Most Replayed Moment: The Framework To Instantly Become Better At Conversation!

What if the secret to better conversations is something most of us never think to do? Alison Wood Brooks is a Harvard Business School professor, behavioural scientist and bestselling author of ‘Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves’. In this moment, Alison Wood Brooks introduces the research-backed framework that can transform the way you communicate in every area of your life. She explains the subtle habits that quietly damage your likability, why people often leave conversations feeling unheard, and the small changes that can make every interaction feel more natural, engaging and memorable. Listen to the full episode here! Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/CcyUkdPhQ4b Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/KtNFPBRhQ4b Watch the Episodes On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Alison Wood Brooks: https://www.talkstudios.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

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

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:12Steven Bartlett?

  Like, they really want to know what's making them disliked, and they really want to know how to be liked.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Good. So, being liked is a huge drive, but it's just one of many things that we care about in terms of gaining status. So, status is respect, admiration, liking in the eyes of other people. Liking is usually comes from sort of warmth and charm. 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 going to be little clues about how to be better liked across the whole framework.

• 0:51Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 0:52Speaker 01

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

• 1:09Steven Bartlett?

  Did you invent it?

• 1:10Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:11Steven Bartlett?

  So, you would say that.

• 1:12Speaker 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 natural language 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 use as a rubric after the fact of saying, okay, how did this go? Did you do well?

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Let's look at T A L K and evaluate.

• 1:58Steven Bartlett?

  Okay. It's the best in the world ever.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Thank you, Stephen.

• 2:01Steven Bartlett?

  I grant you that.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Okay. Thank you for recognizing.

• 2:04Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, no, yeah.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Okay. T is for topics.

• 2:07Steven Bartlett?

  Topics.

• 2:08Speaker 01

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

• 2:14Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Very simple. We all have an intuitive understanding that we sort of work through different chunks. First, we're going to talk about your conversation with your girlfriend, then we're going to talk about the talk framework, then we're talking about the compass, whatever, 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.

• 2:59Steven Bartlett?

  So, what's the game here? To pick better topics, to know what topic we're aiming at?

• 3:04Speaker 01

  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 doing during a live conversation is to offload some of that cognitive work to beforehand.

• 3:23Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Okay? So, prepping topics ahead of time. This does not mean writing out an agenda before you call your parents 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 to talk about.

• 3:44Steven Bartlett?

  Did you do that today?

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Always. Sometimes you don't have to, right? Like, you did it today. You did extensive prep. You even have things printed on cards here. And in a way, I have been prepping for this conversation for 20 years. I've been studying these things. I designed the framework myself. I've gone on 80 other, you know, podcasts. That's all prep for this moment.

• 4:06Steven Bartlett?

  What about in your personal life?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:09Steven Bartlett?

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

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Every conversation that I know is coming.

• 4:12Steven Bartlett?

  Give me an example.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  So, with Cosi before I got here.

• 4:17Steven Bartlett?

  Which is a member of our team.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:29Steven Bartlett?

  She said all good, all good things. All good things. Next question. What does A mean? I'm joking, I'm joking.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  So funny. I often will, 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? 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 going to take guitar lessons, I should remember to ask about that. Or, oh, my friend had this big presentation at work, I should remember to ask how that went. That means you're going to remember to ask them, and that's super kind, and they're excited to talk about it, too. It makes everything better.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  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, ums, as, 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. And you don't even have to do it right before, like, oh, a week ahead of time, if it pops

• 6:04Speaker 01

  in my head that I want to ask Stephen about, do you want to have children? I might write that as a little bullet point in my calendar note for the time that I'm going to be here with you, and then I'll be more likely to remember it. Do you feel skeptical about this?

• 6:18Steven Bartlett?

  No. I was just thinking it probably makes you more, going back to the point about likability, it probably makes you a more likable person.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Much more likable, yeah. In fact, if you can achieve more of your goals, whether they're high informational, low informational, high relational, low relational, all of that makes you more likable. You seem more competent, you seem more warm, especially when you lean towards those pro-social, high relational goals.

• 6:42Steven Bartlett?

  Because everyone talks about how if you're interested in someone else, like you were interested in Cosi.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:47Steven Bartlett?

  That must have felt good for her, which must make her like you more.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  We should go ask her.

• 6:51Steven Bartlett?

  That's a good point.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  I ask them, I have my students sometimes do a reflection task where I say, if you had to walk into a room and your job was to make people like you a 1 out of 10, a 5 out of 10, or a 10 out of 10, what are the behaviors that you would do to try and pursue those three worlds?

• 7:09Steven Bartlett?

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

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:13Steven Bartlett?

