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

0:00I've had many leading experts on this show, including Matthew Walker, and they've all said the same thing about sleep. They've said it's the biggest positive investment you can make in your own performance. You can have the best strategy in the world, but if you're consistently tired, poor decision-making will follow and eventually cause other things to fail in your life. So if you're looking to optimize your recovery, you should start looking at what you're sleeping on. Our sponsor, Helix, makes high-quality mattresses tailored to your body. It doesn't matter if you run hot, sleep on your side, or need something firm.

0:30Helix has a mattress for you. And I asked them recently to send one to a member of my team. And Juan received it. And we travel a lot. So when he's home, quality sleep really matters. And he told me he's getting the best sleep of his life. And the data backs it up with 82 % of people in a Helix study saying they saw an increase in their deep sleep. And with a 120-night trial, you've got four months to prove it to yourself. You can get 27 % off at helixsleep.com slash diary. That's helixsleep.com slash diary.

1:03One of the things we notice when we have conversations on this show about conversation is people really care about likability.

1:11Alison Wood Brooks:Yes. Like they really want to know what's making them disliked. They really want to know how to be liked. Good. So being liked is a huge drive, but it's just one of many things that we care about in terms of gaining status. So status is respect, admiration, liking in the eyes of other people. Liking usually comes from sort of warmth and charm. Admiration often comes from like perceptions of competence. So we want warmth and competence at once, ideally. Okay, let's go back in time. Should we talk about the talk framework? Because there are going to be little clues about how to be better liked across the whole framework.

1:50Okay.

1:51Alison Wood Brooks:Okay. Let's start with T. I'm going to push these to the side. T is, first I just want to say as a whole framework, T-A-L-K, is the most comprehensive, teachable, practical, scientifically rigorous framework in the world for communication. Did you invent it? I did. So you would say that. But I didn't, when I first wrote the book, I didn't say it strongly enough. And in the last almost year, I've come to realize why. One part is because most people focus only on difficult conversations. And here we are focusing on all conversations, even the ones that seem like they should be easy and fun. It's all conversations everywhere, personal and professional.

2:32Alison Wood Brooks:The other piece is that I didn't even really intend this as a scientist, but the way we do research is essentially natural language processing machine learning fits into this new world of AI. So the framework can be used by humans or machines to coach people to be better conversationalists and use as a rubric after the fact of saying, OK, how did this go? Did you do well? Let's look at T-A-L-K and evaluate. Okay. It's the best in the world ever. Thank you, Stephen. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for recognizing me. Oh, yeah. Okay. T is for topics. Topics. Topics. Topics are the building blocks of conversation.

3:11Alison Wood Brooks:It is what we choose to talk about. Okay. Very simple. We all have an intuitive understanding that we sort of work through different chunks. First, we're going to talk about your conversation with your girlfriend. then we're going to talk about the talk framework, then we're talking about the compass, whatever. We're working through topics. What I think most people don't realize is that we're choosing topics every time we talk. It's not just at the beginning of a conversation, like an opener. Like, hey, what did you think of this, you know, the diplomat? No, it's every time you're talking, we're making moves to gently stay on topic or switch to something else.

3:47Alison Wood Brooks:What's so beautiful about that is it means we all have power. We all have control to nudge the conversation one way or another. And we can all do a better job with it. So what's the game here to pick better topics to know what topic we're aiming at? There's a lot of goals. It's both about choosing better topics. It's also about how can we make any topic better. Okay. One huge piece of advice that when you start to realize how much your mind is doing during a live conversation is to offload some of that cognitive work to beforehand. Okay. Okay. So prepping topics ahead of time. This does not mean writing out an agenda before you call your parents or before you call your girlfriend.

4:32Alison Wood Brooks:What it does mean is spending even 30 seconds, maybe even 10 seconds before you're in the chaos of a conversation to think about what you could talk about or what might be important for you to remember to talk about. Did you do that today? Always. Sometimes you don't have to, right? Like you did it today. You did extensive prep. You even have things printed on cards here. And in a way, I have been prepping for this conversation for 20 years. I've been studying these things. I designed the framework myself. I've gone on 80 other, you know, podcasts. That's all prep for this moment. What about in your personal life?

5:08Yeah. Can you give me an example of where you prepared topics?

