The Conversations that Bring Us Closer

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. There's an iconic episode of the TV show Seinfeld where the character George muses about a woman who treated him poorly. She took advantage of his romantic interest in her, treated him like trash, and then discarded him. George begins fantasizing to his friend Jerry Seinfeld about what he would tell the woman if he met her again. He would remind her Of all the ways she treated him like dirt. He would stand up for himself. He would insist that she respect his dignity and apologize. Since this is comedy, George, of course, runs into the woman shortly thereafter at a social gathering. Instead of being brave and forthright, he is meek and obsequious. He allows her to run right over him all over again. But in that same scene, Another woman comes up to Jerry Seinfeld. She went on a date with him long ago, and she felt he did not treat her well. She tells him what George had meant to say.

Remember me?

I'm sorry.

Mary Contardi?

No?

Doesn't ring a bell, Jerry? We had a date 3 years ago. Said you'd call me the next day.

Well, I'm sure I meant to call. I probably just lost note.

Liar!

Liar! You were never going to call me! You thought you could waltz through the rest of your life and never bump into me! You can try me again, but you were wrong, Jerry.

You were wrong.

Last week on the show, we examined the science of conversation. We looked at why an ordinary chat is far from ordinary. These interactions involve hundreds of micro-decisions and a delicate dance of coordination. If you missed that episode, I would urge you to listen to it first. You can find it in this podcast feed. It's called We need to talk. Today, we look at the conversations we all dread: telling someone they treated us poorly, demanding a raise, taking away an elderly relative's car keys. We look at what makes difficult conversations difficult and a series of psychological techniques to help you navigate them. How to have difficult conversations This week on Hidden Brain. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Planet Visionaries. Professional climber and environmental advocate Alex Honnold hosts Planet Visionaries, a podcast spotlighting the people tackling climate challenges with real, hopeful solutions. Throughout season 6, Alex brings together extraordinary changemakers for powerful conversations about grit, determination, and the power of hope to fuel our fight for a better future. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

Quick question, do people come to you for answers at work? Maybe you're managing projects, training new hires, or just the one everyone relies on. That's leadership. Through UVA Darden's Part-Time MBA in Rosslyn, we help professionals like you turn real-world experience into recognized leadership credentials. without stepping away from your career. Whether you work in healthcare, education, government, or business, this is how you take the next step. Learn more at darden.virginia.edu/ptmba.

Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. Is there a conversation you need to have that you keep putting off? In your head, do you play out this conversation, and in every telling, does it end in hurt feelings, misunderstandings, and unhappiness? Alison Woodbrooks is a behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School. She studies the art and science of conversations and how we can get better at having difficult conversations. Alison Woodbrooks, welcome to Hidden Brain.

Thank you so much for having me.

Alison, one way we mishandle difficult conversations is that we avoid having them altogether. How common is such evasion?

Avoidance is so common. It's— and it's common in my life too. I'm an avoider. And so I deeply understand why so many people avoid having hard conversations. They avoid people that they know will be hard to interact with, and they avoid topics that feel, at least ahead of time, like they're going to be very difficult for any number of reasons.

I remember many years ago as a small child, my grandfather had rented out an apartment to someone, and that person wasn't paying my grandfather the rent. And my grandfather knew he had to have a conversation with the tenant. And basically, it was going to be a difficult conversation. And he was a people pleaser, and he hated having difficult conversations. And so whenever he saw the tenant, come up the other side of the road, he would run and hide in the bushes because he didn't want to have the difficult conversation with the tenant. And of course, as a small child, you look at that and you realize, oh, these are difficult conversations. One way to handle them is to basically not have them at all.

That's right. That's right. And it's not always the wrong instinct, but you do have to sort of think about who is it leading us to avoid? And why? Why are we avoiding these topics? And are those reasons good? Are they biased? Are they preventing us from having a deeper relationship?

Can you think of a conversation that you need to have with another person that you've been putting off, Alison?

So many. I, I, I, I feel like I avoid certain topics often. Right now, maybe just today, I mean, I could initiate conversations with many of my students, for example, and tell them that I don't think that their performance in the course so far has been terrific.

Hmm.

And that I'm disappointed in them. that I think it's not only going to affect their grade, but their learning and also how I personally feel about them.

