717: A Key Tactic for Way Better Conversations, with Alison Wood Brooks

Summary

Episode 717: A Key Tactic for Way Better Conversations with Alison Wood Brooks

Host: Dave Stachowiak
Guest: Alison Wood Brooks
Release Date: January 27, 2025
Podcast: Coaching for Leaders

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1. Introduction: The Crucial Role of Conversations in Leadership

In this insightful episode, Dave Stachowiak delves into the art and science of conversations with renowned behavioral scientist, Alison Wood Brooks. Emphasizing that "Leaders aren't born, they're made," Dave sets the stage for a deep exploration of how meaningful dialogues can enhance leadership effectiveness and personal relationships.

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2. Expanding the Conversation Challenge: Beyond the Difficult

Dave (00:35): "Conversations are the venues where leaders do so much of their work...our relationships are about conversations."

Alison Wood Brooks highlights that while much attention is given to navigating difficult conversations, the daily interactions we deem "easy" are equally challenging. She observes that we often "struggle with the conversations we have all day...even the ones that seem easy and fun."

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3. Introducing Topic Preparation: A Strategic Approach

Dave (04:11): "What do you mean by topics in this context and what's so significant about them?"

Alison introduces the concept of topic preparation, a deliberate strategy to enhance conversational quality. A topic is defined as "any thematically related chunk of turns in a conversation," allowing individuals to steer dialogues more effectively by having pre-thought topics ready.

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4. The Myth of Naturalness: Debunking Effortless Conversationalists

Alison (07:38): "The people that you see doing a good job at it probably have been working hard at this skill..."

Alison challenges the common belief that great conversationalists are innately talented. She explains that successful dialogue often results from "deliberate effort" and continuous practice, debunking the "Myth of Naturalness."

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5. Overcoming Resistance to Topic Preparation

Dave (09:45): "How many people push back on it and say... it's not like the natural way of how we have conversations."

Despite its benefits, many resist topic preparation fearing it may make conversations "forced or rigid." Alison shares that initial aversion often stems from misconceptions about spontaneity but emphasizes that preparation does not have to compromise natural flow.

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6. The Benefits of Preparing Topics

Alison (08:34): "You feel less anxious during the conversation because you have a sort of backup plan..."

Preparing topics offers multiple advantages:

• Reduced Anxiety: Having topics ready acts as a safety net.
• Mutual Interest: Ensures conversations are engaging for both parties.
• Seamless Transitions: Facilitates smoother shifts between topics, mitigating awkward pauses.

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7. Finding Inspiration for Conversation Topics

Dave (18:12): "Where do I start? What do you find helps?"

Alison suggests drawing inspiration from everyday experiences:

• Media Consumption: Books, podcasts, and TV shows can seed topics.
• Personal Experiences: Sharing recent activities or observations.
• Curiosity-Driven Questions: Posing intriguing questions inspired by stories or events.

For instance, she cites a listener who uses episodes from "This American Life" as conversation starters to engage others thoughtfully.

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8. Making Conversations Meaningful: Topic Choice vs. Topic Management

Dave (21:37): "Having a good conversation isn't about choosing good topics. It's about making any topic good through topics management."

Alison distinguishes between choosing the right topics and masterfully managing any topic to ensure engaging dialogue. Effective conversationalists excel not just in topic selection but in how they navigate and enrich conversations, regardless of the subject matter.

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9. Application in Leadership and Management Conversations

Dave (25:08): "How do we both show up with some thoughts of like, doing some prep...and at the same time being able to meet people where they are..."

Alison discusses integrating topic preparation in managerial settings, such as one-on-one employee meetings. She emphasizes the balance between preparation and flexibility, allowing leaders to support employees effectively while also fostering open, dynamic interactions.

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10. Personal Insights: Embracing and Streamlining Small Talk

Alison (31:50): "People not only dislike small talk, they actively dread the experience of feeling trapped in small talk."

Through her research, Alison has redefined the role of small talk. She encourages viewing it as a "treasure hunt"—a necessary social ritual that serves as a launching pad for deeper conversations, rather than something to be avoided.

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Notable Quotes:

• Dave on Conversation as Leadership (00:00): "Conversations are the venues where leaders do so much of their work."

• Alison on Topic Preparation (02:21): "Every relationship is a repeated sequence of time that we spend in conversations."

