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

A

I'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. Helium Helix 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@helixsleep.com diary that's helixsleep.com diary. One of the things we notice when we have conversations on this show about conversation is people really care about likability.

B

Yes.

A

Like they really want to know what's making them disliked and they really want to know how to be liked.

B

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 is 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.

A

Okay.

B

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.

A

Did you invent it?

B

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. 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 used as a rubric after the fact of saying, okay, how did this go? Did you do well? Let's look at T, A L, K, and evaluate.

A

Okay. It's the best in the world ever.

B

Thank you, Stephen. Okay.

A

Thank you.

B

Thank you for recognizing.

A

Oh, yeah, no, yeah.

B

Okay. T is for topics.

A

Topics.

B

Topics. Topics are the building blocks of conversation. It is what we choose to talk about.

A

Okay.

B

Very simple. We all have an intuitive understanding that we sort of work through different chunks. First, we're gonna talk about your conversation with your girlfriend. Then we're gonna talk about the talk framework. Then we're gonna talk about the compass. Whatever. 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'd you think of this? The Diplomat? No, it's every time you're talking, we're making moves to gently stay on topic or switch to something else. 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.

A

So what's the game here? To pick better topics, to know what topic we're aiming at.

B

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 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.

A

Okay?

B

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. 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.

A

Did you do that today?

B

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 podcasts. That's all prep for this moment.

A

What about in your personal life?

B

Yeah.

A

Can you give me an example of where you prepared topics?

B

Every conversation that I know is coming.

A

Give me an example.

B

So with Kassi, before I got here,

A

which is a member of our team.

B

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.

A

She said all good things. All good things. Next question. What does a mean? Joking.

B

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 some random thing I see in the room? 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 gonna 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 gonna 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, they're much smoother. There are fewer disfluencies. So ums, uhs, 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 wanna have children? I might write that as a little bullet point in my calendar note for the time that I'm gonna be here with you, and then I'll be more likely to remember it. Do you feel skeptical about this?

A

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.

B

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.

A

Because everyone talks about how if you're interested in someone else, like you were interested in Cozy.

B

Yes.

A

That must have felt good for her, which must make her like you more.

B

We should go ask her.

A

That's a good point.

B

I ask. 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 1 out of 10, a 5 out of 10, or a 10 out of 10, what are the behaviors that you would do to try and pursue those three worlds?

A

Okay, so if I wanted people to like me one out of ten.

B

Yeah. What would you do? You tell me.

A

You tell. You're the expert.

B

I want to hear your guesses.

A

My guesses. I would walk in quiet on my phone and I would ignore them, and maybe I'd look up and make some kind of snide comment. I definitely wouldn't notice that they were there.

B

Yep.

A

And I wouldn't make eye contact with them. I would maybe be maybe like, take a phone call.

B

I was gonna say one's really low, so probably insults. Probably.

A

Oh, yeah. I'd offend them.

B

Yeah. Offend them.

A

Yeah. Make some snobs.

B

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. Maybe if they try and talk to you, interrupt them. Be like, not now.

A

Or look at my phone midway through what they're saying.

B

Yeah. Okay. So there's lots of things you can imagine there.

A

Okay.

B

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. Even for someone who's like, just observing you talking, I'd get them email. That's great. Yep, yep, yep, yep.

A

That's a good way to say you don't matter to me.

B

Yeah, yeah. 5 out of 10 is an interesting one. You want to do it probably more blase, 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.

A

Okay.

B

Okay. Then we get to 10 out of 10 world.

A

10 out of 10 likeability.

B

Yeah. What are you doing if you're trying to get 10 out of 10?

A

I am completely focused on them.

B

Good.

A

I'm attentive, I'm complimentary. I'm gonna flatter them.

B

Yep. Do you think it will seem obsequious?

A

Not if I get it right.

B

Okay.

A

Cause I'm gonna mean it.

B

Yeah. Cause it's gonna be sincere.

A

It's gonna be really sincere.

B

Yeah.

A

I'm gonna crack a great joke.

B

Yes.

A

Knock, knock.

B

Yeah. Who's there?

A

I don't know. I didn't.

B

You're like, I don't know my. Panicked.

A

Yeah. Didn't you?

B

Exactly.

A

So, yeah, I'm gonna flatter them. Crack jokes, be very attentive. Get their name right. Ask them about their grandchild.

B

Good. Okay, let's pause. I wanna. In that description already. You're moving quite quickly through topics as you're interacting with them. 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. 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. But it does happen sometimes, and it's quite lovely, I think I used to

A

put girls off when I was 11 because I used to ask them the meaning of life too quickly on my mother's dollar Nokia phone.

