How to Communicate With Confidence & Ease (From Harvard Business School’s #1 Professor)

Mel Robbins (00:00:22):

And you have a four part framework that helps us communicate more effectively. Can you tell me what the four part framework is?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:00:30):

Yes, very briefly. T stands for topics. A stands for asking, L is for levity and K is for kindness. In my class we do an exercise called never ending follow-up questions.

 

Mel Robbins (00:00:42):

I have a feel like we're about to do this.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:00:43):

Do you want to try it?

 

Mel Robbins (00:00:44):

Yes.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:00:47):

It's like we're all on these journeys looking for those magical moments of connection and sometimes they happen. This is where real power and authority and influence come from. When we think of people who are charismatic and competent, this is what they're doing and that's what you're going to teach us today. I'm going to teach you today,

 

Mel Robbins (00:01:04):

Professor Allison Wood brooks. Welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:01:08):

I'm so happy to be here, Mel. Thank you.

 

Mel Robbins (00:01:10):

I am so excited to just dig into your research and learn everything that we can learn from this crazy popular class that you teach at Harvard Business School. But here's where I want to start. There is a person listening right now who has no time, and yet they found time and made time to be with you and me right now. What can the person listening expect to change about their life? If they take everything that you're about to teach us and they try it and they put it to use.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:01:41):

If they really take what we talk about to heart, I think everything about their life could get better. Your love life, your relationship with your children, your relationship with your parents, your work, your relationships with your colleagues, what you're able to get done together, everything, every person, every relationship in your life is a repeated sequence of conversations over time. So even if each of those conversations gets a little bit better, this short time that we have on the earth, everything about it is going to get better.

 

Mel Robbins (00:02:14):

Wow, you just said our whole life is going to get better. Why does communication matter so much?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:02:19):

Communication is everything. Everything. So really you can think of every relationship in your life as this repeated sequence of conversations and you zero in on each one of those conversations. It's a series of tiny choices that you're making at every moment of every conversation, and we're about to do it right now. Mel, every moment you're making these choices, what should we be talking about? What should I be asking the other person about? When should we be laughing? When should we be crying? When should I ask a question? When should I share something of myself? We're making these tiny micro decisions all the way along and it's going to determine what we're able to do together, what we're able to accomplish together, what we're able to learn about each other, how we talk is who we are and what we're able to do in the world.

 

Mel Robbins (00:03:07):

I love how you framed it because I was sitting here thinking, I hope that she can help me not have so many regrets because I think a lot of us leave a conversation or like, oh, I wish and I hadn't have said that, or, oh, I wish I would've brought that up. But you're also talking about the power of forward momentum.

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:04:04):

I have to tell you, getting that course title approved by the administrator, by the powers that be at Harvard is one of the greatest accomplishments of my professional life. It's sitting next to so many serious courses like Democracy in America and capitalism in today's age. It was intentional. It has a few different meanings. Of course, it's grammatically incorrect, which drives some people up the wall, but there's two meanings. A huge part of the course is about balancing gravity and levity.

 

(00:04:33):

And so I really wanted to signal that in the course title. We're going to take conversation. We're going to take our work very seriously, but in order to do that, we need to also maintain a spirit of play and fun. We have to have fun together or we aren't going to feel safe. We're not going to be able to make progress. The word gooder also is really rooted in this word good. We're going to work towards a goal of kindness. We want to be good people when we're talking to other people and hopefully a little bit gooder.

 

Mel Robbins (00:05:02):

So I want to hear the story behind what made you want to even create this course, because if you're really thinking about it, you've got Harvard Business School, 11% acceptance rate. Aren't the people going to Harvard Business School already good at communicating?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:05:16):

I know this is what everybody thinks, and in a way, yes, and in a way, no. When I was originally recruited to be on the faculty at Harvard, I was recruited to teach a course on negotiation.

 

Mel Robbins (00:05:26):

And by the way, the negotiation course at Harvard is like legendary.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:05:32):

Some of my colleagues were sort of the founders of this framework that is now taught at every business school, at every law school. It's really an incredible course.

 

Mel Robbins (00:05:41):

Why were they recruiting you? I don't mean to be rude, but what were you doing at the time it made them go, we got to have Professor Brooks here.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:05:48):

Well, I went to grad school. I went to grad school in a business school at Wharton in Philadelphia. I was obsessed with humans and people and figuring us all out, and I was a behavioral scientist. And in grad school, I spent my time studying emotions, the way that we feel on the inside, but also how we talk about our feelings with other people. And one of the places that I studied emotions was in negotiations. When you put people in these difficult situations, how do they feel? How are their feelings influencing their behavior and what they're able to do when they're negotiating?

