This tool will make your work conversations more clear and productive

If you’ve ever walked away from a conversation wondering what just happened, you know that talking to someone and staying on the same page is easier said than done. Alison Wood Brooks, Harvard Business School professor and author of Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves, says conversations are coordination games, like playing chicken, where two people try to coordinate their behaviors with each other.

“You’re trying to coordinate and land on an outcome that’s desirable for both people,” she says. “Conversations are more complicated, though, because you’re not just making one choice to veer to the right or left. You’re making choices at every moment of every conversation, coordinating your goals and your preferences with your conversation partner’s goals and preferences.”

For example, during a conversation you must choose the topics you’re going to talk about and the questions you ask or don’t ask. Do you choose to make a joke or give a compliment? When do you speak and when do you listen? There are decisions and pivots all along the way.

Where Things Break Down

When miscommunications and awkward moments happen, they’re often due to coordination problems. Some problems happen above the surface, such as choosing the wrong words or having body language that doesn’t match your sentiment. Problems can also happen beneath the surface of a conversation.

“Let’s say I’m feeling really excited and you’re feeling really sad,” Brooks explains. “You have to coordinate those emotional incongruences. We also have our own goals. Maybe I really want to give you advice, but you don’t want to receive my advice. That’s a different kind of coordination problem.”

Another coordination problem can be tied to our identities. For example, if someone explains a concept that you’re already familiar with, you may feel that they underestimate your intelligence. Or an offhand remark may clash with your political views.

“Anytime we accidentally poke an invisible barb into our partner’s identity or even threaten to poke a barb into our partner’s identity, it’s going to cause difficult moments in conversation,” says Brooks.

Going from Conversation to Coordination

A successful conversation depends on the speakers’ goals. For example, sometimes you might just want to have fun. Other times, you are simply filling time. Maybe your goal is to persuade someone to agree with you. Or perhaps you want to learn as much as you can about the other person.

To organize what can be vast and wide-ranging goals, Brooks recommends going into a conversation knowing what you care about, what you want to achieve, what your priorities are, and what would success look like. You can chart your goals on a conversational compass.

The X axis is the relational axis. At one end are high relational goals, which are things that you care about that positively impact the relationship or the other person to whom you’re talking. The other end of the relational axis are low-relational goals, which are things that you want for your own self-interest.

“That does not make them bad or evil or unethical,” says Brooks. “Human beings have real needs, and sometimes we need to choose to prioritize ourselves.”

The Y axis of the compass is the informational axis. High-informational goals are about exchanging accurate information with each other. “This is often thought of as the main purpose of conversation, and why humans evolved language to exchange information,” says Brooks.

Low-informational goals involve protecting yourself, managing your time, or just wanting to fill time or have fun. “Lots of goals are not about information exchange at all,” says Brooks. “It’s important that we don’t forget how important those goals can be while our conversations unfold.”

A high-informational, low-relational conversation might involve exploring how you can advance in your company. A high-informational, high-relational conversation could be about connecting with each other. High-relational, low-informational conversations might be about protecting your time or privacy, and low-relational, low-informational conversations are about being polite.

How the Compass Helps

Brooks says it’s important to know that all the quadrants are good. “You might feel like you should be moving into the upper-right quadrant that’s high-informational, high-relational,” she says. “That is not the point of the compass. The compass is a framework that describes the things you care about. Those things are going to fall in all four quadrants of the compass.”

The way that the compass helps is it provides a tool that nudges people about their goals. “Usually when we go into conversations with people we know well, we don’t spend any time reflecting about what our goals are,” says Brooks. “And we definitely don’t spend enough time reflecting about what our partner’s goals might be.”

Instead, think ahead of time about your top three goals, then guess what the other person’s top three goals might be. When the conversation is over, use the compass to assess if you achieved your goals.

In the workplace, it helps to be explicit about your conversation goals to ensure you’re on the same page. “You can ask, ‘What does success look like for you in this conversation, meeting, or project?’” suggests Brooks. “It helps the other person to clarify their own thinking about success, too.”

Sometimes goals change as a conversation unfolds and you may have to think on your feet. You may not realize what you care about until it’s happening. In this case, Brooks says self-awareness can be tremendously informative.

“People put a lot of pressure on themselves be great at conversation, and when they fall short of that and have moments that are awkward or don’t seem to go perfectly, they might think, ‘I’m just not a good conversationalist,’” says Brooks. “Conversation is surprisingly tricky. Looking at it as a coordination game that unfolds over time can give you more patience and grace for yourself for not being perfect at it, and more patience and grace for other people for not being perfect, too.”