Alison Wood Brooks: Why most people quietly hate small talk

1. 0:00 – 2:20

   Intro

   1. SBSteven Bartlett0:00

      People really care about what's making them disliked-

   2. ABAlison Wood Brooks0:03

      Mm.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett0:03

      ... and they really wanna know how to be liked.

   4. ABAlison Wood Brooks0:04

      Okay, so first, this is an exercise that I do in my class at Harvard called 10 Questions to Fall In Like.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett0:10

      So if I ask someone those questions, they're gonna like me?

   6. ABAlison Wood Brooks0:12

      It's a great starting point. But let's talk about this, because there are gonna be little clues about how to be better liked, and it's the most teachable, practical, scientifically rigorous framework in the world for communication. Do you wanna hear about it, Steven?

   7. SBSteven Bartlett0:25

      Of course I wanna hear about it. I wanna be the most persuasive, influential, likable talker in the world, so I shall follow your lead.

   8. ABAlison Wood Brooks0:32

      Oh my gosh. (laughs)

   9. SBSteven Bartlett0:33

      It's a lot of power.

   10. ABAlison Wood Brooks0:34

       I love it. I love it so much.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett0:36

       Harvard Professor Alison Wood Brooks is a behavioral scientist.

   12. ABAlison Wood Brooks0:39

       Who has spent two decades studying conversational science.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett0:42

       And she's revealing the communication mistakes we all make. The art of negotiation. And how to get anyone to like you.

   14. ABAlison Wood Brooks0:49

       We all get to adulthood and we feel like conversation should be easy, but as a scientist, when you look under the hood, you realize this is why we have so many awkward moments, why we say things that we shouldn't, why we are boring, why we get angry and hostile, and there's very clear strategies to help us with all of that. Like one of my biggest findings was how we reframe social anxiety as excitement, which makes you focus on opportunities rather than threats, and that paper ended up being featured in Inside Out, the movie. And then there's small talk.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett1:16

       I hate small talk.

   16. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:17

       I'm gonna help you reframe that because it's really important, but the mistake that people make is that they stay there way too long and they need to move up this topic pyramid.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett1:24

       What about in a digital age? Do we need to start communicating differently?

   18. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:27

       Yeah. There's clear things that we should do to make our text-based communication better, and we'll go through all of them.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett1:33

       And you said you'd done an interesting study recently about male friendship.

   20. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:36

       Yes, and it's quite troubling.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett1:39

       So how can I make more friends as a man?

   22. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:41

       Yeah, let's talk about that.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett1:45

       I see messages all the time in the comments section that some of you didn't realize you didn't subscribe, so if you could do me a favor and double-check if you're a subscriber to this channel, that would be tremendously appreciated. It's the simple, it's the free thing that anybody that watches this show frequently can do to help us here to keep everything going in this show, in the trajectory it's on. So please do double-check if you've subscribed, and, uh, thank you so much, because in a strange way, you are- you're part of our history, and you're on this journey with us, and I appreciate you for that. So yeah, thank you.

2. 2:20 – 4:24

   People Need This to Communicate Well

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:20

      Professor Alison Wood Brooks, what is it that you do and why do you think it matters so much to the world?

   2. ABAlison Wood Brooks2:28

      I am a professor at Harvard, and I'm a behavioral scientist. I study how people talk to each other and how they can do it better. I teach a course that I created there called Talk. I wrote a book about it, also called Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett2:47

      And if someone's chosen to listen to this conversation, and they've just clicked on it, and they're thinking, you know, "Should I stay or should I- should I go?" what promise can we give them if they stay and listen to this conversation that is based on the work you've done on your book and all the research you've done? What is it that you think the average person can come away with that will have a meaningful impact on their day-to-day life?

   4. ABAlison Wood Brooks3:07

      All of life is about relationships, and relationships are about talking. So if they can learn even one strategy that helps them in their conversations, it will massively improve their lives. If you think of everything from work to romantic relationships, friendships, productivity, all of it hinges on having excellent conversations.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett3:32

      But conversations are easy, right? Like-

   6. ABAlison Wood Brooks3:33

      (laughs)

   7. SBSteven Bartlett3:34

      ... you just- you just talk.

   8. ABAlison Wood Brooks3:35

      We all feel that way. We all get to adulthood and we feel like conversation should be easy because we started learning how to do it when we were one, one and a half years old, as toddlers, and we practice doing it with an enormous number of partners, conversation partners, every day of our lives, so by the time we become adults, it feels like we should be experts, like we should be great at it. But as a scientist, when you look under the hood and you see, oh my goodness, all of the complexity that's happening under the hood, you realize, oh, this is why we have so many awkward moments, why we say things that we shouldn't, why we don't say things that we should, why we hurt each other, why we get defensive, um, why we are boring, why we get angry and hostile, and there are very clear strategies to help us with all of that.

3. 4:24 – 6:09

   Giving Wrong Impressions

   1. SBSteven Bartlett4:24

      As you were saying that, I was thinking, do you think there's a lot of people that are going through life giving off the wrong impression because they don't know how to talk? Maybe they are disliked, maybe they are misunderstood because they haven't mastered the science of how to have a great conversation.

   2. ABAlison Wood Brooks4:40

      On my worst days I worry that everybody's walking around being misunderstood. When you think about talking, uh, even as I'm talking right now, there's no way to take the entire contents of your mind and all of your personality and say it out loud, and so we're always curating. We're always choosing what- some subset of stuff to share with other people through conversation, and almo- no one is doing that perfectly, and I- and I fear that many people are- are really struggling with it.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett5:10

      If you had to pinpoint just a few things that people want when they think about becoming a great conversationalist, like what is it that we actually are aiming at? Is it to be... You know, what is that?

   4. ABAlison Wood Brooks5:21

      Yeah. Usually people want to be liked, even loved. Usually we want to enjoy our conversations, to not have them be miserable. We want to feel safe and protected and- and not have it be dreadful and time-consuming, and we wanna achieve professional goals, so advancing and achieving and making great decisions. So already, the very basic drives of what people are trying to achieve in conversation are actually a little bit more complicated than just like, "Oh, we're looking for connection." Um, and then when you really dig into it, within all of the goals that people want in those categories, it's like a vast constellation of- of motives.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett6:01

      I would like you to teach me how to talk really, really well.

   6. ABAlison Wood Brooks6:04

      I don't know if you need my help that much, Steven, but I'd love to... Even the best communicators have room for improvement.

4. 6:09 – 11:17

   Being a Better Speaker and Group Conversations

   1. ABAlison Wood Brooks6:09

   2. SBSteven Bartlett6:09

      No, I think I do.

   3. ABAlison Wood Brooks6:10

      Yeah. (laughs)

   4. SBSteven Bartlett6:10

      I think I do 'cause I, I, you know- this, I was thinking about this last, this last week and all the conversations I've had, the different types of conversations.

