Embracing Variability in Conversation: The Joy of Topic Switching

We learn the skill of talking as toddlers and by the time we’re adults, most of us don’t think twice about the inner workings of a conversation. But the reality is, there’s a science and an art to conversing. And understanding that science could unlock so much potential in your professional and personal life. 

Alison Wood Brooks is a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of the book, Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves. She also teaches a cutting-edge course at Harvard called Talk where she helps students hone their conversational skills. 

Alison and Greg talk about talking, including why this critical skill should be incorporated into more school curriculums, the complexities of effective communication, and the importance of small talk. Alison also offers tips for enhancing your conversation skills, whether in personal relationships or professional settings. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

• Alex Pentland
• Jeffrey Pfeffer | Pfeffer on Power podcast
• “Risky business: When humor increases and decreases status” by Alison Wood Brooks, T. Bradford Bitterly, and Maurice Schweitzer
• Nicholas Epley | unSILOed 
• Gong

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Harvard Business School
• Professional Website
• Professional Profile on Instagram

Her Work:

• Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves

Episode Quotes:

Why aren't people experts at communication?

01:59: Language acquisition starts very early in our lives, and we spend almost all day long, every day of our lives, practicing it. And so we get to adulthood, and we feel like we should be experts at it, that we should be really great at it. And yet, as we all know, based on our own ruminations about our own lives, and from our observations of others, we are far from perfect at communication. And the reason that we're not experts at it is because, when you look under the hood, conversation is a lot more complicated and tricky than it first appears, and it takes some rummaging under the hood to understand what's really going on here and why aren't we—why aren't we perfect at it?

What makes a successful conversation

12:12: A successful conversation is about the combination of prep—what you do ahead of time—and then how well you improvise once you're there. It's the combination of preparation and flexibility.

Small talk is the start not the destination in every conversation

18:01: Small talk is a very important social ritual. You have to do it. You have to start somewhere, especially with strangers and people you haven't seen in a long time. You gotta start with, like, how are you? Like, what's going on? How are you? It'd be weird not to. The mistake that people make is staying there too long, not finding those off-ramps to move up the pyramid to something more meaningful and interesting.

The challenge of explicit goals in conversations

10:49: Often, we don't know what we want, and it might emerge as the conversation goes on or as a relationship proceeds. So that's a big problem, right? Like, we just can't possibly anticipate all of the many things that we might want. The second challenge is by making our goals explicit. Like, if we were to say all the things out loud, it would undermine much of the magic that we're actually looking for. We want a conversation to feel almost magical. [11:27]  We want to get there and do the thing without having to say out loud what our goals are. And the things that go unsaid in a conversation really matter. If we were to make everything explicit, a lot of that delight would disappear.