Dr. Alison Wood Brooks

I can't wait for the next one.

Bye.

That's it.

That's it.

Oh, it's so hard to pick just one.

I think it would be thinking ahead a little bit more, prepping topics, giving even a little bit of forethought to the people you're going to see in a day.

Think a little bit about what they're going to find interesting and productive to talk about.

You can write it down in your Google calendar notes.

You can write on a little piece of paper.

Just think it in your head.

you're more likely to have a better conversation once you're together with them.

And what are your parting words?

My parting words are about grace.

So I think because we learn to talk to each other when we're toddlers and we spend our whole lives talking to each other every day with a huge array of partners, by the time we get to be adults, we feel like we should be perfect at it or we should be great at it.

And it's second nature and we should be experts.

But when you look under the hood of conversation, you realize,

Actually, conversations are kind of a train wreck.

We're interrupting each other all the time.

We have half-finished ideas, and we're not making sense a lot of the time.

And so I think giving yourself a little bit more grace that you're not perfect, you're never going to be perfect, even the best communicators aren't perfect, and giving other people more grace.