Yeah.

Right? Like, it's affecting our relationship in a sort of personal way. And the way I avoid that conversation is by asking my assistant to write emails to the students and just let them know what assignments they're missing rather than Starting a conversation with, you know, 20 different people that I think will be hurtful or unpleasant or hard or time-consuming or make them feel bad. There's so many reasons that I— that prevent me from sort of reaching out one-on-one to them.

You know, it's interesting, Alison. You know, many of us think when we are subordinates or students or in a position where someone else has power over us, that the manager or the supervisor or the administrator has no problem whatsoever telling us what they think and feel because, of course, this person has all this power. We build them up to have all this power in our mind. But I think what you're saying is that this actually runs both ways. Your students might understandably have trepidation coming to you and discussing something difficult with you. You have the same problem discussing it with them.

That's right. It's a profound human instinct to try to avoid unpleasantness or things that you don't think will go well. And often, that unpleasantness comes from us grappling with this feeling torn between honesty and being kind. And that really has nothing to do with status, right? If we're grappling with, can I tell you the truth, and is that going to be hurtful to you?

So in 2013, you taught a negotiation class about a fictional football quarterback named AJ Washington. You were a relatively new professor, and you worked hard to make your presentation engaging. You even had planned a big reveal at the end of the presentation. Can you describe what happened that day?

Shankar, I was so excited about this day in class. It was a case about a fictionalized quarterback in the NFL named AJ Washington, and it had been written actually about Tom Brady, our famed Boston New England Patriots quarterback, and his negotiation over his salary and his player contract. So there's a big reveal at the end of class where I reveal that this whole case has been about Tom Brady the whole time, and— Oh, my God. I had brought a very important prop to class to share with the students at the end of this case discussion. And it was on loan to me from my dear colleague who had been the chief operating officer of the New England Patriots for a very long time. And he let me bring one of his Super Bowl rings to class.

Wow.

To help with this big reveal about Tom Brady. And I was so excited. And I made this big show of it at the end. I sort of lifted it up in the air. And I knelt down and then all the students erupted in applause and they all came down at the end of class and wanted to take photos with this Super Bowl ring. And it was so fun. I was very early in my career at, at, at the business school and I was like, oh man, I am nailing this, this, this, I am an amazing teacher. This is going so good, couldn't be going better.

Hmm.

But a few days later I got an email as I so often do from students asking to meet with me. And this student comes to my office, and I have so many meetings with students, and they're— the topics are all over the map, but I thought that he would be asking about, you know, a job that he'd applied for, some personal problem that he was coping with. Instead, he sort of sat down and said, I love the class. It's going so great. Thank you so much. There's just one thing. There's just one thing that I want to talk to you about. And I was like, oh no, geez. And he said, do you remember in class when you flashed the photo of Tom Brady up on your slides? I said, oh yeah, that was awesome, wasn't it? And he said, yes, but you said— you paused on this slide and you said, hey ladies, enjoy the view. And I said, oh yeah, I remember that. I was going for this big dramatic effect. And he said, you know, Framing it that way felt really heteronormative. And this was a long time ago. This was probably 2013. I don't think I had ever heard the word heteronormative before.

Hmm.

And I said, oh my goodness, tell me more. What do you mean? And he said, well, it made it— it kind of felt like you were only talking to the people who are heterosexual, only people who are interested in the opposite gender in the class. What about all the male students who wanted to enjoy the view?

It's worth pausing for a moment and asking how you would have responded in this situation. You're a teacher, and you've just put in a lot of thought and effort into creating a great presentation. A student is upset because of a phrase you used. Would you dismiss the student as being overly sensitive, too woke, Would you even listen? The point here is not what you would have actually done, but to illustrate what happens when we are confronted by difficult conversations. Very often, the conversation inside our heads can get so loud that we stop paying attention to the conversation outside. Alison did not tune out the student.

I thought, whoa, whoa, I, You're right, for sure. I definitely was coming from this sort of heteronormative perspective. And I couldn't have imagined that such a sort of a moment of levity could be experienced in that way as sort of exclusionary. Hmm.

Hmm.

And I was really disappointed in myself. I was really— I was in my 20s still. I was really young as a professor. And I thought, gosh, Of all of the faculty here, the young woman is the one who's getting this wrong, and I'm so sorry. Like, I really— I want to be the inclusive one.