5:10Alison Wood Brooks:Every conversation that I know is coming. Give me an example. So with Cosi before I got here. Which is a member of our team. Yes, thank you. I thought about, I wanted to ask her what it's like to be moving from London to LA. I wanted to ask her what it's like to work with you. She said all good things. All good things. Next question. What does A mean? I'm joking. So funny. I often will. So you can, it's not rocket science. It's literally just a little bit of forethought. What kinds of questions or topics could I ask you that will make our conversation feel a little bit better than just like winging it in the moment and talking about like some random thing I see in the room?

5:56Alison Wood Brooks:I try to do this before every conversation because now I know how powerful it is and how kind it is. If you are calling somebody and you're like, okay, oh yeah, their kid was going to take guitar lessons. I should remember to ask about that. Or, oh, my friend had this big presentation at work. I should remember to ask how that went. That means you're going to remember to ask them, and that's super kind, and they're excited to talk about it too. It makes everything better. So topic prep is a huge deal. In our research, what we find when you randomly assign people to prep topics or not, the conversations where people have thought ahead even for 30 seconds, They feel less anxious.

6:31Alison Wood Brooks:They're much smoother. There are fewer disfluencies, so ums, us, stutters between topics. They cover more topics, which is usually a good thing, more likely to land on good topics. You're less likely to blurt, so you're less likely to share things that you don't want to share with people. It's just an incredibly powerful strategy, and it doesn't need to be complicated. I've gotten in the habit of putting like two or three bullet points for people in my Google calendar notes when you know you have a meeting coming up. And you don't even have to do it right before. Like, oh, a week ahead of time, if it pops in my head that I want to ask Stephen about, do you want to have children?

7:08Alison Wood Brooks:I might write that as a little bullet point in my calendar note for the time that I'm going to be here with you. And then I'll be more likely to remember it. Do you feel skeptical about this? No. I was just thinking it probably makes you more, going back to the point about likability, it probably makes you a more likable person. Much more likable. Yeah. In fact, if you can achieve more of your goals, whether they're high informational, low informational, high relational, low relational, all of that makes you more likable. You seem more competent. You seem more warm, especially when you lean towards those pro-social, high relational goals.

7:42Because everyone talks about how if you're interested in someone else, like you were interested in Cozzy.

7:46Alison Wood Brooks:Yes. That must have felt good for her, which must make her like you more. We should go ask her. That's a good point. I ask them, I have my students sometimes do a reflection task where I say, if you had to walk into a room and your job was to make people like you a one out of 10, a five out of 10, or a 10 out of 10, what are the behaviors that you would do to try and pursue those three worlds? Okay, so if I wanted people to like me one out of 10. Yeah. What would you do? You tell me. You tell me. You're the expert. I want to hear your guesses. My guess is I would walk in quiet on my phone and I would ignore them.

8:26Yeah. And maybe I'd look up and make some kind of snide comment. I definitely wouldn't notice that they were there. Yeah. And I wouldn't make eye contact with them. I would maybe take a phone call.

8:41Alison Wood Brooks:I was going to say, one's really low. So probably insults, probably. Oh, yeah. I'd offend them. Yeah, offend them. Yeah. Maybe take a phone call and then while you're on the phone call, talk about how great you are or something, right? Like some sort of arrogance, et cetera. Yeah. Maybe if they try and talk to you, interrupt them. Yeah. Be like, not now. Or look at my phone midway through what they're saying. Yeah. Okay. So there's lots of things you can imagine there. Okay. Already we've touched on topics, though, right? When you think about, okay, I'm talking on the phone in front of them, and what am I going to be talking about that reduces my likability?

9:17Alison Wood Brooks:even for someone who's like just observing you talking. I'd get the name wrong. That's great. Yep, yep, yep, yep. That's a good way to say you don't matter to me. Yeah, yeah. Five out of 10 is an interesting one. You want to do it probably more blasé, like you engage with them, but not very well. Talk about small talk topics, like you were saying, things that you could talk about with anyone that are not personalized at all, seem a bit disinterested, but not offensive, just bland. Okay. Okay. Then we get to 10 out of 10 world. 10 out of 10 likability. Yeah. What are you doing if you're trying to get 10 out of 10?

9:52I'm completely focused on them.

9:54Alison Wood Brooks:Good. I'm attentive. I'm complimentary. I'm going to flatter them. Yeah. Do you think it will seem obsequious? I don't know if I get it right. Okay. Because I'm going to mean it. Yeah. Because it's going to be sincere. It's going to be really sincere. Yeah. I'm going to crack a great joke. Yes. Knock, knock. Yeah. Who's there? I don't know. I didn't know. You're like, I don't know, my panic. You laughed, didn't you? Exactly. So yeah, I'm going to flatter them, crack jokes, be very attentive, get their name right, ask them about their grandchild. Good. Okay, let's pause. I want to, in that description, already you're moving quite quickly through topics as you're interacting with them.