   5. ABAlison Wood Brooks6:17

      Yeah.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett6:17

      I had one conversation where I met someone's family for the first time, who works with me-

   7. ABAlison Wood Brooks6:23

      Yeah.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett6:23

      ... and it was, you know, it was a little bit nerve-wracking because-

   9. ABAlison Wood Brooks6:26

      Yeah.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett6:26

       ... that cont- you know, people have, have these moments where they meet the in-laws or whatever, or they meet, um, for me, it's often meeting someone who works for me's family I find quite nerve-wracking 'cause they're-

   11. ABAlison Wood Brooks6:34

       Yeah, yeah.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett6:34

       ... like, I think they're kind of probably judging me. I've also had difficult business conversations where-

   13. ABAlison Wood Brooks6:38

       Because they are judging you.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett6:39

       Yeah, they are judging me (laughs)

   15. ABAlison Wood Brooks6:40

       (laughs)

   16. SBSteven Bartlett6:40

       And I can feel it-

   17. ABAlison Wood Brooks6:41

       Yeah.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett6:41

       ... and as I go towards those conversations, I'm like, "Oh my God." (babbles)

   19. ABAlison Wood Brooks6:44

       (laughs)

   20. SBSteven Bartlett6:44

       And then I end up just like freezing or being a little bit paralyzed. And you'd think as so- someone like me who does this for a living, finds conversations easy. I absolutely do not. (laughs)

   21. ABAlison Wood Brooks6:52

       You, I, I actually, the more, uh, you know, I talk to very high level C-suite, um, very successful people, and in fact, the higher and more successful people are, the more likely they are to be aware that this is really important and that they have room for improvement. It's almost like you're aware that this skill is probably what helped you get where you are, and therefore you want to get even better at it. And you're keenly aware of when you have awkward moments or make mistakes or missteps and you're like, "I would really like to get that out of my life, please." (laughs)

   22. SBSteven Bartlett7:26

       Amen. I, like, ruminate on an awkward encounter I had, like, two and a half weeks ago-

   23. ABAlison Wood Brooks7:29

       Of course.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett7:30

       ... and I was like, "I should have just da da da da." But actually in reading some of your work, I thought about what I could have done, and we'll get to this, this idea of pre- preparing for those moments, which I typically don't because I assume I should be a natural.

   25. ABAlison Wood Brooks7:41

       Can I ask you, as you were talking about these different examples of things that you're ruminating about, um, do you feel like you have a, a, a weakness or like a, a recurring thing that you suspect you need to get better at?

   26. SBSteven Bartlett7:55

       I think one of them is I am a bit of an introvert in my sort of self-classification.

   27. ABAlison Wood Brooks8:00

       Mm-hmm.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett8:00

       And as people know who I am well in the world, I think I've become more introverted.

   29. ABAlison Wood Brooks8:05

       Mm.

   30. SBSteven Bartlett8:06

       So, and sometimes that can be perceived in the wrong way. So my like happy state is kind of being alone-
5. 11:17 – 12:26

   Experimenting With Communication Skills With My Identical Twin

   1. ABAlison Wood Brooks11:17

   2. SBSteven Bartlett11:17

      How has being an identical twin been formative in this regard?

   3. ABAlison Wood Brooks11:20

      Hmm. So my twin's name is Sarah. Um, being an identical twin, I'm s- uh, there are many things that are similar to being a close sibling, I'm sure, but an identical twin, it's like you have another version of you in the world. And we share a bedroom, we were on the same sports teams, we played in band together, and so it's sort of like watching a version of yourself up close, and I got to see how she failed and thought, "Oh, well, I'm, I'm gonna avoid that." (laughs)

   4. SBSteven Bartlett11:49

      Mm-hmm.

   5. ABAlison Wood Brooks11:49

      And I would see how she succeeds. She hits a, an amazing joke, she answers, answers an amazing question, I know that I'm able to do that because we have the same DNA, the same abilities. In a sort of subconscious way, I think I've just been chasing-... trying to help other people find that in their relationships, uh, in their friendships, in their romantic relationships, in their work collaborations. Because I've gotten to see how amazing that can be for two human beings, how close you can be and how much you can actually understand each other when you communicate well.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett12:21

      And what research have you done? Like, what are the reference points you're pulling on?

   7. ABAlison Wood Brooks12:24

      Yeah.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett12:25

      Do you do your own research?

6. 12:26 – 18:33

   The Science on How to Reframe Anxiety

   1. SBSteven Bartlett12:26

   2. ABAlison Wood Brooks12:26

      So much.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett12:27

      And give me a flavor of the, the, the volume of the two.

   4. ABAlison Wood Brooks12:29

      Too much probably. I, uh, it's almost like I'm a recovering academic. I've been working in academia doing behavioral science research for 20 years. I know I look impossibly young.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett12:39

      (laughs)

   6. ABAlison Wood Brooks12:40

      Um, I started in graduate school studying emotions, especially anxiety. And, and not the kind of anxiety that requires medication or therapy necessarily, but the types of social anxiety that people feel constantly all day long, and figuring out, "Okay, how does it affect different behaviors like how we negotiate, or how we take advice from each other, or how we perform when we're public speaking?" Uh, these types of things. And then figuring out strategies and tips to help people manage that anxiety more effectively. And one of my biggest findings was how we reframe anxiety as excitement. Uh, it's a very easy flip to move from an ... It, essentially, they're the same emotion because they're both high arousal, high energy, high cortisol, a stress hormone, um, high heart rate, uh, sweaty palms. You just change how you think about it in your mind, so literally saying things out loud like, "I'm excited," change y- how ... your appraisal of it. So you actually experience excitement. It helps you perform a lot better in a lot of different ways.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett13:40

      So, you did a study in 2011?

   8. ABAlison Wood Brooks13:42

      Yes.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett13:42

      Was it?

   10. ABAlison Wood Brooks13:43

       Yes.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett13:43

       The, the, uh, Nervous Nelly negotiation study?

   12. ABAlison Wood Brooks13:45

       So that one was about negotiation specifically. The, um, this excitement reappraisal, the paper's called Get Excited, and that paper actually ended up being featured in, uh, Inside Out, the movie.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett13:57

       Oh, wow.

   14. ABAlison Wood Brooks13:57

       Yeah. There's a great scene where the main character's about to have a panic attack and Joy sneaks into the little cubicle farm of Minions and says, "Stop drawing all of these projections about how things are gonna go badly, and instead draw how things could go well."

   15. SBSteven Bartlett14:12

       (laughs)

   16. ABAlison Wood Brooks14:12

       It's so great. I was sitting in the movie theater with my kids and (laughs) my husband kind of looked down the way and he was like, "Is that your thing?" And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's my thing."

   17. SBSteven Bartlett14:20

       So what d- what did that study show, those two studies, the Nervous Nelly one, but also the

   18. NANarrator14:24

       Yeah.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett14:24

       ... the one on excitement?

   20. ABAlison Wood Brooks14:25

       When we feel anxious, as most people do in negotiations because it's an intense environment, uh, filled with uncertainty and a lack of control, which is the recipe for anxiety, we tend- we wanna escape. We either want to relieve that feeling by making concessions or get out of there, right? Just exit the interaction. That was the main finding of the Nervous Nelly anxiety and negotiation paper. The reframing anxiety as excitement paper is lots of different ways to convince yourself that you're feeling excited just by saying "I'm excited" out loud, and in doing so, that makes you focus on opportunities rather than threats, how things could go well rather than poorly, and it has incredible downstream consequences. It helps you sing better. It helps you do public speaking better. It helps you collaborate more effectively. Um, so it's just a very ... it's a very powerful intervention.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett15:15

       And what was the, sort of, mechanics of the study?

   22. ABAlison Wood Brooks15:17

       So, we would have ... bring people in. You tell them, "Hey, Steven, you're gonna be singing karaoke in front of an audience." People start to feel quite nervous about this, naturally. Then, right before they're gonna get up and sing the song, we say, "Okay, an experimenter's gonna ask you how you're feeling. Some of you, we want you to say you're feeling excited, and some of you, we want you to say you're feeling anxious." And that alone, when I say, "Steven, how are you feeling right now?" And you say ...

   23. SBSteven Bartlett15:46

       Anxious.

   24. ABAlison Wood Brooks15:46

       "Great. Okay. Let's go sing the song." You go. People who said, "I'm anxious," sing worse compared to people who say, "I'm excited." They get out there, they're more in tempo, more on pitch. They have better rhythm. And we s- measure it with a software when they're actually singing in front of the experimenters.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett16:04

       Just by me saying, "I am excited."

   26. ABAlison Wood Brooks16:07

       Yeah.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett16:07

       So the other day when I met my team member's family, I sh- I should have been saying to myself, "I'm so excited to meet them."

   28. ABAlison Wood Brooks16:14

       Among other things.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett16:15

       Okay.

