Truth ➜ You spend more time thinking about what you’ll wear to a dinner party than what you’ll talk about at said dinner party.

Last week’s blog was about how to turn small talk into meaningful talk. But before you even get to small talk, it helps if you’re a good conversationalist.

Thank you to Marvin Blum, friend, blogger, attorney and founder of The Blum Firm, P.C., for sharing Arthur Brooks’ Go Deep or Go Home article with me on this very subject.

Introvert or Extrovert

Brooks, Harvard professor and bestselling author, shares science-backed proof (Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience) that supports extroverts have an easier time having lively conversations. (Not exactly headline news!)

What happens if you’re not extroverted? Brooks agrees with me that everyone can become better conversationalists.

He writes, “This is the argument of my Harvard colleague Alison Wood Brooks (no relation), whose recent book, Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves, follows decades of research on how we interact with people, and how to do it better and more enjoyably.”

4 steps to having better conversations

Alison Wood Brooks (quoted several times in past blogs citing her research on speaker anxiety) provides four research-backed principles for “conducting a strong and enjoyable conversation.”

Alison’s mnemonic: TALK

T is for topics ➜ Before you arrive at that dinner party, golf charity event or board meeting retreat think of a few ideas you’d like to discuss. Do some homework on who your audience will be and keep a list of topics. This will increase rapport and decrease awkwardness.

A is for asking ➜ No one wants to feel like they are in a deposition, but a conversation without questions creates a monologue. Not good! Ask questions and actively listen.

L is for levity ➜ You do not need to be a comic or take an improv class! And you don’t need to tell jokes. Jokes can be offensive. You do need to maintain “good humor”: finding the funny stuff and sharing it. Laughter acts like a social lubricant that can diffuse tension and lighten the situation at hand.

K is for kindness ➜ Both Alison Woods Brooks and Arthur Brooks find the kindness ingredient to be the most important aspect to a good conversation. Why? You focus on the other person. Hard to do!

Arthur adds D for depth ➜ Not great for the TALK mnemonic 🙄 but his idea about depth piggy backs on my last blog about having more meaningful conversations. He shares that “a 2010 study in the journal Psychological Science found that the higher the percentage of conversation that is small talk, the lower the participants’ well-being, whereas the higher the percentage of substantive topics, the higher the well-being.”  He concludes by saying, “Life is short. Go deep or go home.” 

photo: AI Generated