disengagement. Even if one person becomes disinterested or bored or wants to leave, it’s very hard to continue a conversation in a fun and productive way. And it happens all the time, right? Like it’s very, very common, more common probably than anger and hostility. So levity is the antidote for boredom and disengagement. It includes any moment or any move that infuses lightness into the conversation, and that can come through humor and laughter, but also through unfunny things like compliments or Topic switching, which is, I hope, for people who think they’re not funny and never will be, I hope they find that very empowering. People tend to think of these moves like compliments and laughter and jokes as this sort of extra sparkly bonus thing that sometimes happens in conversation. When you start to study the psychology of status hierarchies and connection, you realize it’s not actually this extra bonus. It’s a core determinant of how people relate to each other and who earns status and maintains it. In our research, we found that even one mildly funny joke, like kind of a bad joke, confers so much status to the person who tried. Even when the joke flops, that person is seen as much more confident than a person who’s sort of afraid to make a joke like that. If the joke succeeds, that person is much more likely to be voted as the leader of the group. And so in terms of status striving, which is, you know, the basis of like all humanity and how people relate each other. It seems like levity actually is a very important factor in how we relate to each other and how we hold each other’s attention.
[30:17] Kindness and Validation
🎧 Play snip - 5min️ (25:30 - 30:17) Kindness and Validation
- Show kindness by actively listening and validating your partner’s perspective, especially during disagreements.
- Affirm their feelings before expressing opposing viewpoints.
📚 Transcript
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Alison BeardFunny, and I think that’s the wrong goal. Yeah. And finally, kindness. What exactly do you mean by that, and why is it critical?
Alison Wood BrooksIn a way, topics asking and levity are all working their way up to the most important maxim of the talk framework, which is kindness. They are all helping us make these micro decisions, these coordination decisions more effectively. But ultimately, the question is in service of what? Are you becoming a better conversationalist to pursue your own goals and needs? Or are you doing it? Are you thinking about other people’s goals and needs and sort of like more collective pursuits, people who push themselves to move beyond natural human egocentrism and really focus On their partner’s needs are much more well positioned to actually fulfill those needs. And being able to do that at work and in our relationships outside of work is the key to having great relationships and great conversations. Okay. And then how do you show kindness in a conversation? Listening lives within kindness. And I think one thing we’ve uncovered in our research that was surprising to me is that we have decades and decades of work on active listening. Right. And, you know, it’s mostly nonverbal stuff like eye contact and smiling, nodding, trunk lean, leaning towards your partner while they’re talking. Those are all great, but they also don’t necessarily align with what’s going on inside your mind. Like they, the human mind was built to wander and it wanders a lot while we’re talking to other people. And the whole time you can be smiling and nodding while you’re, you know, actually thinking about your grocery list or that thing that they said earlier in the conversation. So it’s not a high fidelity signal of what’s actually going on. A way to become an expert listener is actually showing that you’ve put in the hard work to listen to someone through your words. So repeating back what you’ve heard from someone, trying to paraphrase or reframe it in some way, calling back to things that people your partner said earlier in the conversation or Even earlier in your relationship. And of course, as we talked about earlier, follow-up questions, which you can’t ask if you weren’t listening in the first place. In my class, I ask my students to do a number of exercises that nudge them to repeat and affirm what their partner has said. So one of them, they’ll go around in a group, and you could do this at a work group or with your family, where you do sequential validation. So let’s say they’re going around and everybody’s sharing one of their favorite songs or musical artists. So I start by saying, you know, I love the song Yesterday by the Beatles. I used to listen to it with my mom. I just think it’s the most beautiful song in the world. The Beatles were so amazing. And I know a lot of people think it’s the best song ever written. It’s funny that you say that because one of my favorites is Blackbird by the Beatles. Right. So then you keep going around the circle, but you have to affirm the person who came before you before you share your own thing.
Alison BeardSee, you preempted me. I was going to say, yes, I love that song, too. And it was one of my favorite Carpool Karaoke was Paul McCartney with James Corden.
Alison Wood BrooksThere was a Paul McCartney carpool karaoke episode. Yes. Oh, I know what I’m going to do right after this. I’m looking at it right after we’re done talking. That sounds amazing. What an epic karaoke partner in the car. So in this exercise, you just practice affirming your partner before you share your own thing. It seems so simple and obvious, but in the practice of our lives, we just forget to do it. And the validation process of saying like, oh, it makes sense that you would love that. It’s so epic that Paul McCartney did a carpool karaoke with James Corden. The practice of doing that becomes even more important when you’ve landed on things that are not so straightforward and easy. So when you get into a realm where you’re disagreeing with each other, it’s even more important to say it totally makes sense that you feel strongly about immigration. You know, like, tell me more about your family’s history with immigration and, you know, living in Miami or whatever, before you go on to say, for a second, I wonder if we could think together About how immigration can be harmful too. So instead, though, most people just move immediately to the hard thing, right? Like, we fixate on the point of disagreement and forget to do that first half part where we validate and affirm our conversation partners.
[31:38] Leadership and Eye Contact
🎧 Play snip - 1min️ (30:20 - 31:38) Leadership and Eye Contact
- Leaders should make equitable eye contact during group conversations.
- This makes lower-status members feel included and more likely to contribute.
📚 Transcript
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Alison BeardOmission. Is the conversational calculus different for people in leadership positions? Absolutely.
Alison Wood BrooksThere’s a chapter in the book about group conversation. So every group has a sort of inherent status hierarchy. Leaders sometimes have high status, sometimes have high power or like control over resources. Sometimes they have high power and low status where they’re not actually very well liked or respected. But certainly their sort of official position in a status hierarchy in an organization and within the sort of social status hierarchy matters tremendously. When any of us find ourselves in high status positions, we should be thinking about how we can help the lower status group members feel safe and feel invited and feel valued, one really Simple thing they can do to start is try to make more equitable eye contact with people during group conversations. In our research, what we have found is humans naturally look at the highest status members of a group while a conversation unfolds. And so even just a little bit more effort to try and catch the eyes of more people in the group makes them feel like they’re not invisible, like they’re included.