TALK Is Everything with Alison Wood Brooks

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1:34Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word, from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know.

2:08Anyways, let's get to it.

2:17Today, we're diving into the science of conversation with Allison Wood Brooks, a Harvard professor and author of Talk, The Science of Conversation, and The Art of Being Ourselves. Now, we all talk every day, but are we really connecting? Allison breaks down why we struggle to be ourselves in conversations. From mastering active listening to using humor and knowing when to apologize, this conversation will change the way you talk and maybe even the way you think about yourself. Let's get into it.

3:00Okay, so joining us now on Open Book is Allison Wood Brooks. She's an associate professor and fellow at the Harvard Business School. It's a place I always wanted to go to, Allison, but I didn't have the balls to apply to it. We'll talk about that in a second. Love it. The title of your book is Talk, the Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves. And if you hear some hoarseness in my voice, I apologize. I'm a little under the weather with these young kids in the middle of the winter. So first of all, let's talk about this, okay, because I love this book, and I think we have a hard time being ourselves.

3:32And I'm very good friends with Robert Greene, who I think you may know from the 48 Laws of Power and from The Art of Seduction and all the different great books that he's written. But he says this to me all the time, that we have good things in us and bad things in us, and we have types of conflict in us, and we have a very hard time articulating it to other people because we don't want to be perceived as bad people. Yep. So let's start there. But before we do that, if you don't mind, let's talk a little bit about your background so we can establish who you are for our viewers and listeners. And then let's talk about why we have such a problem being ourselves.

4:04Yeah. Yeah. So I'm Allison Wood Brooks. I'm a professor at Harvard Business School. I've been there for 12 or 13 years. You know, I look impossibly young. I got my PhD at Wharton and I'm a behavioral scientist. I created a course. I was recruited to Harvard to teach a course on negotiation, did that for about four years, and then created a new course called Talk, which is the basis of this book and has sort of hit a nerve at Harvard and beyond. Before that, though, before that sort of professional turn in my life, I'm an identical twin, which I think is not just a coincidence that I ended up becoming sort of fascinated and obsessed with conversation and studying humans because being a twin is a weird and very lucky existence.

4:49What does your twin do, if you don't mind me asking? Yeah, her name's Sarah Carney. She runs a nonprofit called Prime Coalition. Some professors, colleagues of mine at the business school have written two cases about her, and I didn't even know it. So she's kind of the, she's a very interesting person. I'm very lucky to know her. Okay, so I have to ask this, when is your birthday? March 12th. Oh, March 12th. Okay, it's your Pisces. And it's our 40th, Anthony. We're turning 40. Yeah, I feel bad for you, okay? At age 61, I feel really bad for you guys, okay? It's like a, you know, the funny thing about 40, and I'll just say this to you, when I turned 40, I was like, okay, wow, I think I'm very old.

5:26I didn't start getting into the groove until 40. So life begins at 40, Allison. You're going to be just fine. Thank you. That's very empowering. So, yeah, and you know that already anyway. You know, you're just psychological. Let me tell you the bad part about being 40. I turned 60 last year. I just turned 61 yesterday. I was just getting used to 60. Happy birthday. Thank you. I was just getting used to 60 and then boom, I'm now 61, right? So before you know it, you're going to be 45, okay? So don't worry, okay? You're very youthful, Anthony. Very youthful. Yeah, so there's a lot of work being done, okay?

5:56I can give you, if you're nice to me, because one of the problems with me is I don't have a problem being myself, okay? So this is why I want to talk to you about this. I want to understand what this is all about. But if you're nice to me, I'll give you all my health and beauty tips, okay? Oh, I can't wait. I want them all. All right. You got very good skin from this YouTube video, I can tell, okay? But not for long. I mean, I'm getting to the age when I'm going to need help soon. Yeah, I'm not worried about you right now. Tell me about why people can't be themselves. You're hitting a nerve. You said you're hitting a nerve.

6:25I know why you're hitting a nerve, because people can't be themselves. So tell me why. There's a million reasons that we can't be ourselves, especially in conversation. I mean, when you're talking to somebody else, we're constantly doing a curation task. We're deciding the full contents of our mind is incredibly complex and sophisticated. And there's so much you could possibly say to somebody else. And we're doing this, we're making these little micro decisions of like, well, what tiny fraction of what's in my mind am I going to say out loud to another live human being? And that curation decision is really fraught.