Hmm.

And then he said the sort of saddest part of all. He said, well, most professors make me feel this way. You're just the only one that I feel comfortable enough sharing it with. And I thought, oh my goodness. Like, I guess that's good for me, but so bad for us collectively. In terms of sort of conversational safety and the ability to have these hard conversations.

So there's so much going on in that story, Alison. And as you're telling the story, I'm putting myself in your shoes, sitting across from the student. The student basically says, effectively, you were being insensitive when you when you made this joke in class. And I can imagine you at that moment sort of tensing up and sort of getting a little anxious and getting a little worried and feeling a little aroused. There's a spotlight being trained on you, and you are being called out as someone who is an unkind, insensitive person.

That's right. And we all feel these moments, and there are these fleeting moments where you have high arousal, And negative feelings. There's a map that scholars call the affective circumplex, but my students like to call it the wheel of feelings. And it's sort of high to low arousal on the y-axis, and then negative to positive on the x-axis. And that upper left quadrant is this high arousal, negative feelings, anger, defensiveness, anxiety. Your heart starts to race. You're feeling bad. And these feelings happen in conversation when something starts to not feel right. And it's a familiar feeling. And that's definitely how I was feeling in that moment. This arousal, my heart's racing. Probably your stress hormones start to release in your body. And there are a number of ways that you can react to it. And I think we all grapple with, well, should I react defensively? Should I react angrily? Do I have the sort of self-control to continue engaging in this conversation? in a way that's reasonable and productive.

And I mean, I think the student did a very smart thing by coming and talking to you in the privacy of her office, because in some ways now, you're having a one-on-one conversation. If the student had brought this up in the class, for example, that could have made you feel even more defensive and even more put on the spot.

In the class or online, on social media, we see this happen all the time. In my mind, really, it's very rare to feel like— Any topic is too sensitive to discuss, but there are so many contexts that are too sensitive. I sometimes wonder, is there such a thing as a sensitive topic, or is it all just sensitive contexts? And so it was so kind that the student came and met one-on-one, and also that they started the conversation by being so complimentary and saying, hey, I really love this class. I think you're doing such an amazing job teaching us. And it's because I feel so comfortable with you that I feel safe sharing this constructive feedback about this one moment.

When we come back, the single most important lesson to learn when you are engaged in a difficult conversation. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Quick question, do people come to you for answers at work? Maybe you're managing projects, training new hires, or just the one everyone relies on. That's leadership. Through UVA Darden's Part-Time MBA in Rosslyn, we help professionals like you turn real-world experience into recognized leadership credentials without stepping away from your career. Whether you work in healthcare, education, government, or business, this is how you take the next step. Learn more at darden.virginia.edu/ptmba.

Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Think back to the last time you had a difficult conversation. Maybe it was with a manager or an employee. Maybe it was with a partner or a parent. What did it feel like in the moments before you had the conversation? Did you feel yourself getting tense? Did you feel the need to get a drink first or to avoid the conversation altogether? At Harvard Business School, behavioral scientist Alison Woodbrooke says that handling difficult conversations starts with noticing how we respond to them. You cannot be an effective interlocutor with someone else when you are unaware of how you yourself are reacting. Alison got a chance to apply her research in her own life when a student came to her and complained that she had been insensitive in class.

It's recognizing your own emotions. It's also trying to recognize what your goals are in that moment. So emotions are often automatic, and you get into that upper left quadrant, those high arousal negative feelings, and there are these sort of parasympathetic nervous system signals that are happening that you can't control. But reflecting about what your goals are is so important. Are you trying to persuade other people to agree with you? Are you trying to continue to engage in this conversation? Are you trying to connect? Are you trying to learn from them? Are you trying to listen? What we've found in much of our research is that in these moments, when you're feeling these high-arousal negative feelings, it's very natural to have goals to defend yourself and to persuade other people to agree with you.

Hmm.