10:32Alison Wood Brooks:You know that you can't be circling the drain talking about the weather for long periods of time. So just briefly, let me say, we don't need to avoid small talk. In fact, it's a very important social ritual for people who are strangers to each other, people who haven't seen each other in a long time. It's where we land and say, oh, we're doing conversation now. The mistake that people make is they stay there too long, way too long. Any more than like one beat of, oh my goodness, the weather's really warm. It's like summer in California. then you need to make it more personal and move up this topic pyramid towards medium talk, deep talk quickly, right?

11:13Alison Wood Brooks:So small talk is at the bottom. These are topics anybody can talk about. Tailored talk is more exciting, more personalized, more relevant to your interests. Deep talk is the peak of this pyramid. Only we can talk about this thing in this special way. Not every conversation is bound to get to the deep talk, but when it does, we should feel very appreciative. It's one of the most magical things about being humans. So we don't need to get to deep talk with like the barista at Starbucks or with your neighbor when they're taking out their trash. But it does happen sometimes. And it's quite lovely. I think I used to put girls off when I was 11, because I used to ask them like the meaning of life too quickly and my mother stole a Nokia phone.

11:51Alison Wood Brooks:Yeah. And so they would stop texting back. Yeah. So I think I learned early that like some people just don't. Well, the jokes on them now. Now you get to do it for your life's work. No, but I think you were on to something there. It's not that you asked them about the meaning of life at all. You asked it too quickly. So getting, it's about the pacing as we move up here. Most people stay too long at the bottom, but we also cannot jump to the top often. You kind of have to do the ritual of climbing to feel like you get there in a natural way. And is that where relationships are built, deep ones?

12:22Alison Wood Brooks:For sure. At the top. Moments at the top, probably, right? This is where vulnerability takes you. Often asking lots of questions, especially follow-up questions, gets you up the pyramid more quickly. So shall we shift to the A of the talk framework? Because A is for asking. Topics and asking are intimately tied to each other. The most common way that people switch topics is by asking a question. So you can use questions like, what are you excited about recently? Or what has been your favorite guest to talk to? Or what have you and your girlfriend done together recently? You can do that to switch topics.

13:01Alison Wood Brooks:Once you're on a topic, we use follow-up questions to kind of dive deeply and move up the topic pyramid. So you're saying I should ask more questions? Yes. Okay. Well, ask more than they're asking me. Maybe not you because you spend a lot of time asking questions. But most people, the top line advice to make their conversations better is to ask many more questions. Asking, it sounds so simple, and it's almost like everybody already knows that, but doing it in practice is quite hard, and it's a skill. And people who do it well are more successful on romantic dates. They're more successful in work meetings.

13:41Alison Wood Brooks:They're more successful as collaborators. They're more successful as entrepreneurs in getting funding. All of it hinges on question asking. So the top line advice, just ask more questions. At the very least, don't be a zero question asker. What happens to the fate of zero question askers? They're not getting a second date. They're not going to get that funding. They're not learning enough about their partner to enable them to succeed. If you go on a first date and you're asking zero questions, which like imagine that. We've all sort of been on that date probably. you want to leave within 10 minutes when you're in a first date you have so much to learn about each other you have everything to learn about each other so if someone's not asking it's a real real real problem especially i think this is a very especially good hack for men um and on heterosexual dates often what they're getting wrong is that they're not asking enough questions how'd you know this?

14:42Alison Wood Brooks:From data. From data. Yeah, yeah. So we have a thousand speed dates and we, the outcome is does the other person want to go on a second date with you? And we have transcripts. It was an amazing study run by this incredible research group at Stanford about 10 years ago. And you can just measure it, measure how many questions they ask on each date. People who ask more questions are enormously more likely to get asked on a second date. So much so, imagine you go on 20 first dates, and I say, okay, Stephen, you just have to ask one extra question on those 20 dates. If you do, you'll convert another date into a second date from just one question per date.

15:25According to the data.

