The Science of Good Conversation with Alison Wood Brooks

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of 10 Seconds to Air. If you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel yet, please do so right now. Thank you. Today we are diving into the intricacies of effective conversation and negotiation. Joining me today is Harvard Business School professor and bestselling author Alison Wood Brooks. She is a trailblazer in behavioral science and the author of several books on conversation, emotion, and behavioral decision-making. Her latest book is Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves. Alison joins me now to share her research and give us 4 tips on being better conversationalists.

Stand by.

We're going live. We're going live. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Thank you, Alison, for, for joining me today. I can't wait to get into this conversation. And I think above all, I just really wanna lay out right off the top that having good conversation is good for our wellbeing. I mean, it's good for our health, right?

It's good for everything. Good conversation is the pathway to achieve all of our goals, and certainly health and wellbeing are among them. Yes.

So let me start with the first question of what goes through your mind 10 seconds to air, 10 seconds before a conversation.

Oh my gosh. Well, it depends on what kind of conversation we're talking about. I do a lot of teaching at Harvard, which is a sort of high-stakes performance, performative, um, conversation. Um, I often in, in my real conversations in my life, I have gotten in the habit of thinking about what will be productive and fun to talk about with people. And even I have research on this, the 10 seconds before you engage with someone or with a group of people, those 10 seconds are a valuable time to brainstorm about what topics you should talk about, what will be most productive to discuss. And I've gotten certainly into the habit of making sure I remember even 2 to 3 little ideas of things that I should ask about during the conversation.

So let's, let's also start with your your class at Harvard. It's called TALK, and it's actually in the business school, not in the communications department.

That's right. Yes, I'm at the business school. I was originally recruited at Harvard Business School to teach a course on negotiation long, long ago, and it's a great— negotiation is a great course. You learn so much. But at some point, I, I started to feel like the focus on disagreement and Persuasion was a bit narrow, that, you know, I don't actually feel like I'm walking through the world trying to persuade people all the time. But what I do have to do a lot, and what we all have to do a lot, is talk to other people. And even when you're not trying to persuade people, we have a lot of room for improvement in our ability to have conversations with each other.

Right.

So that's where my course comes from. It's all about the conversations we have every day, some of which are hard and many of which are on their surface easy or should be easy, right? And they turn out to not be as easy as you think.

And, and let's just, for the sake of it, define— we know what a conversation is, but how do you define conversation?

Conversation is any exchange of words between 2 or more people. That's it. There aren't words, it's not really a conversation. There aren't 2 people, it's just you talking to yourself.

And Conversation, do you feel like it has evolved over time? I'm really curious to know. You teach this class and those are of a generation, those people get a lot of criticism for being too connected to their devices or social media. And we criticize them, my generation, age group or whatnot. We look at them and say, oh, they don't even know how to communicate anymore. Oh, they don't even— so I'm— you're in it, you're in the throes of it. They're communicating some way, they're having conversations. What are you finding in your classroom or in your research with the different age groups and even sexes?

So yes, I think it's very easy to sort of point fingers at young people these days and say, look, you're on your phone all the time, you're on a computer, you're playing video games all the time, and this is eroding your ability to have conversations. But I would remind all adults that we also live in the same world where we are also on our phones all the time and emailing all the time, and we didn't grow up doing that. And so in a way, it's— maybe we are even less poised to have healthy social lives in this very digital world in which we find ourselves. In my class, we do an exercise called this communication audit where I ask my students to record all of the incoming and outgoing messages that they receive and give across all modes of communication, actually. Email, texting, Snapchat, face-to-face, phone calls, all of it. And what this highlights, you get to start to see how overlapping and braided all of our conversations are these days because we're texting and emailing and talking to people face-to-face and on the phone. All at the same time. Certainly that is affecting the way that children and teenagers are developing the ability to converse with each other. But, you know, scientists still aren't even sure how that's affecting adults either. And we're all in this world where we need to toggle from one mode of communication to the next. Your original question of how has the ability to have conversation evolved over time is a really fascinating one. It depends on sort of what time horizon you're, you're talking about, in some ways, you can go all the way back to the sort of origins of language, the origins of the human ability to have dialogue, to exchange words with each other. And actually, there's a lot of disagreement about when humans evolved this ability. We have to rely on clues from the archaeological record. So like looking for things like jewelry appearing in layers of rock, like, oh, they wouldn't have been able to gather all of these different teeth. for this necklace if they hadn't been able to, like, talk about what the project was across multiple generations. And then scientists will point to that and say, well, that means that they were— they had evolved the ability to talk to each other.

Mm-hmm.