And to understand, like, you need to understand me. So you start making statements to try and persuade them. But the more effective way to react in those moments is to focus on learning, which is not intuitive. So you need to learn as much as you can about the other person's perspective. Why are they— why did they feel this way? Why did he feel— he clearly felt, you know, moved enough that he needed to come and give me this feedback. Tell me more about that. Like, what was that like for you? And how often do you feel this way? And how could I have said this differently? So, Learning as much as you can about the other person's perspective is much more effective for making the conversation continue in a productive way, and ultimately— and this is sort of the ironic part— ultimately to be more persuasive, because the other person is gonna see you as much more reasonable and measured.

I mean, in some ways, this is such a profound insight, Alison, because when I think about the difficult conversations either that I've had or that I need to have, I do think I have approached those conversations with a mindset of, how do I convince this other person about this thing that I know is right? I know it's right. They don't know it's right. My job is to persuade them that in some ways they are wrong. And in some ways, you're saying that is the wrong way to go about it, that the approach, the orientation, of persuasion in some ways sets us on the wrong track when it comes to having these difficult conversations.

That's right. And you're not alone. Almost everyone has that instinct. It's a deeply held human instinct to feel like you're right and you want to persuade other people to see your point of view and to persuade them to agree with you. It's just not an effective mindset or effective behaviors in the context of a live unfolding dialogue because it's It's impossible. It's so difficult to be on the receiving end of that, that it's hard to continue to listen and engage in the ways that you need to, to even keep a conversation going.

So some time ago, Alison, we featured your colleague Julia Minson on Hidden Brain. She has studied the effects of something called conversational receptiveness. which is closely linked to this idea of turning a difficult conversation from an exercise in persuasion to an exercise in learning. What is conversational receptiveness, Alison?

Julia Minson's work, Hannah Collins, Mikey Ohman's, this work is incredible and groundbreaking on receptiveness. They define receptiveness, especially in conversation, as openness to opposing viewpoints. And the ability to engage receptively live in a live conversation is an incredible skill that we can all work on. And is counterintuitive to most people.

Can you talk about some of the elements of conversational receptiveness? Julia Minson and others talk about starting with the role of acknowledgment, that to actually acknowledge what it is that the other person is saying to you.

That's right. And acknowledgment is a very simple thing. It's almost like just repeating back what you've heard from someone. I hear you saying this, right? Is that correct? I hear you asking this question about receptiveness, Shankar. Is that— am I hearing that correctly? you right? It's sort of this acknowledgement of like, I'm listening to you and I'm understanding what you're saying.

Yeah.

The, the sort of next bump up from acknowledgement is affirmation. So you take what another person has said and you attach a positive affirmation to it. So I say, I hear what you're saying, and also I appreciate it. I, I, it makes sense that you would feel that way about this thing. That's, that's great. You're such a reasonable person. So this sort of affirmation, I love how you said, I love how you asked this question. and it's a great one. And so you attach this positive attribution and affirmation onto your acknowledgement.

Hmm.

Now, all of this is completely independent from agreement, right? You are not necessarily going to go on and agree with what they've said. They're just making the point that linguistically, it's so important to start from a place of saying, I hear what you're saying, I understand it, I like it, I think it's reasonable that you feel that way, Tell me more about it, and just maintaining a tone that your partner is going to be able to continue to engage with, whether you go on to agree or disagree later in the conversation. Another way to think of it would be like validation. You need to validate their feelings, even if you're not going to agree with their beliefs.

One of the things that we often do when we're having difficult conversations is that we fixate on the areas of disagreement that we have with someone else. And that's understandable, that's what makes a difficult conversation difficult. But what are we missing when we do that, Alison?

It's wild. This has been very eye-opening for me. When you're in a conversation, as soon as you stumble across even any sort of difference, when you realize, oh, this person feels differently than me, or they have a belief that's different than mine, or they have a piece of their identity that's very different, it's— our instinct is to focus so strongly on that disagreement or that difference that we almost completely forget about the 99% of other things that we have in common and agree about.

Hmm.

I mean, really, like, everyone wants to feel loved. Everyone wants to feel safe. Everyone wants to feel adored and admired. Everyone likes ice cream. Everybody likes being in a warm room, right? Like, there's so many things that we all agree about, and it— for whatever reason, all of those things sort of go out the window, and we fixate on these little moments of disagreement and difference.

Yeah. And this is not to say that the areas of disagreement are not real. They are real, but it may be that it's actually 15% of the painting as opposed to 85% of the painting.