6:59I mean, we're making a decision of who am I going to be to you in front of you? I'm doing it right now. I'm like, you know, should I be scientist, Allison? Should I be professor, Allison? Should I be basketball player? Should I be mom, Allison? And we're constantly toggling and making these micro decisions every time that we speak in a conversation. Is there a mean Allison in there? I think there's a mean Allison. She's, she's, um, I think back in middle school and high school, I had more of an open battle with mean Allison. And I hope that nice Allison really won. But I do feel like in my mind, I still, like everyone, have to fight against judgmental reactions to other people's behaviors.

7:41But it's become more it's become more second nature to not let not let her out so much. Right. So you have it's habits. You got to work on these habits. That's right. I mean, again, I'm not putting this on you because there's a mean Anthony in there. There's a jealous Anthony in there. There's an envious Anthony. There's a rude Anthony. There's an arrogant Anthony. There's all different types of emotions. But there are certain emotions that we want to project to the world, that we're nice and kind and we're philanthropic. We don't want to project those other emotions. And when we get caught doing that, we make ourselves feel bad, don't we?

8:15Yeah, you do. Now, there's a potential for great humor in it, right? Right. Acknowledging that there are all of those versions of you inside and sort of letting them leak out in moments when it seems like you're going to say, like, hey, I'm going to tell you something true right now. Right. Like, here's something that's living within me. Most people wouldn't let you see this, but I'm going to let you see this little piece of me. There's there's potential for real connection and humor. But when you do that, don't you feel like you're more connected to somebody? Yeah. So when you're like more vulnerable with somebody, you're letting them in and all of a sudden you're able to establish some trust with them.

8:50right? There's, there's there. It's so funny. I have a colleague at Harvard. Her name is Leslie John. She studies self-disclosure. She has a book coming out next year called Reveal. And it's, it's very much navigating this spectrum of transparency and sharing and opacity or not sharing. I think about it constantly in terms of like, what do we decide to say? And where there's also magic in keeping things unsaid, right? And, and knowing that you're so close to somebody that they understand what's happening in your mind, even without you saying it. Yeah, but you don't want to say stuff because what ends up happening is you don't want to be overly judged either, right?

9:24Like if you came from a broken home or you came from an abusive family or whatever it is, you put all that stuff in the closet, right? You want to project something that isn't. So in the conversation that you and I are having, has your mind wandered a little bit? Because in your book, you say that 24 % of the conversation time, the mind is moving on or wandering to other things. My mind has wandered so much. I mean, part of my 40 year old awakening has been a realization of my intense ADHD. So like all people's minds wander, particularly mine. You have so many books in your background and a little Yoda.

9:59And I'm reading that I'm wondering about the car. You also said, yes, we're managing the impression we make on other people. My mind wandered. I've been thinking about Irving Goffman and his theory in the 20th century about impression management and saving face. Like your mind, my mind is going all over into the stratosphere all the time. If you saw my entire office, you would know that I am a train wreck of a mind. Okay. I am ridiculously disorganized. If I showed you the shit thrown in here, but that car is actually from Superman one. So I'm a big Superman enthusiast here. You see that? Is it a baseball ball?

10:34My wife and I are actually in that picture on the bottom there. I had the artist painted in. Oh, I love that. Okay. And so that's Superman Muhammad Ali fighting. These headsets are from my podcast. Okay. If you look over here, this is, look at the mess here. I love it. There's so much potential for distraction. Has your mind already been wandering? How much has yours been wandering? Yeah, no, my mind has totally been wandering because I'm trying to figure you out because you're presenting something, but you are something else too. And so I'm trying to figure it out. Maybe I need to read the book Reveal as well, right?

11:07Because a lot going on. Every person you talk to is so many different people. And everyone has multiple selves. Everyone knows so much. And the only way you're going to figure me out is by asking the questions that you actually want answers to. But aren't you, as a person, it's a more generic question about people. Aren't you born a certain way, Allison? You know, as a psychologist for a long time, I thought not. I thought everything was learnable and trainable and you could develop better habits. And then I had my own kids, just like you did. and it did change my perspective. They do come out quite different from each other.

11:43So I think I've softened my view on what's the balance between nature and nurture. And particularly in the context of conversation, my students ask about this all the time. Aren't there people that are just born good conversationalists? Aren't they just naturally charismatic? Aren't they extroverted? Aren't they gregarious life of the party? And I think to some extent, they're not born that way. I mean, no one's born knowing how to even have conversation. But some people pick up on the feedback all around them and get better at it faster than others. But we can all get better at it. What makes somebody charismatic?

