March 13, 2025 • 51 mins
Alison Wood Brooks is a renowned behavioral scientist, professor at Harvard Business School,and the author of Talk: The Science of Conversation and The Art of Being Ourselves.
Her work focuses on the psychology of conversation, emotion, and behavioral decision-making. In this podcast, she dives into the intricacies of good conversation and negotiation. What makes someone a good conversationalist? Why do so many people hate “small talk.” What factors should we consider when beginning a conversation? Plus, find out what 4 actions you can take to have better conversations today.
https://alisonwoodbrooks.com
Her work focuses on the psychology of conversation, emotion, and behavioral decision-making. In this podcast, she dives into the intricacies of good conversation and negotiation. What makes someone a good conversationalist? Why do so many people hate “small talk.” What factors should we consider when beginning a conversation? Plus, find out what 4 actions you can take to have better conversations today.
https://alisonwoodbrooks.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of ten 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 best selling author
Alison Woodbrooks. She is a trailblazer and behavioral science and
(00:23):
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 four tips
on being better conversationalists.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Goodbye, Live at Home.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Thank you Alison for joining me today. I can't wait
to get into this conversation, and I think above all,
I just really want to lay out right off the
top that having good conversation is good for our well being.
I mean, it's good for our health, right.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
It's good for everything.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Good conversation is the pathway to achieve all of our goals,
and certainly health and well being are among them.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yes, So let me start with the first question of
what goes through your mind ten seconds to Air ten
seconds before a conversation.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Oh my gosh, Well depends on what kind of conversation
we're talking about.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
I do a lot of teaching at.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Harvard, which is a sort of high stakes performance performative conversation.
I often 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. Seconds before you engage
(02:02):
with someone or with a group of people, those ten
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 two to three little ideas of things
that I should ask about during my conversation.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So let's also start with your class at Harvard. It's
called Talk, and it's actually in the Business School, not
in the communications department.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
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.
It's a great course.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
You learn so much.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
But at some point 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,
(03:07):
we have a lot of room for improvement and our
ability to have conversations with each other.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
So that's where my course comes from.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
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, when they turn
out to not be as easy as you think.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
And let's just for the sake of it, define We
know what a conversation is, but how do you define conversation?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Conversation is any exchange of words between two or more people.
That's it. There aren't words, it's not really a conversation.
There aren't two people, it's just you talking to yourself.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
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
(04:09):
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.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
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
(04:54):
doing that, and so in a way it's maybe we
are even less poised to have help these 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
(05:17):
all modes of communication actually email, texting, snapchat, face to face,
phone calls, all of it. And with this highlight to
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
(05:42):
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 the ability to have conversation evolved over
(06:02):
time is a really fascinating one. It depends on sort
of what time horizon 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 evolve
(06:24):
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 talk about what
the project was across multiple generations. And then scientists will
point to that and say, well, that means that they
(06:45):
were they had evolved the ability to talk to each other.
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 we're people talking
to each other at different points. How did that influence culture,
How did that reflect the way that they were organizing
(07:06):
their societies and to achieve what goals? Was it an
agrarian culture? Who was talking to whom and on what topics?
In the book, I start in the Age of Conversation,
which was in the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
It was a time when people were.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
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,
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
(07:45):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
But all along the way, right like that, there is
a basic.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
You know, as soon as humans evolve 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's 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,
(08:29):
feeling protected, learning about each other, and not being awkward while.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
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,
the big thing out here in la is Trader Joe's
(08:57):
and the people in Trader Joe's love to make small talk,
and I guess we could start with that as far
as small talk goes, because that is a communication tool.
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
(09:19):
no expert. I just go out there and talk. How
do you frame small talk or assess it?
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah? I didn't. I'm like you.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
I love small talk, I think because for two 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 two, 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
(09:50):
past it. I didn't realize how much how many people
out there hate small talk and how really trapped they
feel until I started teaching this course at Harvard called Talk,
and I realize, oh my god, I think ninety percent
of my students are really struggling with this like they're
really they dread it. It leads them to not initiate conversations. Overall,
(10:13):
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 and in the course, we talk
about a framework that people find quite helpful, which is
a topic pyramid, and the pyramid has three levels. The
base of the pyramid has this is topics that anyone
(10:34):
could talk about, so technically it's small talk.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
So it's stuff like.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
The weather, or how is 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 do know.
The problem isn't with those topics in general. The problem
is actually that people stay there too long. If you
stand topics that are completely depersonalized and sort of shallow,
(11:00):
it can very quickly start to feel meaningless 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's just needs to be something that's more interesting and
(11:22):
more and more personally relevant. And so when if you're
at the base of the pyramid and 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 alived and excited and like
(11:44):
we just had some sort of important discovery.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
You mentioned earlier about the different 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 cover station?