   30. ABAlison Wood Brooks16:15

       So th- so this ... And this is important. It doesn't always work, right? If you're terrified-
7. 18:33 – 20:02

   If You're Nervous, You're More Likely to Make a Bad Decision

   1. ABAlison Wood Brooks18:33

   2. SBSteven Bartlett18:33

      And this negotiation study you did, what was the mechanism for that?

   3. ABAlison Wood Brooks18:36

      Yeah. That was a more class of the- the literature, people have been studying negotiations for decades now, and there's a really great negotiation course at almost every business school and law school that's based in all of this rigorous work. What had not been studied on in terms of negotiating are people's emotions. It was, uh, it was about 15 years ago that people, e- including scholars, came to the point where we were like, "Oh, people's feelings matter." When they feel nervous or when they feel angry, that's actually an important distinction, how you feel on the inside versus what you're expressing to your counterpart. So in this paper, what we found is as a base rate, most people feel anxious before and during a negotiation, because it is an intense environment. It's probably one of the greatest benefits of taking a negotiation course, is that you just get reps, and so you get more comfortable with the, uh, process of doing it. That might be the biggest takeaway from doing a training course like that. And so in this paper, we have that sort of base rate, "Look, everybody's feeling anxious," um, and then what are the downstream consequences of feeling anxious? And what we find pe- we had people doing negotiations, playing these negotiation games. What we find is that people are much more likely to sort of leave prematurely or make more concessions to relieve the feelings of anxiety.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett19:51

      Make bad offers?

   5. ABAlison Wood Brooks19:52

      Yeah. Or, who, depends on your goals, right? If you, if your goal is to claim a lot of value, then making concessions and giving money away is not going to help

8. 20:02 – 24:26

   Asking for a Salary Raise

   1. ABAlison Wood Brooks20:02

      you with that.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett20:02

      So if I'm asking my boss for a pay rise, for example-

   3. ABAlison Wood Brooks20:04

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett20:05

      ... and I, and I'm very, very nervous, I'm much more likely to, um, lower my expectations, accept a bad offer, and leave the situation prematurely?

   5. ABAlison Wood Brooks20:15

      Absolutely.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett20:16

      So what do I do about that?

   7. ABAlison Wood Brooks20:17

      Oh, so many things. W- if we're talking about asking for a raise, um, what you want is to go in there with as much sort of personal power as you can. One way to do that is to get another job offer somewhere else first. So when you talk about this as the, a best alternative to a negotiated agreement, a BATNA. You wanna strengthen your BATNA. So if your boss says, "No, I'm not giving you a raise," you can legitimately say, "I'm gonna go take this other job offer, 'cause I just got a better offer from the guy down the street."

   8. SBSteven Bartlett20:47

      What if you don't want...

   9. ABAlison Wood Brooks20:49

      To leave.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett20:49

       ... to take the oth- the other offer?

   11. ABAlison Wood Brooks20:51

       Then you need to be honest with yourself about how much power you have in the negotiation. You also probably, a lot of people make the mistake of going in sort of hands on hips like, "I deserve more money." There are lots of questions that you should ask first to know, "Am I negotiating with the right person? Does my company have the funds to actually give me more money? Why, what, how can I justify this in a way that's compelling to them?" Right? It's- it's not up to you. It's that the- they need to want to keep you and to feel like you are being fairly and generously rewarded, and all of that requires asking a lot of questions before you go in and start making demands.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett21:31

       In that context, how would you try and persuade me if you worked for me? So what would you say? Because I do think, you know, it's very easy to get someone's backup when you walk in and ask them for money-

   13. ABAlison Wood Brooks21:40

       Yeah.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett21:40

       ... if you do it

   15. NANarrator21:41

       the right way.

   16. ABAlison Wood Brooks21:41

       100%. I, it's hard for me to answer this, because, um, maybe this is sort of my personal values. It's almost like I'm taking off my expert hat for a moment. I think the best way to get a raise is to be awesome. Do things that are valuable, and your company is going to give you more money without even having to ask for it. So in my heart, eh, this question of, "How do we have a conversation where I ask for more money?" it's almost like I- I would hope that you don't even get to that point. If you are truly making yourself almost irreplaceable and incredibly valuable, your boss is going to be coming to you and saying, "I have to keep you around. You're amazing. You're so incredible." That's a much easier conversation to have than walking in and saying, "I'm- I'm r- It's not fair. I don't make enough."

   17. SBSteven Bartlett22:31

       I do think that holds to be true. I think that generally if people's first priority is what they want, then they often don't tend to get what they want. But people who have the priority, their first priority is what I can give, tend to get what they want.

   18. ABAlison Wood Brooks22:44

       That's right. It's so, um, it's a bit of a sort of like a mindset shift. If you prioritize other people's needs, if you're thinking about what your boss finds valuable, what the organization finds valuable, and you rise to meet those needs, you make yourself valuable, which is going to come back to you. Um, hopefully, that's what, that's the hope. And I think often that is the case. Almost always that is the case. In the talk framework, and we'll get there, the K is for kindness. And it's not kindness in the sense of like altruism, because, "I'm gonna help my boss and do everything he wants because I care so deeply." That can be part of it, but also it's this sort of loop of like, well, if you give him everything every, if you give the organization what it needs, that's gonna come back to you. You will actually become valuable and get what you want as well. That's how-

   19. SBSteven Bartlett23:34

       Mm-hmm.

   20. ABAlison Wood Brooks23:34

       ... relationships work.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett23:36

       Usually when I interview people, I lead the way. Today, I'm gonna follow.

   22. ABAlison Wood Brooks23:39

       (laughs)

   23. SBSteven Bartlett23:40

       Okay? Because you know the outcome that me and the audience wanna get to.

   24. ABAlison Wood Brooks23:44

       Yeah.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett23:44

       So I have all this stuff here.

   26. ABAlison Wood Brooks23:46

       I love it. Props.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett23:47

       I have all these props.

   28. ABAlison Wood Brooks23:48

       Fabulous.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett23:49

       I have these blocks that for anyone that can't see the conversation, say T-A-L-K on them, talk.

   30. ABAlison Wood Brooks23:54

       Fabulous.
9. 24:26 – 32:31

   The Conversational Compass

   1. SBSteven Bartlett24:26

      It was a conversation I had with my girlfriend, where I just wanted her to know that I accept the fact that I fucked up.

   2. ABAlison Wood Brooks24:30

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett24:31

      Like, I- I- I accept the fact that I should have been more present in a particular moment and I wasn't, and I just wanted to, like...

   4. ABAlison Wood Brooks24:38

      Own it.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett24:39

      O- Own it.

   6. ABAlison Wood Brooks24:40

      And- and convey that to her.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett24:41

      And convey that I'm sorry and I get it.

   8. ABAlison Wood Brooks24:42

      Yep.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett24:43

      And this is not one where I'm gonna try and justify my whatever. No, actually, I- I- I- objectively, I should have been more attentive and present.

   10. ABAlison Wood Brooks24:52

       Yep.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett24:52

       I just wanted her to know that.

   12. ABAlison Wood Brooks24:53

       Yep. So you sort of have an admission of blameworthiness. Uh, why? Why did you want to do that?

   13. SBSteven Bartlett25:00

       Because I felt that she was right, and I regretted my- my behavior.

   14. ABAlison Wood Brooks25:04

       Yep.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett25:05

       So, sometimes I don't feel like she's right. Sometimes I'm here to, you know, respond. In this particular scenario, I thought, "Do you know what? Actually, on balance, I should have been more present." This was an important time for her, and in hindsight, t- ah, that's not how I wished I behaved.

   16. ABAlison Wood Brooks25:22

       Okay. How did you want her to feel during and at the end of this conversation?

   17. SBSteven Bartlett25:30

       Understood.