• Alison on the Myth of Naturalness (07:38): "Conversational skills... are developable, and anybody can learn them."

• Alison on Small Talk (31:50): "Instead of dreading it, view it as this opportunity as a launching pad and get out of it as quickly as you can."

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Conclusion: Empowering Better Conversations Through Preparation

Dave and Alison conclude by reinforcing the transformative power of topic preparation. They encourage listeners to adopt this tactic to foster more meaningful and effective conversations, enhancing both leadership capabilities and personal relationships.

For those interested in further exploring these concepts, Alison's book, "The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves," and additional resources on CoachingforLeaders.com are highly recommended.

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Additional Recommendations:

• Episode 497: The Way into Difficult Conversations with Kwame Christian.
• Episode 655: Improving Difficult Conversations with Sheila Heen.
• Episode 670: How to Connect With People Better with Charles Duhigg.

These episodes offer complementary insights into mastering both challenging and everyday conversations, essential for effective leadership.

Transcript

[Dave Stahoviak]

Conversations are the venues where leaders do so much of their work. We all know someone who can always keep a conversation interesting and relevant in this episode, how a key tactic can help you towards more meaningful conversations. This is Coaching for Leaders, episode 71.

[Alice Wood Brooks]

7, produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human potential.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Greetings to you from Orange County, California.

This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm.

Your host, Dave Stahoviak. Leaders aren't born, they're made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. Oh, conversations. It is such a key word. It's such a key principle for us, and it's such a key activity not only for leaders, but also for us as human beings. And so much of our success in.

Our relationships is about conversations.

And yet it is something that I think almost universally we are challenged by. How do we have the best conversations? And how can our conversations help us.

To make the world a better place?

And I am so glad today to welcome a guest who's going to help us to get better at having more effective conversations and connecting well with people.

To build our relationships.

I'm so pleased to introduce to you Alice Wood Brooks.

She is the O'Brien Associate professor of.

Business Administration and Hellman Faculty Fellow at.

The Harvard Business School where she created.

And teaches a course called Talk as a Behavioral Scientist.

She is a leading expert on the.

Science of conversation and her research was referenced in two of the top 10 most viewed TED talks and depicted in Pixar's Inside Out 2.

She is the author of the Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves.

Alison, Hi. Glad to have you.

[Alice Wood Brooks]

Hi, Dave. Thank you so much for having me.

[Dave Stahoviak]

You point out in the book that being a successful person is about relationships, and of course, so much about relationships is about talking. And we all know that we're not so great at difficult conversations, but it turns out that we're not super great at the easy conversations either, are we?

[Alice Wood Brooks]

No. That's right. So, first of all, every relationship is a repeated sequence of time that we spend in conversations with someone and away from conversation with them. And that's a really important thing to keep in mind as. As our relationships unfold in our lives. When I was hired at Harvard, I was hired to teach a course called Negotiation. And it's a course that we have at sort of every business school, every law school, a lot of graduate schools in all over the world. And I was teaching this course on negotiation, and I sort of had this epiphany that we don't just struggle with Difficult conversations and negotiations. We struggle with the conversations we have all day along, every day, with all of the people in our lives, even the ones that on their surface, seem easy and like they should be fun. We're constantly saying things that we regret and doing things that we regret and forgetting to talk about things that we should talk about and what's going on there. We. Why are we stumbling through the social world in this way? And as a scientist, I was bound and determined to figure it out.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Yeah.

And there is so much in this book, the model that you frame for us, and I was sharing with you offline before we started recording that.

Already.

Reading this book has gotten me thinking about different ways that I show up in all kinds of different conversations and relationships. And one of the things you write that really struck me is you say, though we can parse our words in many ways into phrases, sentences, paragraphs, turns, syllables, and so on, it's the topics that we as talkers, choose, follow, manage, and remember. And as I. As I've been thinking about this, I'm curious, what do you mean by topics in this context and what's so significant about them?