If we want good connection and good conversation, what are
the components of good conversation.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
It's a great quot So the definition of success in
conversation depends on what the speakers want to get.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Out of it.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
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 when
(12:37):
you start to look at people's goals and conversation, often
each person actually has a surprisingly complex constellation of goals.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
And so to organize the.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
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 that just
two axes. The X access is a relational things, so
I'm a 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
(13:12):
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 access. Then there's
an informational access, the why access. At the high end,
(13:33):
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 my 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 want to feel good, we
(13:54):
don't want to feel awkward.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
We need to leave on time.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
These are very imports that have nothing to do with
what we're talking about or how accurate is the information
that we're exchanging. And so you can think about asking people.
You could ask someone before 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 answer.
(14:19):
Like I wanted it to be fun. I wanted to
hear about the wedding that they went to. I wanted
to ask about 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. I wanted to keep this secret that my
friend told me to keep. Right. So if you get
people going, they start to realize, oh, I have a
(14:41):
lot of goals. When I'm talking to other people 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 five minutes, but I'm
also dying to hear every detail of the wedding that
you went to, those two things are going to be
and common inflict with each other. And of course I
(15:03):
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 that. I want to
guide to diving over the weekend. So we're just constantly
sort of colliding with each other in terms of what
we want out of a conversation.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
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 all aftrack.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
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. But
(15:56):
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?
Speaker 3 (16:10):
People who are better at figuring that out end up
being more successful conversationalists.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
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.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Them all together. So you know, this is a big
broad question. 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 been a sort of decades of
work talking about difficult conversations, or whole courses about negotiation
(16:56):
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 nine topics you might talk about in
a conversation, one of them or maybe two of them
might be more difficult than the others.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
So thinking at.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
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 too difficult,
(17:42):
those difficult moments can pop up in ways that you
do expect and can expect and in unexpected ways.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Right, you don't know what the other person is going
to bring you.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
You never you have no idea.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
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 going to 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 a
sort of new spontaneous context that you have to respond to.
(18:20):
So difficult things can cop up unexpectedly at any moment
and in ways that you didn't anticipate. You never know
when you're going to sort of poke a barb into
somebody right identity and hurt them or they hurt you,
and like, ooh, 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
(18:44):
the earth, so above the surface, these are things that
are we have differences that like maybe we're using the
wrong word that different words refer to the same thing,
or we're using the same word to mean different things,
or we're just sort of miscoordinating is like our words
and our gestures and stuff, we're just misunderstanding each other.
(19:04):
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,
(19:27):
as we said earlier, different goals.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I want to give you.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
Advice, but you don't want to hear it. I want
to talk about the wedding. You want to hear about
my skydiving. Like, different goals make things complicated. 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.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
To talk about that?
Speaker 4 (19:51):
Should we talk about it? If we knew, how do
we navigate it? And then at the very core of
the earth that this layer is our identities, and our
identities different 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
(20:13):
to use. So like, differences and difficulties can crap up
at any layer of the earth, and we, as good conversationalists,
need to be prepared to confront them in a way
that feels safe and productive.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
And it just sounds you lay all that out and
it's all very real. And I think when you talk
about 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
(20:51):
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 it's like we converse
pretty well. Am I off.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
It's so it's so funny.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
It's almost like I as a scientist, I waffle between
one moment, I'm like, it is a miracle that humans
can talk to each other at all, Like once you
when you look under the hood of a conversation, it's
so much more complicated and fraud than it seems. And
then then in the next moment, I'm like, you know what, though,
this is going pretty great for everybody. We learned to
(21:27):
do it when we're one 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.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Why would I need to work on this as a skill.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
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. Even if I'm already good,
I want to get better.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Mm hmmmmm 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?
Speaker 4 (22:24):
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.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Thousands of them.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
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 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 an accidentally makes
(22:59):
a jab they didn't 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. Again, still
we're able to understand each other. We are able to
look back on a conversation and say, oh, yeah, we
talked about like these four topics and I left feeling
(23:21):
pretty good about it.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Hm.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
And that to me is really it's both beautiful thing
about human existence that we evolve 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
do it better.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
It also makes me wonder, how often does one party
think the conversation went well and the other side doesn't
think so.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
This is the really scary thing. It's 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 mistake there's a lot of disagreement. Like, so
the things that we ruminate where you're like, oh, I
really shouldn't have asked that question, and it's driving me
(24:07):
crazy and I want to apologize. The other person might
not have even noticed that, they might 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.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
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?
Speaker 3 (24:42):
It's okay, this is good. We always say this in
my class.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Is like that uncomfortable feeling of confusion or discomfort means
that you're learning something new, and that can be the
eye openingness of it.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Is can be uncomfortable and weird. Yeah, so what can
you do about it?
Speaker 1 (25:02):
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?
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Okay, So my students develop this sense of sort of
hyper vigilance 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 hyper
fixated on everything that I'm saying and doing and what
the other person's doing. And that doesn't feel healthy. For sure.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Thinking about this all the time is not healthy.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
But what's so nice is that, like we know that's
going to dissipate after they're done with the class. The
idea of to be good to foster a little bit
more self awareness about what are your own strengths and
weaknesses in conversation, a little bit more vigilance or awareness
of like what's going on here is what can I
do before conversation starts that might make it go better?