That's right. And we forget about the rest of the painting.

One of the other ideas that Julia Minson and others talk about is that when we are proposing our ideas, so when it's our turn to speak, to hedge those ideas a little bit, to not speak in overly declarative language or confident language, to basically say, I think, or, here's something to think about. What does that do in a difficult conversation, Alison?

It goes back to this idea of our instinct says to I'm— that I'm right, and I'm gonna prove to you that I'm right. And to do that, I need to say it in such a compelling and strong way that you can't possibly deny that I'm right.

Yeah.

We forget that it's really hard to be on the receiving end of that, to be the listener and to be receiving such, like, strong statement, righteous sort of language. And so this point about qualifying your language, expressing the points that you're uncertain about, like, I actually was wondering if this, or I think— I'm pretty sure this, Or, I wonder about this. Those qualifications, that qualifying language goes against our instincts to be strong and resolute and decisive, but being on the receiving end of it makes that person sound so much more reasonable and realistic, and it's so much easier to engage with them. So you're probably detecting a theme here, which is all of this stuff goes towards the goal of being able to continue talking to each other in a way that's productive and And dare I say, enjoyable.

Hmm.

Because if we go along with our instincts to prove to people that we're right, it's very hard to continue to have that conversation, and it's going to spiral into a place that's not enjoyable.

I was talking to another guest on Hidden Brain some time ago, and he used to be a champion debater in high school. Of course, when you're having a debate, you present your strongest argument and the other person presents their strongest argument, and then a judge decides whose argument is the best. He was pointing out that in many ways, we conduct difficult conversations the same way, which is we try and prosecute our argument and expect the other person is going to prosecute their argument, and then imagine that there is some kind of imaginary judge who's going to come in and give us the prize for coming up with the better argument. But, of course, in real life, there is no judge. There is no third party to adjudicate and say, your argument was better than the other person's argument. Your goal, in fact, is to get across to the other person and to sort of find common ground with the other person. And that's very hard to do when you're trying to beat the other person into a pulp.

That's exactly right. And there's this sort of thought experiment that I like to do that I think of Mm-hmm. My way, your way, the right way? For almost any task or any topic or any issue, let's just call it loading the dishwasher. I have my way of loading the dishwasher. You have your way of loading the dishwasher. But probably neither of our ways of loading the dishwasher is the objectively correct or optimal way of loading the dishwasher. And so nitpicking with each other and arguing about, well, my way is the best way, and then you say, well, my way is the best way, it's all so silly, especially Especially when neither of you knows the sort of ground truth objective reality of what's the best way.

When the emotions we're feeling are unhelpfully negative, you say, Alison, that we should reframe them in a more positive light. Can you explain what you mean by that? What do you mean by reframing a negative emotion in a positive light?

When we feel negative emotions, which we all do, A lot of the time. We have a lot more control over how we experience that emotion than we would think. So I'll give the example of anxiety. When we feel anxious, it's a high arousal emotion, it's very negative. Our instinct tells us to try and calm down, try and get rid of that emotion. People go to great lengths to try and calm down when they're feeling anxious. But calming down requires a sort of 2-step move. You have to reduce your physiological arousal, so your racing heart, your sweaty palms, your cortisol in your body, those things are really hard to control. You actually don't have a lot of executive control over those things, and you're trying to move from negative emotion to positive.

Hmm.

So it's this 2-step thing that turns out very hard to do, if not impossible. The idea of reframing is, let's focus on this, the part of it that we do have more control over, and that's our, the, the, our appraisal of negative versus positive. So if you're feeling anxious, what if we could say, What if we stay in high arousal world and you just say to yourself, you know what, I'm excited. Just that small flip helps move you from negative valence anxiety to positive valence excitement.

So you can see, for example, distress as passion, for example, as a way of reframing or reappraising the distress that you're experiencing.

That's exactly right. So I have worked with Lizzie Bailey Wolf about this. Often people say, I'm stressed, I'm so distressed, but you can reframe that, for your own benefit in saying, no, no, this is just a signal that I care about it, that I'm passionate. And actually saying it out loud is really compelling to the people around you as well.

So in some ways, what I understand you're saying, Alison, is that the goal here is not so much to change the emotion itself, but to shift your interpretation of the emotion.