   18. ABAlison Wood Brooks25:31

       Mm-hmm.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett25:31

       And... uh, yeah, really unders- that was really it. It's like I wanted her to feel understood and, I guess, like, connected to me. But it's more, it's really more I just wanted her to not worry that I didn't understand. So she didn't have to say it again.

   20. ABAlison Wood Brooks25:49

       Mm-hmm.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett25:49

       I just wanted her to know that I- I get it.

   22. ABAlison Wood Brooks25:51

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett25:52

       And that in future, I wish I would behave differently.

   24. ABAlison Wood Brooks25:55

       How did you want to feel during and after this conversation?

   25. SBSteven Bartlett25:59

       I guess I wanted to offload the guilt.

   26. ABAlison Wood Brooks26:01

       Aha.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett26:02

       (laughs)

   28. ABAlison Wood Brooks26:02

       Aha. Good. Good.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett26:03

       Yeah, 'cause I felt bad. I felt like, "No, actually..."

   30. ABAlison Wood Brooks26:05

       And it was weighing on your conscience.
10. 32:31 – 37:17

    How People Should Really Apologize and When It's Too Much

    1. ABAlison Wood Brooks32:31

       Yeah?

    2. SBSteven Bartlett32:31

       Got, got you.

    3. ABAlison Wood Brooks32:32

       Do you have a sense of where your goals from that conversation that you described would be?

    4. SBSteven Bartlett32:36

       Apologize...

    5. ABAlison Wood Brooks32:37

       Mm-hmm.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett32:37

       ... which is high relational and not very high on informational, 'cause I didn't have a bunch, I didn't have a lot to say. It was just very simply about letting her know that I was sorry, and it wasn't, I didn't have a big explanation or a bunch of excuses or justifications. It was just, "Listen, I fucked up." Yeah, I get it.

    7. ABAlison Wood Brooks32:54

       Can we talk about apologies for a sec?

    8. SBSteven Bartlett32:55

       Sure.

    9. ABAlison Wood Brooks32:56

       I love that you chose this as your example, because... And the way you're describing it, I love how you're saying, um, "I didn't go into a huge explanation of why I did it or anything." More people should apologize that way. A lot of people, uh, their instinct when they're apologizing is to revisit the problem and sort of make excuses or explain why they m- did the thing wrong. It's not effective. Um, what is more effective is what you're describing, taking ownership and saying, "Look, I, I just messed up, and I'm so sorry, and I feel awful about it." And the most effective component of an apology is actually making a promise to change. If you say to your girlfriend, "I've realized I messed up here. I'm not gonna do it again. Here's how I'm gonna be different in the future," like a concrete plan, it's so compelling to hear that you've thought about that (laughs) and that... And then it's measurable, because she can see in the future, do, do you actually live up to that promise (laughs) ? Do you follow through on this promise to never do, make the mistake again?

    10. SBSteven Bartlett33:56

        Is there a point where you can apologize too much?

    11. ABAlison Wood Brooks33:59

        We studied this. I ran some studies on this. Um, we started by looking at, um, frequency of apologies made during normal conversations. It's quite rare for someone to over-apologize, but it does seem like within one conversation, if you apologize more than twice, it starts to be more of a reminder of the bad thing that happened. Like, you just keep revisiting it, and it brings you back to the negativity rather than moving forward. We also studied apologies in a really large dataset of parole hearings, like among people who had committed really serious crimes, and we looked at the types of apologies that they made in their par- during their parole hearings. And there, it seems like you actually can't over-apologize. Like, more is better, and again, the most effective component is making a promise to change in the future. Um, "H- I'm gonna go, um, when I get out, I'm gonna be in AA. I'm gonna live, live with my grandmother. Here's the job I'm gonna do." Whatever the plan is, um, you're actually more likely to get out of jail.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett35:01

        And going into those difficult conversations, is there anything one needs to do to prepare?

    13. ABAlison Wood Brooks35:06

        Hmm.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett35:07

        Because we, our lives are full of difficult conversations, and actually it's the avoidance of them that ends up messing up our lives the most. So when you think about difficult conversations that we all have to have or with difficult people, is, do I have to prepare for that?

    15. ABAlison Wood Brooks35:18

        So this is very natural. Almost every person that you hear talk about communication tends to focus on difficult conversations. I'm gonna suggest to you that that is a very narrow view of the conversational world, actually. And in fact, thinking about difficult conversations is, uh, uh, a little bit of a misnomer. It's not like there are some conversations that are difficult and some that are easy.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett35:41

        Mm-hmm.

    17. ABAlison Wood Brooks35:41

        It's that in every conversation, there can be moments of difference, where we use different language to mean the same thing, where we have an incongruence in our emotions, where we have a difference in motives. "I wanna give you advice, but you don't wanna take it." Or something dips down to a difference in our identities. "I'm American, and you are a Brit." So any time you encounter these little fleeting moments of difference in all of these different ways, and maybe there was an image here. Let me see. No, it's not here. Um, it looks like layers. We talk about it like layers of the Earth, and above the surface are the words and sounds that you hear while people are talking. Right at the surface are people's emotions. So I feel excited, but you feel tired (laughs) and bored.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett36:25

        Mm-hmm.

    19. ABAlison Wood Brooks36:25

        That's gonna be, uh, tough. Right below that are people's motives. What I want to achieve, it gets back to the compass. What I want to achieve is different than what you want to achieve. We're all walking around with a compass in our mind, and they're different from each other. Right below that are our beliefs.... right? I believe that immigration is a problem, and you believe that AI is a way bigger problem than human immigration. (laughs) Um, how do we talk about that, in a way? And then all of it get, gets down to the sort of hot magma in those layers of the Earth model of our identities. So even an easy conversation, we're on a date, or we're two spouses are driving in a car, or friends are hanging out watching a movie, like, you can stumble upon these little moments of difficulty any time for any reason. And you need to have the skill set to be able to make sure the c- temperature doesn't get too hot.

11. 37:17 – 41:46

    The Validation Trick in Any Dispute

    1. ABAlison Wood Brooks37:17

    2. SBSteven Bartlett37:17

       What is that skill set?

    3. ABAlison Wood Brooks37:18

       There's fabulous research on this. I have found it incredibly helpful in my life. Um, research by Julia Minson, Mike Yeomans, Hannah Collins, called receptiveness. So it's receptiveness to opposing viewpoints, and it's both the mindset when you, when someone comes to you with something that seems crazy, (laughs) you don't judge it negatively. You have to fight the human instinct to think of it as like, "That's crazy. That's wrong, and now I'm gonna win. And now I'm gonna be right and prove you wrong," because all of those instincts ruin our conversations and our relationships.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett37:55

       Why?

    5. ABAlison Wood Brooks37:56

       It makes us defensive on the receiving end. It makes us sort of accusatory and hostile on the attack end. Once we get into an accusation and defense mode, the conversation has broken down. It's no longer about connection, savoring, protecting, and advancing. We're now in this new world that is not achieving any of our goals. Um-

    6. SBSteven Bartlett38:18

       So say someone comes to me and s- comes to you and says something s- crazy. They say, "You know, the sky is purple."

    7. ABAlison Wood Brooks38:24

       Yeah.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett38:25

       "It's, actually it's not blue, it's purple."

    9. ABAlison Wood Brooks38:27

       Here's a magical phrase that you can say in that moment. "It makes sense that you feel that the sky is purple. It makes sense that you feel excited to tell me that the sky is purple. It makes sense that you feel X about Y. It makes sense that you feel skeptical about podcasts. It makes you f- it makes sense that you feel annoyed that I speak quickly. It makes sense that you are worried about AI." Whatever people are feeling, whatever they express to you, we can validate that feeling because whatever's going on in their mind is their reality. And we have to say that out loud before we go on to do anything else, even if we're about to disagree with them vehemently. (laughs) But we have to say the validation piece first, just like therapists do all the time, in order for them to feel heard and like, "Oh, yeah, I'm safe here, so then I can join you on your side of the table, and now we're gonna untangle this weird problem together." "You say the sky is purple. Tell me more. Like, what, well, how did you come to feel like the sky is purple? Um, are, do you, are you color-blind? Are you, do you see everything in purple?" Like, now I can ask you questions about how you came to that perspective, and we can lear- I can learn about it.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett39:39

        I guess the risk is you don't wanna appear-

    11. ABAlison Wood Brooks39:40

        Validate something wrong?