 

Mel Robbins (00:06:21):

Well, that's super cool. So this is your area of expertise. You get recruited to go to Harvard Business School to teach this course in negotiation. What happened?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:06:29):

Yeah, so I was there. I taught negotiation for about four years. It's an amazing course. You spend time practicing in doing these role plays of, okay, you're the manager of a factory and you need to negotiate and procure some of these hard things, or oh, now you're going to negotiate for a new house. Okay, let's do that. Let's go practice. You do these role plays, you learn great frameworks about how to do it better. But even as I was teaching this great class and I could feel that my students were getting so much value from it, I realized that we were missing something. When I think about negotiations, you realize how often am I doing that? How often are you doing this? Maybe you're negotiating for a new car or a new house or a higher salary. I don't know, maybe once every two months maybe. And what I started to realize is like, wait, but we have to talk to people all day long every day. And I don't think of those as negotiations. That seems like a different nut to crack.

 

(00:07:29):

And many of our students at Harvard are actually already quite strategic. So some of the lessons that we're teaching them in negotiation are pretty intuitive to them. We're taking strategic people and teaching them to be even more strategic. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I think what these people need might be how do we teach them to be more engaging and fun and funny and interesting and dynamic and more empathic? Where's the course that can help them to do that? And there wasn't one. They've tried many ways over the years and none of them have really stuck.

 

Mel Robbins (00:08:04):

Okay, so you come up with this course called Talk, and based on your research, why is communication so challenging for people?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:08:13):

Oh my gosh. Communication is challenging for a million reasons. When you think if you ask me to make a list of the mistakes that people make in conversation, I would go on and we choose the wrong topics. We forget to raise the topics that we should talk about. We don't ask enough questions. We ask too many questions. We're talk too much about ourselves. We don't focus enough on the other person. We brag, we humble brag, we give backhanded compliments. We do all of these things. The laundry list is so long, it feels almost insurmountable, and in my mind I'm like, wait. But people can't keep all of those things in their heads all the time. What they really need is a simple framework that can help them wrap their arms around this vast ocean of complexity that is in every conversation. And when you look under the hood of every conversation, you start to realize how complex it really is.

 

Mel Robbins (00:09:08):

And that's what you're going to teach us today. That's what I'm going to teach you today, this simple framework. Professor Brooks, before we jump into the takeaways from this class and all of the research that you've done on the science of communication, can you just tell me and the person who's listening, how exactly does becoming a better communicator impact you? For real?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:09:33):

Yeah. Becoming a better communicator is going to help you gain and maintain higher status.

 

Mel Robbins (00:09:39):

What does that mean?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:09:40):

When I use the word status, what I mean is likability, respect, power, what the kids these days would call Riz, right? It's these people who have high status are the ones we admire, that we have power in their groups at work, in their friend groups, in their families. And so when you hear me say high status, I'm not talking about fancy or highfalutin or what social class you're in.

 

Mel Robbins (00:10:05):

Got It.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:10:06):

Literally in your social group, are you respected? Do you have power? Do you have influence?

 

Mel Robbins (00:10:12):

Well, that's everything.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:10:13):

Yeah, it's everything.

 

Mel Robbins (00:10:14):

Wow. So learning to be a better communicator by really taking all this science of communication that you teach at Harvard Business School and applying it means you'll have more respect, you'll have more influence, whether you're talking about in your home with your family or you're talking about with your colleagues, or you're talking about in the classroom or the hospital you work with. We're really talking about your ability to not only communicate, but to be respected and admired by your peers and listened to.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:10:42):

That's right. And have a little fun while you're doing it.

 

Mel Robbins (00:10:45):

Alright, well let's dig into all of your research. What do you think is the single biggest reason why most people can't communicate effectively?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:10:55):

Probably if I was forced to choose the single biggest reason is our human nature of egocentrism.

 

Mel Robbins (00:11:01):

That's a big word. What does that mean?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:11:03):

Yeah. Self centered, we're self centered, we're self focused. Our brains are built for survival. We're focused on what is my perspective? How can I stave off dangers and fears and stay alive and sort of proliferate my own life and protect my family and ego center? That self focus is good for survival back when we were hunters and gatherers. But in today's day and age, it also holds us back from really connecting with other people. You have to relentlessly sort of fight against your self-centered instincts to really focus on another person.

 

Mel Robbins (00:11:38):

Well, that's true because you go into a conversation sort of with that default mode of what's in this for me? And if you're thinking about it from what's in it for you, you're probably already starting off on the wrong foot

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:11:52):

In a bad place, yes.

 

Mel Robbins (00:11:54):

I recently read research Professor Brooks that every generation is getting worse at communicating. Do you think that's true?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:12:03):

I dunno. I don't think every generation is getting worse. I think people, human beings have probably always struggled with conversation. Let me back up for a moment. In the book we talk about conversation as a coordination game. And a coordination game is any sort of decision you need to make independently between two or more people where you can't communicate. So the game of chicken is a good example where you're sort of hurdling towards each other and you have to choose, do I veer left or veer? And both people have to choose without talking to each other. They have to coordinate. Okay? So a conversation is like this game of chicken, except you're making these relentless coordination decisions. You're deciding what are we going to talk about? What am I going to disclose about it? How are we going to talk about it? Are we going to be silly? Are we going to be serious?