[Alice Wood Brooks]

Okay, awesome. So let's back up for one second. First of all, it's not a conversation until there are words involved. Whether you're on the phone with somebody or on Zoom or face to face or texting or emailing, the words that we exchange, exchanged with each other, make it a conversation. The definition of conversation is any exchange of words between two or more people. All right? So there's always words involved. Now, sometimes there might be nonverbal cues, sometimes there might be acoustic. You can actually hear the words and sounds that they're making, but there are always words. And so when we start to think about the words that people exchange with each other, there's so many different sort of levels of analysis, so many ways to break it down. In conversation, in particular, the turn level matters. That's something that's really definitional about dialogue, is that I take a turn speaking, and I might say a bunch of sentences, and then I stop, and then you take a turn and respond to what I've said, hopefully. And we go back and forth, right? We do turn taking. So turns are important, sentences are important, words are important. But the human mind is not fast enough. It's not a supercomputer. It can't keep up with. If we were to try and monitor every word choice that we make or even every sentence that we. That we put together, we can't keep up and do that. We can't be sort of like monitoring everything that comes out of our mouth. So what occurred to us as psychologists is what is the level of analysis that we could focus on that people can actually exert some control and agency over? And it turns out that topics are like the perfect level of analysis because they're useful. We can actually exert control over our choices when we're making these decisions about what topic to talk about, whether to call back to something we've already talked about, to drift to something else, to jump cut aggressively to something totally unrelated. And the topic level of conversation becomes very useful. You asked now, like, what is a topic? A topic is any thematically related chunk of turns in a conversation. And I think intuitively we all know what a topic is. It's sort of. If I asked you, hey, Dave, like in your last conversation, could you just make a list, bulleted list, of the four topics you covered, all of the topics you covered, you would intuitively know what I. What I mean. And you could do it pretty easily. And so when we look at conversation, when you look at transcripts of conversations, you can do that chunking task where you pull together all the thematically related things that people say into. Into topics.

[Dave Stahoviak]

One of the things that you point out in your work, and I certainly have had this experience, and I think a lot of us have, where we all run into people in our lives. Some of them we work with, some of them are family members that just. These people that just seem so great and instinctual about how to have wonderful conversations and so adept at being able.

To engage people and be interesting and.

All the things like we want from a great conversation. And you point out that good conversation is, yes, about the instinctual parts, but it's also about deliberate effort. And one of the invitations is to do some thinking about topics in advance of a conversation. And that's something I think, like, most of us don't think to do in most contexts.

[Alice Wood Brooks]

That's right. What you're describing is something in the book that we talk about called the Myth of Naturalness, where when we see really great conversationalists, people who seem so charismatic and smart and, and charming and engaging, it's easy to believe that it's effortless for them, and maybe it always has been, and they were born that way. When you start to study the psychology of conversation, you realize it is not effortless for anyone. And the people that you see doing a good job at it probably have been working hard at this skill for most of their life or for a time in their life. And in that moment during the conversation, they are still working hard at being a very engaged listener, at making all of these micro decisions to manage the conversation. Well, conversational skills are. We are not born with them. They are developable, and anybody can learn them. And what you're touching on is one of the skills that is so helpful to everyone, and that is topic prep. So thinking ahead just a little bit about the topics that you might raise during a conversation, even for 30 seconds before a conversation starts, if you think, oh, yeah, last time I talked to them, I knew that their kid was going to try out for the school play. And I think they mentioned that their dad had to have surgery and that they had this big presentation coming up at work. So I want to remember to check in about those things. And also I saw this really cool show that reminded me, and I think they'd like it, so I'm going to mention that, too. So you've now just come up with four great topics, and if you had not spent those, you know, 15 seconds reflecting about it, you likely would have forgotten to bring them up during the conversation. Or even if you did remember, you're going to use a lot of cognitive effort, a lot of your mental load, a lot of your brain space to do that creative task while the conversation is unfolding. And it's just much more difficult to do that creative task, that memory task, during a conversation, compared to before the conversation starts when you're alone and at rest and you have more cognitive bandwidth to think about.

[Dave Stahoviak]

It's so interesting. And it, and it makes so much sense at an intellectual level. And yet I'm struck by you sharing so many stories in the book of how when you invite people to do this, do a little thinking in advance about topics, how many people push back on it and say, no, like, this is. This is not like the natural way of, like, how we have conversations. We just don't think to do this. And in fact, sometimes we actively work against it.