(25:57):
How can I look back on a conversation that has
happened 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.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
How much does emotion play a part in conversation, in
good conversation?
Speaker 3 (26:17):
So much, so much so.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
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 anger, is just disinterest, like people,
(26:44):
you aren't talking about things that are mutually interesting. People
aren't leaning forward, they're not getting excited, and so you
can you can ruin a conversation in both of those directions.
One that sort of higher arousal negative emotions, but also
this low arousal negation of emotion is not good either.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
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
(27:27):
or bad conversation?
Speaker 4 (27:29):
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. There are lots of verbal cues too, So
if your partner has raised a topic, that's a good
(27:49):
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,
some like a mirror question where I've asked you you're
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
(28:11):
or like you're not sure where to go next, how
you're kind of biding your time. But there are so
many subtle cues of people's interests if they're uh, and
it's not necessarily interest in the conversation as a whole,
but again at the topic level, So if people start
laughing uncomfortably and there are longer pauses, or they start
(28:34):
repeating things they've already said, those are very reliable clues
that you should switch to a new topic, because that
means that topic is sort of running out of running
out of juice.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Okay, say that again, Say that again. I want to
make sure I follow.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
That uncomfortable laughter, 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. And
good conversationalists are good at switching assertively to something new.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
But that's making it sound like it's on the other person.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
So if you know, it's on everybody, Okay, it's on everybody. Yeah,
we should all be looking for these. And two of
those things are sort of mutual. Actually all of them
are mutual. You can be laughing uncomfortably or the other person.
Mutual pauses, these lulls or silences are always mutual. It
means that nobody's haying anything in those moments, and redundancies
can come from anybody. So you really should be on
(29:33):
the lookout for these clues in your partner but also
in yourself.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
But sometimes 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 twenty plus years, I realize he is
really thinking about his response.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Yeah, so and this is important.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
The distinction between who 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 if there are long pauses,
(30:23):
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, long pauses
can be really nice. It's a 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
(30:47):
signal that your relationship sucks, right, Like it's not like
being on a first date where the law is going
to be like, oh, this is not going well.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
And so it depends.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
So many of these contextual factors matter, including the duration
of your relationship.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
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.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
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. You can't possibly sort of express everything that's
(31:39):
in your mind and everything about who you are all
the time. And so I think there's a there's a
sort of undertone in the book I hope about, like
how you talk to people is who you are to them.
It's how they perceive your personality, your values, your thoughts,
(32:01):
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
different relationships and in different situations.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
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. And now I'm
in la 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 way people converse with each other
(32:36):
is really different. I have found that, and I have
often been accused of being a little more direct in
the average person, and even for 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.
(32:57):
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,
(33:19):
I feel a little abrasive. What's going on there?
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Let me ask you a follow up question.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Do you feel like you do you shift the level
of your directness depending on where you are?
Speaker 1 (33:31):
For sure?
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yeah? That's good, so good? It is okay, good, Yeah,
so good.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
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
(34:00):
person I'm with, what are they looking for? What's appropriate?
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?
Speaker 3 (34:21):
I think being a good.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
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, So of
course you should adjust your pack. One way to say
it is like, I'm sure you didn't bring the same
(34:44):
conversational style that you used in the newsroom back home
when you were like at bathtime with your babies right
right right, 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 an authentic that
makes you a savvy and considerate conversationalist.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
All right, well you made me feel much better, Thank
you very much.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
And you feel it.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
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 sort of assimilation, not just as when
you move to a new place, but like even with
it from one conversation to the next. The idea of
sort of assimilating or accommodating and mirroring the person that
(35:33):
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.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
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 have been offended by what
the other one said. You know, like, hey, notice the
(36:08):
dishes are there or something, you know, like when you're
gonna get whatever, but I feel like it is a
useful tool just from experience. How does that play into
good conversation?
Speaker 4 (36:20):
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
going to like stumble upon a moment of humor or
a moment of warmth, and we appreciate it. It's nice,
(36:42):
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. A psychologists, when we study 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
(37:05):
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 sparkler fizz that's like,
oh yeah, okay, now back, this is great again. And
it's just it's just incredibly important. And as you said,
(37:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
And appreciation for other people's levity.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
I don't. I'm going to ask you more about that,
and I want to get to the kind of takeaways
for people. But before we kind of get to that,
I just want to know a little bit about negotiation.
