The science of better workplace conversations

Changing someone’s view rarely happens all at once

Episode 98 of the Working It podcast, hosted by Financial Times, titled "The science of better workplace conversations" was published on January 14, 2025 and runs 17 minutes.

January 14, 2025 ·17m · Working It

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Summary

What can we learn about the way we speak by analysing thousands of everyday conversations? That’s a question that fascinates Alison Wood Brooks. Alison, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, and author of the forthcoming book, Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves joins Isabel Berwick to discuss her research. She explains how to plan a conversation even when you don’t know who you’ll be speaking to, how we misunderstand apologies, and why there’s no such thing as too many questions.Want more? Free links:What we talk about when we talk about the officeThe difficult work conversation AI helped me withPresented by Isabel Berwick, produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval, mixed by Simon Panayi. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s head of audio.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Description

What can we learn about the way we speak by analysing thousands of everyday conversations? That’s a question that fascinates Alison Wood Brooks. Alison, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, and author of the forthcoming book, Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves joins Isabel Berwick to discuss her research. She explains how to plan a conversation even when you don’t know who you’ll be speaking to, how we misunderstand apologies, and why there’s no such thing as too many questions.

Want more? Free links:

What we talk about when we talk about the office

The difficult work conversation AI helped me with

Presented by Isabel Berwick, produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval, mixed by Simon Panayi. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s head of audio.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.