Professor Alison Wood Brooks

And I know, I'm like, oh my God, they've got something to say.

And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're yaring them out.

Yes.

They're trying to yeah them into silence so that they can get their point across.

Yes, right.

And I've had to send messages in the past to 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 you, like, you know, maybe... Maybe don't.

Well, I constructed it more...

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 yeah um because they're not because they weren't really listening and so the minute i got the feedback was the minute i thought you know steven you've you've watched this happen you know it's objectively true

you owe it because you're this person's report to have a conversation with them about it because it's getting in the way of their success.

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 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.

And like, can people change?

Or is it just like a genetic thing?