I actually took a class at a business school class
on negotiation. I thought it was incredibly interesting and beneficial
(38:08):
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
(38:29):
teach it and how it relates to conversation. Also.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
Yeah, So the definition of negotiation is anytime two or
more parties disagree and are working towards agreement. It's a
very sort of broad definition. Almost any time you stumble
upon a moment of difficulty or disagreement during a conversation,
it sort of all of a sudden becomes this little
(38:53):
mini negotiation, and often the sort of skill that you
need in those moment. Two 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 a learning mindset. If you
go in with the goal to persuade another person to
(39:16):
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.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
If you come instead with a.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
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
(39:47):
push down that instinct to persuade, by the end of
the conversation or the negotiation, are more likely to have
persuaded the other person because you seem more interested and reasonable.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Right, I think that is so oh important. I mean
I never noticed that subtlety. I think of it more
as curiosity. But yeah, right, if you're willing to learn
from the other person, they must feel great, not just.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
Willing to like dying to learn like you. All you
want is to understand their perspective. You don't want to
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 not effective. And so
these negotiation courses, which are in every business school and
law school are terrific. They are They give you very
(40:34):
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 too
to overcome them.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
But that's it. That is really a great starting place
of just the learning coming into it with a with
a learning, there's nothing more annoying than someone who's trying
to persuade you right off the start and you it's like,
you don't even care what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
And it comes in every context, right, whether it's around
the dinner table at Thanksgiving dinner, or and the you're
buying a new car, 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
(41:26):
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 I'm going
to sell my company, my new entrepreneurial venture to you,
or I'm going to persuade you to do this thing
that I might 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
(41:47):
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, And
that's an incredible skill if you can get better at it.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Right, So, what are the you mentioned one just now,
But what are some of the most common pitfalls that
you see in conversation?
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Oh so many.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
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
(42:34):
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,
flow up. You'll always get out of small talk by
asking follow up questions too, because it gets personal and
(42:57):
informative really quickly. Other type of question that is awesome
our open ended questions. Let's 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?
(43:18):
Or why were you late? Why did you do that
this morning? Why questions can feel very accusatory. So anyway,
but top line advice is just ask more questions.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Ask more questions. Okay, so let's give people a couple
of takeaways. You talked about questions. We'll get there. Let's
let's give people three four takeaways if they want to
start today having good conversation or improving their conversation. What
can we do today to improve our conversations?
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Okay, I'll give It's hard to choose just three, but
I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
You can choose as many as you want.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
Number One, head about conversations and think about to think
of two to three 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
(44:21):
topics not just for work meetings, like even when you're
gonna call your mom, like think ahead about what you
want to ask her, what to talk about prep topics.
Number two, 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 what
they have to say. Number three, give more compliments. Oh,
(44:46):
if 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.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Tell people.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
And then number four, 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? Makes
sense that you feel sad about? Why makes sense that
(45:28):
you feel excited about block? So validating their feelings first,
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
(45:50):
about your mom. Okay, let me put on my grumpy
reviewer at for a second and say, maybe.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
What your d mom is doing doesn't make sense right.
Speaker 4 (45:58):
Like, so before you go on to disagree with them,
try and validate an affirm because everybody needs it. Everybody's
dying for a friend out there, and you can do
that even if you go on to disagree with people.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Okay, so I'm just going to repeat those There were four.
The first one, think ahead, two to three thoughts before
you pick up the phone to call mom, sister, friend, business, associate,
whoever it may be. Number two, ask more follow up questions.
Number three give compliments. Love this. We often refrain from
(46:31):
doing it, but hey, it makes make someone feel good,
So give more compliments. And number four validate the other
parties 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.
Speaker 4 (46:49):
I'm going to give you a compliment. For your very
good listening, Alita. That was very impressing to thank you.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
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 mentioned before
we depart today.
Speaker 4 (47:07):
No, I think 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.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
And so we we didn't delve into that as deeply.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
But for those folks who are feeling excited about what
we talked about, I think that they can expect to
learn more about listening.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Well, take a moment right now. I mean, we don't
have to. You know, we're not on a time cut
me off, going to cut you off. We're absolutely let's
talk about listening.
Speaker 4 (47:38):
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 one on one. 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.
(48:01):
We all know that from sitting on zoom and you know,
looking and nodding and smiling, but actually we're over to
the sides or texting our friends or making a grocery list.
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
(48:24):
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. Paraphrasing multiple speakers in a group conversation.
These are verbal signals, and they're verbal expressions that you've
(48:48):
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 we heard them, not only with by
nodding and smiling, but by it with our words.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
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?
Speaker 3 (49:15):
It's a great question.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
I mean that every human being is a compilation of
the tiny moments of their whole life. But one thing
that I think is no coincidence is that I am
an identical twin. Oh and so I grew up with
like watching like an identical copy of myself sort of
navigating the social world and gave each other feedback constantly,
(49:40):
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 think in a way me
teaching at Harvard this course on conversation as a way
of trying to help other people achieve that level of
reality with the people in their lives.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
Is she a good conversationalist as well?
Speaker 4 (50:06):
Who's saying and that I'm a good conversationalist, Alida, I'm
feeling like that's a little narcissi as a machine.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
She's terrific.
Speaker 4 (50:13):
But even me saying that feels like a weird self toast,
because twins are bizarre.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
No, she's great. She's the cool twin for sure.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
Oh my gosh, Well Allison, 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 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
(50:41):
little things that we can be doing and be aware
of it, how cool is that?
