169. Don't Be a ZQ: Make Your Conversations Count
24:46 Share

What can a matchmaker teach you about personal branding, and what can a comedian reveal about using humor to lead? To dig deeper into the latest business and management research from around the world, you need H B R idea cast from our friends at harvard business review with one thousand episodes and counting. Idea cast is your one stop shop for guidance on career productivity, strategy and leadership.

Listened to new episodes on H P R idea cast every tuesday. Wherever you get your podcasts. H P R idea cast, it's all you need to lead.

Many of us dread small talk, yet big things happen in chitchat. And our starter conversations today in this episode derived from a linked in live event. You'll learn essential tools to make your small talk a success.

I made brahms and I teach strategic communication at stanford graduate school of business. Welcome to think fast, talk smart, a podcast. I am super excited today to speak again with alison woods Brooks.

Alison joined me a wild back for episode seventy three. Allison is the oya associate professor of business administration and helman faculty fellow at the harvard business school. Allison's research focuses on the science of conversation and interaction, and he teaches an award winning course called talk without further, let's jump into our new linked in life.

Before we get started, I want to invite you to think fast, talk smart, premium. If you act before november twenty first, you get a twenty five percent discount and become a member of our founders club. Please check out faster, smarter, dao slash premium.

As as we start our conversation. I'm curious what makes for a good conversation.

Oh, man, what a huge question. At the core. People want to feel connected, loved, alive, productive, but how to get there varies from one moment to the nex. It's surprisingly tRicky task for something that we start doing as todd's talking to each other.

Yeah, how have you found IT works best to actually start conversations that I know a lot of us, myself included, can feel very uncomfortable and awkward in those situations.

There's a great quote from veep, selena. ie. Goes, every conversation starts with a sentence. So you know you starting below.

But the question is, what do you do after hello? And I didn't really realize how deeply people dread small talk, like starting conversations, until I started teaching this course at harvard called talk. And I realized quite quickly that dread of small talk is just incredibly wide read.

Almost everybody feels either some anxiety or some sort of, look, I don't want to do small dog, which means that it's a sort of problem to be solved. The reason I didn't really realize how much people dread small talk of because I sort of love IT IT, which I don't know that like a weird flex. I think now I think it's embarrassing .

and you're so good at IT.

There are all the reason I love IT is because I think it's like a treasure hunt. I think it's this trod in ground that can be very moaning, but you have to do IT. So dreading IT is a little bit counterproductive.

It's a place you have to start when you're talking to strangers. It's a place you have to start even with people you haven't seen in a while. And when you're there, the purpose of serving is as a search, a play for you looking for golden nuggets. So like opportunities to find something that gonna make you move in the direction of productivity, connection, fun and something deeper. I think the dread .

of small talk is something many of us are familiar with. I think, though, as you've eluted to small talk affords us great opportunities. I think there are big things that happen during small talk, and maybe you and I together can help rebrand small talk so people actually get excited about IT.

It's unavoidable and very important. The trip isn't avoiding small talk, is about making sure you don't get stuck there too long.

So how you initiated and then move on speaking of small talk in conversation with people, I I want to recognize that we have people joining us from all over the world and very soon we want to hear from you. So you'll be able to ask us questions and answer those questions in to the chat. And alison and I will answer those questions.

Share with me your best approach to initiating small talk. What I do is I like to just ask questions or make observations about things i've seen. How do you get these conversations started?

So in my course, we talk about a framework that can help, and then they'll get into sort of specific strategies of what to say. I can be helpful to think about a topic pure mid. And at the bottom of this pure mid is where small talk lives. It's topics that you could talk about with anyone, which is why we all revert to talking about the weather or how are you how was your weekend stuff that you can connect with anybody about in the next year of the pyramid is as medium talks are slightly tailored to the person you're talking to, and Taylor ing IT can mean that you are asking questions about them, things that they're excited to talk about or just topics that they have some expertise are interested.

So just getting more and more personalized at the top of the pyramid is this sort of conversational NBA when you feel you need only connected to someone, you're talking about something that only may be the two of you can possibly talk about in a way that only the two of you can talk about IT. It's where we have this magical shared reality together. So with my students, we talk about Fostering just a little bit more awareness of where you are on this topic.

Purity, it's not like small talk is bad, but it's helpful to know when you're there and how long you've been there. The idea is also not always to get to the peak IT would be weird to try and aim to have this like wonderful, deep, meaningful conversation with the very start starbucks in a thirty second interaction. Or where are your neighbor who is just like taking out the trash? So the goal is not always to get to the peek of the pyramid, but to Fostering awareness of where you are.