So that's sort of fascinating that we don't even really know. Fast forward, and you can start at any point in sort of modern history and study how were people talking to each other at different points? How did that influence culture? How did that reflect Um, the way that they were organizing their societies and for, to achieve what goals. Was it an agrarian culture? Who was talking to whom and on what topics? Um, in the book, I start, uh, in the Age of Conversation, which was in the 1700s. Um, it was a time when people were starting to realize that they didn't just have to talk about what their kings and queens were telling them to talk about and sort of pay homage to their monarchs.

Mm-hmm.

But instead they could get together and talk about whatever they wanted to. In the ways that they wanted to talk about it. And so the book starts there, and the course starts there, and then we move to today with pit stops along the way to reflect about how conversation has evolved over time and place over time. And now we find ourselves in this world where we're stressed about how technology is influencing our conversations and our ability to learn. to learn language. But all along the way, right, like, there is a basic, um, you know, as soon as humans evolved the ability to converse, there are these predictable patterns where you're taking turns talking to each other. The goals often include exchanging information with each other, but there is like a whole constellation of other things that we care about that have nothing to do with exchanging information, you know, things like having fun. feeling safe, feeling protected, learning about each other, and not being awkward while we do it.

Right, right. Which is always the challenge, right? If you don't know people or you're depending on the situation, you're having to negotiate with someone you don't know, or you come into a room and you don't know the people, or you're at a party and you're, I mean, there's all these situations, or you're at the supermarket, you know, one of the big thing out here in LA is Trader Joe's and the people in Trader Joe's, love to make small talk. And, and I guess we could start with that as far as small talk goes, because that is a communication tool. Um, it's the beginning of the conversation. I in particular love small talk because I think small talk gives you a lot of information to then develop the conversation. But I'm no expert, I just go out there and talk. Um, what— how do you frame small talk, or Assess it.

Yeah, I didn't— I'm like you. I love small talk. I think because for 2 reasons. One, it's an important place to learn information quickly so that you can move to more meaningful places in the conversation. It's sort of a treasure hunt. But 2, I don't mind small talk because I don't stay there very long. I'm a person who very desperately wants to get to more sensitive stuff. And so I'm constantly sort of pushing past it.

Mm-hmm.

I didn't realize How much— how many people out there hate small talk and how trapped they feel by it until I started teaching this course at Harvard called Talk. And I realized, oh my God, I think 90% of my students are really struggling with this. Like, they're really— they dread it. It leads them to not initiate conversations overall. They don't know how to get out of it. It's the sort of panicky, awful, shallow, meaningless place for them. So in the book, we— and in the course, we talk about a framework that people find quite helpful, which is a topic pyramid. And the pyramid has 3 levels. The base of the pyramid has— this is topics that anyone could talk about. So technically it's small talk. So it's stuff like the weather, or how was your weekend? How are you sleeping? How's the family? Topics that you could raise with someone you've never met before. or with people that you, you do know. The problem isn't with those topics in general. The problem is actually that people stay there too long. If you stay on topics that are completely depersonalized and sort of shallow, it can very quickly start to feel meaningless and, and unproductive. So you want— what you want to be looking to do is move to the second tier of the pyramid, which is tailored talk. And these are topics that are more personalized, more exciting to you and the other person. Maybe they have to do with somebody's expertise, but really it just needs to be something that's more interesting and more, and more personally relevant. Um, and so if you're at the base of the pyramid in small talk, you should be looking to move to this sort of more tailored place. The top of the pyramid is deep talk. Not every conversation needs to get there, but when you do get there, you should sort of try and appreciate like, oh, we're having one of those magical moments where we really feel connected and loved and alive and excited. And like we just had some sort of important discovery.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

You mentioned earlier about the different, um, types of conversation, right? So, so you said depends on the kind of conversation of what you might think about or how you prepare for it. So what are, what kinds of conversation, if we want good connection and good conversation, what are the components of good conversation?

It's a great quote. So the definition of success in conversation depends on what the speakers want to get out of it. Um, there are many ways that people think about, like, types of conversation. Oh, it's a work conversation, it's a non-work conversation, it's a formal conversation, it's a casual conversation. I think typologies that have to do with the conversation itself are less helpful than thinking about what the speakers care about, what they want out of it. So, um, when you start to look at people's goals in conversation, often each person actually has a surprisingly complex constellation of goals. And so to organize the things that people are aiming for, my colleagues and I came up with what we call the conversational compass, and it's a way to organize your goals. And it's just 2 axes.

Mm-hmm.