[Alice Wood Brooks]

Oh, yeah. Oh, my goodness. I was shocked by how many people are so averse to topic prep. And in diving into those feelings of aversion, it now makes a lot more sense to me. I think some people, it doesn't occur to them to prepare topics to think ahead. They think of conversation as this task that should be spontaneous and sort of improvised. And they go through life winging it, which, okay, let's leave it. Let's set that bucket of people aside for a moment. Then there's other people who are like, okay, I can imagine that you could prep topics before, like a work meeting, like, design an agenda, whatever. But I don't need to prep topics for conversations with people I know really well, like my spouse or my kids or my parents or my friends. Like, we're going to know what to talk about. We see each other all the time. I think about them a lot. I know what we're. We're going to. We're going to always know what to talk about. And so people are like. And they're worried. They're worried that if you prep topics, it's going to make the conversation feel forced or rigid or wooden or somehow overly scripted. I suppose when you actually. People nudge people, and I do this with both my students and in my research with participants. When you nudge them, when you sort of make them prepare topics and then have a conversation and compare it to people who have not prepared at all or thought ahead at all, you see that there's just all of these rewards awaiting people who have thought ahead even for 30 seconds. And here are some of the rewards. One, you feel less anxious during the conversation because you have a sort of backup plan of what to talk about. Number two, you're more likely to land on topics that are mutually interesting. Like, yes, you should talk about their kids. Audition for the school play, because that's gonna be. That matters to them. And if you care about them, it will matter to you, too. And so thinking about that ahead of time means you're going to actually do that very important conversational task of landing on magical topics that are mutually interesting. The third thing is that it helps at the boundaries between topics. So topic boundaries. These are places where we can often feel awkward, like we're running out of stuff to say. We both kind of realize that we have longer mutual pauses. We have more uncomfortable laughter because everybody's sort of wondering, should we move to a new topic? And if we do, what should it be? So you're doing this little creativity task on the spot, and we all know how that feels. It feels sort of panicky. You're like, I can't let the conversation die right now. And if you have thought ahead about possible topics, even as simple as, oh, I need to ask about their dad who had surgery. In that panicky moment, you don't feel panicked. And you just say, by the way, how was your dad's surgery? Like, you're just. It's just ready. It's right there in your back pocket, and you can bring it out whenever you need it. And I think what people underestimate the people who feel very averse to this. What they underestimate is like, hey, if the right moment doesn't arise for you to raise those topics, you don't have to. It's fine. It's just that they're there if you need them.

[Dave Stahoviak]

So this is fascinating on so many levels. And as you were saying that I was thinking for years, when I do interview prep, I have a section of my notes that is titled Reserve. And it is almost never do I go to it, but it is, I always have three or four things there of if we run out of stuff or if I hit that awkward point in an interview of like, I don't know where to go next, that I've got some backup plans for something and yet never think to do that in my personal life or in conversations that are kind of like one off conversations or individual conversations with clients or other stakeholders. And, and I think it's like, it's really interesting thinking about some of the examples from your research and in the book of the anecdotes of people who push back at this. Like, I don't want to prep topics.

For all the reasons you just said.

I don't want to sound scripted. It just doesn't seem natural. It's not like intuitive, all those things. And yet when you go ask those same people after having conversations, sometimes they'll cite the best conversations are the ones where someone else brought in a prepared.

[Alice Wood Brooks]

Topic, you know, and what's so crazy? So in many of these conversations with my participants and with my students and just in life, what's so funny is sometimes the people who are very averse to topic prep are like, oh, and I had this great conversation. It was so spontaneous. It was, we were so improvised, so smooth, so great. And then you ask their partner and their partner's like, oh, yeah, well, I thought about that ahead of time, right? Like I, I thought about you when we were apart. I thought about what you'd want to talk about, what the point of this interaction was going to be, what you would like to talk about. And then I did it. And they're like, oh my God. Oh, because it's invisible, right? Of course, the people who are already prepping topics, naturally, you don't get to see their prep unless they tell you in the conversation, hey, I was like daydreaming about you for hours. And it occurred to me that I should ask you this. Like, usually we don't say that, we just ask the question so that all of that topic prep work is invisible. It's part of this, going back to this myth of naturalness, right? Like you see great conversationalists and you can't see. See that all the work they did before the conversation began, it's mostly invisible. And so you think it's just coming to them off the cuff. And often it's not.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Well, I think you said something big a moment ago too, that even if you do some, if you do the prep and you start to think about topics, you may not actually bring those topics into the conversation. But just the act of doing the prep and having some things you can go to oftentimes like, brings more, just more presence in the moment. It's a more enjoyable conversation even if you don't get to the topics. It's so fascinating.