And then, of course, don't get stuck at the base of the parameter too long. And just like you're saying that the best way to get out of IT in by asking questions for that, you're constantly looking for these golden nuggets in the treasures hunt of a weight of launch away from the base of the pm. Another way that you can get out of the basic epa mid, if your partners is not really giving you a lot, you can be asking lots of questions and they're not giving you a lot.

So just started volunteer stuff of your own right. O O K, i'm to talk about, I went to german village with my husband. I thought I was the to charming area on bus. So you just start volunteering things that they might latch onto, and hopefully that will give you up from the bed in the par meet as well.

I really like this idea of thinking about where you are at in terms of the conversation you're having and how you start in one place. But the idea is to move upward and starting with observations, starting with question. And if that doesn't get you moving, then you can reveal some information about yourself. I find that taking just a few moments in advance of entering a circumstance where there is small talk rag, expect there to be to just think about some things that are of the moment or going on can help prepare me and help me feel maybe even excited to enter the interaction.

So now you're leaning into this idea of topic threat, which is we've done research on topic prep math. IT comes in the form of thinking ahead just for even like thirty seconds about questions that you can ask.

So if you're seeing somebody that you know thinking for like ten, okay, what were they doing between the last time that we talked and now where they taking guitar lessons? Was their dad sick? What's their kid up to so that when you are together, it's right on the top of your tongue to say like, oh, how's your dad doing these days? Power list guitar lesson is going or oh yeah, your kid was playing hockey. Did he make the team to you're ready with those questions and the right there for you.

I just did this with a friend of mine who last time I saw them, I knew that they were buying new running shoes. So the first thing I asked about is how the running going. And IT was a great way to get started.

It's an example of what we call long term listening, which means you were actually listening to what they were saying last time you were together. Listening is very hard. You've now prove into them that not only did you hear them and think about the fact that they were gonna get these new running shoes, but you were smart enough and caring enough to remember to bring IT up the next time.

I appreciate this notion of long time listening. I think that's a really interesting concept. I wants to dig deeper in the listening. But before we do curious if you've had an interaction recently, alison, where you feel particularly proud of how you started the conversation.

What a great question. If reminds me of a question that my friend recommended when I know fifteen years got to begin my career, he often recommended asking starting conversations with, what are you excited about lately? Everybody has an answer to that question. And whatever their answer is, has this bill ten level of enthusiasm minute, like whatever they say, it's be interesting to talk about IT.

I like that a lot. And before we end, I wanna make sure I ask you that question. Speaking of questions, Kelly is writing a question I think is really important related to the listening question that you said.

The long term listening question, what do you do if your memory is not bad, good, and you can't remember things? I mean, as I get older, I struggle with this. Any suggestions for how to initiate conversation when you know there was something there, but you just can't remember?

IT tell you're not alone. We all struggle with memory. Human memory is remarkably flawed and filled with falls.

And in fact, when we study people, we make them try and remember their conversations and almost no one can remember the details of a conversation they had. We're pretty good at remembering loosely what topics we covered, but details, they're quite hard. So you're not alone. We're here with you. I'm also working with p and the elderly because this is one of the things that they think a lot about.

As our memories are defeat, as we get older, what can we do conversationally to stay engaged and remain good listeners? And how can we exercise? Is this memory muscle in the context of conversation really easy hack, which we steal from all sort of sales people who use customer relation on the C. R.

M model, right? Which is this right things down? If something struck you from a conversation and we're going to forget IT, make a little voice, know in your phone, or put IT in your chAllenge, or for the next time you're going to see that person, just make a note yourself, like he Kelly self, remember, ask about the running, or they said that they were thinking about maybe starting this book club.

And remember to ask, follow up about the book club. Follow up and memory are so important, and we have to anticipate that our memory are flawed. And to do that, that really helps to write things down.

Yeah, i'll just double down on that. I am somebody who journals at the end of every day is a way of reflection on my communication and and things that I am thinking about. And if I have a really good conversation all right down, what made you so good? And then if I meet the person again, I can always go back and and remind myself.

So not only does IT have the benefit of reflection, but IT also helps you when you have to meet folks. So I find that very useful as well. A question came in from iv. Can you ask too many questions and conversation?

The short answer is yes. But the risk of asking too many questions is so much further out on the question asking spectrum than you think. So when we studied, people are going on thousands of first states. We never found the testing point like, but no one asked enough questions that the relationship with linear, there was no tipping point for asking too many questions.

Now when you look in a more conflictual environment like negotiations or sales, you sometime to do see a tipping point where a sales person can ask too many questions or uh in an intense negotiation, the counter party can ask too many questions. But that tipping point is way further out than you would think so far out that it's actually hard to get there. IT would be as if you're asking three questions per minute during the entire interaction.