12:19Oh, my God. All the things in the book, every little thing. Often when we think about people who are charismatic, they're really great listeners and they're really good at calling back to things. They think about other people and they call back to stuff that you've experienced before. They're curious. They want to hear about it. They want to reminisce. They want to make things. They also seek to make things fun. They don't let conversations get boring. That's the L in the talk maxims. The L is levity. So they tend to be really good at levity. They're good at listening, good at asking questions, good at picking topics that will be interesting to their partners, not just to themselves, and then sensing when the topics start to lose steam and move to something else.

12:58You're really good at that. You move topics fast. Well, because I got, I only got 30 minutes with you. I want to have five hours. I want to be like, Joe Rogan conversation with you, but I've only got 30 minutes. So I got to talk fast. I got to think about what I'm saying. Right. Yep. That's exactly right. So this is something that charismatic people do. They tend to switch topics more quickly until they land on something that's really juicy and really exciting. And then you can kind of stay there for a little bit longer. Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you a fun, quick story. So I, you know, Bill Clinton and I have a little bit of a relationship.

13:28I invited him to one of my conferences and he was like, Like, you know, you're good on TV. Do you have a media coach? And I said, no, I don't have a media coach. He said, hey, man, Tiger Woods has a golf coach. You got to have a media coach. And so I said to him, so who's your media coach? And so anyway, he introduced me to his media coach about 12 years ago. And I did a one-year course in media training. What did you learn? I'm going to tell you what I learned. I'm going to tell you what I learned. OK, shut up. Shut up and listen. Yeah. OK, particularly if you're moderating something, shut up and listen.

13:58and you'll be more interesting to people if you shut up and listen. And the other thing I learned is talk more slowly. You won't say the word um or okay or any of these verbal tics that we have as we're trying to form our thoughts if you just talk more slowly. But people can put a lot of pressure on themselves to get rid of those verbal tics, which I understand. When my students listen back to their recordings of their conversation, they're mortified by how many disfluencies, ums, uhs, stutters are there, which is true. If you're doing sort of podcasting or one way speaking, ums and uhs are distracting.

14:30In natural dialogue between real people and their lives, those disfluencies serve important purposes. They often signal when someone's - You're a thousand percent right about it. It's so important. Like it shows that you're feeling uncertain about something and that your partner should wait and wait for you to sort of clarify. So, so much so do I believe that just going back to the media coaching, I had gotten myself to the point where I said no ums and okays. And the media coach said to me, you sound like a robot. You have to feather in. Yeah, you know what to interact with a robot. You have to feather in some ums and okays.

15:04Yeah, it's exactly right. People are expecting some ums and okays, but in a public speech, they want less of them. Let's put it that way. But this episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void?

15:43But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers, a network of 130 million of them, in fact. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills, and did I say job title? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. But how do you become a better listener? So you've got students. What do you tell your students? How do you become a better listener? Listen, for decades, people have been talking about active listening.

16:15This idea of using nonverbal cues like eye contact, smiling, nodding, leaning forward, to show someone that you're hearing them, that's good. That's like listening 101. But to really be a charismatic, responsive, intensive listener, what you really need to do is fight against your mind wandering, which you and I both do intensively. It's part of why I love conversation is that it's like the challenge of trying to stay engaged. How can I make this interesting for you, but also for myself? So doing that hard work of making it engaging for everyone. But then, and this is what I teach my students, and this is really, this is like listening 201, advanced listening.

16:52You need to speak your listening out loud. You need to repeat what you've heard someone say. You need to ask follow-up questions. You need to paraphrase what multiple people have said in a group. You need to call back to stuff that you've talked about earlier in the conversation or earlier in your relationship. Those are the only undeniable signals that you've actually heard the other person. Smiling, nodding, leaning forward. You can do those things even if you're thinking about Yoda or your grocery list. You cannot repeat what someone said or ask a follow-up question if you weren't intensively listening to them.

17:25I mean, it's well said. So since I am listening to you, you're curious about Yoda. So I'll just tell you that my seven-year-old gave me that because it's from the Mandalorian. And he said, dad, put this in your office. It'll make you smart like Yoda. Hopefully I'm getting a positive aura. I don't know if it's working or not. OK, but I hope so. I mean, I hope I'm trying to be smart. Do you let me ask you a question on any level. Did you do you feel like putting tchotchkes in your office is a great topic seed so that someone like me will then say, what's the deal with Yoda? Yes. Yes. But I'm also a child.