    12. SBSteven Bartlett39:42

        Yeah.

    13. ABAlison Wood Brooks39:43

        Why not?

    14. SBSteven Bartlett39:43

        You don't wanna appear to be saying, 'cause if I say, "It makes sense that you think the sky is purple, but it's actually blue."

    15. ABAlison Wood Brooks39:49

        The word thinks is important. It's, "It makes sense that you feel X about Y."

    16. SBSteven Bartlett39:54

        Mm-hmm.

    17. ABAlison Wood Brooks39:55

        Not, "It makes sense that you think X about Y." Thinking is like a cognition.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett40:00

        Is there a risk of it sounding patronizing?

    19. ABAlison Wood Brooks40:02

        Maybe.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett40:02

        Like, do-

    21. ABAlison Wood Brooks40:03

        But in pr- in practice, it feels really, really good. When I run this, so I run an exercise in my class where we go around. Let's say there, there's a group of five students, and you have to share something. We start easy, like, "Share one song you love." And then the next person has to validate that before they share their f- favorite next song, and you go around and around very quickly. And so it feels very contrived to say, "Okay, you have to say, 'I love that you love that Taylor Swift song. That's so interesting.' I actually don't like Taylor Swift." (laughs) It feels very contrived, but when you talk to the students after it, they say, "Yes, I knew what we were doing. It did feel over the top to say that about people's song preferences. And still it felt amazing to have the person next to me say, 'I love that you love that Taylor Swift song.'" Validation, we are s- all so hungry for validation that even ridiculous validation feels amazing. So then when you get to round two, and everybody's sharing something that they're really struggling with, and the person next to them says, "Wow, I'm so sorry that sounds really, really hard. It makes sense that you feel upset about your mom," now you've got that habit, and you're making them feel quite good about something that actually does deserve that validation. So it's all about, like, de- developing these habits no matter where the difference or disagreement is coming from.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett41:25

        What's the opposite of that?

    23. ABAlison Wood Brooks41:27

        The opposite is what how people m- naturally respond, tend to naturally respond, which is by trying to win and prove them wrong and prove that they're right. So you say, "The sky is purple," and I say, "Well, that's crazy. The sky's blue." And then where does our conversation go? (laughs)

    24. SBSteven Bartlett41:44

        So frustrating.

    25. ABAlison Wood Brooks41:44

        It feels terrible for you.

12. 41:46 – 47:53

    Don't Do This When You Disagree

    1. ABAlison Wood Brooks41:46

    2. SBSteven Bartlett41:46

       Yeah. It's so int- I learned this, um... Because I employed this person once, and this person, when we'd talk about ideas, the first word out of their mouth was always, "I disagree," and then they'd make their point.

    3. ABAlison Wood Brooks41:58

       That's right.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett41:59

       And I don't know what it was (laughs) about it, but I noticed that it would, like, get my back up.

    5. ABAlison Wood Brooks42:03

       Of course.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett42:04

       And i- so I'd say, uh, "F- I don't know." I'd say, "I think we should do it like this." "I disagree."

    7. ABAlison Wood Brooks42:08

       Yeah.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett42:08

       And then they'd make their point, and I remember thinking, "Gosh, that's such a..."

    9. ABAlison Wood Brooks42:11

       And it's so ironic because their goal is to persuade you.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett42:15

        Mm-hmm.

    11. ABAlison Wood Brooks42:15

        At the end of it, they want you to agree with their position. That's not at all how persuasion works. The only way that we change our beliefs is, is usually across many conversations, and we're around someone we like talking to and respect and have admiration for.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett42:31

        Mm-hmm.

    13. ABAlison Wood Brooks42:31

        And then over time, we sort of bend to the gentle pressure of their differing viewpoint. If I say, "I disagree. Now let's fight about it."

    14. SBSteven Bartlett42:41

        Hmm.

    15. ABAlison Wood Brooks42:41

        You're, you get your back up, and you're not having, you're not enjoying talking to me, even if you're right and-Right? Like, it's not about being right or wrong in that moment. The goal here is to keep the conversation in an emotional place where it can continue, so you can continue to engage. And that's what these researchers find in this receptiveness research is, you know, if you qualify your statement saying, like, "I wonder if the sky could be a different color," rather than, "The sky is blue," with certainty. There are all of these sort of he- hedging language, you can divide yourself into multiple parts, so if you said to me, "The sky is purple," I would say, "Oh my gosh, as your friend and as a painter, that is so intriguing to me. As a biologist or as a, as a meteorologist, maybe we should investigate that."

    16. SBSteven Bartlett43:26

        Mm-hmm.

    17. ABAlison Wood Brooks43:27

        Um, literally dividing yourself into two disagreeing parts. It's usually how we actually feel. So if your mother says something crazy to you, that seems crazy to you, you could say, "As your daughter, I'm so intrigued that you've come to hold that perspective, I'd love to hear more." You know, "As a representative of Gen Z, I know my friends would want you, want me to say this." It means that you can hold two perspectives at once, and it is very helpful to the other person to keep the conversation going. But all of the elements of this receptiveness recipe have, have this flavor. It's a little surprising. I think often people think of these types of things as weakness, because it's like our, our instinct is to try to win and be right, and instead, what I'm saying is, no, hedge your claims. Show that you're uncertain about stuff. Validate their feelings. Divide yourself into disagreeing parts because you're not certain about anything in order to keep the conversation going, so that you have any shred of hope of persuading them over the longer term.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett44:24

        I remember Tali Sharot telling me about a study, either she told me... She's a neuroscientist in London, and she told me they put two people in a brain imaging scanner and got them to, like, look at photos and come to agreement on the price of something.

    19. ABAlison Wood Brooks44:38

        Yes.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett44:38

        And then eventually in these studies, I'm super paraphrasing here, she's probably, like, cringing at this point.

    21. ABAlison Wood Brooks44:42

        I think I know what study you're talking about.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett44:43

        Oh, do you? Could you explain it in a sentence?

    23. ABAlison Wood Brooks44:45

        Yes. Yeah. So, so they studied what, what lights up in your brain when you're in a situation of disagreement versus agreement-

    24. SBSteven Bartlett44:52

        Yeah.

    25. ABAlison Wood Brooks44:52

        ... and it is actually more taxing to your mind when someone is disagreeing with you. It's like these neurological, um, alarm bells go off-

    26. SBSteven Bartlett45:01

        Mm-hmm.

    27. ABAlison Wood Brooks45:01

        ... and all of a sudden, like you describe, what was your phrase? My back goes up? What was your phrase?

    28. SBSteven Bartlett45:05

        Yeah, my back goes up. I get my back up, yeah.

    29. ABAlison Wood Brooks45:06

        That's it. It's actually in your brain. Your brain goes up, and it's hard, it's, it's very hard to continue to engage once that process is underway.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett45:14

        Yeah.
13. 47:53 – 49:48

    How to Be Liked

    1. ABAlison Wood Brooks47:53

    2. SBSteven Bartlett47:53

       One of the things we notice when we have conversations on this show about c- uh, about conversation, is people really care about likability.

    3. ABAlison Wood Brooks48:01

       Yes.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett48:02

       Like, they, they really want to know what's making them disliked-

    5. ABAlison Wood Brooks48:04

       Mm-hmm.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett48:05

       ... and they really wanna know how to be liked.