So when our instincts are saying, oh, gosh, I don't want to ask too many, it's Better to think like that's really hard. And what is much more common and and a bigger risk is not asking enough. You never wanna leave a conversation asking zero questions.

We call this in my book. We call these Z Q. Don't be A Z Q. That's never good in any interaction. And IT means that that you're not actually having dialogue. And the risk of asking too few questions is much higher than asking .

too many Z Q for zero questions. Yes, right? Yes, yes. I I love that you study different environments in how conversation takes place in those different environments or or interactions that have different purposes. A date is very different, and then a sales called different from a negotiation, at least in many ways, they're different in looking at the different context.

Can you extrapolate some key ideas or best practices? So if you're in a situation where you're trying to influence somebody verses, if you're just trying to get along and get to know somebody, are there differences in how we should approach this? In the types of conversation starters we use are the ways we move up. The pym.

yeah. So in any conversation, whenever you're together with another person, your behavior should adjust rate to fit the context. And our goals shift constantly. They shift from one conversation to the next. They also shift from one topic to the next.

So imagine that you are having a meeting at work and you know that for part of IT, you're gonna negotiating for a higher salary. But probably for another part of IT, you're going to be like asking about their kids or asking about a project that they have been working on or brainstorming about a new thing, a new collaboration. So I think and this is what we get into in my in my book, we have a little bit made the mistake of thinking of conversations at the conversation, marvel and how things change from one conversation to the next.

But I can help a lot to actually start thinking at the topic level, how do our goals change from one back to the next? As soon as we're done negotiating about my salary, everybody's gold shift, as we move to talk about this collaboration project, we're going to work on. And so being a little bit more aware of how your own goals are shifting and how your partners goals are shifting should influence how you behave.

And in my course, we talk about this sort of two by two framework to figure out what your goals even are. One, access is relational, where we have some goals that are meant to help the relationship in the other person and some goals that are very selfish, which that's a very human thing to do. It's not bad.

And then the other access is information. So many of articles are about exchanging information that sort of the point of communication. But many of goals are not about information exchange at all.

In fact, we want to keep a secret, or we want to avoid talking about something, or we just want to feel time. And I think a lot of people forget that the low informational goals matter tremendously, especially enjoyment. Something has to be fun in order for the conversation to go. Well.

I really appreciate this discussion of thinking about your goals. As you know, alison, I strongly believe that all communication needs to be goal driven. And thinking about your goal and thinking about how the goal changes makes a lot of sense.

And thinking about the relational and informational components as well. And then there's a third components, sometimes I think about, which is the action, what's the desired action? So it's information in motion and action that really help us guide our communication. And even in spontaneous situations, answering a question, making small top, giving feedback, you can think about what your goal is, and then tailor your communication to focus on that goal.

Can I ask you that when you are in small talk at the bottom of the topic pyramid, in small talk world, what are your goals? What are you thinking about?

I often wanna just make the other person feel comfortable. I want to start from a place of comfort. I think that allows for connection. That's not to say that conversation can be uncomfortable. In many cases, I think there are fits to people feeling a little pushed. But at the beginning, I just want to connect and feel comfortable and that's why i'll often ask a question of somebody or make an observation to invite people to join me. I see small talk is really an invitation to engage yeah and even if .

you know that you're going to get to harder topics later, you have to connect birth, right? Like you have to feel feel uncomfortable together. Before you can go on to do hard things, you have to start from a place of of comfort, safety and closely.

And speaking of how that can be difficult to shown rights, are there different ways to initiate conversations and maintain them virtually versus when we're in person?

This is a very appropriate question. Thank you. To show me, i've right now in my class that I teach called talk. I'm having my students do what I call a communication ought IT.

And I want you to think about this, to think about twenty minutes in your life where you have one of those really busy metic communicative time. So you've got text messages coming and you've got emails coming in. You met beyond the phone with somebody, and also there's somebody trying to talk to you face to face.

So this is quite common for people these days. We're constantly toggling between communication modalities. You're getting dms all the time.

And so the question becomes not only how do we do small talk Better in digital modalities, but how do we talk from looking down at a screen or looking at a computer screen, and then turning our eyes and meeting the gaze of real human beings? So how are we doing these things? Quit in quick succession with many people, where in a world where our attention is so fractured and so fragmented and so cold and so many different directions do our brains, that they have the capacity to do this really surprisingly ly tRicky conversation task, when so many different messages are coming our way from so many different places, the fundamental principles of small talk are always the same.

Or I just like that was you're saying, start with connection and treat me like a treasured hunt. You're looking for golden nugget that make things more interesting and more meaningful. But the trick is, how do we do this when we're an information poor environments where you can use your body language as much, or maybe they can even see you if you're on the phone, but there seem basic incident es of connection apply everywhere.

