Hi, Matthere. Quick question foryou.
When was the last time you took a step back from your daily life and took the time to invest in yourself and youreducation?
For a lot ofus, it's been a longwhile.
But here's thetruth. Great leaders never stopideas.
Connecting to otherpeople.
Connecting to a higher purpose like an organization's mission orvision.
But how do we do thisconnecting?
Conversely, it's throughconversation.
Join me today as I have a conversation aboutconversations.
My name is Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School ofBusiness.
Welcome to ThinkFast,TalkSmart, thepodcast.
I'm late to get into ourconversation, so let's go ahead and getstarted.
I first came to know you and your work when I was writing my books speaking up without freakingout.
I came across your research on reframinganxiety.
I know it's from a long whileback, but I'd love to have you share this really helpful speaking anxiety managementtechnique.
Do you mindsharing? Ofcourse.
I would loveto. So when I was in gradschool, my dissertation was aboutanxiety.
Everybody feels anxious and not everybody needs therapy or medication or that level oftreatment,right?
To help us deal with the very normal feelings of anxiety that we all feel a lot of thetime.
SoMatt, what makes you feelnervous?
Does anything make you feelnervous?
Well, I still getnervous.
Youknow,Allison, it'sfunny.
I get most nervous when I speak in front of folks likeyou, people who studycommunication, people who know what Iknow, know a lot more than Iknow.
That's when I getnervous.
Other times I've learned to manage anxiety through techniques like you're going to introduce andothers, but I still getnervous.
How aboutyou? Do you get nervoustoo?
Oh mygosh,totally.Yeah.
And I think we needto,actually.
That was avery, you put a compliment inthere.
So thankyou. That was verynice.
I think we're right to feelanxious.
Not only when we talk to people that we admireand, youknow, we don't want to mess itup, but also anytime there's uncertainty and any sort of lack ofcontrol, which comes tome, I think that's the kind of conversation that's sort of how it'sbuilt,right?
Like we're co-constructing this interaction rightnow.
I don't know what you're going tosay.
I don't know what you're thinking and I can't possiblyknow.
So that uncertainty is alwaysthere.
And lack of control is there because I can't control how you react to me or what you think ofme.
Soreally, conversation is a very understandable place where you would feelanxious.
There are lots of other tasks that make us feel anxious aswell.
So we tried a very simple copingstrategy, a very simpleintervention.
And the questionwas, can people reframe their anxious feelings asexcitement?
And it's a really simpleidea, but the reason that it works is because when we feelanxious, we have this crazy instinct that we should try and calmdown.
Like reallypowerful. Everybody feels like they should calm down when they'reanxious.
And that'shard,right?
That would require that we mitigate the physiological signs ofanxiety.
So you're racingheart, sweatypalms, fiked cortisol in yourbody.
You're trying to like push those down as well as move from the negativevalence,right?
Like a negative emotion like anxiety and move into the positive zone ofcalmness.
And that two-stepmove, reducing the physiological signals and moving from negative topositive, it's pretty muchimpossible.
It'svery, veryhard, especially the physiological component ofit.
Soinstead, what reframing as excitement does is it allows you to stay in that higher rousalzone.
You're not trying to combat your automatic physiologicalprocesses, but instead you're just doing this mental reframe from negative topositive.
I love that it's sosimple.
And infact, it reallyis.
You justsay,hey, these feelings I'm having could representexcitement.
And you can begin thinking about what is exciting in thisopportunity.
I'm excited to share myinformation.
I'm excited to contribute to thisconversation.
And that allows youto, and highlight maybe one or two keytakeaways.
Yeah, I love teaching thiscourse.
Talk is anacronym. It'sT-A-L-K.
And it stands for topics asking levity andkindness.
And what the course aspires to do is help people talk just a little bitbetter.
I started out in the business school at Harvard TeachingNegotiation.
I started to get a little frustrated is we have such a focus both as scientists and in public discourse on difficult conversations or so-called difficultconversations.
And this conjures conversations like negotiations or delivering constructive feedback or giving hard advice or these things that we come to think of asdifficult.
What I've really through my life and teaching and through my research is that even easy conversations aredifficult.
We don't just suck at the hardones.
We suck at the easy onestoo.
It's sostressful.Yes.
Yes. And once you delve into the complexity and the nuance that lives and breathes within eachconversation, you start to see why it'shard.
And even when our goal isaligned, even when our only goal is to havefun, even that can be sort ofhard,right?
Like we might say the wrongthing.