That's right. Psychologists call this reappraisal. You're shifting the appraisal, not how you're feeling it physiologically, but just how you're thinking about and interpreting that feeling.

You have a colleague, Cynthia, who has a very effective way of reframing emotion when a discussion gets too heated. What is her technique, Alison?

My colleague Cynthia is amazing. She's an incredible teacher, and I love watching her teach because she constantly keeps her sort of hand on the dial, the sort of temperature knob of the mood of the classroom. And when she feels like things are getting too down or sad or angry, she calls it out. She says, I'm not loving the emotional vibe in here. Let's hit the refresh button. And she does, even just by labeling it and saying, let's hit the refresh button, it really helps so much.

So in other words, just like we can call attention to what's happening inside our minds and label it and say, I'm feeling defensive, I'm feeling upset, I'm feeling called out, I'm feeling threatened, what she is doing is saying, we can call attention to what's happening in the conversation. Notice where we are in the chat.

That's right. It's what makes levity so powerful as well. You notice if people are getting bored or disengaged from the conversation, it's so important in those moments to realize the emotional timbre and to do something about it. Switch topics, make a joke, smile, give someone a compliment, just to lift the mood is incredibly powerful.

One error we make in difficult conversations is we sometimes try to see things from the perspective of the other person, which on the surface seems a good thing. But the problem is when we do this, we imagine how we would think and what we would do in their circumstances. Talk about what happens when we do this, Alison.

It's such a well-meaning instinct, but unfortunately, the human mind is so egocentric. So we try to imagine what another person would be thinking and feeling, but we use our own thoughts and feelings as a sort of proxy, as a, as a, as a guess. This is what helps us guess how other people are thinking and feeling. We're relying on our own point of view. And unfortunately, no two people are exactly alike. Even my twin sister, Sarah, and I are not exactly alike. And most people are just incredibly different from each other, and we underestimate how different other people are from us. So, very famously, psychologists have found that people are just really— it's very challenging to take another person's perspective. The most direct way to take take another person's perspective isn't to guess, but to ask them for it, to ask questions and actually hear from their own mouth what's going on in their mind.

When we come back, why seemingly innocuous comments can deeply hurt another person, and a magic key to disarming someone who is very angry You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Instagram. Instagram teen accounts' automatic protections limit who can contact teens. the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Teens are automatically placed into Teen Accounts. Teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. Learn more about Teen Accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Air France. Air France Business Cabin offers comfort throughout the journey with priority check-in, boarding, and lounge access. Onboard, enjoy menus from renowned French chefs, wines and champagne selected by a sommelier, and free high-speed Wi-Fi. When it's time to rest, settle into a fully adjustable lie-flat bed with added mattress comfort. The art of travel, elevated, because Air France Business Cabin goes further in every detail to make your journey exceptional. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Quince. We all have those pieces in our closet that we can count on— the versatile jacket, the perfect t-shirt. These are the pieces that make getting dressed easy, and that's what Quince does best. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials in designs that are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. And when the temperature drops, to build on these everyday staples with versatile layers designed to keep you warm and comfortable all season long. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, tell them Shankar Vedantam sent you. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Have you ever noticed that when you're having a difficult conversation, or even a conversation that wasn't supposed to be difficult, something you say can set off another person and send the conversation haywire? You were not trying to give offense, but the other person is deeply offended. At Harvard Business School, Alison Woodbrook says she teaches her students an exercise to avoid such landmines.