 

Mel Robbins (00:12:50):

Am I going to talk about it all? Because now when you said chicken, I thought, wait a minute, the person listening, I know me, has somebody in their life they have to deal with that they can't quite communicate with. It can get very frustrating and we don't even think about it. We just then start to avoid the person that we're having trouble communicating with. What do you think all of us get wrong when it comes to communication?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:13:15):

So there's this focus on the self, which starts you from a place of getting you off on a bad foot and you're often focusing on yourself the whole way along. Researchers have sort of found consensus on this idea that failures and perspective being able to understand the other person's point of view and their mind is the single greatest barrier to conflict resolution and to connection. And that's true at every moment of every conversation, we struggle to understand what the other person is thinking and feeling and what they're going to say and do next. We rely on our own beliefs, our own opinions, our own feelings to guess how somebody else is feeling, and we're really bad at guessing.

 

Mel Robbins (00:13:58):

I've already learned something, which is I assumed, and I am sure we'll get into it, that being a better communicator is about you speaking differently. And what you're already signaling is, wait a minute, if you can't actually understand that communicating is about connecting with somebody and being able to stop yourself and truly step into somebody else's shoes and imagine what they might be feeling. If you can't do that, you can't communicate. Is that what you're basically saying?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:14:29):

That's exactly right. Because conversation is between two people or more a you thing. It's, it's completely separate from public speaking, which where it's like one person standing on a stage not getting a response. Dialogue is about back and forth. You take turns speaking and listening, and you don't know what your partner's going to say next, but you're going to have to respond to it. So it's really not about you. It's about you plus the other person and what you can build together.

 

Mel Robbins (00:15:00):

I love that. And so you've taken a decade of research and you have a four part framework that helps us communicate more effectively. Can you tell me what the four-part framework is?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:15:11):

Yes, very briefly. T stands for topics. A stands for asking, L is for levity, and K is for kindness.

 

Mel Robbins (00:15:20):

I realize you take an entire semester at Harvard Business School to unpack the four-part framework, but today, professor Brooks, you are going to teach us this four-part framework.

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:15:37):

T, T is for topics. So topics are the things we talk about, right? If I asked you after this recording to look back and say, what did we talk about? Your brain would be really good at organizing and categorizing. Oh, well, first we talked about your course and then we talked about topics and then this. So our brains are really good at chunking things into segments, into topics, which is so helpful in practice because it means that we can use that ability to steer topics while we're talking to each other.

 

Mel Robbins (00:16:11):

But you have to be really good at communicating in order to steer the topics.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:16:14):

You do not have to be good. You just have to know that it's happening. And so I think often when you say what topic you're going to talk about, people think about the opening topic.

 

Mel Robbins (00:16:24):

Let's put us at the scene. How would you use the T topic part of the four-part framework to let's say you're going out on a date. Okay, how do you use topic to help you be a better communicator?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:16:37):

Anyone who's going out on a date is already thinking about what they're going to wear, how they're going to do their hair, what makeup they're going to put on, what restaurant they're going to meet at, what activity they're going to do. We do all of this prep work ahead of time. Only 10% of people think about what they're going to talk about once they get there. You're spending so much time showering and getting dressed and making the reservation at the restaurant. At the same time, you should be thinking about what are some things that'll be fun for us to talk about once we're together? So topic prep, that's step number one. Think ahead.

 

Mel Robbins (00:17:12):

Wow. And you could do that for anything. You could do that if you're getting together with your family. So if you're tired of the same old, same old with your family, think about interesting things that you could talk about or questions to ask. How do you even teach yourself to be good at topic prep if you've never even thought about this,

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:17:29):

You just have to start doing it.

 

Mel Robbins (00:17:30):

What do you mean?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:17:31):

So a lot of people are very averse to topic prep, especially with people they know well. They feel like they shouldn't need to plan topics for someone that they're very close to. They'll just know what to talk about once they're together.

 

Mel Robbins (00:17:43):

I'm guilty of that.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:17:44):

Yeah, it's normal. A lot of people feel that way,

 

Mel Robbins (00:17:46):

Which is why we then go, how are your kids and how is work? What's going on?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:17:49):

Look at the weather. Let's talk about the appetizer in front of us on this table. We tend to grab things that are right there in our environment that are easy to talk about, but it doesn't mean it's the right thing to talk about. It's not the most fun thing to talk about. A little bit of forethought. So we have research on this. We've studied people who we ask to even spend 30 seconds, 30 seconds ahead of a conversation, brainstorming possible topics that they could talk about. Then we let them go and have their conversation versus people who just walk in and have the conversation. You normally would have the people who have prepped even for 30 seconds, even if they don't end up raising those topics, their conversation is better. It's more enjoyable, it's more fluent. You're less anxious. Those little panicky moments when you're not sure you know that something's getting boring and you need to switch, but you don't know where to go.