The x-axis is relational things. So on the high relational end of things, these are goals like apologizing, having fun together, seeking advice. So high relational things that serve the group or your partner. At the low end of this relational spectrum, these are things that are more self-serving. So things that you carry— I want to make a good impression, I need to leave the conversation on time, I want to persuade you to agree with me. So that's the relational axis. Then there's an informational axis, the y-axis. At the high end, these are high informational goals, so exchanging information, learning, teaching, persuading, brainstorming, making decisions together. These are all things that require a lot of accurate information exchange during the conversation. But what we shouldn't forget is that we have tons of goals that are not about information exchange at all. We just want to fill time. We wanna feel good, we don't wanna feel awkward, we need to leave on time. These are very important goals that have nothing to do with what we're talking about or how accurate is the information that we're exchanging.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

And so you can think about asking people, you could ask someone before a conversation, during a conversation, or after it, what did you care about? What did you want out of that? And they'll give you tons of answers, like, I wanted it to be fun, I wanted to hear about the wedding that they went to, I wanted to ask about, Uh, the guitar lessons they've been taking. I kind of wanted to persuade them to let me borrow their car for the weekend. I wanted to seem smart and funny. Um, I wanted to keep this secret that my friend told me to keep, right? So if you get people going, they, they start to realize, oh, I have a lot of goals when I'm talking to other people.

Mm-hmm.

And everybody's walking through the world with this conversational compass in their mind. Things get tricky when your own goals conflict, right? If I need to leave in 5 minutes, but I'm also dying to hear every detail of the wedding that you went to, those 2 things are going to be in conflict with each other. And of course, I have goals that will conflict with my partner's goals. I want to give them advice, but they don't want to receive it. I want to talk about this wedding, but they really want to hear about the— that I went skydiving over the weekend. So we're just constantly sort of colliding with each other in terms of what we want out of a conversation.

So that makes me wonder how you know what the other person's goals are, or are you supposed to kind of tune into the clues that are happening to know if you're off track?

This is the whole crux, Alita. This is why it's so hard. The definition of being a good conversationalist, and particularly a kind and fun conversationalist, rests a lot on your ability to figure out what the other person wants. What they care about. You also need to figure out what you want, which is not always clear either. Um, but the, the more you can figure out what the other person wants, thinking about it ahead of time, if you already know them, trying to read their cues during the conversation to figure out what they want, asking them directly, hey, what do you want out of this? Um, people who are better at figuring that out end up being more successful conversationalists.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Difficult conversations. How do we navigate those and get out of them, manage them to the best of our ability? Talk about difficult conversations for a second.

Avoid them altogether. Um, um, no. So, you know, this is a big broad question. Uh, you can— many people do try to avoid difficult conversations, and we're all looking for ways to confront them more assertively. One thing that I think could be quite helpful is there have been sort of decades of work talking about difficult conversations or whole courses about negotiation that are essentially courses on difficult conversations. One thing that I have found quite helpful in my research to realize is it's not that whole conversations are difficult. It's that Out of the 9 topics you might talk about in a conversation, one of them or maybe 2 of them might be more difficult than the others.

Mm-hmm.

So thinking at the sort of topic level rather than as a whole conversation can be quite helpful in realizing, oh yeah, this whole thing doesn't have to be terrible. And when we do get to the hard thing, let's make sure we're in a place and we're ready to confront whatever the difficult thing is. So it's more like difficult moments rather than difficult conversations. And then when you do get to difficult, those difficult moments can pop up in ways that you do expect and can expect and in unexpected ways.

Right. Um, you don't know what the other person is going to bring you.

You've never— you'd have no idea. It's part of what makes conversation both very exciting but also intimidating is because you don't have, it's uncertain. You have no idea what the other person's gonna say next. And you have a lack of control. You can't control what the other person says next. And you're taking turns and at every new turn of the conversation provides this sort of new spontaneous context that you have to respond to. So difficult things can crop up unexpectedly at any moment and in ways that you didn't anticipate. You never know when you're gonna sort of poke a barb into somebody's—

Right.

identity and hurt them, or they hurt you, and like, oh, this is going to get hard. We talk about a sort of taxonomy, a hierarchy of difficulties in the book, which is above— it's like layers of the earth. So above the surface, these are things that are— we have differences that like maybe we're using the wrong word, the different words to refer to the same thing, or we're using the same word to mean different things, or we're just sort of misquoting This is like our words and our gestures and stuff. And we're just misunderstanding each other. Even just those things can cause all kinds of confusion and difficulty and moments of heatedness. Then you go down in layers of the earth and there can be differences in your emotions. Like, I'm really, really excited. I want to party and you're not feeling it and don't want to go there with me energy-wise. That's going to make the conversation trickier. Beneath that, people have different motives, as we said earlier, different goals. I want to give you advice, but you don't want to hear it. Um, I want to talk about the wedding. You want to hear about my skydiving? Like, different goals make things, uh, complicated.

Mm-hmm.