My students find it helpful to use a model to think about why these difficult moments pop up in conversations, sometimes unexpectedly, often unexpectedly. And we use a model that we call the layers of the earth. Above the surface of the earth, this is the content of the conversation. So the words that we're saying to each other, the sound, the way we sound to each other, our nonverbal cues, all the things that Right at the surface of the earth are our emotions, and sometimes parts of our emotions are observable. You can tell when I'm getting angry or anxious or upset, and sometimes they're hidden beneath the surface of the earth. Right below that layer are our motives or our goals, and, you know, maybe sometimes I want to seek your advice, but you don't want to give it to me. Or, I want to persuade you, but you are not ready to be persuaded. When we have incongruous motives, it's another way that difficult moments can erupt. And then at the very core of the earth, of course, are our differences in our identities. And anytime conversation shoots down to the hot magma of our identity, things are going to feel really hot and heated and difficult. And even sort of easy conversations have a way of shooting down to that hot magma core of our identities in sort of unexpected ways. And my students talk about this a lot. Like, you know, you can— even an innocuous question like, oh, where did you get your glasses? Or, hey, I love your haircut, can feel sort of deeply threatening to people if they're imagining that this question is going to lead to something very sensitive about their identity or where they're from or their race or their gender or their, you know, sexual orientation. And so what we talk about in my class is becoming a little bit more aware of differences at every layer of the earth. So at the surface, where our words— are we literally using the same— the right words? Are we understanding each other and what we mean when we're using certain words? And often moments of difficulty come from, like, oh, we're just misunderstanding each other. We're using the same word to mean different things, or we're not talking about the same Often, these differences in our emotions cause problems. I want to go have fun. You're— you actually want to have a deep conversation. We have different motives. And then, of course, differences in our identities. And I think most of the most difficult moments in conversation come from the moments when you poke an invisible barb into somebody's identity. And sometimes you realize when it's happened, and sometimes you don't. It goes back to the story of this LGBTQ student who came and talked to me.

Mm-hmm.

about making an insensitive comment, a heteronormative comment in class.

Yeah.

I poked an invisible barb into an important part of who he is, and he didn't feel seen and acknowledged and valued and worthy of care. And so anytime that we make our conversation partner feel like they're— we don't understand them, we don't see them, and we are not making them feel worthy of care, it's gonna cause problems.

When you were a college student, Alison, you and your fellow students found yourselves in opposition to an administrator. The students saw this administrator as an enforcer, and they thought that she was heavy-handed. They often clashed with her. You decided to try another approach. Can you tell me what happened?

So I was a member of a club, a social club, when I was an undergrad. And there was a woman there whose full-time job it was to take care of this beautiful property and to keep all of the students who hung out there and ate their meals there, to keep them safe. And historically, the student members of the club had this really confrontational, sort of oppositional relationship with this house manager. And I remember watching this oppositional dynamic unfold, and it really made me feel not only uncomfortable, but also I started to feel like this isn't serving the students well either because it puts her in this enforcer position, in this oppositional position. She's not going to give us the things that we want. And so I— when I became the sort of vice president of this club, I thought, I'm going to try and convince my fellow students, the fellow leaders of the club, and this woman, let's— let's reposition ourselves as allies. Like, why don't we try and work together? And so first I had to convince the other students that this was a good approach. That was not easy because there was a lot of animosity between the students and this house manager. But then the really hard conversation was facing— facing this woman myself. And I remember it very vividly. It was at her— it was in her office. in private, sort of woman-on-woman. I had— was the first woman who had ever been an officer in this club. And I went and met with her one-on-one. And she was so gracious and so grateful when I apologized for the behavior of all of the students historically, and how unkind they had been, and how— why this animosity had erupted between the students and this house manager.

Hmm.

And I just said, I'm so sorry. Like, I— we don't want you to feel that way. We want to work together. We wanna be on the same team here. And she just said, thank you so much. Thank you so much for saying this. This sounds so amazing. And we both cried, and she was so grateful. And it really felt like this turning point in the dynamic, which did prove out to be really great for us going forward. It really worked out well. She gave the club so much more of what we actually wanted. And then what was really moving, it ended up being one of the most meaningful sort of conversations of my life. That was, you know, 15 years ago, and that was an inflection point for the club going forward. The students then developed a new norm of being friends with this woman and being on good terms, and it continued on for the next 15 years. And I saw her at my 15th college reunion, and she looked great. She looked so healthy and happy. And she pulled me aside and she said, I just can never thank you enough for having that conversation with me and making this change. It changed the club for the better, and it changed my life. And I— it meant so much to me.

Wow, that's an amazing story, Alison. And it's really testament to what happens when we handle difficult conversations well, that there is a huge payoff here, a huge psychological payoff here.

Yeah.

And don't get me wrong, it was scary to have that conversation. It felt like she would She didn't like the students. She was mad at us all the time. We were always in trouble. And there was so much historical animosity that I was trying to sort of undo and shake up. And it was— it took a lot of chutzpah, or a lot of courage, to go in there and try and sort of work through it. It wasn't easy.