[Alice Wood Brooks]

And it's more than just presence, right? Like the, the, the. The. Having a lower cognitive load, more brain space to focus on your partner is crucial for being an actually good conversationalist. You need to listen. It's so effortful to listen to somebody else and think about them and focus on them relentlessly as a conversation unfolds and try and coordinate all of the topics and things that you're saying and all your jokes and all your stories, whatever. That is so effortful that literally anything you can do to offload that cognitive work to before the conversation is going to be a huge win. And Dave, something you said a little bit ago reminded me when you think about your day, like, let's say you wake up in the morning and you think about your day. We all know with quite high precision who we're gonna see in the day. Sometimes it's because we have like, certain meetings scheduled or zoom calls. Other times it's because it's people that we see most days, like your family members or a friend. But you also know with pretty good probability the archetypes of people that you're gonna see. Like, you know, oh, I'm gonna run into somebody. Like, there's gonna be somebody working at Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks, and I'm gonna interact with them at the cash register. So even if you've never met that person before, you know that there's going to be a person there. And you could think about, like, in that context, as I am checking out and getting my coffee, what topic, what one question could I ask them or one joke could I make that would brighten their day? That is also topic prep, right? Like, you're thinking about the archetype and thinking, like, what would be a unique thing for someone to say that would make that Interaction, even in our 15 seconds together, that could make it better.

[Dave Stahoviak]

And this is where the creativity and the thinking about this, I think probably is a little scary for some of us. Of, like, okay, well, I get it, and it makes sense. How do I get inspiration for topics and, like, what I might say in a conversation with a colleague, with the barista, with my spouse, when people kind of buy into this, but they're like, all right, where do I start?

What do you find helps?

[Alice Wood Brooks]

Oh, my God, this is such a fun question, because inspiration comes from everywhere. I mean, the very easiest answer, hey, in my book, there's a list of a hundred topics, 100 questions you can ask people, go there, start there if you'd like. That could be helpful. But the broader answer is inspiration for our conversation topics is everywhere in the world. It's, in a way, I think, why we watch TV shows, it's why we read books, it's why we listen to podcasts, it's why we take on a weird. We take an art class or, like, try out an experimental drug. These are all experiences and pieces of learning that are potential topic seeds for our conversations with other people. So don't underestimate the power of saying, like, hey, I saw this weird thing or this funny thing, or, I saw this weird reel on Instagram and it reminded me of you, or I wondered if you'd seen it too. Inspiration can come from everywhere, and it shouldn't be stressful to think about that. It should be sort of exciting and thinking about, well, which of these. Which of this, like, world of possibility is. Would be most fun and productive to talk to about with specific people in your life.

[Dave Stahoviak]

When you were saying that a moment ago, it reminded me of one of the examples in the book of a gentleman who listens to the this American Life podcast. And the reason he listens isn't so much for his own listening, but he uses it as a. As a. Just a creativity ground for deciding what topics he would ask people in conversations. I think it's really fascinating to, like, have something that's a regular part of your day that you use to generate ideas.

[Alice Wood Brooks]

Absolutely. And it's a very subtle mindset shift. Like, most people are already listening to podcasts and watching TV shows and reading articles.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Yeah.

[Alice Wood Brooks]

So just shift your mindset and say, oh, I'm not just doing this for my own edification, for my own enjoyment, but also as potential topic seeds to talk about with other people. People. It might nudge you to sort of absorb that information slightly differently. You start asking yourself, like, well, who would find this most interesting? Or how can I frame this as a question when I talk to somebody? Or, like, how could I retell this as a story? So Mike, the guy in the book that I talk about, and he listens to the podcast this American Life, and he had so many examples. He listened to one episode where he. Where a guy and his friends, his kids had been exploring in the woods, and they stumbled upon this abandoned house. And when they went into the house, it looked as if the family had left with no warning. Like, there was still dinner on the table, and there was, like, a prom dress hanging on the door. And so when he's listening to this story on this American Life, he finds this intriguing for his own development. But he's thinking, like, what is the question I could ask people if I give them quick context about the story? And then he said, the question I ask people is, why do you think they left? Like, that's so fun. Like so. And you can. Of course, that's not going to be an appropriate thing to bring up all the time, but every once in a while it will be. He uses it when he goes to, like, work conferences and everybody's awkwardly standing around in a windowless ballroom not knowing what to talk about. He's just like, oh, let me tell you about this podcast episode I listened to recently, right? Like, he's got. It gives him fodder to make those conversations much more interesting.