    7. ABAlison Wood Brooks48:06

       Good. So, being liked is a huge drive, um, but it's just one of many things that we, we care about in terms of gaining status. So status is, uh, respect, admiration, liking in the eyes of other people. Liking is usually comes from sort of warmth and charm. Uh, admiration often comes from, like, perceptions of competence. So we want warmth and competence at once, ideally. Okay. Let's go back in time. Should we talk about the TALK framework? Because there are gonna be little clues about how to be better liked across the whole framework.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett48:40

       Okay.

    9. ABAlison Wood Brooks48:40

       Okay. Let's start with T. I'm gonna push these to the side. T is... First I just wanna say as a whole framework, T-A-L-K is the most comprehensive, teachable, practical, scientifically rigorous framework.... in the world for communication.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett48:59

        Did you invent it?

    11. ABAlison Wood Brooks49:00

        I did.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett49:00

        See, you would say that. (laughs)

    13. ABAlison Wood Brooks49:01

        But I didn't... When I first wrote the book, I didn't say it strongly enough, and in the last almost year, I've come to realize why. One part is because most people focus only on difficult conversations, and here we are focusing on all conversations, even the ones that seem like they should be easy and fun. It's all conversations everywhere, personal and professional. The other piece is that, I didn't even really intend this as a scientist, but the way we do research is essentially, uh, natural language pro- processing, machine learning fits into this new world of AI. So the framework can be used by humans or machines to coach people to be better conversationalists, and used as a rubric after the fact of saying, "Okay, how did this go? Did you do well? Let's look at T-A-L-K and evaluate."

14. 49:48 – 51:33

    The T-A-L-K Framework

    1. ABAlison Wood Brooks49:48

    2. SBSteven Bartlett49:48

       Okay. It's the best in the world ever. I grant that.

    3. ABAlison Wood Brooks49:50

       Thank you, Steven. Okay.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett49:51

       Thank you. (laughs)

    5. ABAlison Wood Brooks49:52

       Um, thank you for recognizing.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett49:53

       Oh, yeah, no, yeah.

    7. ABAlison Wood Brooks49:54

       Okay. T is for topics.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett49:56

       Topics.

    9. ABAlison Wood Brooks49:57

       Topics. Topics are the building blocks of conversation. It is what we choose to talk about.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett50:04

        Okay.

    11. ABAlison Wood Brooks50:04

        Very simple. We all have an intuitive understanding that we sort of work through different chunks. First, we're gonna talk about your conversation with your girlfriend. Then, we're gonna talk about the TALK framework. Then, we're talk about the compass, whatever. We're working through topics. What I think most people don't realize is that we're choosing topics every time we talk. It's not just at the beginning of a conversation, like an opener, like, "Hey, what'd you think of this, you know, The Diplomat?" No. It's every time you're talking, we're making moves to gently stay on topic or switch to something else. What's so beautiful about that is it means we all have power, we all have control to nudge the conversation one way or another, and we can all do a better job with it.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett50:50

        So what's the game here? To pick better topics?

    13. ABAlison Wood Brooks50:51

        Yeah.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett50:51

        To know what topic we're aiming at?

    15. ABAlison Wood Brooks50:54

        There's a lot of goals. It's both about choosing better topics. It's also about, how can we make any topic better, okay? One huge piece of advice that when you start to realize how much your mind is do- doing during a live conversation is to offload some of that cognitive work too beforehand.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett51:13

        Okay.

    17. ABAlison Wood Brooks51:13

        Okay? So prepping topics ahead of time. This does not mean writing out an agenda before you call your parents (laughs) or before you call your girlfriend. What it does mean is spending even 30 seconds, maybe even 10 seconds, before you're in the chaos of a conversation to think about what you could talk about or what might be important for you to remember

15. 51:33 – 54:59

    Easy Ways to Have More Casual Conversations

    1. ABAlison Wood Brooks51:33

       to talk about.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett51:33

       Did you do that today?

    3. ABAlison Wood Brooks51:35

       Always. Sometimes you don't have to, right? Like you did it today. You did extensive prep.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett51:40

       Mm-hmm.

    5. ABAlison Wood Brooks51:40

       Um, you even have things printed on cards here.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett51:43

       Mm-hmm.

    7. ABAlison Wood Brooks51:43

       And in a way, I have been prepping for this conversation for 20 years.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett51:47

       Mm-hmm.

    9. ABAlison Wood Brooks51:47

       I've been studying these things. I designed the framework myself. I've gone on 80 other, you know, podcasts. I... That's all prep for this moment.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett51:56

        What about in your p- personal life?

    11. ABAlison Wood Brooks51:57

        Yeah.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett51:58

        Can you give me an example of where you prepared topics?

    13. ABAlison Wood Brooks52:00

        Every conversation that I know is coming, I-

    14. SBSteven Bartlett52:02

        Give me an example.

    15. ABAlison Wood Brooks52:03

        So with Kasi, uh, before I got here-

    16. SBSteven Bartlett52:06

        Which is a member of our team.

    17. ABAlison Wood Brooks52:08

        Yes, thank you. I thought about... I wanted to ask her what it's like to be moving from London to LA. I wanted to ask her what it's like to work with you.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett52:18

        She said all good, all good things.

    19. ABAlison Wood Brooks52:20

        (laughs)

    20. SBSteven Bartlett52:21

        All good things. Next question. What does A mean? (laughs) I'm joking, I'm joking.

    21. ABAlison Wood Brooks52:26

        So funny. Um, I often will, um... So you can... It's not rocket science. It's literally just a little bit of forethought. What kinds of questions or topics could I ask you that will make our conversation feel a little bit better than just like winging it in the moment and talking about like some random thing I see in the room?

    22. SBSteven Bartlett52:45

        Mm-hmm.

    23. ABAlison Wood Brooks52:46

        I try to do this before every conversation because now I know how powerful it is and how kind it is. If you are calling somebody and you're like, "Okay. Oh, yeah, their kid was gonna take guitar lessons. I should remember to ask about that," or, "Oh, my friend had this big presentation at work. I should r- remember to ask how that went," that means you're gonna remember to ask them, and that's super kind, and it, they're excited to talk about it too. It makes everything better. So topic prep is a huge deal. In our research, what we find, when you randomly assign people to prep topics or not, the conversations where people have thought ahead, even for 30 seconds, they feel less anxious. They're much smoother. There are fewer disfluencies, so ums, uhs, stutters between topics. They cover more topics, which is usually a good thing, more likely to land on good topics. You're less likely to blurt, so you're less likely to share things that you don't want to share with people. It's just an incredibly powerful strategy, and it doesn't need to be complicated. I've gotten in the habit of putting like two or three bullet points for people in my Google Calendar notes when you know you have a meeting coming up.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett53:50

        Mm-hmm.

    25. ABAlison Wood Brooks53:50

        And you, and you don't even have to do it right before. Like, oh, a week ahead of time, if it pops in my head that I wanna ask Steven about, "Do you wanna have children?"

    26. SBSteven Bartlett53:58

        Mm-hmm.

    27. ABAlison Wood Brooks53:58

        I might write that as a little bullet point in my calendar note for the time that I'm gonna be here with you-

    28. SBSteven Bartlett54:03

        Mm-hmm.

    29. ABAlison Wood Brooks54:03

        ... and then I'll be more likely to remember it. Do you feel skeptical about this?

    30. SBSteven Bartlett54:07

        No. I was just thinking it probably makes you more... Going back to the point about likability, it probably makes you more, a more likable person to be.
16. 54:59 – 59:10

    If You Want to Be Liked, Don't Do This

    1. ABAlison Wood Brooks54:59

       worlds?"

    2. SBSteven Bartlett54:59

       Okay, so if I wanted people to like me 1 out of 10-

    3. ABAlison Wood Brooks55:02

       Yeah.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett55:02

       ... what, what...