 

Mel Robbins (00:18:40):

Yes,

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:18:41):

That doesn't happen anymore. You've got options in your back pocket, in your mind. Oh yeah, if there's a lag, I need to remember to ask about their kid who'd had tried out for the hockey team. So you've always got an option, a backup plan for the panicky moments. Turns out it makes the conversation much more enjoyable as well. You tend to switch topics a little more frequently and you're more likely to land on things that are mutually interesting to everybody involved.

 

Mel Robbins (00:19:06):

So if the person listening right now is super introverted, very shy, and they're now having a panic attack about this idea of I got to come with topics. What is the best way to help you become good at doing this if you don't think that this is going to come naturally to you?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:19:25):

Totally. I think the first thing is don't have a panic attack. This might be the greatest tool that you've ever added to your arsenal as an introvert in your life. Because so much of why introverts feel panicked once they're in social situations is that they don't know what to say. They don't really want to approach these difficult moments. Having some topics prepped, eases, all of that. And once you experience the magic of topic prep in action, you're like, oh my God, this is it. I should have been doing this my whole life. For the most part, you know who you're going to see in a day. You might know the specific people, whether it's your kids and your spouse, and then this set of colleagues. And then knowing who you're going to see means that you can prep topics for all of them in a personalized way.

 

Mel Robbins (00:20:08):

So walk me through the day.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:20:09):

Yeah. Okay, so we're going through the day. You wake up, you see your kids before they get on the school bus and you're talking to your spouse. You can think about ahead of time, what are each of my kids doing today? What are their pain points? What are they probably feeling excited about? What are they nervous about? What's going on in their life? Do they have band at school? Instead of just being like, remember you're trumpet. You could be like, how is band? What's going on when you're in band? How do you feel? What are you looking forward to about it? Right? That's going to be so much more interesting than just like, don't forget your trumpet. And then they rush out the door's.

 

Mel Robbins (00:20:43):

Then you get to work and your colleague who's kind of quiet, what's a topic you could bring up with a colleague?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:20:48):

Anything? I mean, it depends on the colleague, right? Let's imagine that it's a colleague that you love and you are thinking about their life. They just had a new child. I mean, ask about how that's going. Having a new child is a traumatic and dramatic thing. How's it going? Are you changing so many diapers? Whatever? Or they had a big, a big presentation last week. How did it go? What was good about it? What was hard? Anything I can help you with on it?

 

Mel Robbins (00:21:14):

Now, give me one for my mom and dad because I have the same conversation with them over and over and over. How'd it go? What'd you do? How was golf? What are you doing tonight?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:21:21):

You know what? So my sister just did the most amazing thing for my parents. She actually used chat, GPT to ask to prep topics with them. How do you do that? So she typed in to chat GPT. She was like, what do you think people who live in upstate New York in their seventies who have nine grandchildren, what are the types of questions that they want me to ask them?

 

Mel Robbins (00:21:42):

What?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:21:42):

Yeah. Yeah. Because the internet knows that demographic better than we as individuals could possibly know that demographic.

 

Mel Robbins (00:21:50):

I can literally hear the person listening, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. About everybody in their life.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:21:55):

Everyone in your life. You could use it to prep topics. You could even say chat, TP, t. What do you think this colleague who doesn't really like me because of this reason, we got in an argument once about this thing and now they're mad at me. What would they want me to do? What would they want to talk about with me? If anything? It's wild.

 

Mel Robbins (00:22:14):

You are really smart. You should consider teaching a class on this. What is the second part of the talk framework for communicating better?

Mel Robbins (00:22:24):

Okay.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:22:24):

Yeah. Ask more questions, ask better questions.

 

Mel Robbins (00:22:28):

Now you're making me panic because I don't know if my question's going to be better. What is a better question?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:22:33):

You're already a great question. I mean, look, you've prepped topics and you are asking so many questions. We're already off to a great start, Mel. So what's so funny is a pattern that you might pick up on here is that in every conversation, once you're in it, it's very overwhelming. You're making tons of choices. You're trying to listen to what the other person is saying. You're trying to process it. You're trying to do this tiny creativity task of how do I come up with something interesting to say back to them? That's really hard on your brain. That's a lot of cognitive effort. So anything you can do ahead of the conversation, like topic prep is helpful, and any sort of trick that you can have during the conversation can also be helpful. And that's why asking questions is such a superpower. You don't need to have prepped it ahead of time. All you need to do is listen to what your partner is saying and ask about it. Ask more about it.