  What?

• 7:14Speaker 01

  What would you do? You tell me.

• 7:16Steven Bartlett?

  You tell me, you're the expert.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  I want to hear your, I want to hear your guesses.

• 7:18Steven Bartlett?

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

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:27Steven Bartlett?

  And maybe I'd look up and make some kind of snide comment. I definitely would notice that they were there.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 7:32Steven Bartlett?

  And I wouldn't make eye contact with them. I would maybe be rude, like, maybe like take a phone call.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. I was going to say, one's really low, so probably insults, probably.

• 7:46Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah, I'd offend them.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, offend them.

• 7:48Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Maybe take a phone call, and then while you're on the phone call, talk about how great you are, or something, right? Like, some sort of arrogance, et cetera.

• 7:56Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Maybe if they try and talk to you, interrupt them.

• 8:00Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  And be like, not now.

• 8:02Steven Bartlett?

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

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Uh-huh. Yeah, okay. So, there's lots of things you can imagine there.

• 8:08Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Already, we've touched on topics, though, right? When you think about, okay, I'm talking on the phone in front of them, and what am I going to be talking about that reduces my likability, even for someone who's like just observing you talking?

• 8:20Steven Bartlett?

  I'd get their name wrong.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  That's great. Yep, yep, yep, yep.

• 8:23Steven Bartlett?

  That's a good way to say you don't matter to me.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. 5 out of 10 is an interesting one. You want to do it probably more blasé, like you engage with them, but not very well. Talk about small talk topics, like you were saying, things that you could talk about with anyone that are not personalized at all, seem a bit disinterested, but not offensive, just bland.

• 8:45Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Okay. Then we get to 10 out of 10 world.

• 8:48Steven Bartlett?

  10 out of 10 likability.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. What are, what are you doing if you're trying to get 10 out of 10?

• 8:53Steven Bartlett?

  I'm completely focused on them.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Good.

• 8:55Steven Bartlett?

  I'm attentive, I'm complimentary, I'm going to flatter them.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Yep. Do you think it will seem obsequious?

• 9:02Steven Bartlett?

  I don't know if I get it right.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:05Steven Bartlett?

  Because I'm going to mean it.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it's going to be sincere.

• 9:08Steven Bartlett?

  It's going to be really sincere.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:10Steven Bartlett?

  I'm going to crack a great joke.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:12Steven Bartlett?

  Knock, knock.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, who's there?

• 9:14Steven Bartlett?

  I don't know.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  You're like, I don't know, my panic.

• 9:16Steven Bartlett?

  You laughed, didn't you?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 9:18Steven Bartlett?

  So, yeah, I'm going to flatter them, crack jokes, be very attentive, get their name right, ask them about their grandchild.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Good. Okay, let's pause. I want to, in that description, already, you're moving quite quickly through topics as you're interacting with them. You know that you can't be circling the drain, talking about the weather for long periods of time. So, just briefly, let me say, we don't need to avoid small talk. In fact, it's a very important social ritual for people who are strangers to each other, people who haven't seen each other in a long time. It's where we land and say, oh, we're doing conversation now. The mistake that people make is... They stay there too long, way too long. Any more than like one beat of, oh, my goodness, the weather's really warm. It's like summer in California.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Then you need to make it more personal and move up this topic pyramid towards medium talk, deep talk quickly, right? So, small talk is at the bottom. These are topics anybody can talk about. Tailored talk is more exciting, more personalized, more relevant to your interests. Deep talk is the peak of this pyramid. Only we can talk about this thing in this special way. Not every conversation is bound to get to the deep talk, but when it does, we should feel very appreciative. It's one of the most magical things about being humans. So, we don't need to get to deep talk with like the barista at Starbucks or with your neighbor when they're taking out their trash, but it does happen sometimes and it's quite lovely.

• 10:45Steven Bartlett?

  I think I used to put girls off when I was 11 because I used to ask them like the meaning of life too quickly when my mother stole the Nokia phone.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:51Steven Bartlett?

  And so, they would stop texting back.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:54Steven Bartlett?

  So, I think I learned early that like some people just don't.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Well, the joke's on them now. Now you get to do it for your life's work. No, but I think you were on to something there. It's not that you asked them about the meaning of life at all. You asked it too quickly. So, getting, it's about the pacing as we move up here. Most people stay too long at the bottom, but we also cannot jump to the top often. You kind of have to do the ritual of climbing to feel like you get there in a natural way.

• 11:20Steven Bartlett?

  And is that where relationships are built, deep ones?

• 11:22Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 11:23Steven Bartlett?

  At the top?

