Classes begin at Harvard Business School this week, and a course that’s sure to fill up fast this year is Alison Wood Brooks’ new offering How to Talk Gooder in Business and Life. It’s based on data revealing the importance of how we talk. Not the proper use of language or presentation skills. The way we talk with each other in our daily lives.
Students will learn conversation skills based on research insights through practice, feedback, reflection, and wisdom from occasional guests such as matchmakers and comedians.
This hit my radar while listening to Michael Lewis’s Against the Rules podcast. He devoted seven episodes earlier this year to coaching — its history, impact, and potential unfairness. Brooks, along with fellow HBS Professor Michael Norton, prototyped this course last year and Lewis explored the humor and seriousness of their findings.
Social scientists like Brooks and Norton analyze data from our everyday interactions — meetings, sales calls, speed dating, parole hearings, casual conversations, political debates, kids, Twitter — to discover what makes conversations work or not.
Spoiler alert: Dale Carnegie told us what this research has now confirmed way back in 1936 in his How to Win Friends and Influence Others.
Norton notes, “We talk all day every day, it’s the number one thing that we do,” yet we don’t know how to do it effectively, and make all kinds of mistakes.
He called out humble brags. Ugh...my hand is so sore from signing so many autographs. We don’t love bragging and we like it even less when it’s insincere.
Brooks points to egocentrism.
We’re so focused on ourselves that we don’t know what topics others are interested in. We don’t listen. We offer compliments that don’t land. Use humor that misses. And commit the deadly boomerask — we ask a question, get an answer, and bring it back to us: “How are you?” “I’m OK. I hurt my foot and can’t run.” “Oh, that happened to me a couple of years ago, and …”
How to talk gooder
Brooks packaged the research findings in her TALK framework to help coach students to be better conversationalists:
Topic: Have a topic plan. Even for simple conversations. And don’t be afraid to switch topics. For spontaneous conversations where you can’t plan, data showed that when people switched topics more frequently, the conversation was more enjoyable.
Asking: Ask more questions. This makes it more likely you’ll get a second date, make a sale, and get funding if you're an entrepreneur. We even like our Alexas and Siris better when they ask more questions. What else happened? How did that make you feel? And no boomerasking. Be more interested than interesting.
Levity: Use and appreciate humor and a sense of play. It makes us more likable. Creates psychological safety. Can make us seem more competent. Helps navigate conflict.
Kindness: Be responsive and validating. Receptive to opposing views. Smile. Care.
The advantaged keep getting advantageder
Lewis asks, “Now is this a scandal, that students at the Harvard Business School are the first to learn these new data-driven tricks of conversation? Of course not, that’s what HBS does: amplify the advantages of people who are already winning.”
When he asked Brooks where she’d take this, she lit up, Young children. Underserved populations. Could propel them into success.
Lewis notes, “. . . coaching is clearly getting better and better, and spreading into more areas of life, which means it matters a great deal who gets it and who does not. And the people who don’t get it are often the ones who need it most.”
“Think about it,” he challenged.
I am.