One of the incredibly difficult and incredibly powerful things that you did was that you apologized to her for the way that she had been treated in the past. I think for people who feel like they have been wronged or people who are in opposition, there's often a sense of burning injustice. I'm just an administrator. I'm here trying to keep the students safe. All they have is ill will toward me. They treat me so badly. No one recognizes what I've done. You have this narrative in your head of all the ways in which the world has been been unkind to you. And of course, the world doesn't constantly come and admit that. But when someone actually walks in the door and says, I'm sorry, it has a transformative effect on you. Can you talk a little bit about the power of apologies in the course of having difficult conversations?

I think as a conversation researcher, as a human being, apologies are one of the most powerful tools we have in our conversational toolkit. They Apologies are so remarkably powerful, and they're quick, right? Like, they— it doesn't take that many turns of a conversation to deliver an apology, and they're just— they can do so much good. And even though they're so powerful, many people are reluctant to give them.

Talk a little bit about that. Why do you think that is, Alison? Given how powerful they are, why are we so reluctant to Apologizing requires that you make yourself vulnerable to the other person.

It feels like it requires you to humble yourself. It can feel like you are admitting that you were wrong in some way, and it makes yourself vulnerable to the other person because they could exploit that and say, oh yes, you were wrong, I was right. And that just takes an incredible amount of humility. But in practice, when you go through with it and you apologize, it doesn't necessarily equate to an admission of blameworthiness. It just feels so good for the other person to be on the receiving end of it that it makes the conversation and the relationship so much better.

I want you to tell me the story of when your son Kevin was a toddler. I understand to the extent that he could talk, you had a series of very difficult conversations. Tell me how those went and what happened.

Oh, my sweet Kevin. So Kevin's 9 now, but back when he was— and he's a terrific kid— back when he was a toddler, he was a late talker. He was really frustrated, and he had so many big ideas, and he couldn't express them. And so he would get really angry and mad and yell and scream and sort of flop around. And one day during one of these sort of tantrums, he reared his head back, and he— and he sort of butted his head right into my face, and he— and he broke my nose.

Wow!

And it was so painful. And so physically painful, of course, but also emotionally painful. Like, as a mother, how do I have this child who's capable of, like, hurting me in this way? And how do I teach him to not be this way? And I just remember I plopped him down, and I ran over to the mirror to see if my face was okay. It was a really dramatic moment that— it was really hard. And he was so young, it was hard to decide how to react in that moment.

I understand that you came back to this incident some years later, Alison. Can you tell me what happened?

That's right.

I—

it became infamous in our family, the nose-breaking incident with toddler Kevin. So over time, he heard me and my husband talk about this moment. We told it to him as a story. And, you know, he learned to talk, he learned to regulate his emotions, and he sort of came to find this story, like, intriguing. Like, he couldn't believe that he would've behaved that way. And one night, he was probably 7 or 8 years old, and we were reading together, and he was reading one of his favorite books at the time, you know, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. A lot of kids love this And the main character in the story typically can be sort of thoughtless and can be kind of cruel to his best friend. But there was a part of the book where Greg apologized to his best friend, and it was a rare moment. It was a very sort of kind moment for the character in the book. And in that moment, Kevin stopped reading, and he looked up at me and he said, Mom, He said, yeah. And he said, do you remember when I broke your nose when I was a toddler? And I said, oof, yes, I do remember, Kevin. I don't think I'll ever forget. And he looked at me right in the eyes and he said, Mommy, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that I did that to you. And my heart just sort of burst in the way that I had cried so much when he first had broken my nose. Now I I was crying again, but this time out of pride. It was such a meaningful moment to see how he had grown from being this toddler struggling so much with language and his emotions, and in such a short time, maybe 5 years later, was in this place where he was able to own that and apologize and empathize and recognize my pain was just incredible.

Alison Wood Brooks is a behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School. She's the author of Talk: The Science of Conversation and The Art of Being Ourselves. Alison, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

Thank you so much for having me.

Do you have follow-up questions for Alison that you'd be willing to share with the Hidden Brain audience? If so, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at ideas@hiddenbrain.org. That email address again is ideas@hiddenbrain.org.

ideas@hiddenbrain.org.

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