 

Mel Robbins (00:23:27):

Huh? Well, how can asking better questions or asking more questions, improve connection and make you better at communicating?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:23:35):

Our inability to understand other people's perspectives is a huge barrier to conflict management and connection. The antidote to that is question asking. It is a direct pathway to get what's in your head out of your head and share it with me. In my class, we do an exercise called never ending follow-up questions.

 

Mel Robbins (00:23:55):

Oh, do you want to? I have Feel like we're about to do this. Yes.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:23:58):

Do You want to try it?

 

Mel Robbins (00:23:58):

Yes.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:23:59):

Okay. I'll ask questions and you answer, and then maybe we can switch roles.

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:02):

Okay.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:24:02):

Okay. Mel, what did you have for breakfast this morning?

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:06):

A smoothie.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:24:07):

Oh, what was in your smoothie?

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:09):

It was this protein powder and a little bit of honey and two lemons that we squeeze and then some water and then zip it up and then slurp it down.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:24:19):

That sounds so healthy. If you had your dream breakfast, would it be this protein smoothie? What would be in your dream breakfast?

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:27):

It depends on the day. I'm a very kind of, picky is the wrong word. I'm the kind of person that I eat based on my mood. So some mornings dream breakfast would be scrambled eggs, avocado, kimchi. Another day it might be the smoothie. Another day it might be something else.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:24:45):

Amazing. So you like variety. Where do you think that need for variety comes from every day? Would you be happy having the same thing

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:53):

Every day? I got to share how I feel when you're doing this. Me.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:24:55):

Tell me how you're doing it. Tell me how it's going.

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:58):

It's amazing. I can tell you're really interested. And so as every question you ask, I'm like, oh, she's really interested in what I had for, oh, my breakfast is very interesting. And so you're demonstrating that saying, in order to be interested, be interested in somebody else.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:25:16):

Exactly. And we both know we have this common knowledge that I'm doing this very extreme thing. I'm asking a follow-up question every time I talked just then. That sounds so extreme. That sounds like a lot of questions. And it also, some of my students are like, isn't this manipulative? If you know that that's what you're going to do, doesn't that undermine our authenticity? Is the other person going to actually feel like you want to learn about their breakfast? And I'm like, guys, even if you know that's what you're doing, I still really care. I really want to hear about your breakfast and your habits and what you like. It's just a nudge to do it a little bit better.

 

Mel Robbins (00:25:52):

What if you get really good at asking questions and you notice most people you talk to never ask you a question about you?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:26:02):

Listen, we've all been on that date, Mel. We've all been on a date with, we call these people Z Qs. Z Qs, zero questions, zero questioners. My hope, and what I want to say to the people listening is don't leave a conversation having asked zero questions.

 

Mel Robbins (00:26:19):

But what do you do if you're the one who's just poured into somebody else and that it's like crickets?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:26:25):

Yeah. Well, as in all things in life, you don't have control over what other people do in a conversation reflecting about what you do have control over. Okay, well, let's try and shift to a new topic that maybe they're more likely to ask me a question. Maybe we shift to something where you have some expertise and they know you have expertise, so they should ask you even more that you have ask you questions.

 

Mel Robbins (00:26:47):

So you shouldn't say something insulting back or there's no backhanded compliment that you're teaching at Harvard Business School to say to somebody, no, I know that was kind of a joke, but it's annoying as hell though.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:26:59):

It's really annoying. It's really annoying.

 

Mel Robbins (00:27:01):

I guess you're just saying make a mental note

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:27:03):

In the context. Let's go back to this context of dating. If you're on a date with somebody, they go a whole date, two whole dates, three whole dates, not asking you much at all, that could be a legitimate reason to not keep dating them.

 

Mel Robbins (00:27:15):

Well, why would you?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:27:16):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (00:27:17):

If after two dates they don't ask you a single question. I mean, I think that's a gigantic red flag.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:27:24):

I left a date in the middle after 20 minutes once because

 

Mel Robbins (00:27:27):

How did you do that?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:27:27):

I excuse myself to the bathroom. I looked right into the mirror and I was like, this is never going to work. I can't be with someone for the rest. You can't be with someone for the rest of your life who within 20 minutes has made you feel infuriated that they're not interested in you. And so that was that.

 

Mel Robbins (00:27:44):

And we all want to know Professor Brooks, when you walked back to the table, what did you say?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:27:50):

Yeah, I said, this was really nice. We'll follow up. Good luck. And I left. I did text him later and I did give him the feedback because I did say it was a little frustrating that you didn't ask me anything about myself. I don't usually do that with people, but in that case, it just seemed like he really needed to know.

 

Mel Robbins (00:28:07):

And what did he say?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:28:09):

I think he was like, oh, I'm so sorry.