[Dave Stahoviak]

One of the key points you make, and I think there's a big distinction here, is that having a good conversation isn't about choosing good topics. It's about making any topic good through topics management. Tell me about that distinction.

[Alice Wood Brooks]

Oh, yes, this one. I'm obsessed. I continue to think about this. Most of us have the instinct, the intuition that good conversationalists are good at choosing topics, that there are just, like, the right questions to ask, the right things to talk about with certain people. And to some extent, that could be true, right? A little bit like, you should choose topics that align with your goals. If you want to get advice from somebody or you think they need your advice, you should probably say, do you want. Would you like my advice? Or you should say them, do you have any advice for me? Right. So remembering to raise topics that align with the things you actually want to achieve, meet. That's sort of the definition of choosing good topics. But when we look at how conversations unfold, you start to realize no matter what the topics are, there are some people who can take even the weirdest or most mundane starting point and they make it great, they make it fascinating, they make sure that it is in pursuit of the things that people are hoping to achieve. And they do it through all of the things that we talk about in the book. Right. Asking questions, finding moments of levity, focusing relentlessly on your partner and really listening to them. And it's just that distinction between, yes, you should try and raise topics that are good, but also once you're in it, your whole job is to make it even better.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Yeah.

And there's very much a, there's a science, but there's also an art to this of like, it's not simply taking 30 seconds before the conversation, thinking about the five topics and following them in order. When you get into a conversation, like, that's where it would be very scripted and bulleted, Right. It's the, you've got those, you show up for the conversation and it's like.

A great jazz artist, right?

Like they know the notes, they know all the music theory, they got all the pieces. And then they, and then in the moment they decide, all right, maybe I'm gonna start with topic three.

And then based on how the other person responds and where this conversation goes.

Maybe we spend 20 minutes on that. And then I realize, like, oh, something shifted and I'm gonna go back to topic one that I was thinking about or maybe something else entirely. Like, that's a big part of the art of this.

[Alice Wood Brooks]

Yes. Charlie Parker, the jazz saxophonist, has this fabulous quote that's like, you know, as a good musician, you practice, practice, practice, but then you get up on stage and you let it all go and you just whale. And I love that mentality because it's both, you should be doing as much as you can ahead of time to prepare and be ready. But then once you're in it, the key for improvisation is reading the room, reading your partner and reading yourself. And just like you're saying, Dave, that reading the room, reading yourself, reading your partner, those are as much an art as they are a science.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Thinking about this from partially, also the standpoint of managers and coming into conversations with employees. And so often we've talked on the podcast over the years of being able, especially like in a one on one conversation of being able to ask Michael Bunge Daniels question, what's on your mind.

And have the other person drive the.

Conversation and set the agenda and, and, and, and, and be paying attention to them and how do we support and serve them in the best possible way. And there's, I think there's a both and here of like, how we also could show up to help that conversation along by thinking about topics in advance. And I'm wondering if you've thought about this or seen this in the research on how do we both show up with some thoughts of like, doing some prep, thinking about topics and at the same time being able to meet people where they are and sometimes throwing that out the window, but also sometimes utilizing that to actually help and support the other person. I don't know if I'm asking a.

Clear question here, but.

[Alice Wood Brooks]