Beneath that, we might have different beliefs about the same topic, right? This is where we see a lot of political discourse is like, I just believe different things than you. And are we going to talk about that? Should we talk about it? If we do, how do we navigate it? And then at the very core of the earth, at this layer, is our identities. And our identities differ in so many ways: race, gender, age, sexuality, religion, all of the things. And like, our identities are often tied to all those other things, our beliefs and our motives and our emotions and the words that we choose to use. So like, differences and difficulties can crop up at any layer of, of the earth. And we as good conversationalists need to be prepared to confront them in a way that feels safe and productive.

And it just sounds, you, you lay all that out and it's all very real. And I think when you talk about a, a conflict or a belief or all these different things that can go into your conversation, they all seem to be moments of challenges. Yet we do have conversation all the time, and it seems like most of them go pretty well. Or maybe I'm just on my own with this, and I think I'm having all these great conversations, and I'm not really having great conversations. But despite all of those challenges, it seems like we converse pretty well. Am I off?

It's so— I— it's so funny. It's almost like I, as a scientist, I, I waffle between one moment I'm like, it is a miracle that humans can talk to each other at Like, once you— when you look under the hood of a conversation, it's so much more complicated and fraught than it seems.

Right.

And then in the next moment, I'm like, you know what, though? This is going pretty great for everybody. We learned to do it when we're 1 and a half years old, and you do it all day long, every day. And like, most of them go pretty well. And I think that's been a very interesting thing as a teacher and as a coach to see is many people are sort of like, This is going fine for me. Why do— why would I need to work on this as a skill? So there's like people like that. And then there are others who are like, I get this is the key to life. This is the key to achieving anything that I want in life is to be a better conversationalist in all of my conversations. So even if I'm already good, I want to get better.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, that's what I come to think of. I say, wow, I mean, there's a lot that could go wrong in a conversation. And most of the time, It doesn't go wrong. So what are we doing that's allowing us to roll through our days without a lot of conversational conflict?

Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. So in our methods as a scientist, what we do is we study the transcripts of real conversations between real people, like thousands of them. And when you look at under the hood like that, you very quickly realize like even conversations that feel like they're going well are a train wreck. Like we're interlocked. We're interrupting each other all the time. We are forgetting to ask questions that we meant to ask. We're moving away from a topic before we've actually gotten to the main point of it. We get excited about this and then we get distracted by that. And somebody makes a— accidentally makes a jab they didn't mean to make. So when you think about this, it's almost like an endless laundry list of mistakes and errors that we're making in conversation.

Yes.

We're able to understand each other.

We're—

we are able to look back on a conversation and say, oh yeah, we talked about like these 4 topics, and I left feeling pretty good about it.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and that to me is really— it's both beautiful thing about human existence that we evolved the ability to do that, and that we are able to do it all the time and feel connected as we do it. And also, it leaves open this enormous space for us to, to do it better.

It also makes me wonder, how often does one party think the conversation went well and the other side doesn't think so?

This is the really scary thing. It's, um, you'll never know. You'll never know. And even when you ask people after a conversation has ended, like, what went well and what were your mistakes, there's a lot of disagreement. Like, so the things that we ruminate where you're like, ooh, I really shouldn't have asked that question and it's driving me crazy and I wanna apologize. The other person might not have even noticed that. They may not have even thought about that at all, but they really were bothered when you said or did something else.

Yeah.

And so this is the sort of wicked feedback environment is that we do this task all day long, every day, but we get very little feedback about how it's actually going.

So right now I feel a little confused about communicating and about conversation. So where, why do I feel that way all of a sudden? And how do I get out of that?

It's okay. This is, this is good. I, we always say this in my class is like that uncomfortable feeling of confusion or discomfort means that you're learning something new. Okay. And that can be the eye-openingness of it is, can be, um, uncomfortable and weird. Um, Yeah. So what can you do about it?

Yeah. I mean, should we be thinking about it more or thinking about it less, or just have an awareness and sort of study it? You know, where's that happy space?

Yeah. Okay. So my students develop this sense of sort of hypervigilance, uh, while they're taking the course, and they're sort of like, oh, this feels really weird. I know this can't be good for me, that I'm like now hyperfixated on everything that I'm saying and doing and what The other person's doing, and that doesn't feel healthy. For sure, thinking about this all the time is, is not healthy. But what's so nice is that, like, we know that's going to dissipate after they're done with the class.

Mm-hmm.

The idea is to be good, to foster a little bit more self-awareness about, um, what are your own strengths and weaknesses in conversation, a little bit more vigilance or awareness of, like, what's going on here? What is What can I do before a conversation starts that might make it go better? How can I look back on a conversation that has happened and realize like, oh yeah, when they did that thing, that was really amazing. Like a deeper appreciation of sort of what's going on in our conversation so that we can the next time do a little bit, a little bit better.