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Moments at the top, probably, right? This is where vulnerability takes you. 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? Because A is for asking. 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 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.

• 12:10Steven Bartlett?

  So, you're saying I should ask more questions?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:13Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, well, ask more than they're asking me?

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Maybe not you because you spend a lot of time asking questions. But most people, the top-line advice to make their conversations better is to ask many more questions. Asking, it sounds so simple and it's almost like everybody already knows that, but doing it in practice is 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.

• 12:57Steven Bartlett?

  What happens to the fate of zero-question askers?

• 12:59Speaker 01

  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. You 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, especially a good hack for men in, on heterosexual dates. Often, what they're getting wrong is that they're not asking enough questions.

• 13:41Steven Bartlett?

  How'd you know this?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  From data.

• 13:43Steven Bartlett?

  From data?

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, we have a thousand speed dates and we, the outcome is, does the other person wanna 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, Stephen, 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.

• 14:25Steven Bartlett?

  According to the data?

• 14:26Speaker 01

  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.

• 14:35Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:37Steven Bartlett?

  Significantly less?

• 14:38Speaker 01

  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.

• 14:52Steven Bartlett?

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

• 14:55Speaker 01

  It makes them feel heard and like you wanna know their answer, that you're interested in them. 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 to then ask more, better questions. So, it's not just about asking more, although that's a good start. It's about asking great follow-up questions. The, the, the benefits of question asking are almost entirely driven by the power of follow-up questions.

• 15:24Steven Bartlett?

  So, what, give me an example of asking a great follow-up question.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  We're on a date. It's, there's food, it's going really well. I've just shared with you that I went on an amazing walk down the Sunset Strip this morning.

• 15:35Steven Bartlett?

  And then I would say, really? Oh, my God, I've always wanted to go. Tell me, tell me about it.

• 15:40Speaker 01

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

• 15:54Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, my God.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Or was I gonna go, a few blocks away was the Menendez Brothers' house?

• 15:59Steven Bartlett?

  Who's that?

• 16:00Speaker 01

  The two brothers who killed their parents.

• 16:02Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, shit, on Netflix?

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I would, literally right in between and I was at this crossroads, do I choose cultured? Do I choose morbid curiosity?

• 16:14Steven Bartlett?

  And which one did you choose?

• 16:15Speaker 01

  I went with cultured. I was too afraid by myself.

• 16:18Steven Bartlett?

  You're so cute.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  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, even though it might, like someone else might've been like not that interested. And then you feel embarrassed, like, oh, I just shared a bunch of vulnerable stuff. I was walking alone in LA. I had morbid curiosity about these two brothers and this story. 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.

• 16:57Steven Bartlett?

  So, did I do the right thing then?

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you were doing great.

• 16:59Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:00Steven Bartlett?

  What's the wrong thing to have done? For me to just, just?

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Oh, imagine if I had been like, oh, I went on this amazing walk down the Sunset Strip and you said, oh, my favorite restaurant on the strip is a sushi place.

• 17:11Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, shit.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  I, I went to this amazing restaurant and I went to this amazing store. Yeah, they carried Hermes. I bought an amazing pair of boots.

• 17:20Steven Bartlett?

  People do that all the time.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Constantly. So, this is called boomer asking.

• 17:23Steven Bartlett?

  Boomer asking?

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Not because of boomers. We love, it's for people of all ages. Commit boomer, it's a boomerang.

• 17:30Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, okay.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  So, I say to you.

• 17:33Steven Bartlett?

  I lost subscribers.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  No, we love boomers. So, I say to you like, Stephen, what's your favorite restaurant?

• 17:40Steven Bartlett?

  Mr. Chow's.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Oh, I've been to Mr. Chow's. Last time I went to Mr. Chow's, I went with a whole bunch of friends and I had a friend who was really.

• 17:45Steven Bartlett?

  Do that all the time.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  So, I've asked a question, you've shared something with me that is such a gift. Any sort of self-disclosure is such a gift. And instead of saying, oh, who did you go with? Or what did you order? Or what is it like inside? How did you like it? I bring it, the focus of the conversation right back to myself.

• 18:04Steven Bartlett?

  People that do that don't know they do it.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 18:08Steven Bartlett?

  Cause I will, obviously, you know, I will go for dinner or we'll have, I don't know, 10 of my colleagues there. And then sometimes I'll have one particular colleague who is doing exactly that.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:17Steven Bartlett?

  And they have no idea.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Don't you wanna be like, stop?

• 18:20Steven Bartlett?