We don't know how other people are feeling what they're thinkingabout.
And so that's what that's sort of the humble and extremely ambitious promise of thecourse.
Let's make each conversation just a little bitbetter.
But in accumulation over all the conversations of yourlife, that could make a massive difference for you and your career and for the people youlove.
Ihave, as you wellknow, I've spent a lot of time recently talking about the spontaneous moments of communication because a lot of what's taught in your institution at my institution is how to doit.
It triggers so very many ideas and thoughts for me that I actually wanted to turn this one around onyou,Matt, and askyou, when you think of the wordstructure, especially the context ofcommunication, what types of things are you thinkingabout?
Greatquestion. Communication structure is nothing more than a logical connection ofideas.
It's a bridging ofideas.
And not only is it the form that the communicationtakes, but it is the way you think about thecommunication.
So having a structure helps solve one of the two fundamental problems I believe we have incommunication, what to say and how to sayit.
What does your research tell us aboutstructure?
In myresearch, I'm really interested intopics.
And so what topicsare, is you take a chunk ofturns.
So you asked me thisquestion, what do you think aboutstructure?
And so turns are one organizingstructure.
So we can chunk the turns that we've taken on this topic into atopic.
And that opens up all new ideas and thoughtsabout,well, how do we choose the besttopics?
And how do we manage the boundaries betweentopics?
Thetopic,heuristic, is very intuitive to the humanmind.
But we don't realize as that we're making these micro decisions constantly in our conversations to managetopics.
Soevery, literally every time youspeak, you're choosing whether to stay on this topic or switch to somethingelse.
So I'm trying to be a very polite podcast guest and answer your question aboutstructure.
But I could jag and start talking about theKardashians.
Right? Like that's an option that Ihave.
So that'stopics,right?
So we're going to take some of thetopics, chunk our turns into thematic logicalchunks.
And then even still within this like mechanicalbucket, we think a lot aboutwhat, and you said this nicelyearlier, what we talkabout, there's actually a lot of more complexity there than we might intuitively reallyrealize.
There's actually three streams ofcontent.
The first isverbal, the words we say to eachother.
The second isnonverbal.
And that's everything about how your body ismoving, your handgesticulation, your facialexpressions, your eyegaze, everything that's not that you perceive visually about other people isnonverbal.
Then there's this third bucket that a lot of people don't know about or think about as a separate category that's extremely important for the structure ofconversations.
And that's parallellanguage.
And it's everything acoustic about how we're talking to eachother.
That's notwords. So words are the carriers ofmeaning, but parallel language also can change themeaning.
Isay, I lovethat,Matt.
That's very different than I lovethat,Matt.
I loveit. It changes it entirely and it's just an acousticproperty, the tone of myvoice, how fast I'm sayingit, thepausing, whether I laugh while I'm doingit.
And there's so many aspects of parallel language that canchange.
I want to come back to small talk because small talk is something that many of us strugglewith.
And there's a chat that we have at mixers or at coffee meetings or even cocktail parties can be really challenging forpeople.
What advice and guidance do you have to make small talk lesschallenging?
And are there certain choices you talked about conversation being a series of choices that we can make that can help small talk go moresmoothly?
Yes. Small talk gets a badrap,man.
It's notfair. It gets a really badrap.
The purpose of small talk is to help us coordinate easily around more interestingtopics.
Right? Everything about conversation is this sort of coordinationkerfuffle.
We're trying to coordinate with another humanmind.
Like what should we be talkingabout?
How should we beinteracting?
What do I feel safe sharing withyou, etcetera?
Small talk is reallyuseful.
It's the predictable way that we open up this really crazy experience we're about to havetogether.
And so I think it gets too bad arap.
It serves a very important sort of searchprocess.
So if you think of small talk as a search and really lean into it as this like enjoyable searchprocess, then it can become lessawkward.
I like that notion of reframing forsure.
And I think that canhelp.
And when you see it as serving a purpose beyond just thisawkward, I'm standing next to you and need to saysomething.
I've come to learn and I'm curious if you have other insights into this that in small talk are just the decisions we make can really influence how the conversationgoes.
And I've heard that there are two choices people often make either supporting choices of the topic that's being discussed or shiftingchoices.
Do you have insight into that and perhaps other types of choices that we can make to make things better orworse?
Yes. We study topic selection a lot and we call it topicmanagement.
Two choices is actually a goodheuristic, but it's oversimplifying what we'redoing.
So how we studythis, we study topic selection on a turn by turnbasis.