How much does emotion play a part in conversation, in good conversation? So much.

So much. So, Often when we think of conversations that have been derailed or have gone off the rails, it's easy to think of anger and getting overheated, people arguing, yelling at each other. And that's true, that's not good, that does derail a conversation. But the sort of quieter killer of conversation is actually boredom. It's more common than, than anger, is just disinterest. Like people, you aren't talking about things that are mutually interesting, people aren't leaning forward, they're not getting excited.

Yeah.

And so you can, you can ruin a conversation in both of those directions. One that's sort of high arousal negative emotions, but also this low arousal negative emotion is not good either.

And do you pick up on that? Should you know what those cues are? Because you also talk a little bit in the book about the nonverbal cues. So that, I guess, if someone's giving me some kind of cue like they're backing up, I'm guessing, okay, we're not interested anymore. How much do those nonverbal cues play into a good or bad conversation?

So there are things on average that reflect people's interest and disinterest in conversation. Smiling and laughing, laughing at your own jokes actually is a good signal of interest in the topic. Um, There are lots of verbal cues too. So if your partner has raised a topic, that's a good sign that they want to talk about it. For example, asking follow-up questions tends to show that someone is interested and wants to know more. On the other hand, something like a mirror question where I've asked you about your weekend and then you say, well, what about your weekend? Usually you're not actually that excited to hear about my weekend. You're just doing that out of politeness or like you're not sure where to go next.

Okay. Mm-hmm.

Um, but there are so many subtle cues of people's interests if they're, if they're, uh, and it's not necessarily interest in the conversation as a whole, but again, at the topic level.

Mm-hmm.

So if people start laughing uncomfortably and there are longer pauses, or they start repeating things they've already said, Mm-hmm. those are very reliable clues that you should switch to a new topic. Uh, 'cause it, that means that topic is sort of running out of, running out of juice.

Okay. Say that again. Say that again. I wanna make sure I follow that.

Uncomfortable laughter.

Mm-hmm.

Longer pauses and redundancies. So repeating things that they've already said on that topic are reliable signs that it's time to switch to a new topic.

Mm-hmm.

And good conversationalists are good at switching assertively to something new.

Mm-hmm. But that's making it sound like it's on, on the other person. So if you know—

Oh no, it's on everybody.

Okay.

It's on everybody. Yeah. We should all be looking for these. And, and 2 of those things are sort of mutual. Actually, all of them are mutual. You can be laughing uncomfortably or the other person. You— mutual pauses, these lulls or silences are always mutual. It means that nobody's saying anything in those moments. Um, and redundancies can come from anybody. So you really should be on the lookout for these clues in your partner but also in yourself.

But sometimes you, you pause because you're thinking about something. I know for me, my husband takes long pauses. Of course, I assume he's not listening, doesn't care, all these things that you're, you know, but as I've gotten to know him over the 20-plus years, I realize he is really thinking about his response.

Yeah.

So I do appreciate it.

And this is important, the distinction between who is your partner, right? So is it someone that you just met and/or an acquaintance you don't know that well, or a work colleague that you only work with sometimes? Conversations between people who don't know each other as well, it's less acceptable to have long pauses. Like, that's a— if there are long pauses, it's a signal that things aren't going well and the conversation is dying. On the other hand, if you're talking to somebody you've known for a really long time and you've learned the cadence of their conversational preferences, um, long pauses can be really nice. It's companionable. You feel safe being quiet together. You're giving them time to think. And you both know that that long pause is not a signal that your relationship sucks, right? Like, it's not like being on a first date where the lull is going to be like, oh God, they— this is not going well. And so it depends. So many of these contextual factors matter, including the duration of your relationship.

Um, the name of your book, Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves. That last section, the art of being ourselves. What do you mean by that?

I think a lot of people, there's a lot of rhetoric around what it means to feel and be authentic and what it means to be yourself. As psychologists, we know that as people move from one situation to the next or from one conversation to the next, they bring multiple selves. You can't possibly sort of express everything that's in your mind and everything about who you are all the time.

Mm-hmm.

And so I think there's a sort of undertone in the book, I hope, about How you talk to people is who you are to them. It's how they perceive your personality, your values, your thoughts. And so these micro decisions that we're making about what to talk about and what questions to ask and whose goals to focus on really determine who you are in, in different relationships and in different situations.

I have a question about that on a personal note, and I know that you're in Boston and I'm from Boston, and I often get, yay to Boston, Austin.

Yes.