 

Mel Robbins (00:28:11):

Well, at least he said something.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:28:13):

Exactly. Wow. Okay. Still no question though, Mel,

 

Mel Robbins (00:28:16):

But based on the fact that this is your area of expertise, what do you know about those situations where you're either have a family member or you have a colleague or a boss or a friend that actually never asks anything about you based on the research and your experience? What is the kind interpretation of that situation?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:28:42):

Yeah, there's a lot that holds people back from asking questions. And it's not all disinterest. Sometimes it's again, this self-centeredness. There are some people who don't even think to ask questions because they're so focused on themselves and what's going on in their own mind and what they can share and a dazzle you with. Other times though, people realize they should be asking questions and they struggle to do it because they're afraid. They're afraid of being too intrusive. They're afraid that they ask something, that it makes them look incompetent, like they should already know the answer. And these fears are usually misplaced, but those fears do hold people back from asking questions.

 

Mel Robbins (00:29:19):

Got it. That is a kind interpretation. Yes, it is. Where does listening fall into your four-part framework? Because we've talked about topic selection and asking questions, but what about listening?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:29:32):

Yeah. It's funny that this framework is called talk because listening is the glue that holds it all together. It's so very important. I know that you have attention challenges. I also have attention challenges. Turns out most humans have attention challenges our minds, our resting state of our minds is in a mind wandering mode. And so the demand of conversation to try and focus our wandering minds on another person continuously for a whole conversation is incredibly challenging. It takes a lot of hard work. Some people are better at it than others, but if you put in that hard work to be engaged with somebody, even while your mind is wandering, you should get credit for it. And in our research, we've studied the ways that you can get credit for your good listening by get credit. What do you mean? So get credit. Meaning you want your partner to know that you've heard them.

 

Mel Robbins (00:30:25):

Oh God, I feel like you're in the middle of my marriage because I can't tell you how many times I've been in a conversation with my husband and I'm doing something. So I turn my back on him and he's like, are you listening to me? And then I parrot back word for word what he just said. And then we get into this little thing where he is like, I didn't ask if you heard me. I asked if you're listening. I don't feel like you are.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:30:58):

Okay, let's break down listening. This is incredibly common. Okay, so listening is three steps. The first step is hearing and seeing your partner, all of the cues that the person is giving to you, their words, the sound of their voice, their nonverbal behaviors, everything that comes in through your eyes and ears. That's the sort of physical part of listening. Then your brain does step two, which is I'm going to think about some of the stuff that I'm hearing and seeing. I'm going to elaborate on it in my mind. Step three is this unique thing that's offered by conversation, which is I can show back to you that I heard you and that I was thinking about it. And that's how we get our credit and that's how you get our credit. So the decades of research on active listening have mostly focused on nonverbals. So the fact that you turned your back on your husband makes him feel like you're not listening to him. Your nonverbals were sort of incongruent with what was going on in your mind.

 

Mel Robbins (00:31:54):

Correct.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:31:55):

So he's sort of like, well, if you're going to put in the hard work to actually listen to me, why don't turn your back on me? That makes me feel like you don't care about what I'm saying. So many decades of focus on these nonverbal cues, making eye contact, nodding, smiling, facing someone, leaning forward as you're talking to them, that's all great. That's like listening 1 0 1. So don't turn your back on your husband if you're listening to him,

 

Mel Robbins (00:32:19):

And I'm definitely not going to swivel this chair while we're talking.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:32:22):

Exactly. We could try it. But the listening 2 0 1 sort of more advanced is using your words to show someone that you've heard them. So while nodding and smiling and facing someone can be faked, even if you were facing your husband, you could have been nodding and smiling and not listening to him. The fact that you were able to repeat back exactly what he said, he should be thrilled. You really were listening to him and you were able to repeat it back, but you didn't make him feel heard in that moment with your nonverbal cues.

 

Mel Robbins (00:32:54):

Yeah, because the tone of voice was snarky. I heard everything that you said, so that was bad on me.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:33:00):

That's part of it. Yep. That's part of it. But this, using your words is really important. So the best listening often is spoken. It includes repeating back what someone has said to you. It can be invalidating or affirming them in their feeling saying like, oh, I'm hearing that you sound a little bit sad about that. It makes sense that you would feel sad about whatever. The fact that you didn't win the role in the school play, just saying that it makes sense that you feel X about Y is one of the most powerful phrases that you can say to another person.

 

Mel Robbins (00:33:31):

Well, one of the most powerful things that I hear my colleagues say at work is, what I heard you say is this, and this is what I'm going to do. Is that right? And then the second I hear that, I'm like, oh my gosh. Heard.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:33:43):

Yeah, it's exactly right. So they're affirming. They're acknowledging what you said. They're affirming what you said. They're also checking to make sure they've understood you explicitly linguists call this grounding. It's making sure that your shared understanding actually is shared and it's accurate. And if it's not accurate, it gives you the opportunity to repair it, to correct it and say, oh, that's not actually what I meant. What I meant was this. And we're constantly doing that checking and repairing process while we talk to other people. And so speaking, you're listening is so powerful. Follow up questions do the same thing. You can only follow up if you've heard what they said before. True paraphrasing. If you're in a group and a couple other people have said something, you can say, okay. What I'm hearing here is I think we as a group feel like we want to have fun, but we also need to make this hard decision. Is that right? So just kind of summarizing what people before you have said is another way of doing it in the sort of group context.