So every time someonetalks, they're making a microdecision.
And you can imagine it as like I'm staying on thistopic, I'm going to support the topic or I'm going toswitch.
That's a goodheuristic.
But actually there's some gray area in between those twopoles,right?
So there'salso, I'm going to passively let you stay on this topic versus I'm going to actively encourage us to stay on thistopic.
I'm going tosay, oh mygod, that'samazing.
Tell memore, which is very different thanlike,uh-huh,right?
Like that's a bigdifference.
And the same wasswitching.
You can imagine moves that are very subtly drifting that are almostambiguous.
Like we're not sure if we're moving on to a new topic or if it's just a sort of like an adjacent fuzzy drift away from the currentone.
And then there are really aggressive switches to new ones where we're talking about conversation with eachother.
And then I'mlike, and also let me tell you about my chicken saladsandwich.
Wow. Soyummy. Everyone should eat chickensalad.
There's like lots of shadesof, when we're making these choices about how to managetopics, there's like shades of things you can do to support as you said or switch to somethingnew.
We can all feel when a topic like the juice is like dried up from atopic.
What we find in our research is that people who assertively switch in those moments are greatconversationalists,right?
If you can sense if there's longerpauses, if there's awkwardlaughter, if people start repeating things they've already said on thetopic, it's their signals that it's time toswitch.
And so doing so assertively is something we can all do a little bitbetter.
We have this instinct to be a little afraid to switch topics because it feels rude or abrupt or maybe they have more tosay.
When in fact it's much safer and usually a good idea to switch to something new because boredom and stagnation are bigger risks than weknow.
So I'm not going to take the advice you just gave and abruptly switch topics because I'm hearing a theme across several of the things you've talked about and it's really about being sensitive to what's needed in themoment.
And to me thisthoughtfulness, this slowing down is related really tolistening.
You and I study communication and there's this notion that in communication it's about what you'resaying.
It's so often I'm coming to realize it's about what you're listening and hearing and I know what a recent chat you and Ihad.
You shared with me that you're really beginning to focus your research on listening and I'm curious if you could share a little bit about how you see listening and how we can become betterlisteners.
It's so funny that you say this Matt because my course is called Talk and great irony of it is that I think it should really be calledlisten.
Like that's one of the biggest takeaways from it is that it's so hard to be a good listener and so veryimportant.
So we have some really exciting research about listening that's just comeout.
I work on this topic with a PhD student here at Harvard named Hannah Collins and a co-author named Mikey Oman's and my colleague at the Harvard Kennedy School named JuliaMinson.
And what we've realized is the human mind is built towander.
It's not built to focus in on one person for long stretches of time and yet that's what conversation demands of our mind is to really pay attention to those three streams of content that I mentionedearlier, the verbalcontent, all those nonverbal cues and also the parallellanguage.
It's like drinking from a higher fire hydrantright?
We're bombarded by information and that information is veryinteresting.
It often makes our minds make connections to random ideas and then we want to elaborate and think about somethingelse.
It's tremendous work to stay focused on a conversation partner as the whole conversationunfold.
And so what we have found in our research is a key piece of this is like if you're putting in the effort to listen attentively tosomebody, show it tothem.
Don't just assume that theyknow.
And so there's decades and decades of work on activelistening.
This focuses on things like eye contact and nodding and smiling and laughing at the right times and leaning towards yourpartner.
These are the sort of nonverbal cues that you're listening tosomebody.
And that's allgreat, but it's great as a very basic startingpoint.
What we're finding now is actually expressing your attentive listening with your words is what makes someone such a compellingcommunicator.
So I heard you earlier talking about that you also eat the same lunch every day and the only way that I can say that now is because I was listening toyou.
And so remembering to bring it up later or express affirmation and say that's sointeresting.
They eat the same lunch everyday.
Why do you dothat? And asking a follow upquestion.
These are undeniable cues that you've actually heard someone process what they were saying and you're repeating it back tothem.
So these are the sort of high fidelity cues of goodlistening.
And often people put in the work to listen to someone and they just forget to showit.
They forget to say it out loud and it's a huge missedopportunity.
So the ways to do this are through things like follow upquestions, call backs to earliertopics, paraphrasing what someone hassaid, or if someone has said something that'sconfusing,again, revisiting those repairstrategies.
Like can you ask a question that helps to fix a quick misunderstanding or this sort of rift in your sharedreality?
Can you do it right then andthere?