Um, and now I'm in LA, um, and I, and I've lived in Chicago and I've lived in Miami and I've lived in Europe. And depending on where you are, the, the way people converse with each other is really different. I have found that. And I have often been accused of being a little more direct than the average person, and even from my kids, you know, my own family. And I don't necessarily mean anything by it. I just Get to the point. Some people find it funny. Some people find it rude. Some people find it efficient. Can you talk about that just for a moment and quell my fears of what, you know, what's going on there? Because I do start to feel sometimes like, oh, when I'm in Boston, I have no problem with these conversations. People kind of talk right back at me. It's not a problem. When I'm in other parts of the country, I feel a little abrasive. Uh, what's going on there?

Let me ask you a follow-up question. Do you feel like you— do you shift your, your, the level of your directness depending on where you are?

For sure.

Yeah, that's so good. It is.

Okay, good.

Yeah, so good. I think a lot of people, if I ask that question of like, how are you shifting your behavior in different places or with different people? They might be reticent to admit that they do because in a way they feel like that's like wrong somehow, or like they're being inauthentic, when in fact it's an important skill actually to perceive what are the norms here, wherever place I'm in, whatever person I'm with, um, what are they looking for, what's appropriate.

Mm-hmm.

This is part of room reading, right? Like reading the room, knowing the other person, knowing the context that you're in. We make all kinds of adjustments and should make all kinds of adjustments to converse smoothly and effectively and to be thinking about, well, what is needed here? I think being a good conversationalist, being a kind conversationalist is so much about thinking about other people's needs, like what they need from you. And if you're in a place where being direct and abrasive would be seen as highly inappropriate, then certainly that's not what the other person needs from you.

Right.

So of course you should adjust your bit. One way to say it is like, I'm sure you didn't bring the same conversational style that you used in the newsroom back home when you were like at bath time with your babies.

Right, right.

Good point. Or going to a bachelorette party in Vegas. Like, we all have these multiple selves that we bring to different contexts, and that doesn't make you inauthentic. That makes you savvy and considerate. Conversationalist.

All right. Well, you made me feel much better. Thank you very much. Good.

And you feel it whenever you move, when you travel to a place where you don't live, or anytime you move to a new place, you're going to notice these little sort of micro things that differ. The, the sort of assimilation, not just as when you move to a new place, but like even within from one conversation to the next, the idea of sort of assimilating or accommodating and mirroring the person that you're with is a tremendous skill because it's more likely to make them feel comfortable around you. And so the more you can pick up on those differences and adjust to them, the better.

You talk about levity, and I just want you to touch on that for a second because I love that. I often, often when I'm talking to some other people, or, you know, maybe we've had a miscommunication, my husband and I, you know, and I'll say we should just laugh about that more because if we had turned to laughter or levity, neither one of us would've been offended by what the other one said. You know, like, hey, notice the dishes are there or something, you know, like, when are you gonna, whatever. But I feel like it is a useful tool just from experience. How does that play into good conversation?

Yeah, I think, I mean, I think everybody would say they love levity, of course, but I think naturally we have a tendency to think of levity, so humor and warmth, Almost as this extra thing. It's like, okay, we're doing the work, we're having a conversation, and maybe we're gonna like stumble upon a moment of humor or a moment of warmth, and we appreciate it. It's nice, but then it's over and we're like back to work, right? Like back to the real stuff. It sort of feels extra, like a little bonus. As psychologists, when we study, um, conversation, what you realize is no, it's not just an extra thing. It's actually a core determinant of the status hierarchy and how we view people's competence and their confidence and How you maintain engagement during a conversation. So levity is really the antidote for boredom, which, as we already talked about, is a real quiet but very serious threat to conversation, is disinterest. And levity is the antidote. It pulls us back in. It's that little moment of sparkle or fizz that's like, oh yeah, okay, now I'm back. This is great again.

Mm-hmm.

And it's just, it's just incredibly important. And as you said, it's two-sided, so you can create moments of levity by, through levity moves like humor and warmth, but you also can foster a mindset, an appreciation for, for other people's levity. You can smile more, you can laugh more, you can just say like, oh, that's so great. You know, like really come to a place of appreciation.

I don't, I'm gonna ask you more about that and I wanna get to the kind of takeaways for people, but before we kind of get to that, I, I just wanna know a little bit about negotiation. I actually took a class, a business school class on negotiation. I thought it was incredibly interesting and beneficial.

Good.

And I can't even remember why, it was so long ago, but it definitely, there were tools to it that definitely helped me in life. And if there's anything that we can just share, just the fundamentals of good negotiation, I would love to share that with listeners. What can you say on that as having taught that and continuing to teach it and how it relates to conversation also?