    5. ABAlison Wood Brooks55:03

       What would you do? You tell me.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett55:04

       ... all types of things. What would- you tell me. You're the expert.

    7. ABAlison Wood Brooks55:05

       (laughs)

    8. SBSteven Bartlett55:06

       You're, you're a book.

    9. ABAlison Wood Brooks55:06

       I wanna hear your, I wanna hear your guesses.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett55:08

        My guesses. I would walk in, quiet on my phone, and I would ignore them.

    11. ABAlison Wood Brooks55:15

        Yeah.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett55:16

        And maybe I'd look up and make some kind of snide comment. I definitely wouldn't notice that they were there.

    13. ABAlison Wood Brooks55:21

        Yep.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett55:21

        And I wouldn't make eye contact with them. I-

    15. ABAlison Wood Brooks55:28

        Maybe call-

    16. SBSteven Bartlett55:28

        ... would maybe be really, like, maybe, like take a phone call.

    17. ABAlison Wood Brooks55:30

        Mm-hmm. I was gonna say, you can get, one's really low, so you probably insults, probably-

    18. SBSteven Bartlett55:35

        Oh, yeah, I'd offend them.

    19. ABAlison Wood Brooks55:36

        Yeah, offend them, um-

    20. SBSteven Bartlett55:37

        Yeah, make some snot, snot, snarky comments.

    21. ABAlison Wood Brooks55:38

        Maybe take a phone call, and then while you're on the (laughs) phone call, talk about how great you are, right, or something, right?

    22. SBSteven Bartlett55:44

        Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    23. ABAlison Wood Brooks55:44

        Like some sort of arrogance, et cetera.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett55:46

        Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

    25. ABAlison Wood Brooks55:46

        Um, maybe if they try and talk to you, interrupt them.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett55:50

        Yeah.

    27. ABAlison Wood Brooks55:50

        Uh, and be like, "Not now."

    28. SBSteven Bartlett55:52

        Or look at my phone midway through what they're saying-

    29. ABAlison Wood Brooks55:54

        Uh-huh.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett55:54

        ... and just like, yeah.
17. 59:10 – 1:03:13

    The Importance of Asking in Conversations and Dates

    1. ABAlison Wood Brooks59:10

       And-

    2. SBSteven Bartlett59:10

       And is that where relationships are built, deep ones?

    3. ABAlison Wood Brooks59:12

       For sure.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett59:12

       At the top?

    5. ABAlison Wood Brooks59:13

       Moments at the top probably, right? This is where vulnerability takes you. Um, often asking lots of questions, especially follow-up questions, gets you up the pyramid more quickly. So shall we, shall we shift to the A of the talk framework?

    6. SBSteven Bartlett59:27

       Sure.

    7. ABAlison Wood Brooks59:28

       Because A is for asking. Uh, topics and asking are intimately tied to each other. The most common way that people switch topics is by asking a question. So you can use questions like, "What are you excited about recently," or, "What has been your favorite guest to talk to," or, "What have you and your girlfriend done together recently?" You can u- do that to switch topics. Once you're on a topic, we use follow-up questions to kind of dive deeply and move up the topic pyramid. Um...

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:00

       So are you saying I should ask more questions?

    9. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:00:02

       Yes.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:03

        Okay. What, ask more than they're asking me or-

    11. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:00:05

        Maybe not you, because you spend a lot of time asking questions. (laughs)

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:08

        Yeah.

    13. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:00:08

        But most people, the top line advice to make their conversations better is to ask many more questions. Asking, uh, it sounds so simple, and it's almost like everybody already knows that, but doing it in practice is v- quite hard, and it's a skill. And people who do it well are more successful on romantic dates. They're more successful in work meetings. They're more successful as collaborators. They're more successful as entrepreneurs in getting funding. All of it hinges on, on question asking. So the top line advice, just ask more questions. At the very least, don't be a zero question asker.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:46

        What happens to the fate of zero question askers?

    15. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:00:48

        Oh, they're not, they're not getting a second date. They're not gonna get that funding. They're not, they're not learning enough about their partner to enable them to succeed. If you go on a first date and you're asking zero questions, which, like, imagine that. We've all sort of been on that date probably.... you wanna leave within 10 minutes. When you're on a first date, you have so much to learn about each other.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:12

        Hmm.

    17. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:01:12

        You w- have everything to learn about each other, so if someone's not asking, it's a real, real, real problem, especially... I think this is a very, uh, es- especially good hack for men, um, in, on heterosexual dates. Often what they're getting wrong is that they're not asking enough questions.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:30

        How do you know this?

    19. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:01:31

        (laughs) From data.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:33

        From data?

    21. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:01:34

        Yeah, yeah. So we have 1,000 speed dates, and we, uh, the outcome is does your, the other person want to go on a second date with you, and we have transcripts. It was an amazing study run by this incredible research group at Stanford about 10 years ago. And you can just measure it, measure how many questions they ask on each date. People who ask more questions are enormously more likely to get asked to, on a second date, so much so, imagine you go on 20 first dates, and I say, "Okay, Steven, you just have to ask one extra question on those 20 dates. If you do, you'll convert another date into a second date from just one question per date."

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:14

        According to the data?

    23. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:02:15

        Yes. It's true for both men and women, but it's particularly helpful for men because they ask fewer questions on average than women do.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:25

        Really?

    25. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:02:26

        Yeah.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:26

        Significantly less?

    27. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:02:27

        Yes. And the other funny gender effect in the data is that men are just more likely to agree to go on second dates. They're less discerning in general. But if they want, if, if men wanna get asked on the second date, just ask more questions.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:42

        What is it me asking more questions doing to the other person?

    29. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:02:45

        It makes them feel heard and like you wanna know their answer, that you're interested in them, and... So it signals your interest, but also you learn what's in their mind and what their experience is, which gives, arms you with more information that to then ask more better questions. So it's not just about asking more, although that's a good start. It's about asking fol- great follow-up questions. The, the, um, the benefits of question asking are almost entirely driven by the power of follow-up questions.

18. 1:03:13 – 1:07:13

    Never Do This on a Date

    1. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:03:13

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:13

       So what... Gimme an example of asking a great follow-up question.

    3. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:03:16

       We're on a date.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:17

       Okay, yeah.

    5. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:03:17

       It's, uh, there's food, it's going really well.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:19

       Yeah.

    7. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:03:20

       I've just shared with you that I went on an amazing walk down the Sunset Scrip- Strip this morning.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:25

       And then I would say, "Really? Oh my God, I've always wanted to go."

    9. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:03:28

       Oh.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:28

        "Tell me, tell me about it. How was it?"

    11. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:03:29

        "Oh, incredible. Um, so I got to this point. I had never been here- there before. There was... I had to decide was I gonna veer off and go see, um, the Marilyn Monroe apartment, which by the way is right next to the Frank Lloyd Wright house."

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:44

        Oh my God.

    13. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:03:44

        "Or was I gonna go a few blocks away, was the, uh, Menendez brothers house?"

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:49

        Who's that?

    15. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:03:50

        The two brothers who killed their parents.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:52

        Oh sh- I... On Netflix?

    17. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:03:53

        Yeah.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:54

        Oh, wow. Okay.

    19. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:03:54

        So I would v- literally right in between, and I was at this crossroads. Do I choose culture? Do I choose morbid curiosity? (laughs) Um...

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:03

        And which one did you choose?

    21. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:04:04

        I went with culture. I was too afraid by myself-

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:07

        (laughs)

    23. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:04:07

        ... by myself.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:08

        (laughs) You're so cute. You're so cute.

    25. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:04:09

        Um, so, okay, so we... Okay, we're off our date now. "That was so fun. You were asking such lovely questions, and it really helped to, like, cheer me on, like you actually wanted to hear this story."

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:21

        Mm-hmm.