No, you are. And I think I. Let me share a story that I think can help us answer this. This question, please. There's a. There's an element of like, how do you. How are you both very prepared and very flexible? And I think in the context of conversation, the sort of question built into that is like, how do you both lead and follow, especially in terms of topic management, as you. As things go along. So in my class at the very beginning of the semester, one of the first exercises my students do is called the chat circle. And it's sort of like speed dating, but without the romantic part. And each student has a five minute conversation with five other classmates over the course of this class session. And they rate how the conversation has gone after each one. And this is what we're practicing. We're practicing. They've all prepped topics ahead of time that they could talk about with anyone, right? So that's sort of the baseline. But during the conversation, they're aiming to meet their partner where they are and try to be flexible. And then afterwards we can ask them questions like, well, how many of you actually raised some of the topics that you prepared ahead of time? And for those of you who did, how did it go? Was it better? Was it worse? And we measure all of these things. Now. One round of the chat circle exercise, I randomly assign one person in each pair to be the topic leader and the other one to be the follower. And then the following round, they. They flip roles. And so much like Delicious, so many delicious questions spill out of this experience for them. For the students who are sort of alpha and used to being controlling and used to being leaders, it is so hard when they are put in the role of a topic follower, it means that they need to relinquish conversational control to their partner and just go where that other person leads them. And for people who are possibly extroverted, loud, domineering, this is very, very, very hard. By the way, I am one of those people. And so it's very. It is a skill to be developed to be able to follow other people's lead in a conversation, and it's something we should actively work on, vice versa. For students who are possibly more introverted or just more experienced and comfortable letting other people take the lead, being put in the topic leader role is really uncomfortable for them. They don't like it. It feels stressful. It feels like pressure. It feels like you're asking them to do something they don't want to do. And so there's. All of these dynamics are playing out in our natural conversations as well. And we sort of trade off the roles of leader and follower. We all have available to us this power to control the flow of topics in a conversation, but we also have the power to relinquish control and follow where our partners want to lead us.

[Dave Stahoviak]

And part of what I'm hearing there is just being conscious of that, that given the conversation, given the moment, I'm thinking about the. So often I hear managers say, well, I'd like to have the conversation where the employee comes to the conversation and it really is their topic. It's really like they bring the agenda, they show up with the things that are on there. I really want to focus on them.

And they say all that.

They set it up, they ask the person to bring the agenda, and then they show up in the conversation and they, like, don't have anything and they don't really know what to do. And I think what I'm hearing you say is like, hey, being ready for.

Both of those moments.

Like, in theory, yes, someone would show up and have this beautiful agenda. We would be there as servant leaders to support them. And yet, like, the reality is, is that a bunch of times that just doesn't happen. Someone's not equipped to do that. They're scared, whatever, right. And so having the, the reserve, right, the. The backup plan of like, okay, in.

In the event someone shows up and.

They'Re not prepared, they're not ready. I've got four or five things that I can. I can do in the service of.

This other person, in the kindness of.

Supporting them, that I can lead some.

Leave some breadcrumbs that will help us.

To move through this conversation in a wonderful way.

[Alice Wood Brooks]

And they can be breadcrumbs that are helping to unlock the other person. Right. So you don't have to abandon the goal of having that employee be still be the topic leader, but you might need to provide them with prompts that make them feel more comfortable or more inspired. Right. And you can. You really need to think carefully about that. What Is it that you're hoping to unlock in them? Do you want to hear where they're feeling most anxious or most confused in their work? Are you hoping to unlock little points of pain for them, that your questions should focus on that so that you can get them to open up? If it didn't work as a starting point, it's sort of like a failure on both sides. The employee didn't do their topic prep, didn't do their due diligence, and was possibly like either under prepared or too scared to actually be the topic leader. Yeah. But on the other end of it, if you're usually the topic leader and you're like, I want to relinquish control, you can. You have to sort of stick with that even in the event that they need your help in doing it. Right. Like, don't say, hey, I want you guys to sort of bring the topic to this meeting, then show up and continue to dominate the airtime and actually decide, I'm going to just bring up stuff that I want to talk about, which we see happen often as well.

[Dave Stahoviak]

This work is so fascinating. We're only zeroing in on one of the four aspects of conversations. And I hope that if this has been helpful, you'll go get Allison's book and read it and then, of course, go and utilize it and practice in conversations. And Allison, I. I often ask people what they've changed their minds on, and I'm curious, in doing all the research you've been doing and especially putting this book together and, and now people engaging with these ideas and especially around topics, what, if anything, have you changed your mind on as you've been doing this?

[Alice Wood Brooks]

Sure. I have realized many things about many, many things. But one that kind of is sticking with me these days is this idea of small talk. I didn't realize how profound and pervasive the dread of small talk is in the world until doing research on conversation and teaching my course, I've now realized that people not only dislike small talk, they actively dread the experience of feeling trapped in small talk. And I guess I just didn't realize it because I kind of like it. I view it as like a treasure hunt. It's a social ritual that you can't avoid. You have to start a conversation somewhere. And usually the most appropriate place to start is with easy topics to sort of reify your relationship with people, to greet strangers, whatever. So what I've realized and what I've changed my mind about is, okay, let's teach people to lean into small talk. It's you can't avoid it. And instead of thinking like of avoiding small talk, think of it as an opportunity. It is a treasure hunt and you have to do it. And the mistake that most people make is that they linger in it too long. So instead of dreading it, view it as this opportunity as a launching pad and get out of it as quickly as you can.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Allison Wood Brooks is the author of the Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves.