Speaker 2 (50:48):
So?
Speaker 3 (50:48):
I mean, get plenty of chances to practice, Alita.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
Thank you, Alison, such a pleasure to be with you today.
I really appreciate your time. Can't wait for what's coming next.
Any preview of what's coming up.
Speaker 4 (51:00):
We'll see it well, I don't know, we'll see the
future is but the future is bright.
Speaker 3 (51:04):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
This was a blast.
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of ten 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 best selling author
Alison Woodbrooks. She is a trailblazer and behavioral science and
(00:23):
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 four tips
on being better conversationalists.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Goodbye, Live at Home.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Thank you Alison for joining me today. I can't wait
to get into this conversation, and I think above all,
I just really want to lay out right off the
top that having good conversation is good for our well being.
I mean, it's good for our health, right.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
It's good for everything.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Good conversation is the pathway to achieve all of our goals,
and certainly health and well being are among them.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yes, So let me start with the first question of
what goes through your mind ten seconds to Air ten
seconds before a conversation.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Oh my gosh, Well depends on what kind of conversation
we're talking about.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
I do a lot of teaching at.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Harvard, which is a sort of high stakes performance performative conversation.
I often 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. Seconds before you engage
(02:02):
with someone or with a group of people, those ten
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 two to three little ideas of things
that I should ask about during my conversation.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So let's also start with your class at Harvard. It's
called Talk, and it's actually in the Business School, not
in the communications department.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
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.
It's a great course.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
You learn so much.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
But at some point 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,
(03:07):
we have a lot of room for improvement and our
ability to have conversations with each other.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
So that's where my course comes from.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
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, when they turn
out to not be as easy as you think.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
And let's just for the sake of it, define We
know what a conversation is, but how do you define conversation?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Conversation is any exchange of words between two or more people.
That's it. There aren't words, it's not really a conversation.
There aren't two people, it's just you talking to yourself.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
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
(04:09):
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.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
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
(04:54):
doing that, and so in a way it's maybe we
are even less poised to have help these 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
(05:17):
all modes of communication actually email, texting, snapchat, face to face,
phone calls, all of it. And with this highlight to
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
(05:42):
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 the ability to have conversation evolved over
(06:02):
time is a really fascinating one. It depends on sort
of what time horizon 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 evolve
(06:24):
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 talk about what
the project was across multiple generations. And then scientists will
point to that and say, well, that means that they
(06:45):
were they had evolved the ability to talk to each other.
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 we're people talking
to each other at different points. How did that influence culture,
How did that reflect the way that they were organizing
(07:06):
their societies and to achieve what goals? Was it an
agrarian culture? Who was talking to whom and on what topics?
In the book, I start in the Age of Conversation,
which was in the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
It was a time when people were.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
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,
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
(07:45):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
But all along the way, right like that, there is
a basic.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
You know, as soon as humans evolve 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's 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,
(08:29):
feeling protected, learning about each other, and not being awkward while.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
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,
the big thing out here in la is Trader Joe's
(08:57):
and the people in Trader Joe's love to make small talk,
and I guess we could start with that as far
as small talk goes, because that is a communication tool.
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
(09:19):
no expert. I just go out there and talk. How
do you frame small talk or assess it?
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah? I didn't. I'm like you.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
I love small talk, I think because for two 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 two, 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
(09:50):
past it. I didn't realize how much how many people
out there hate small talk and how really trapped they
feel until I started teaching this course at Harvard called Talk,
and I realize, oh my god, I think ninety percent
of my students are really struggling with this like they're
really they dread it. It leads them to not initiate conversations. Overall,
(10:13):
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 and in the course, we talk
about a framework that people find quite helpful, which is
a topic pyramid, and the pyramid has three levels. The
base of the pyramid has this is topics that anyone
(10:34):
could talk about, so technically it's small talk.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
So it's stuff like.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
The weather, or how is 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 do know.
The problem isn't with those topics in general. The problem
is actually that people stay there too long. If you
stand topics that are completely depersonalized and sort of shallow,
(11:00):
it can very quickly start to feel meaningless 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's just needs to be something that's more interesting and
(11:22):
more and more personally relevant. And so when if you're
at the base of the pyramid and 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 alived and excited and like
(11:44):
we just had some sort of important discovery.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
You mentioned earlier about the different 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 cover station?
If we want good connection and good conversation, what are
the components of good conversation.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
It's a great quot So the definition of success in
conversation depends on what the speakers want to get.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Out of it.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
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 when
(12:37):
you start to look at people's goals and conversation, often
each person actually has a surprisingly complex constellation of goals.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
And so to organize the.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
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 that just
two axes. The X access is a relational things, so
I'm a 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
(13:12):
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 access. Then there's
an informational access, the why access. At the high end,
(13:33):
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 my 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 want to feel good, we
(13:54):
don't want to feel awkward.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
We need to leave on time.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
These are very imports that have nothing to do with
what we're talking about or how accurate is the information
that we're exchanging. And so you can think about asking people.