B

Yeah.

A

And so they would stop texting back.

B

Yeah.

A

So I think I learned early that like some people just don't like.

B

Well, the joke's on them now. Now you get to do it for your life's work. No, but I think you were onto 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.

A

And is that where relationships are built? Deep ones for sure.

B

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 once you're on a topic. We use follow up questions to kind of dive deeply into and move up the topic pyramid.

A

So are you saying I should ask more questions?

B

Yes.

A

Okay, well, ask more than they're asking me.

B

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, 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.

A

What happens to the fate of zero question askers?

B

They're not getting a second date. They're not gonna get that funding. They're 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 on 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 on heterosexual dates. Often what they're getting wrong is that they're not asking enough questions.

A

How'd you know this?

B

From data.

A

From data?

B

Yeah. Yeah. So we have a thousand speed dates and 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 asked 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, according to the data. 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.

A

Really?

B

Yeah.

A

Significantly less.

B

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.

A

What is me asking more questions doing to the other person?

B

It makes them feel heard and like you want to know their answer, that you're interested in them, 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. 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.

A

So give me an example of asking a great follow up question.

B

We're on a date, 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.

A

And then I would say, really? Oh my God, I've always wanted to go. Tell me, tell me about it. How was it?

B

Oh, incredible. So I got to this point, I had never been there before. There was. I had to decide was I gonna veer off and go see the Marilyn Monroe apartment, which by the way, is right next to the Frank Lloyd Wright house.

A

Oh my God.

B

Or was I gonna go a few Blocks away was the Menendez brothers house.

A

Who's that?

B

The two brothers who killed their parents.

A

Oh, on Netflix?

B

Yeah.

A

Oh, wow.

B

Okay. So I would literally right in between. And it was at this crossroads. Do I choose cultured? Do I choose morbid curiosity?

A

And which one did you choose?

B

I went with cultured. I was too afraid by myself.

A

You're so cute.

B

So, okay, so we. 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. And then you feel embarrassed, like, oh, I just shared a bunch of vulnerable stuff. I was walking alone in la. I had morbid curiosity about these two brothers. In this 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.

A

So did I do the right thing then?

B

Yeah, you were doing great.

A

Okay. Yeah. And what's the wrong thing to have done for me to have just, oh,

B

imagine if I had been like, oh, I went on an amazing walk down the Sunset Strip and you said, oh, my favorite restaurant on the strip is a sushi place.

A

Oh, shit.

B

I went to this amazing restaurant and I went to this amazing store. Yeah, they carried Hermes. I bought an amazing pair of boots.

A

People do that all the time, constantly.

B

So this is called Boomerasking.

A

Boomerasking.

B

Not because of boomers. We love it. It's for people of all ages. Commit. Boomerang. It's a boomerang.

A

Oh, okay.

B

So I say to you.

A

I lost subscribers.

B

No, we love boomers. So I say to you, like, Stephen, what's Your favorite restaurant?

A

Mr. Chow's.

B

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

A

really all the time.

B

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 it, the focus of the conversation right back to myself.

A

People that do that don't know they do it.

B

Correct.

A

Because I will obviously, you know, 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.

B

Yes.

A

And they have no idea.

B

Don't you want to be like stop?

A

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

B

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. Chao's with? And I let you answer. Then I say, oh, I've been there too.

A

You can see it happening in their head because you say the word Mr. Chao's is your favorite restaurant and they

B

immediately there's an association.

A

I've got a brilliant story about Mr. Chows that I need to tell everybody.

B

It makes sense that people do this. 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.

A

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. And I know, I'm like, oh my God, they've got something to. And they're like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're yering them out.

B

Yes.

A

They're trying to yer them into silence so that they can get their point across. And I've had to send messages in the past that say, by the way, you were saying yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it made it seem to an objective observer like you weren't listening and actually you were just trying to say something. So just in the interest of your, like, you know, maybe, maybe don't. Just don't say like.

B

How do they respond to that feeling?

A

Well, because I didn't. I constructed it more tactfully. Tactfully that I just described. But I thought about it a lot and I just wanted to. Cause I'd seen them doing this 30, 40 times in meetings and I don't think they realize how it's perceived.

B

Now you know how I feel during so many conversations for so many different reasons. There are so many things like that where you see Other people doing the dastardly conversational thing and it's totally understandable why they're excited. They have a thing they want to say and it's preventing them from actually engaging with the person who's talking and what they're saying. All of these things are understandable. It's important to come from a place of like, of non judgment. It's because our brains were built to wander, not focus on another person. Because we're deeply egocentric beings and we focus on our own perspective. Both of those things hold us back from really being able to engage with someone else. I want to go back to your thing of like a 10 out of 10 likability. Those are the little things. The little death by a thousand cuts to your likability are these things where it's like you're not able to actually really focus on someone else and really engage with what they're saying and ask follow up questions and then later in the conversation call back to something they said earlier because you're just that clever. So much stands in the way of doing that.