 

Mel Robbins (00:34:37):

Amazing.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:34:37):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (00:34:38):

Since you teach this at Harvard Business School, I would love for you to just explain why this matters because it may seem as though listening is important just to be able to connect with people. But it's a really important skill at work because if you're in a meeting and somebody all of a sudden is summarizing everything that they heard, you turn and look at that person or like, oh, that person's powerful. And so how does the skills that we've talked about so far, topic selection, asking this, active listening that demonstrates something translate to more authority and influence, whether it's at work or it's in your home or it's in a friendship.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:35:32):

This is where real power and authority and influence come from. When we think of people who are charismatic and competent, this is what they're doing. They are actually listening. They're putting in the hard work to listen to other people. They're putting in the hard work to think about it, and then they are saying it out loud. They are saying, wow, I really heard you say this and it seemed like you maybe feel anxious about this thing. Can you tell me more about that? Just being able to do that is incredible. That is sort of what competence is when we're talking about interpersonal contexts.

 

Mel Robbins (00:36:03):

So true.

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:36:08):

L is Levity. Mel, thank goodness. It's levity. And levity includes moments of humor, but also unfunny moments of warmth and levity is the antidote for boredom.

 

Mel Robbins (00:36:21):

Why is humor such a powerful tool if you want to be better at communicating?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:36:27):

Listen, when we think of conversations that have gone off the rails or have not gone well, it's very easy to think of conversations that seemed angry or hostile or there was conflict or disagreement because it's so obvious. You're yelling at each other, you're arguing. But what is a quieter killer of conversation, and probably more common than conflict, is boredom and disengagement. We're not interested in what we're saying to each other. And as soon as either person becomes disinterested, you can't have that good connection. You can't make progress anymore. And levity, these fleeting moments of sparkle and fizz, they pull us back in. They fix the boredom,

 

Mel Robbins (00:37:06):

Sparkle and fizz. How do you create that? Because you have some really interesting research about how making fun of yourself really is a powerful thing to do. Can you share a bit of this research for us?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:37:20):

Yes. Yes. So this is something people think about all the time. Should I make fun of myself? Will that make things feel more fun and funny? So you can do it. You can deliver it in a way that it's like self-deprecating humor. You're making fun of yourself. You can also do it in a way that's not funny at all, but you're sharing your whole self. You're not just talking about your successes, but also the failures and struggles that you encountered on your pathway to success. This is a particularly effective strategy for people who already have high status, who are powerful, who are respected, who are known as competent for leaders. It's a way to say to everybody, Hey, look, I'm like you too. I'm a human being. I don't do this thing. Right? Here's some negative feedback that I got on my way to success. So, so powerful. It is riskier for people who are low status to use, self-deprecating humor, or to reveal their failures. When you're low status, you have a narrower range of options available to you that will be seen. People might actually start to question your competence, and that's why being low status feels so limiting and so constraining.

 

Mel Robbins (00:38:28):

So how do you as a Harvard Business School professor define low status? I would imagine if we cracked open people's heads, a lot of people are so punishing to themselves totally, that they believe that they have a low status based on self-doubt. But what are you talking about?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:38:50):

So status for scholars is defined as liking and respect and prestige in the eyes of other people.

 

Mel Robbins (00:38:58):

Okay.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:38:58):

Okay. So it's liking. And do people respect me? There's really good news here, Mel, which is every group has a sort of status hierarchy. People pretty easily know who's high status, who's low status, who's in the middle. But the good news is it changes much more frequently than you think. It changes not only from one conversation or one place to the next. It changes from one topic to the next. So imagine you're in a group, you're having a meeting, you're talking about something you don't know anything about. You are low status on that topic, and there might be some raucous experts in the room, and that's intimidating. And you're like, how can I contribute to this? It's a terrible feeling. You feel invisible and marginalized.

 

(00:39:43):

All of a sudden the conversation shifts to talking about, oh, should we update our maternity leave policy? All of a sudden, if you're the only woman in the room, you're all of a sudden you're at the top of the heap, okay? You have the most lived experience, the most knowledge to bring to this conversation. So even if you're feeling low status on many topics, if all of a sudden it switches to something else, you might all of a sudden become high status. And we shouldn't underestimate the value of that. When we have value to bring,

 

Mel Robbins (00:40:12):

If you're sitting in a conversation with friends or something at work and you're feeling that low status moment, like, I got nothing to contribute, is there a Harvard Business School sentence? I can say that is like preemptive raises my status without revealing that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:40:30):

I think the magic trick is asking questions. Really? Okay. So if you're on a topic and you're feeling like you don't know anything, it's always valuable to ask questions about. Even people who know everything about it, it's helpful for them to have a sounding board and someone who's asking questions, they don't know what other people don't know. So sometimes when you're at low status, you're in this privileged position to say, look, nobody here knows what you're talking about. Define this for us. What do you mean by status?