You could ask someone before 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 answer.
(14:19):
Like I wanted it to be fun. I wanted to
hear about the wedding that they went to. I wanted
to ask about 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. I wanted to keep this secret that my
friend told me to keep. Right. So if you get
people going, they start to realize, oh, I have a
(14:41):
lot of goals. When I'm talking to other people 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 five minutes, but I'm
also dying to hear every detail of the wedding that
you went to, those two things are going to be
and common inflict with each other. And of course I
(15:03):
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 that. I want to
guide to diving over the weekend. So we're just constantly
sort of colliding with each other in terms of what
we want out of a conversation.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
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 all aftrack.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
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. But
(15:56):
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?
Speaker 3 (16:10):
People who are better at figuring that out end up
being more successful conversationalists.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
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.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Them all together. So you know, this is a big
broad question. 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 been a sort of decades of
work talking about difficult conversations, or whole courses about negotiation
(16:56):
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 nine topics you might talk about in
a conversation, one of them or maybe two of them
might be more difficult than the others.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
So thinking at.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
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 too difficult,
(17:42):
those difficult moments can pop up in ways that you
do expect and can expect and in unexpected ways.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Right, you don't know what the other person is going
to bring you.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
You never you have no idea.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
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 going to 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 a
sort of new spontaneous context that you have to respond to.
(18:20):
So difficult things can cop up unexpectedly at any moment
and in ways that you didn't anticipate. You never know
when you're going to sort of poke a barb into
somebody right identity and hurt them or they hurt you,
and like, ooh, 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
(18:44):
the earth, so above the surface, these are things that
are we have differences that like maybe we're using the
wrong word that different words refer to the same thing,
or we're using the same word to mean different things,
or we're just sort of miscoordinating is like our words
and our gestures and stuff, we're just misunderstanding each other.
(19:04):
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,
(19:27):
as we said earlier, different goals.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I want to give you.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
Advice, but you don't want to hear it. I want
to talk about the wedding. You want to hear about
my skydiving. Like, different goals make things complicated. 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.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
To talk about that?
Speaker 4 (19:51):
Should we talk about it? If we knew, how do
we navigate it? And then at the very core of
the earth that this layer is our identities, and our
identities different 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
(20:13):
to use. So like, differences and difficulties can crap up
at any layer of the earth, and we, as good conversationalists,
need to be prepared to confront them in a way
that feels safe and productive.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
And it just sounds you lay all that out and
it's all very real. And I think when you talk
about 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
(20:51):
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 it's like we converse
pretty well. Am I off.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
It's so it's so funny.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
It's almost like I as a scientist, I waffle between
one moment, I'm like, it is a miracle that humans
can talk to each other at all, Like once you
when you look under the hood of a conversation, it's
so much more complicated and fraud than it seems. And
then then in the next moment, I'm like, you know what, though,
this is going pretty great for everybody. We learned to
(21:27):
do it when we're one 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.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Why would I need to work on this as a skill.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
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. Even if I'm already good,
I want to get better.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Mm hmmmmm 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?
Speaker 4 (22:24):
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.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Thousands of them.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
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 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 an accidentally makes
(22:59):
a jab they didn't 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. Again, still
we're able to understand each other. We are able to
look back on a conversation and say, oh, yeah, we
talked about like these four topics and I left feeling
(23:21):
pretty good about it.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Hm.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
And that to me is really it's both beautiful thing
about human existence that we evolve 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
do it better.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
It also makes me wonder, how often does one party
think the conversation went well and the other side doesn't
think so.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
This is the really scary thing. It's 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 mistake there's a lot of disagreement. Like, so
the things that we ruminate where you're like, oh, I
really shouldn't have asked that question, and it's driving me
(24:07):
crazy and I want to apologize. The other person might
not have even noticed that, they might 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.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
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?
Speaker 3 (24:42):
It's okay, this is good. We always say this in
my class.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Is like that uncomfortable feeling of confusion or discomfort means
that you're learning something new, and that can be the
eye openingness of it.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Is can be uncomfortable and weird. Yeah, so what can
you do about it?
Speaker 1 (25:02):
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?
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Okay, So my students develop this sense of sort of
hyper vigilance 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 hyper
fixated on everything that I'm saying and doing and what
the other person's doing. And that doesn't feel healthy. For sure.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Thinking about this all the time is not healthy.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
But what's so nice is that, like we know that's
going to dissipate after they're done with the class. The
idea of to be good to foster a little bit
more self awareness about what are your own strengths and
weaknesses in conversation, a little bit more vigilance or awareness
of like what's going on here is what can I
do before conversation starts that might make it go better?
(25:57):
How can I look back on a conversation that has
happened 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.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
How much does emotion play a part in conversation, in
good conversation?
Speaker 3 (26:17):
So much, so much so.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
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 anger, is just disinterest, like people,
(26:44):
you aren't talking about things that are mutually interesting. People
aren't leaning forward, they're not getting excited, and so you
can you can ruin a conversation in both of those directions.