Alison, thank you so much for your time and for your work.

[Alice Wood Brooks]

Dave, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.

[Dave Stahoviak]

If this conversation was helpful to you Three Related Episodes I'd also recommend the first two, the related topic of Difficult Conversations. That is, of course, the work of leadership of often starting, continuing, and leading the difficult conversations that come up. In episode 497, Kwame, Christian and I talked about the way into difficult conversations.

And we talked about the first few.

Moments of a conversation. Often that is the hardest point of beginning the conversation, framing it, where you.

Start the initial steps.

In episode 497, Kwame and I talked about, okay, how do you actually do that? Where do you start? What's the mindset that's helpful? And also then tactically, where do you begin? In a closely related episode 655, we continued the conversation on how to help difficult conversations go better. Sheila Heen was my guest on that.

Episode and we talked about her iconic.

Book with her colleagues at the Harvard Negotiation Project on Difficult Conversations. Difficult Conversations. I read oh gosh, more than 20 years ago. It has informed so much of my thinking on conversations with others over the years. And Sheila was so gracious to teach us on how to help those difficult conversations to go better. Some of the key principles from Difficult Conversations, episode 655, super helpful for that. And then finally, I'd recommend the episode with Charles Duhigg, how to Connect With People Better. We talked about his recent book, Super Communicators on episode 670. And in that conversation, one of the points he makes is helping us to nudge a little bit more toward emotion and a little bit less toward transaction in conversations. And more importantly, how to do that. So many of you told me that was such a helpful conversation. One of the most downloaded episodes we had last year. Great compliment to this conversation today. Again, that's episode 600. All of those conversations you can find on the coaching4leaders.com website. And there have been many episodes about conversations over the years because that is so important as a venue for leaders to do their work. And so you'll find that and many other topic areas inside of the free membership. We've made it as easy as possible for you to be able to find what you're looking for inside of the library. It's hard to do that on the apps, but it's easy to do that on the website. And the best thing to do is just go over to coaching4leaders.com, set up your free membership. You'll be often running in just a few moments and you'll have access to the entire library searchable by topic so you can track down the episode you're looking for. Also all of the notes and references from me, plus a ton more inside of the free membership. For access to everything just go over to coaching4leaders.com the conversations don't stop on the podcast, though. They continue in many other ways. And one thing I do every single month is invite a guest who has been on the podcast before to a more personal conversation with our members and we spend an hour talking with them about their work and oftentimes something that was featured on a past episode. But we talk about in the context of the real situations that our members are dealing with every single day. We call it an expert chat. It's an opportunity for our members to get together with the experts directly and have a conversation. And they asked the questions, not me and our most recent one. My friend Tom Henschel from the look and Sound of Leadership podcast joined us for a conversation on how to deal with a narcissist. Tom and I hit on that a little bit in a past episode, but we didn't have a chance to explore it fully. And in that recent conversation, Tom and I and several of our members had an in depth conversation for an hour on how do you handle it when you run into that situation where all of a sudden you find yourself working for someone who's a narcissist or maybe one of your peers is, or a direct report. How do you handle that and deal with it? The bad news is there's a whole bunch you can't do that doesn't work that people try all the time that actually make things worse. The good news though is once you know what that is and you make peace with that, there is so much more that you can do. And we had a detailed conversation about both of those areas. It's one of our recent expert chats. The recording is part of the Coaching for Leaders plus membership. If you'd like to get access to that recording plus all of the recordings of expert chats over the last five years, Coaching for Leaders plus may be an avenue for you. For details on what's involved and what's a benefit inside of coaching for leaders plus, just go over to coaching4leaders for more. You'll get access to all of those past expert chats plus new expert chats every single month, those results, recordings available to you, and a ton more inside of Coaching for Leaders plus. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Next Monday. I'm glad to welcome Sandra Motz to the show. We are going to be talking about how leaders can use the algorithms for good important conversation right now. See you back next Monday. And thanks as always for the privilege to support.