So there's some foundational principles. And then you have to think about the modalities. I think actually the virtual tools can afford to some interesting ways of connecting and making small talk. So I I think of a conversation i'm having where in the midst of IT, somebody gives me a thugs up reaction, a party horn that gives me some interesting information, one about how we're connecting, but two IT gives me something that I can use to escalate the conversation or move to a different topic. So there's stuff going on there that we can actually average.

I want to spend a just a minute coming back to this notion of listening because I know you have had some recent research about listening and not just active listening, but actually saying what you've heard. Can you share a bit more about listening? Because I know IT plays a critical role in conversations.

It's so funny. My course is called talk. My book is called talk. And really, at the core of all of IT isn't about talking. It's about listening, right?

In our research on listening, what we found is that, number one, it's incredibly hard. IT is very effortful. And so if you put in the effort to actually listen to people, you should taca lize on that effort and show IT to them.

So there's decades and decades of research and work on this idea of active listening, which is mostly using nonverbal cues like nodding and smile, living and leaning forward and making people feel like you're hearing them in that moment. This is great. So making people feel like you're listening to them is a great first step.

Here's a tRicky thing. Number one, IT can be faked. Number two, there is a Better way to convey your listening, and that is with your words.

So even though listening happens while the other person is talking, you have this unique opportunity and conversation to immediately respond to IT with your words. And so in research, together with hana Collins, is the professor U. C.

L. A. What we found is speaking back to someone. What you've heard is just incredibly powerful. When we think of people who are charismatic, often this is what they're doing. So they are asking follow up questions that follow up on what someone has just said.

They're of phrasing, maybe something that a few different people have said and summarizing IT in a nice way. They're using call backs, which are when you reference back to anything that was said at the beginning of a conversation or even earlier in a relationships. So this was your example earlier.

Mp, when you followed up with your friend about their running shoes, and you said, hey, like, how's going? Not only is that and it's follow the question is a call back. It's a distant call back. And it's so magical because IT shows that you are listening, although many days ago, when they were sharing with you that they were going to get new running shoes and make them feel validated, like you heard them, like you care, and that you want to know more. And as we said at beginning of this conversation, feeling connected and heard and understood is really like the core goal of all of this is why we interact with each other.

So alison, i'm going to do a call back here. Uh, what's something that you're .

excited about? I am so excited about my new book. It's called talk, the science of conversation and the art of being ourselves. IT is based on fifteen years worth of research on conversation. IT follows the trajectory of the course that I developed at the harvard business school, also called talk. So i'm just really excited to share that this book with the world that comes out january twenty first, and you can pre order .

the book now, right? I am privileged to have received an early copy. And those who listen to me and read the stuff, I do know that I like very practical, tactical stuff that can really immediately have impact our communication.

And Alice on your book does that well in the grounds, science. And as everybody listening, here's a your tone and your approach, your energy for what you do comes out. So I am very excited for your book to launch. Thank you for that.

absolutely. Yeah, i'm reading a comment from john who's saying we've got think fast, talk smart the book. We've got the podcast when are we getting the musical? You are also excited about a new offering that coming out of a thing as talk smart.

Thank you, john. You never want to hear me sing. Allison is actually part of a band, and he does thing somebody that you would benefit from hearing signal me.

Yes, I am very excited. I think fast talk smart, we're coming up on our fifth year or five year anniversary is in january. In in advance of that, we're actually launching a premium offering.

So for those of you who find value in our costly offering, we're going to actually have a premium offering that gives deeper dives into our content, gives access to more material, more content and more opportunities to build a community. Please do consider the premium. And all of this is based on what alison is all about, what i'm all about, which is ultimately helping people the home and developed the communication skills.

Because at the end of the day, communication is how we relate. It's how we connect in, is how we grow. Alice, in any parting thoughts, I really appreciate you spending time with me in this live environment. I certainly wish you well. Any parting pots.

just thank you so much. Mad and everybody listening and get out there and don't be afraid of small talk. Lean into IT find the golden nugget of parts of questions.

And with that, I simply say thank you to all of you for joining. Thank you for your support of think fast, talk smart. Stay tuned for alison's book and our premium mothering.

You will talk to you soon. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this linked in live thinking fast, talk smart episode. This episode was produced by Shelley mary weather in me, matt Abrahams. The full deep thinks video version of this linked in live is available at think fast talk smart premium, which you can join a faster, smarter doi o slash premium if you enjoy this episode and want to learn more about small talk and conversation, please check out episode seventy three with alison wood Brooks, an episode eighty nine with Rachel Green world. Find more of our episodes on youtube or wherever you get your podcast, and check out faster, smarter doi o for deep die videos, english language learning content and our newsletter.