One that sort of higher arousal negative emotions, but also
this low arousal negation of emotion is not good either.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
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
(27:27):
or bad conversation?
Speaker 4 (27:29):
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. There are lots of verbal cues too, So
if your partner has raised a topic, that's a good
(27:49):
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,
some like a mirror question where I've asked you you're
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
(28:11):
or like you're not sure where to go next, how
you're kind of biding your time. But there are so
many subtle cues of people's interests if they're uh, and
it's not necessarily interest in the conversation as a whole,
but again at the topic level, So if people start
laughing uncomfortably and there are longer pauses, or they start
(28:34):
repeating things they've already said, those are very reliable clues
that you should switch to a new topic, because that
means that topic is sort of running out of running
out of juice.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Okay, say that again, Say that again. I want to
make sure I follow.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
That uncomfortable laughter, 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. And
good conversationalists are good at switching assertively to something new.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
But that's making it sound like it's on the other person.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
So if you know, it's on everybody, Okay, it's on everybody. Yeah,
we should all be looking for these. And two of
those things are sort of mutual. Actually all of them
are mutual. You can be laughing uncomfortably or the other person.
Mutual pauses, these lulls or silences are always mutual. It
means that nobody's haying anything in those moments, and redundancies
can come from anybody. So you really should be on
(29:33):
the lookout for these clues in your partner but also
in yourself.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
But sometimes 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 twenty plus years, I realize he is
really thinking about his response.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Yeah, so and this is important.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
The distinction between who 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 if there are long pauses,
(30:23):
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, long pauses
can be really nice. It's a 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
(30:47):
signal that your relationship sucks, right, Like it's not like
being on a first date where the law is going
to be like, oh, this is not going well.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
And so it depends.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
So many of these contextual factors matter, including the duration
of your relationship.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
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.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
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. You can't possibly sort of express everything that's
(31:39):
in your mind and everything about who you are all
the time. And so I think there's a there's a
sort of undertone in the book I hope about, like
how you talk to people is who you are to them.
It's how they perceive your personality, your values, your thoughts,
(32:01):
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
different relationships and in different situations.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
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. And now I'm
in la 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 way people converse with each other
(32:36):
is really different. I have found that, and I have
often been accused of being a little more direct in
the average person, and even for 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.
(32:57):
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,
(33:19):
I feel a little abrasive. What's going on there?
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Let me ask you a follow up question.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Do you feel like you do you shift the level
of your directness depending on where you are?
Speaker 1 (33:31):
For sure?
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yeah? That's good, so good? It is okay, good, Yeah,
so good.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
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
(34:00):
person I'm with, what are they looking for? What's appropriate?
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?
Speaker 3 (34:21):
I think being a good.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
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, So of
course you should adjust your pack. One way to say
it is like, I'm sure you didn't bring the same
(34:44):
conversational style that you used in the newsroom back home
when you were like at bathtime with your babies right
right right, 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 an authentic that
makes you a savvy and considerate conversationalist.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
All right, well you made me feel much better, Thank
you very much.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
And you feel it.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
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 sort of assimilation, not just as when
you move to a new place, but like even with
it from one conversation to the next. The idea of
sort of assimilating or accommodating and mirroring the person that
(35:33):
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.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
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 have been offended by what
the other one said. You know, like, hey, notice the
(36:08):
dishes are there or something, you know, like when you're
gonna get whatever, but I feel like it is a
useful tool just from experience. How does that play into
good conversation?
Speaker 4 (36:20):
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
going to like stumble upon a moment of humor or
a moment of warmth, and we appreciate it. It's nice,
(36:42):
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. A psychologists, when we study 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
(37:05):
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 sparkler fizz that's like,
oh yeah, okay, now back, this is great again. And
it's just it's just incredibly important. And as you said,
(37:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
And appreciation for other people's levity.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
I don't. I'm going to ask you more about that,
and I want to get to the kind of takeaways
for people. But before we kind of get to that,
I just want to know a little bit about negotiation.
I actually took a class at a business school class
on negotiation. I thought it was incredibly interesting and beneficial
(38:08):
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
(38:29):
teach it and how it relates to conversation. Also.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
Yeah, So the definition of negotiation is anytime two or
more parties disagree and are working towards agreement. It's a
very sort of broad definition. Almost any time you stumble
upon a moment of difficulty or disagreement during a conversation,
it sort of all of a sudden becomes this little
(38:53):
mini negotiation, and often the sort of skill that you
need in those moment. Two 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 a learning mindset. If you
go in with the goal to persuade another person to
(39:16):
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.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
If you come instead with a.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
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
(39:47):
push down that instinct to persuade, by the end of
the conversation or the negotiation, are more likely to have
persuaded the other person because you seem more interested and reasonable.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Right, I think that is so oh important. I mean
I never noticed that subtlety. I think of it more
as curiosity. But yeah, right, if you're willing to learn
from the other person, they must feel great, not just.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
Willing to like dying to learn like you. All you
want is to understand their perspective. You don't want to
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 not effective. And so
these negotiation courses, which are in every business school and
law school are terrific. They are They give you very
(40:34):
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 too
to overcome them.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
But that's it. That is really a great starting place
of just the learning coming into it with a with
a learning, there's nothing more annoying than someone who's trying
to persuade you right off the start and you it's like,
you don't even care what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
And it comes in every context, right, whether it's around
the dinner table at Thanksgiving dinner, or and the you're
buying a new car, 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
(41:26):
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 I'm going
to sell my company, my new entrepreneurial venture to you,
or I'm going to persuade you to do this thing
that I might 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
(41:47):
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, And
that's an incredible skill if you can get better at it.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Right, So, what are the you mentioned one just now,
But what are some of the most common pitfalls that
you see in conversation?
