When we meet a great conversationalist, we often think they were born with natural charisma or that they have the gift of gab. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Just as a great athlete hones their skills on the field, talented conversationalists work to improve theirs, too.
Alison Wood Brooks, Harvard Business School Professor and author of Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves, says that with small changes in how we approach conversation, and some practice, we can feel less awkward, more confident, and build deeper relationships.
“Start small, ask one more follow-up question than feels natural. Prep one topic before you walk into a room. Find one moment of levity when things feel heavy,” Brooks told MasterClass. “Those are small moves, but the benefits are real, and they multiply exponentially over time.” To make these skills easy to remember, she arranged them into an acronym, TALK, which stands for Topics, Asking, Levity, and Kindness.
Brooks explained the TALK framework in an interview with Cal Walters on the Intentional Leader podcast.
1. Topics—Prepare them ahead of the conversation
People hesitate to prepare a few topics ahead of a conversation because they think it will feel stilted or robotic. However, studies show that preparing topics ahead of time makes it more enjoyable for you and your conversation partner. In fact, if you only think of topics for 30 seconds before a conversation, it can make all the difference.
“We’ve run experiments on this where we randomly assign people to either prepare topics ahead of time, think about it, or not. The people who prepare topics have much better conversations—way better—for a whole host of reasons,” Brooks said. “One is they just feel more comfortable and less anxious the whole time. They know they have the sort of reserve of ideas of things they could raise if they need to, but they don’t have to.”
2. Ask—Follow-up questions are incredibly important
“Questions are incredibly powerful. They help unlock information exchange. They bring us closer together. They do all the good things that we’re looking to do in conversation,” Brooks said. “And for many different reasons, we sort of forget to ask them, or we’re afraid to ask them. We’re worried about asking the wrong question, and so those, those fears hold us back from…asking more.”
A 2017 Harvard study that Brooks co-wrote found that if you’re approaching someone you’ve never met, if you ask them a question, plus two follow-ups, they will rate you as more likable than if you asked a question and then made the interaction about yourself. “We identify a robust and consistent relationship between question-asking and liking,” the study’s authors wrote. “People who ask more questions, particularly follow-up questions, are better liked by their conversation partners.”
3. Levity—Don’t be boring
“The point of levity is to find these opportunities, these sparkly moments, to keep everybody engaged,” Brooks continues. “Sometimes it’s through humor. Sometimes it’s through things that are not funny at all and are really warm. So, compliments, asking questions. It’s really about keeping your hand on the temperature gauge, and as soon as you feel like a conversation’s getting too boring, or people are stagnating, or they’re feeling disengaged and disinterested, any move that helps pull people back in.”
4. Kindness—Show you genuinely care
“Kindness is funny. It’s the thing that we learn about as children, as a virtue,” Brooks told Good Life Project. “And I spent most of my life, really thinking about, like, what does that actually look like? Like people who are really kind. What are they thinking about? What are they doing from one moment to the next? To truly, like, pay attention to other people, actually care about them, serve other people’s needs, and often in conversation that means sometimes prioritizing the other person’s preferences before your own.”
Ultimately, if you think your social life could use some improvement, try the TALK framework and see if your conversations become more engaging and your relationships grow closer.