18:04okay i am very in touch with my inner child okay so here okay can i i'm going to show you something this will end up in the podcast something i'm very proud of can you hold on one second okay this is very embarrassing ago so do you recognize that okay and for people listening in do you recognize that you see you're too young to recognize i dream of genie it's barbara oh my Oh, my God. Okay. And you see, so Barbara's been on my podcast. And I've had dinner with her in LA several times. And for people listening in, I have the original Genie bottle from I Dream a Genie. What? There's about 70 of these.

18:45And Barbara signed it for me. See? She signed it there. That is gorgeous. And if you were my vintage, if you were 61 and you were a male heterosexual, you had a crush on Barbara. Eden. And so my wife, who has no problem with me having dinner with Barbara Eden, I will say that she brings her 91-year-old chaperone, aka her husband, with her. But it is what it is, right? How old is Barbara Eden now? 94. Wow. I bet she's still a babe. Does she have a belly button? Because they never showed her belly button on the show. Yeah, she does have a belly button. I haven't seen her belly button, to be honest, but she does have one.

19:19But I'm bringing this up because my office is a throwback to my childhood. Because I want to come into my office. I want to think about what I was doing as a kid and what my inner child was. Does that help you bring yourself to conversations and to your work? Yeah, I think it's important. Don't you? Yeah, I do. Very much so. So you mentioned humor a lot in this book. I do. Are you a humorous person? I mean, I know the answer, but I want you to articulate it. Who can say that about themselves? That's crazy. You know you are. Of course you're a humorous person. I live my as a family core family value.

19:56I don't think I would have survived my childhood if I didn't learn to keep up with the silly humor in my family. I live for humor. In fact, a huge part of the value add that I hope I bring to the Harvard Business School is like a relentless insistence on levity. I think it might be one of the biggest weaknesses of probably a lot of organizations, but also Harvard is like the only way that you can make great progress and feel connected and alive and safe is if you feel a spirit of play. And that comes largely from humor. If people aren't funny, they can they can just find it through just like warmth, I think, too.

20:37But yeah, I live for I live for levity, Anthony. What's your favorite TV show? Right now or forever? Tell me. Right now, I mean, right now we've been watching Silo, which I will say is in this theme. I also just watched The Diplomat with Keri Russell and Silo is Rebecca Ferguson. I'm really liking seeing these these protagonists, main character, female characters emerge who are physically tough, super smart. They have skills. They're nuanced. They're interesting. And actually in both of those shows, they have male partners who are also interesting and high achieving, but aren't the main dish. They're a side dish.

21:17So I love watching that. Okay. I've watched both those shows. I love both those shows. You know, I do a lot of traveling, so I'm always on a plane. Did you notice that about those shows? I have noticed that about those shows. But I would say that those shows, you know, listen, we probably shouldn't get political, but I'm not a very woke person. It's all right. What I like about those shows is they're not woke. They show women who are tough and strong, but they're not patronizing these women in these shows. Do you see what I'm saying? And I think that's a very important message. If you're in Hollywood listening, you want tough, strong women and you don't want virtue signaling.

21:53You don't want patronization, if that makes any sense. It does. How do you think other shows patronize women? Or what are they doing right? And listen, if you go to Broadway now, they will put the whole spectrum of people on the stage as a virtual signal. There'll be very heavyset people in the dance troupe. There'll be very different types of people. There'll be men and women that shouldn't be there, okay, but they're there. And I think we have a tendency to do this now as a form of virtual signaling as opposed to just talent. Yeah. Okay, and I think people will be mad at me for saying that, you know.

22:27And I think the cancel culture is ebbing now finally. I think people are finally saying that that's not going to be the thing, you know. Yeah. So hopefully that continues. All right. We've got a couple more minutes. Apologies. Let's talk about apologies. Do we apologize to each other too much or too little? Too little. Too little. There's a lot of discord. There's a lot of discord. Because, you know, people born in the 1940s that are men, they don't apologize. I know. It's a real problem. That's a sign of weakness for them to apologize. I know. I think it's a real problem. Until recently, so scientists hadn't studied real conversations between real people until probably the last five or 10 years.