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Oh so many.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
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
(42:34):
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,
flow up. You'll always get out of small talk by
asking follow up questions too, because it gets personal and
(42:57):
informative really quickly. Other type of question that is awesome
our open ended questions. Let's 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?
(43:18):
Or why were you late? Why did you do that
this morning? Why questions can feel very accusatory. So anyway,
but top line advice is just ask more questions.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Ask more questions. Okay, so let's give people a couple
of takeaways. You talked about questions. We'll get there. Let's
let's give people three four takeaways if they want to
start today having good conversation or improving their conversation. What
can we do today to improve our conversations?
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Okay, I'll give It's hard to choose just three, but
I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
You can choose as many as you want.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
Number One, head about conversations and think about to think
of two to three 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
(44:21):
topics not just for work meetings, like even when you're
gonna call your mom, like think ahead about what you
want to ask her, what to talk about prep topics.
Number two, 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 what
they have to say. Number three, give more compliments. Oh,
(44:46):
if 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.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Tell people.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
And then number four, 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? Makes
sense that you feel sad about? Why makes sense that
(45:28):
you feel excited about block? So validating their feelings first,
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
(45:50):
about your mom. Okay, let me put on my grumpy
reviewer at for a second and say, maybe.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
What your d mom is doing doesn't make sense right.
Speaker 4 (45:58):
Like, so before you go on to disagree with them,
try and validate an affirm because everybody needs it. Everybody's
dying for a friend out there, and you can do
that even if you go on to disagree with people.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Okay, so I'm just going to repeat those There were four.
The first one, think ahead, two to three thoughts before
you pick up the phone to call mom, sister, friend, business, associate,
whoever it may be. Number two, ask more follow up questions.
Number three give compliments. Love this. We often refrain from
(46:31):
doing it, but hey, it makes make someone feel good,
So give more compliments. And number four validate the other
parties 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.
Speaker 4 (46:49):
I'm going to give you a compliment. For your very
good listening, Alita. That was very impressing to thank you.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
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 mentioned before
we depart today.
Speaker 4 (47:07):
No, I think 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.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
And so we we didn't delve into that as deeply.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
But for those folks who are feeling excited about what
we talked about, I think that they can expect to
learn more about listening.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Well, take a moment right now. I mean, we don't
have to. You know, we're not on a time cut
me off, going to cut you off. We're absolutely let's
talk about listening.
Speaker 4 (47:38):
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 one on one. 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.
(48:01):
We all know that from sitting on zoom and you know,
looking and nodding and smiling, but actually we're over to
the sides or texting our friends or making a grocery list.
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
(48:24):
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. Paraphrasing multiple speakers in a group conversation.
These are verbal signals, and they're verbal expressions that you've
(48:48):
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 we heard them, not only with by
nodding and smiling, but by it with our words.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
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?
Speaker 3 (49:15):
It's a great question.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
I mean that every human being is a compilation of
the tiny moments of their whole life. But one thing
that I think is no coincidence is that I am
an identical twin. Oh and so I grew up with
like watching like an identical copy of myself sort of
navigating the social world and gave each other feedback constantly,
(49:40):
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 think in a way me
teaching at Harvard this course on conversation as a way
of trying to help other people achieve that level of
reality with the people in their lives.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
Is she a good conversationalist as well?
Speaker 4 (50:06):
Who's saying and that I'm a good conversationalist, Alida, I'm
feeling like that's a little narcissi as a machine.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
She's terrific.
Speaker 4 (50:13):
But even me saying that feels like a weird self toast,
because twins are bizarre.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
No, she's great. She's the cool twin for sure.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
Oh my gosh, Well Allison, 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 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
(50:41):
little things that we can be doing and be aware
of it, how cool is that?
Speaker 2 (50:48):
So?
Speaker 3 (50:48):
I mean, get plenty of chances to practice, Alita.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
Thank you, Alison, such a pleasure to be with you today.
I really appreciate your time. Can't wait for what's coming next.
Any preview of what's coming up.
Speaker 4 (51:00):
We'll see it well, I don't know, we'll see the
future is but the future is bright.
Speaker 3 (51:04):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
This was a blast.
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