  Yes, stop, fuck no. Just like ask them about their thing. They're new here. We're trying to make them feel comfortable.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Even one follow-up question might be enough. And so, if you use this mindset of like, ask the next question before you pull it back to yourself, it sometimes can be enough. Probably many more follow-up questions is better, but even just one where I was like, oh, who did you go to Mr. Chow's with? And they let you answer, then I say, oh, I've been there too.

• 18:45Steven Bartlett?

  You can see it happening in their head because you say the word Mr. Chow's is your favorite restaurant and they immediately.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  There's an association, yes.

• 18:51Steven Bartlett?

  Brilliant story about Mr. Chow's that I need to tell everybody.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  It makes sense that people do this. Our brains are incredibly, are wired to be egocentric. We know all of our lived experiences, our own, with 100% accuracy. We lived it. It's all up here. So, anything that we see or hear in our conversations is of course going to trigger all of these memories and associations in your mind about your lived experience. And it's such an enemy of good conversation because it constantly tugs you away from being interested in the other person first.

• 19:23Steven Bartlett?

  The other thing I've seen in meetings, which I've had to have a complex 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.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  I know.

• 19:35Steven Bartlett?

  And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're airing them out.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:39Steven Bartlett?

  They're trying to air them into silence so that they can get their point across.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Yes, right, yes.

• 19:43Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Maybe don't.

• 19:55Steven Bartlett?

  Just don't say like.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  How do they respond to that?

• 19:57Steven Bartlett?

  Well, because I didn't, I constructed it more.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Tactfully?

• 20:01Steven Bartlett?

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

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:09Steven Bartlett?

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

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Now, you know how I feel during so many conversations for so many different reasons. 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 what they're saying. All of these things are understandable. It's important to come from a place of like, of non-judgment. It's because our brains were built to wander, not focus on another person, 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.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  I wanna go back to your thing of like a 10 out of 10 likability. Those are the little things, the little death by a thousand 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 follow-up questions. And then later in the conversation, call back to something they said earlier because you're just that clever. There's so much stands in the way of, of doing that.

• 21:24Steven Bartlett?

  In that particular example I'm thinking about, I started to get negative feedback from people that worked with this person. And I noticed one day the negative feedback was, I don't think they're even listening to me.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, because they're not.

• 21:39Steven Bartlett?

  Because they weren't really listening. And so the minute I got the feedback was the minute I thought, you know what, Stephen, you've watched this happen, you know, it's objectively true. You owe it because 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 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. Some people are just, they kind of just got the habit.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:04Steven Bartlett?

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

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:11Steven Bartlett?

  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 career trajectory.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:25Steven Bartlett?

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

• 22:28Speaker 01

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

• 23:02Steven Bartlett?

  What do you mean?

• 23:03Speaker 01

  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 in a quantifiable way that impacts everything that matters to them, like a bottom line, almost has 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

• 23:49Speaker 01

  term because now they know, now they get it, and now they know that they aren't great at it yet.

• 23:53Steven Bartlett?

  Well, there were anything else that, you know, we talked about death by a thousand cuts as it relates to being a 10 out of 10 conversationalist and like a likeable 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?

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Let's move to K as I'm moving along in this framework. We're skipping L for now, which we would never skip L forever. K is for kindness. Often, we're 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. I've forever been obsessed with this idea of 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 a thousand 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 10 is like

• 24:53Speaker 01

  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, it's nice to meet you, Dr. Brooks, right? Like, you need to be able to read that. There is this paper 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, 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.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  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 broadly speaking, the interactions where they were using more respectful language went better. There were less conflicts, there were, they drive away without further infractions. So the tiny choices we make in our language and the language of respect 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 racial bias, that's, it comes from that kind of stuff.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  That's where it leaks out is in the language we use with each other. So we can all learn to use more respectful language.

• 26:29Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think much about how our emotional state is impacting our ability to accomplish any of these things? Because I think, you know, the days where I'm least likely to be kind are the days where I haven't slept.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:43Steven Bartlett?

  And I should probably be avoiding all conversations that day.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  It's really, I think one of the biggest things I've learned from all of this work is that conversation is remarkably effortful and it requires quite a bit of energy. Even if you know how to be a good conversationalist, often we don't have the energy to actually do it. Oh, I don't have the energy to brainstorm topics. I don't have the energy to continue asking follow-up questions. I'm going to let my egocentrism take over and boomerask till the sun comes down, goes down.

• 27:11Steven Bartlett?

  Like boomers.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Not boomers.

• 27:14Steven Bartlett?

  I have a difference of opinion here.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  I'm going to accidentally use disrespectful language and not repair that, not correct it. That's kind of what keeps me up at night is that human beings do have limitations. We are limited in time, we're limited in energy, our brains are not supercomputers. And so in practice, people who are great communicators will often fall short of their own hopes because they don't have the energy to do it.