A

In that particular example I'm thinking about, I started to get negative feedback from people that worked with this person. And I noticed one day the negative feedback was I don't think they're even listening to me. Cause they're not, because they weren't really listening. And so the minute I got the feedback was the minute I thought, you know what, Stephen, you've watched this happen, you know it's objectively true, you owe it cause you're this person's report to have a conversation with them about it because it's getting in the way of their success. And the fascinating thing for me is if I plot everybody I know and work with on an axis of like self awareness as it relates to their communication, some people are just, they kind of just got to have it. And then some people are on the other end of this spectrum where there's like no apparent self awareness of like how they're coming across. And they're so talented and so hardworking. But this one thing of like their communication self awareness is honestly in some cases the single thing, the single gravitational force on their career trajectory.

B

Yes.

A

And like, can people change or is it just like a genetic thing they can.

B

First, let me address, there are pros and cons to being at both ends of that spectrum. If you are too hypervigilant and too self aware, it can be distracting. It might mean that you're sort of people pleasing too, which can lead to burnout and Exhaustion. If you're at this lack of self awareness end, of course it's gonna be a real problem. And so I love teaching and coaching people at that end because you can become more self aware. So many of my students at Harvard come into the course and that's how they are.

A

What you mean?

B

They are not aware of what their strengths and weaknesses are. They don't know what they're doing right and wrong. They just know they either hate conversation or aren't good at it. And so just by going through this talk course, they become much more sort of clear eyed and open to the fact that conversation is a skill that matters profoundly. Not in a sort of soft skill, fuzzy way, but in a quantifiable way that impacts everything that matters to them, like a bottom line, almost as like an economic value to them. And so just having their eyes open to the fact that like this is a skill and a skill they need to get better at. Even if I don't see them getting massively better in the course of three months, it means that they are likely to get better at it over the longer term because now they know, now they get it and now they know that they aren't great at it yet.

A

Are there anything else that you know? We talked about death by a thousand cuts as it relates to being a 10 out of 10 conversationalist and likable person. Are there any of these other small things that we do which are harming us but are tiny that most people don't know they're doing?

B

Let's move to K because I'm moving along in this framework. We're skipping L for now, which we would never skip L forever. K is for kindness. Often we are all taught this virtue of kindness when we're children and spend the rest of our lives sort of falling short of actually doing it in practice. I've forever been obsessed with this idea of what are like people who are actually kind. What are they thinking about and how are they interacting with other people? What kinds of choices are they making? How do they talk to other people? And so when you say death by a thousand cuts, there are these sort of mistakes that we make in the respectfulness of our language that undermine our actual kindness to other people. Making sure you use someone's name. You gave this example and the 1 out of 10 is like use the wrong name. That is really meaningful. You need to know people's names and use them correctly and with appropriate formality. Right. Sometimes it's wonderful to say like, hey honey, and sometimes you need to say, it's nice to meet you, Dr. Brooks. Right. Like you need to be able to read that. There is this paper where they studied conversations between police officers and citizens in Oakland, actually close to here in normal traffic stops. So when police pulled over citizens and walked up to the car and said you were speeding and they used body cam footage and got all the transcripts from these interactions and then measured the respectfulness of the language that the police officers were using, there are some really not surprising but terrible findings that police officers were using less respectful language towards black citizens compared to white citizens. But more broadly speaking, the interactions where they were using more respectful language went better. There were less conflicts. They drive away without further infractions. So the tiny choices we make in our language and the language of respect varies along like hundreds of features of language. And it's a very gradient concept, but they have a real impact on how these interactions go. When we think about sort of like things like systemic racial bias, it comes from that kind of stuff. That's where it leaks out, is in the language we use with each other so we can all learn to use more respectful language.

A

Do you think much about how our emotional state is impacting our ability to accomplish any of these things? Because I think, you know, the days where I'm least likely to be kind are the days where I haven't slept. Yeah, I should probably be avoiding all conversations that day.

B

It's really. I think one of the biggest things I've learned from all of this work is that conversation is remarkably effortful and it requires quite a bit of energy. Even if you know how to be a good conversationalist, often we don't have the energy to actually do it. Oh, I don't have the energy to brainstorm topics. I don't have the energy to continue asking follow up questions. I'm going to let my egocentrism take over and boomerask till the sun comes down goes down.