Yeah, so the definition of negotiation is anytime 2 or more parties disagree and are working towards agreement. It's a very sort of broad definition. Almost anytime you stumble upon a moment of difficulty or disagreement during a conversation, it sort of all of a sudden becomes this little mini Negotiation. And often the sort of skill that you need in those moments, there's 2 skills that you could be thinking about. One is influence and persuasion. The other, which I think we find in more recent research that's more helpful, is actually taking on this mind— a learning mindset. If you go in with the goal to persuade another person to agree with you or to come to make these concessions, Most people dig in their heels and the conversation becomes more fraught and more tense. If you come instead with a learning mindset where you're going to try and learn as much as you can about their sincere needs and desires and goals, and try and learn as much as you can about their perspective, it puts you in a better position to understand like, oh, well, how can I satisfy your needs and goals? How can we actually reach agreement? And ironically, people who come with a learning mindset and push down that—

Mm-hmm.

that instinct to persuade, by the end of the conversation or the negotiation, are more likely to have persuaded the other person.

Oh, interesting.

Because they seem more interested and reasonable.

Right. I think that is so important. I mean, I never noticed that subtlety. I, I think of it more as curiosity, but yeah, right. If you're willing to learn from the other person, um, they must feel great.

Not just willing to, like dying to learn. Like you, all you want is to understand their perspective. You don't wanna persuade them. Nobody wants to talk to somebody who is actively trying to persuade them to agree. That's a terrible feeling, and it's not fun, and it's not effective. And so these negotiation courses, which are in every business school and law school, are terrific. They are— they give you very concrete frameworks and skills to think about, okay, when we confront these moments of disagreement, what's going on structurally? Like, what are we disagreeing about? Can we quantify these different disagreements and what are some strategies we can use to overcome them.

But that is really a great starting place of just the learning, coming into it with a learning. There's nothing more annoying than someone who's trying to persuade you right off the start and it's like you don't even care what I'm saying. You're just trying to persuade me.

And it comes in every context, whether it's around the dinner table at Thanksgiving dinner or you're buying a new car or Or you're trying to get a colleague to collaborate with you on something, like wherever it's happening, drop the goal to persuade them and focus entirely on learning. The more I have my students do this exercise, we're not walking through the world doing a series of like sales pitches. I think a lot of people think that we are like, oh, you're going through—

Right.

I'm gonna sell my company, my new entrepreneurial venture to you. Persuade you to do this thing that I want. No, no, we're walking through life and it's a series of conversations and there's another human mind on the other side that has their own goals and their own needs. Your job is not to pitch to them, it's to figure out what those needs and goals are so that you can actually fulfill their needs, that you can actually give them exactly what they want ideally. Um, and that's an incredible skill if you can get better at it.

Right. So what are the— you mentioned one just, just now, but what are some of the most common pitfalls that you see in conversation?

Oh, so many. The laundry list of mistakes is so long. But I think one of the most common ones is not asking enough questions. If you successfully adopt this learning mindset and walk through the world with curiosity, behavior that comes along with that is question asking. That's the most direct pathway to learn what's in your partner's mind and their perspective is to ask for it. In fact, Humans are not good at guessing what other people are thinking, but we're really good at asking for it, and people are good at answering. And there are superhero types of questions. So asking follow-up questions is great. You know, ask one, let them answer, then follow up, follow up, follow up, follow up. You'll always get out of small talk by asking follow-up questions too, because it gets personal and informative really quickly. Another type of question that is awesome are open-ended questions that start with the word what. So saying like, what did you do this morning? What did you have for breakfast? What's on your mind? What are you excited about? Those questions are much more fun to answer than why didn't you have a banana at breakfast? Or why were you late? Why did you do that this morning? Why questions can feel very accusatory.

Mhm.

So anyway, but top line advice is just Ask more questions.

Ask more questions. Okay, so let's give people a couple of takeaways. Um, you, you talked about questions. We'll, we'll, we'll get there. Let's, let's give people 3, 4 takeaways if they wanna start today having good conversation or improving their conversation. What can we do today to improve our conversations?

Okay, I'll give— it's hard to choose just 3, but I'm gonna do it.

You can choose as many as you want.

Number one, think ahead about conversations and think about— think of 2 to 3 things that you want to talk about with people before the conversation starts. Once a conversation is underway, it's a very cognitively overwhelming task. And so we're much better at brainstorming topics beforehand. It makes conversations less anxiety-inducing, smoother, more enjoyable, more productive. So brainstorm topics. Not just for work meetings, like even when you're gonna call your mom, like think ahead about what you wanna ask her, what to talk about. Prep topics. Number 2, ask more follow-up questions. As soon as you are on a topic and they answer, like you can stay there by asking more questions about what they've said so that you can uncover the real treasure in, in what they have to say. Mm-hmm. Um, number 3, give more compliments.

Oh.