• 27:41Steven Bartlett?

  I think Brené Brown said to me that when she comes home and she's out of energy, she'll just say to her partner, listen, I'm on 10% today, so I can't deal with this now.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  And what, talk about self-awareness. Boy, if you can do that, if you can say, and you have sturdy enough relationships at work and at home that you could say, dude, I'm like a two out of 10, you got to cut me a break today. It would be tremendously helpful. It requires quite a bit of self-awareness to recognize that you're at a two out of 10 and a lot of grace from the people around you, which means that you're going to have to give them grace in response at some point. That's what good relationships are.

• 28:20Steven Bartlett?

  And the L.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  L, shall we put them in the correct order?

• 28:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  T A L K. L is for levity. So we've talked a bit about difficult conversations and how they can so easily get overheated. When you think about chats that go off the rails, it's quite easy to think of hostile conflict, difficult conversations, because they're very salient, they're very memorable. There's might be shouting, there's going to be hurt feelings, defensiveness. The more common enemy of conversation is actually boredom and disengagement. So yes, do we get annoyed with each other? Absolutely. But almost every conversation has stints of disengagement where people aren't interested. And so levity is humor and warmth to help us avoid disinterest and boredom.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  And levity is important for sort of happiness and engagement sake itself. You know, it matters that we're enjoying our time together. But maybe even more profoundly, if we are not leaning towards each other and interested in what the other person is saying, we can't achieve any of our other goals. Good conversation requires mutual engagement. So if I'm bored and my mind is wandering, which happens a lot because I have attentional issues, it happens to a lot of people a lot. The human mind wanders 25% of the time during conversation. So it's quite common. If your mind is wandering and you're not engaged with each other, then you can't do anything else either. Persuasion, making decisions together, brainstorming, connecting, none of it.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  So the L is very important because it makes things fun and enjoyable, but it's also important because we need to stay here with each other and not disengage.

• 30:04Steven Bartlett?

  What if you're not a warm person?

• 30:08Speaker 01

  It's so funny.

• 30:08Steven Bartlett?

  I've been accused of being very serious. Yeah, people say to me, people say to me a lot, like, you're very serious. I'm like, really? I think I come across as serious sometimes.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  I think you may come across as serious, I think, but you do come across as very warm. And so that's an important distinction.

• 30:24Steven Bartlett?

  You're using flattery. I've seen that on your compass.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  I'm not, I'm giving, I'm giving very direct feedback.

• 30:28Steven Bartlett?

  I've got your compass here and it says flattering, flattering, high relational. I'm going to you.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  So there's, levity is two parts. It's humor and warmth. And I always start this part of my class at Harvard by saying to my students, if you're not funny and you think you never will be, it's okay. I don't think I'm going to be the one to make you funny within the span of two months if you are a deeply serious and funny person. Other people believe that you can get funnier over time. We can talk about that in a moment. What I do deeply believe is that anyone can be more warm. And so warmth moves include anything, expressing gratitude, I'm so grateful for your time today. I'm so grateful for you engaging with the content of my work. Flattery, giving compliments, just shifting topics.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  So if you can get better at sensing when people are getting bored with a topic and getting more courageous and assertive about switching more frequently can be very, very helpful for keeping the conversation sort of bubbling along. Callbacks. Callbacks are any reference back to something that you've talked about previously. They're total magic. It shows that you were listening to someone earlier in the conversation, maybe even earlier in your relationship, like a month ago. If I can call back to something we talked about, it shows, I heard you, I was thinking about what you said, I was able to retain it in my mind, and I'm clever enough to reference back to it now.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  And often it has this really amazing quality where if I bring it up again, it's funny because you're like, oh, shit, that's super clever. Often, a lot of people ask me, how do we end conversations well? And I have two pieces of advice there. I'm going to bring this back to callbacks. One is, nobody knows when to end conversations. It's the final topic switch, it's the final coordination choice. There's no way to know, there is no right answer. So it's better to just end it, like be assertive, walk away, rather than hemming and hawing and feeling bad and embarrassed about it. The second piece of advice is that it's a great time to try a callback. The very last beat of the conversation, you can say, and I hope you have a great time with your girlfriend this weekend, right?

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Like whatever they had mentioned, oh, I'm going to go, we're going to go to see this movie. I hope you have a great time at the movie this weekend, right? Showing that like, oh, I heard you 30 minutes ago when you told me this thing. That can help to smooth the exit ramp away.

• 32:59Steven Bartlett?

  What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.