 

Mel Robbins (00:40:57):

Okay, let me just highlight that because the person listening, I really want you to understand this. Do you know the confidence it displays to be a person who really doesn't understand what people are talking about? And to say out loud, hold on a second. You're 15 steps ahead. You've lost some of us in this room. Can you please back up and explain this because I'm not tracking

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:41:26):

And it's not always going to be appropriate, but sometimes it is.

 

Mel Robbins (00:41:29):

Well, and what that says is, first of all, I value that I'm tracking along. And number two, you can trust me because I'm going to tell you when I don't know something. And number three, I am following with you, but I'm going to slow you down and make sure everybody comes along. I mean that right there, that's how you raise your status because it demonstrates a huge level of confidence.

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:41:53):

Before we get onto K, I have one more thing to say to these low status friends. Yes, we are with you. We have all been low status. Our status changes constantly. One thing before we move from away from levity, one of the most effective ways to raise your status is to make people laugh. I think we have an instinct that we think of humor as this extra bonus thing. Like, oh, there's that funny guy. He made a good joke. We're all laughing. That's great. Now, back to the real stuff. When we look at what's really going on with social dynamics in our research, if you can make people laugh even one time in a conversation, they are so much more likely to vote for you as the leader of that group. Just one joke, if you just make people laugh, it's just a core determinant of status, earning status, and then keeping it once you've earned it.

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:42:50):

The fourth part is K for kindness, and it's really this virtue that we all learn as kids so that we should all be kind. I don't know about you, Mel. I spent my whole life really think what do kind people do day to day, moment to moment? What are they thinking about? What are they saying? How are they behaving? And I think one of the great privileges of this new emerging science of conversation is we're figuring it out what kind people who really care about others, how they communicate with the people around them. So we attack this in a very concrete way.

 

Mel Robbins (00:43:24):

So what do they do?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:43:25):

Yeah, the first part is using respectful language. So as soon as you cross over into that zone where people are feeling hurt or harmed or othered or excluded or bullied, you have lost this kindness goal. Yep. You've moved beyond it. It's gone. And the second piece again is this responsive listening. So putting in the effort to hear other people caring about what they're sharing with you and showing that you're listening to them with your words and with your nonverbals.

 

Mel Robbins (00:43:53):

So how can you use this framework with a colleague?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:43:58):

Every time, all the time. I mean, you can use it over email, over text, and face-to-face. Every time you interact with a colleague, you should be thinking what topics are valuable to them? How can I bring value to them? What are they going to find interesting and exciting? If you don't know ahead of time, you can just ask them, what are you excited about lately? How can I be helpful? What can I do? What's going on? What are you struggling with right now that I might be able to help with? Right. It's just incredible.

 

Mel Robbins (00:44:24):

How do you use the kindness part with your partner?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:44:28):

Oh my gosh. The thing that makes kindness so hard is that it is effortful and it's constant. We have to battle against all of these other things that are draining our resources. Especially with someone you live with, you see them all the time. And so it's a big ask to say, well be kind all the time to this person, put in all of this effort all the time. But I think trying to get over our self-centered, our self-focus, and really trying to understand what our partner cares about, figure out what they need, whether it's just a hug or it's just a cup of coffee. Figure out what they need and help them get it.

 

Mel Robbins (00:45:09):

So if somebody is listening right now and they're in a relationship where the communication isn't working, you're frustrated, you misunderstand each other, everything becomes some stupid thing. What is your advice based on your research on the science of communication?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:45:29):

Yeah, it sounds like that kind of relationship sounds like you're stuck in a bad equilibrium, a bad sort of

 

Mel Robbins (00:45:35):

What does that Mean?

 

Dr. Alison Wood Brooks (00:45:36):

So you're stuck in, you've developed habits in a specific relationship that aren't working for you, and then every time you see that person, you might fall back into that same habits where you're getting defensive, you're lashing out, you're making accusations rather than these ideals that we're trying to live up to of like, I want to be interested in you. I want to figure out your needs and help you. You've fallen into the opposite. So there's a couple of things. One is we talk a lot about the power of apologies, and this would be an example when you could say, it seems like we've really fallen into some bad habits where we're really getting defensive or lashing out and arguing all the time. What would it take for us to sort of shift that? How can we get into a different pattern? How can we change our habits with each other? It's going to require that both people buy into it because conversation is co-constructed. It means that they have to buy in. You have to buy in, and you both have to try. And if you can't shift out of that equilibrium, that's often when relationships part ways,

 

Mel Robbins (00:46:36):

Of course, because why would you want to be in a relationship where it's not rewarding? It's not rewarding. You're both not working on it.