Like yousay,oh, I heard you say something aboutlistening.
I didn't quiteunderstand.
Can you explain that a little bit more tome?
All of these things show that you're listening attentively to someone and that youcare.
I think the gift of listening is a truegift.
And having to demonstrate it through your words isreally, reallyimportant.
And as somebody who hosts a podcast and teaches people how to interview and to runpanels, all the skills that you just talked about are critical in thatsuccess.
Matt, are you always caught in like themetaloupe?
Do you feel like you're floating over the room watchingyourself?
It'slike, teach about your communicating aboutcommunication.
The metacommunication is really critical to becoming a bettercommunicator, but I absolutelyagree.
And I actually describe it just like youdid, that to become a bettercommunicator, you have to be engaged in it in the present in themoment, but at the same time observing it from above to see what's going on and what'sneeded.
And really effective communicators learn how to toggle between those two areas of focus to beeffective.
And it takes practice and time to doit.
Youknow,Alice, in this conversation has been absolutelyfantastic.
I have learned alot. I'd love to ask you the same three questions I ask everybody on thispodcast.
Are you ready forthat? I was bornready.
Isure. I know that forsure.
Questionone. The best communication advice you have ever received is a five to seven word presentation slidetitle.
What would itbe? One thing that sticks withme, this was from a professional matchmaker named RachelGreenwald, who I love in a door and who also teachescommunication.
She uses thiscatchphrase, be more interested thaninteresting.
I think that's a really powerful bit ofadvice, especially going back to the notion of small talk andchitchat.
It's really not aboutyou, it's aboutthem.
And I love that idea about I am going to be really curious to hear your answer to thisone.
Numbertwo, who is a communicator you admire andwhy?
It's such a greatquestion.
There are so many communicators Iadmire,Matt.
Imean, I admire you as acommunicator.
And for manyreasons, perhaps the most embarrassing one is because you have such a lovely timbre to yourvoice.
It'slike, it's like pleasant to hear all thetime.
Why thankyou.Yes, we should get you to sing on thispodcast.
No, that would be adisaster.
I think my real answer here is StephenColbert.
In mycourse, we watch a few examples of his live conversation with otherpeople.
The first one is a conversation he has with a comedian RickyJervase.
And they're debating the existence ofGod.
Have you seen thisconversation?
I havenot. So Ricky Jervase's train is aphilosopher.
And what I love about it is that it's like the super serioustopic.
And yet they find these moments of levity that are just soamazing.
And even beyond thelevity, they show incredible graciousness to the other person'sperspective.
Wonderful. Question numberthree, what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communicationrecipe?
This is sohard, it's so hard topick.
As ascientist, I can tell you what the most robust predictors are of a goodconversation.
It's hard to narrow it down tothree.
I think it comes down to choosing good topics and making any topicgood, asking goodquestions, finding moments oflevity, and expressing our kindness to otherpeople.
But that's an easyanswer.
So that's not going to be myanswer.
My realanswer, I talk aboutthis.
I have a book coming out nextyear.
And so in thebook, we talk about minding thegap,GAP.
So GAP are these three ingredients ofgratitude.
So being grateful for your conversationpartners, even giving you thetime, the honor of theirtime, and to be in theirpresence.
The A isacceptance. So every great conversation starts from a place ofacceptance.
It's sort of the semantra of yes and that we borrow from the end of thecomedian.
And then the P ispatience.
So knowing that we're always going to makemistakes, being patient with ourselves and with otherpeople, and trying to fixthem.
Well, I cannot wait for your book to comeout.
And I really appreciate you filling in those gaps for us today and helping us understand better how we can communicate and converse and really listen so that we canengage, demonstrate warmth and learn fromothers.
Allison, this was a tremendous pleasure to have you on and it was great to chat withyou.
I'm so grateful for yourtime.
ThanksMatt. Thanks for joining us for another episode of ThinkFast, TalkSmart, ThePodcast.
This episode was produced by JennyLuna, MichaelRiley, andme, MattAverhands.
Our theme music is composed by FloydWanderer.
We invite you to find more episodes wherever you get yourpodcasts.
Be sure to tell a friend or two to listen in aswell.
Subscribe and go ahead and rate and review the show aswell.
Finally, join us on LinkedIn where our conversationcontinues.
Hi, Matthere. Season leaders know that today's ever-changing landscape demands constantevolution.
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Join us this summer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business for one of our on-campus C-suite programs to enrich yourperspective, amplify youreffectiveness, and shape the future withconviction.