15:26Alison Wood Brooks:Yes. It's true for both men and women, but it's particularly helpful for men because they ask fewer questions on average. than women do. Really? Yeah. Significantly less. Yes. And the other funny gender effect in the data is that men are just more likely to agree to go on second dates. They're less discerning in general. But if they want, if men want to get asked on the second date, just ask more questions. What is me asking more questions doing to the other person? It makes them feel heard and like you want to know their answer that you're interested in them. And so it signals your interest, but also you learn what's in their mind and what their experience is, which gives, arms you with more information to then ask more better questions.

16:10Alison Wood Brooks:So it's not just about asking more, although that's a good start. It's about asking great follow-up questions. The benefits of question asking are almost entirely driven by the power of follow-up questions. So what, give me an example of asking a great follow-up question. We're on a date. It's, there's food, it's going really well. I've just shared with you that I went on an amazing walk down the Sunset Strip this morning. And then I would say, really? Oh my God, I've always wanted to go. Tell me about it. How was it? Oh, incredible. So I got to this point, I had never been there before. There was, I had to decide, was I going to veer off and go see the Marilyn Monroe apartment, which by the way, is right next to the Frank Lloyd Wright house.

16:54Alison Wood Brooks:Oh my God. Or was I going to go a few blocks away was the Menendez brothers house? Who's that? The two brothers who killed their parents. Oh, on Netflix? Yeah. Oh, wow. So I would literally right in between, and I was at this crossroads. Do I choose cultured? Do I choose morbid curiosity? And which one did you choose? I went with cultured. I was too afraid by myself. You're so cute. So, okay, we're off our date now. That was so fun. You were asking such lovely questions, and it really helped to, like, cheer me on. like you actually wanted to hear this story, even though it might like someone else might have been like not that interested.

17:36Alison Wood Brooks:And then you feel embarrassed like, oh, I just shared a bunch of vulnerable stuff. I was walking alone in L.A. I had morbid curiosity about these two brothers and the story. It's very easy to make someone feel invalidated in that moment. But follow up questions make me feel like, oh, he wants to know more. He's coming with me on this journey. So did I do the right thing then? Yeah, you were doing great. Okay. Yeah. And what's the wrong thing to have done for me to just... Oh, imagine if I had been like, I went on an amazing walk down the Sunset Strip. And you said, oh, my favorite restaurant on the Strip is a sushi place.

18:11Oh, shit.

18:12Alison Wood Brooks:I went to this amazing restaurant and I went to this amazing store. Yeah, they carried Hermes. I bought an amazing pair of boots. People do that all the time. Constantly. So this is called boomer asking. Boomer asking? Not because of boomers. We love... What are you saying about boomers? It's for people of all ages. Commit boomerast. It's a boomerang. Oh, okay. So I say to you... I love subscribers. No, no, we love boomers. So I say to you, like, Stephen, what's your favorite restaurant? Mr. Chow's. Oh, I've been to Mr. Chow's. Last time I went to Mr. Chow's, I went with a whole bunch of friends, and I had a friend who was really...

18:45Alison Wood Brooks:People do that all the time. So I've asked the question, you've shared something with me that is such a gift. Any sort of self-disclosure is such a gift. And instead of saying, oh, who did you go with? Or what did you order? Or what is it like inside? How did you like it? I bring the focus of the conversation right back to myself. People that do that don't know they do it. Correct. Because I will go for dinner or we'll have, I don't know, 10 of my colleagues there. And then sometimes I'll have one particular colleague who is doing exactly that. Yes. And they have no idea. Don't you want to be like, stop, stop.

19:20Yes, stop. Just like ask them about their thing. They're new here. We're trying to make them feel comfortable.

19:25Alison Wood Brooks:Even one follow-up question might be enough. And so if you use this mindset of like, ask the next question before you pull it back to yourself, it sometimes can be enough. Probably many more follow-up questions is better. But even just one where I was like, oh, who did you go to Mr. Chow's with? And I let you answer. Then I say, oh, I've been there too. You can see it happening in their head because you say the word Mr. Chow's is your favorite restaurant. And they immediately go, boom, I've got a brilliant story about Mr. Chow's that I need to tell everybody. It makes sense that people do this.

19:55Alison Wood Brooks:Our brains are incredibly, are wired to be egocentric. We know all of our lived experiences, our own, with 100 % accuracy. We lived it. It's all up here. So anything that we see or hear in our conversations is, of course, going to trigger all of these memories and associations in your mind about your lived experience. And it's such an enemy of good conversation because it constantly tugs you away from being interested in the other person first. The other thing I've seen in meetings, which I've had to have a couple of conversations about historically, is when someone will be talking and then someone's listening going, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.