A

Not boomers.

B

Not boomers. There's a difference of opinion here. I'm going to accidentally use disrespectful language and not repair that, not correct it. That's kind of what keeps me up at night, is that human beings do have limitations. We are limited in time, we're limited in energy. Our brains are not supercomputers. And so in practice, people who are great communicators will often fall short of their own hopes because they don't have the energy to do it.

A

I think Brene Brown said to me that when she comes home and she's out of energy. She'll just say to her partner, listen, I'm on 10% today, so I can't deal with this now.

B

And talk about self awareness. Boy, if you can do that, if you can say, and you have sturdy enough relationships at work and at home that you could say, dude, I'm like a 2 out of 10, you gotta cut me a break today, it would be tremendously helpful. It requires quite a bit of self awareness to recognize that you're at a 2 out of 10 and a lot of grace from the people around you, which means that you're gonna have to give them grace in response at some point. That's what good relationships are. And the L L, shall we put them in the correct order?

A

Yeah.

B

V, A L, K L is for levity. So we've talked a bit about difficult conversations and how they can so easily get overheated. When you think about chats that go off the rails, it's quite easy to think of hostile conflict, difficult conversations because they're very salient, they're very memorable. There might be shouting, there's going to be hurt feelings, defensiveness. The more common enemy of conversation is actually boredom and disengagement. So, yes, do we get annoyed with each other? Absolutely. But almost every conversation has stints of disengagement where people aren't interested. And so levity is humor and warmth to help us avoid disinterest and boredom. And levity is important for sort of happiness and engagement sake itself. You know, it matters that we're enjoying our time together, but maybe even more profoundly, if we are not leaning towards each other and interested in what the other person is saying, we can't achieve any of our other goals. Good conversation requires mutual engagement. So if I'm bored and my mind is wandering, which happens a lot because I have attentional issues, it happens to a lot of people a lot. The human mind wanders 25% of the time during conversation. So it's quite common. If your mind is wandering and you're not engaged with each other, then you can't do anything else either. Persuasion, making decisions together, brainstorming, connecting, none of it. So the L is very important because it makes things fun and enjoyable, but it's also important because we need to stay here with each other and not disengage.

A

What if you're not a warm person?

B

It's so funny. I've been accused of being serious for a friend.

A

Yeah, yeah, yeah. People say to me, people say to me a lot like, you're very serious. I'm like, really? I think I come across as serious sometimes.

B

I think you may come across as serious, I think, but you do come across as very warm. And so that's an important distinction.

A

You're using flattery. I've seen that on your compass.

B

I'm not. I'm giving. I'm giving very direct feedback.

A

High relational. I'm on to you.

B

So there's levity is two parts. It's humor and warmth. And I always start this part of my class at Harvard by saying to my students, if you're not funny and you think you never will be, it's okay, because I don't think I'm gonna be the one to make you funny within the span of two months. If you are a deeply serious, unfunny person. Other people believe that you can get funnier over time. We can talk about that in a moment. What I do deeply believe is that anyone can be more warm. And so warmth moves include anything. Expressing gratitude. I'm so grateful for your time today. I'm so grateful for you engaging with the content of my work. Flattery, giving compliments, just shifting topics. So if you can get better at sensing when people are getting bored with a topic and getting more courageous and assertive about, switching more frequently can be very, very helpful for keeping the conversation sort of bubbling along. Callbacks. Callbacks are any reference back to something that you've talked about previously. They're total magic. It shows that you were listening to someone earlier in the conversation, maybe even earlier in your relationship, like a month ago. If I can call back to something we talked about, it shows, I heard you, I was thinking about what you said. I was able to retain it in my mind, and I'm clever enough to reference back to it now. And often it has this really amazing quality where if I bring it up again, it's funny because you're like, oh, shit, that's super clever. A lot of people ask me, how do we end conversations? Well, and I have two pieces of advice there. I'm gonna bring this back to callbacks. One is, nobody knows when to end conversations. It's the final topic switch. It's the final coordination choice. There's no way to know. There is no right answ. So it's better to just end it, like, be assertive, walk away, rather than hemming and hawing and feeling bad and embarrassed about it. The second piece of advice is that it's a great time to try a callback. The very last beat of the conversation, you can say, and I hope you have a great time with your girlfriend this weekend. Right? Like whatever they had mentioned. Oh, I'm gonna go. We're gonna go to see this movie. I hope you have a great time at the movie this weekend.

A

Right?

B

Showing that like, oh, I heard you 30 minutes ago when you told me this thing that can help to smooth the exit ramp away.

A

What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.

B

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