    27. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:04:21

        "Um, even though it might... Like, someone else might have been, like, not that interested," and then you feel embarrassed, like, "Oh, I just shared a bunch of vulnerable stuff. I was a-walking alone in LA. I had morbid curiosity about these two brothers and this story." Um, it's very easy to make someone feel invalidated in that moment, but follow-up questions make me feel like, "Oh, he wants to know more. He's coming with me on this journey." (laughs)

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:47

        So did I do the right thing then?

    29. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:04:48

        Yeah, you were doing great.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:49

        Okay.
19. 1:07:13 – 1:09:14

    The Meeting Mistake You Shouldn't Make

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:13

       The other thing I've seen in meetings, which I've had to have a con- couple of conversations about historically, is when someone will be talking, and then someone's listening going, "Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah." And I know, I'm like, "Oh my God. They've got something to say."

    2. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:07:24

       I know.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:24

       And they're like, "Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." They're yeahing them out.

    4. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:07:27

       Yes.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:28

       They're trying to yeah them into silence-

    6. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:07:30

       I know.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:30

       ... so that they can get their point across.

    8. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:07:32

       That's right, yes.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:33

       And I've had to send messages in the past to say, "By the way, you were saying 'yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,' and it made it seem, to an objective observer, like you weren't listening and actually you were just trying to say something. So just in the interest of your, like, you know, maybe..."

    10. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:07:44

        Maybe don't.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:45

        "Just don't say, like, you know."

    12. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:07:46

        How do they respond to that feedback?

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:47

        Well, bec- I didn't, I constructed it more...

    14. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:07:50

        Tactfully? (laughs)

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:50

        Tactfully than I just described. But I thought about it a lot, and I just wanted to, 'cause I'd seen them doing this, uh, 30, 40 times in meetings.

    16. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:07:58

        Yeah, yeah.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:59

        And I don't think they realize how it's perceived.

    18. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:08:02

        Now you know how I feel during so many conversations for so many different rea- there are so many things like that where you see other people doing the dastardly conversational thing, and it's totally understandable why. They're excited. They have a thing they wanna say, and it's preventing them from actually engaging with the person who's talking and, and what they're saying. All of these things are understandable. I, it's important to come from a place of like, n- of non-judgment.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:30

        Mm-hmm.

    20. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:08:30

        It's because our brains were built to wander, not focus on another person.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:36

        Mm-hmm.

    22. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:08:36

        Because we're deeply egocentric beings and we focus on our own perspective. Both of those things hold us back from really being able to engage with someone else. I wanna go back to your thing of like a 10 out of 10 likability. That, those are the little things, the little, um, death by 1,000 cuts to your likability are these things, where it's like you're not able to actually really focus on someone else and really engage with what they're saying and ask followup questions, and then later in the conversation call back to something they said earlier because you're just that clever. Um, our, there, so much stands in the way of, of doing that.

20. 1:09:14 – 1:11:48

    Poor Communication Skills Might Be Holding Back Your Career

    1. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:09:14

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:14

       In that particular example I'm thinking about, I started to get negative feedback from people that worked with this person.

    3. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:09:21

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:22

       And I noticed one day the negative feedback was, "I don't think they're even listening to me."

    5. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:09:26

       Yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:27

       Um...

    7. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:09:28

       'Cause they're not.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:28

       'Cause th- they weren't really listening, and so the minute I got the feedback was the minute I thought, "Do you know what? Steven, you've, you've watched this happen. You know it's objectively true. You owe it, 'cause you're this person's report, to have a conversation with them about it because it's getting in the way of their success." The, the fascinating thing for me is if I plot everybody I know and work with on an axis of, like, self-awareness as it relates to their communication-

    9. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:09:48

       Yeah.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:49

        ... some people are just, they kinda just g- have it.

    11. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:09:53

        Yep.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:53

        And then some people are on the other end of this spectrum where there's, like, no apparent self-awareness of how, of like how they're coming across.

    13. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:10:01

        Yeah.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:01

        And they're so talented and so hardworking, but this one thing of, like, their communication self-awareness is honestly, in some cases, the single thing, the single gravitational force on their c- career trajectory.

    15. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:10:14

        Yes.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:15

        And like, can people change? Or are they, is it just like a genetic thing?

    17. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:10:18

        They can. L- first let me address there are pros and cons to being at both ends of that spectrum. If you are too hyper-vigilant and-

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:27

        Yeah.

    19. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:10:27

        ... too self-aware, it can be distracting. It might mean that you're sort of people pleasing, too, which can lead to burnout and exhaustion. If you're at this lack of self-awareness end, of course it's gonna be a real problem. And so I love teaching and coaching people at that end, because you can become more self-aware. So many of my students at Harvard come into the course and that's how they are.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:52

        What do you mean?

    21. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:10:53

        They are not aware of what their strengths and weaknesses are. They don't know what they're doing right and wrong. They just know they either hate conversation or aren't good at it. And so just by going through this talk course, they become much more sort of clear-eyed and open to the fact that conversation is a skill that matters profoundly, not in a sort of soft skill fuzzy way, but as a, uh, in a quantifiable way that impacts everything that matters to them, uh, like a, like a bottom line, almost as like an economic value to them. And so just having their eyes open to the fact that, like, this is a skill and a skill they need to get better at, even if I don't see them getting massively better in the course of three months, it means that they are likely to get better at it over the longer term, because now they know. Now they get it, and now they know that they aren't great at it yet.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:43

        The world of business looks entirely different today than it did 15 years ago. Back then, building a brand

21. 1:11:48 – 1:12:39

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22. 1:12:39 – 1:17:06

    The Importance of Kindness in Any Conversation

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:39

       Are there anything else that, you know, we talked about death by 1,000 cuts as it relates to being a 10 out of 10 conversationalist and like, likable person. Are there any of these other small things that we do which are harming us but are tiny that most people don't know they're doing?

    2. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:12:54

       Yes. Let's move to K. Um-

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:55

       Okay.

    4. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:12:56

       ... as I'm moving along in this framework, um-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:58

       We're skipping L.

    6. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:12:58

       We're skipping L for now-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:59

       Okay.

    8. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:12:59

       ... which we would never skip L forever. K is for kindness. Um, often we are all taught this virtue of kindness when we're children and spend the rest of our lives sort of falling short of actually doing it in practice.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:13

       Mm-hmm.

    10. ABAlison Wood Brooks1:13:14

        I've forever been obsessed with this idea of w- what are, like, people who are actually kind, what are they thinking about and how are they interacting with other people? What kinds of choices are they making? How do they talk to other people? And so when you say death by 1,000 cuts, there are...... these sort of mistakes that we make in the respectfulness of our language that undermine our actual kindness to other people. Making sure you use someone's name. You gave this example, and the one out of ten is, like, use the wrong name. That is really meaningful. You need to know people's names and use them correctly, and with appropriate formality, right? Sometimes it's wonderful to say, like, "Hey, honey," and sometimes you need to say, um, "It's nice to meet you, Dr. Brooks," right? Like, it, it... You need to be able to read that. Um, there is this paper, um, where they studied conversations between police officers and citizens in Oakland, actually close to here, in normal traffic stops, so when police pulled over citizens and walked up to the car and said, um, "You were speeding," you know, and they used body cam footage and got all the transcripts from these interactions, and then measured the respectfulness of the language that the police officers were using. There are some really, you know, not surprising but terrible findings that police officers were using less respectful language towards black citizens compared to white citizens. But sort of more, uh, broadly speaking, the interactions where they were using more respectful language went better; there were less conflicts, there were... They wa- they'd drive away without further infractions. So, the tiny choices we make in our language, and the language of respect i- i- is, varies along, like, hundreds of features of language, and it's a very gradient concept, but they have a real impact on how these interactions go. When we think about sort of, like, things like systemic bi- racial bias, that's... It comes from that kind of stuff. That's where it leaks out, is in the language we use with each other. So, we can all u- learn to use more respectful language.

Episode duration: 2:31:33