If you, if you think nice things about, if you're thinking a nice thing about somebody, say it out loud. We have all of these fears that giving compliments will make us feel— look incompetent or make the other person feel embarrassed. Everybody is starving for affirmation. So give it to them, especially if you're really thinking it. Tell people. And then number 4, if someone says something that you disagree with, a very helpful phrase to start with Is it makes sense that you feel upset about whatever. It makes sense that you feel sad about why. Makes sense that you feel excited about blah. So validating their feelings first.

Mm-hmm.

Before you go on, whether you go on to agree with them or disagree with them, it's really important to validate their perspective. And for whatever reason, Most people forget to do that. It makes sense that you feel sad about your mom. Okay. Let me put on my grumpy reviewer hat for a second and say, maybe what your mom is doing doesn't make sense. Right? Like, so before you go on to disagree with them, uh, try and validate and affirm because everybody needs it. Everybody's dying for a friend out there.

Yeah.

And you can do that even if you go on to disagree with people.

Okay, so I'm just going to repeat those. There were 4. The first one, think ahead. 2 to 3 thoughts before you pick up the phone to call mom, sister, friend, business associate, whoever it may be. Number 2, ask more follow-up questions.

Good.

Number 3, give compliments. Love this. We often refrain from doing it, but hey, it makes, makes someone feel good. So give more compliments. And number 4, Validate the other party's concern or what they've said, or affirm them and validate them. Don't immediately go to the solution and kind of cut them off.

I'm going to give you a compliment for your very good listening, Alita. That was very impressive.

Thank you. Wow. That is huge coming from you. Thank you so much. I'm honored. Alison, anything I did not ask you about that you want to make sure that you mention before we depart today?

No, I think, um, even the book is called Talk: The Science of Conversation, the Art of Being Ourselves. Much of what we, I talk about in the book isn't about talking at all, but about being a good listener.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and, and so we, we didn't delve into that as deeply, but for those folks who are feeling excited about what we talked about, I think that they can expect to learn more about listening.

Well, we'll take a moment right now. I mean, let's, we, we don't have to, you know, we're not on a time constraint.

You're gonna cut me off? No, I'm not.

No, I'm not gonna cut you off. We're absolutely, let's talk about listening.

We hear a lot about this phrase active listening, which there's sort of decades of research and books and those ideas about active listening. Active listening is great. It's sort of like listening 101. It's mostly about smiling and nodding and making eye contact and leaning forward and showing your partner that you're listening to them. That's great. It's important. But those things are also pretty easy to fake. We all know that from sitting on Zoom and, you know, looking and nodding and smiling, but actually we're over to the side sort of texting our friends or making a grocery list.

Right.

So what we have found in our research is the higher fidelity clue that you can give people that you're actually hearing them is by using your words. And so the only way you can ask a follow-up question or call back to something someone said earlier in the conversation, like how you went to Trader Joe's and everybody acted different in LA compared to Boston, the only way I can do that is because I was listening to you earlier in our conversation. Mm-hmm. Right, paraphrasing multiple speakers in a group conversation. These are verbal signals, and they're verbal expressions that you were listening earlier on, and they are undeniable cues that you heard your partner. And so we— most people don't use those enough. And we should all be working to show our partners that we heard them, not only with by nodding and smiling, but by with our words.

I have one more question for you. How did you land here? Were you a great conversationalist and you got curious about it? How did you dive into this?

Um, it's a great question. I mean, every human being is a compilation of like tiny moments of their whole life. But, um, one thing that I think is no coincidence is that I am an identical twin.

Oh.

And so I grew up with like watching a, like a identical copy of myself sort of navigating the social world and gave each other feedback constantly, just like siblings do, but like even more so. And I think ultimately I have a very tight-knit shared reality with my twin sister. We're really close. We've always been really close. And I, I think in a way, me teaching at Harvard this course on conversation is a way of trying to help other people achieve that level of shared reality with the people in their lives.

Is she a good conversationalist as well? I would—

who's saying that I'm a good conversationalist, Alita? I'm feeling like that's a little narcissism machine. She's, she's terrific. But even me saying that feels like a weird self-dose because twins are bizarre. No, she's great. She's the cool twin for sure.

Oh my gosh. Well, Alison, this has been such a pleasure. So neat. I will continue to follow all your work. I think it's so cool and it really, it dives into into stuff that's just so important. We don't think about it. And if we can make our lives better, I say, by communication, which is— conversation is the first layer of that— why wouldn't we do it? You know, if there are little things that we can be doing, um, and be aware of it, how cool is that? So I love it.

And we get plenty of chances to practice, Alida.

Right. Thank you, Alison. Such a pleasure to be with you today. Really appreciate Thank you so much for your time. Can't wait for what's coming next. Any preview of what's coming up?

We'll see. I don't know. We'll see. The future is bright. Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast.