Alison Wood Brooks

When talking to someone at work, whether in a casual conversation or a high-stress negotiation, is it possible to ask too many questions? Or too few? What about topics, humor, disagreement, compliments, directness, disclosure, and on? Conversations—good conversations—can unlock so much potential in any organization. They can lead to better understanding, tighter teams, more empathic leaders, stronger customer experiences, smarter decisions, greater trust, and more effective collaboration.

Conversation is essential to success. So why is it surprisingly hard to do well? Drawing on her years of groundbreaking research, Alison Wood Brooks takes us inside the science of conversation, giving you the confidence and practical advice to approach any interaction with more creativity and compassion. With clarity and humor, she uses her TALK framework to examine the hidden moments and microdecisions that drive everything from sales calls and doctor-patient discussions to speed dates and team meetings.

Along the way, Alison helps audiences see conversation as part of how organizations actually work: how people lead, sell, serve, care, collaborate, build trust, navigate conflict, and create experiences for the people around them. She gives audiences a shared language for noticing those moments, frameworks to help organize our thinking, and practical tools to make them work better, depending on what the situation calls for.

This keynote will utterly transform the way you view face-to-face conversations (as well as those you have by phone, email, text, and social media). It’s a highly engaging and broadly relevant talk with instant universal appeal for any group seeking to understand better how conversation shapes performance, relationships, culture, and experience across a company or organization—and what small changes can make those interactions more effective.

No matter our level of conversational competence or confidence, we all put pressure on ourselves for our conversations to go well and feel a sense of personal failure when they don’t. And the stakes feel especially high right now. At a time of widespread loneliness, anxiety, social disconnection, and rapid technological change, many of us have fewer opportunities to practice the messy, real-time human interactions that help us build confidence, trust, belonging, and connection. It’s not just that we struggle to navigate difficult conversations. Even ordinary interactions can feel harder than they once did, just as our need to connect, collaborate, understand one another, and feel understood has become more urgent.

Yet even in easy conversations, we miss abundant opportunities to connect, accomplish what matters, learn from one another, build trust, make decisions, create together, and strengthen the relationships that shape our lives. Small conversational choices can influence whether people feel heard or dismissed, whether ideas surface or stay hidden, whether conflict deepens or becomes productive, and whether an interaction leaves us feeling more connected or more alone.

In this insightful and immediately useful keynote, Alison Wood Brooks takes audiences inside the science of conversation and shows how we can get better at one of our most essential human skills. She gives people a shared language for understanding what is happening inside an interaction and practical tools for making more intentional choices in the moment. From friendships and families to teams, workplaces, classrooms, and customer experiences, better conversations can help us build trust, navigate disagreement, spark creativity, make better decisions, strengthen belonging, and understand one another more deeply. The result is not simply better conversation, but better relationships, better work, and better outcomes in the moments that matter most.

We all want to build trust with our friends, coworkers, and teams. Alison Wood Brooks can show you how to do it better and faster.

Every relationship, whether individual or group, unfolds over time in a series of conversations. The microdecisions we make in each interaction can build, sustain, or erode trust. A Harvard Business School professor and the author of TALK, Alison has spent her career researching how to build and sustain trust in one-on-one relationships and in groups.

In this keynote, Alison takes you through frameworks that she’s used to help groups like the Boston Celtics expedite trust-building. She explains how topic management, question-asking, levity, and kindness can help you build trust quickly, improve your relationships, and get the best out of your teams. This broadly applicable talk is a must-see for anyone interested in building more productive workplaces, better teamwork, and stronger relationships at work and in life.

But the implications go well beyond a single team. Conversation shapes how leaders lead, colleagues collaborate, employees experience culture, and organizations interact with the people they serve. Alison gives audiences a practical shared language for noticing those moments and making more intentional choices within them—whether the goal is stronger collaboration, better decision-making, greater psychological safety, a more effective customer experience, or simply a team that works better together.

Conversation is “the ultimate human skill,” says Alison Wood Brooks, and learning how to do it well is a critical part of growing up. It is the training ground where we learn to ask for what we need, collaborate with others, navigate differences, and lead with empathy. At a time when more of young people’s lives are mediated by screens, technology, and increasingly AI, opportunities to practice the messy, real-time work of human interaction matter more than ever. Alison has frameworks that can help parents, teachers, and mentors make conversation a more intentional part of how young people learn, build relationships, navigate disagreement, and participate in their communities.

In this inspiring and actionable talk, this Harvard Business School professor and author of TALK offers a science-backed roadmap for anyone who wants to help kids and teens build belonging, connect with others, and develop the human skills they will carry into adulthood. Audiences will learn practical strategies to help young people raise better topics, ask generative questions, negotiate effectively, and navigate the wonderful humanness of real-time interaction.

The applications extend across the educational experience: classrooms, advisory, peer relationships, family engagement, extracurriculars, and the everyday moments when young people are learning how to be with other people. Rather than treating conversation as one more “soft skill” to teach, Alison helps schools and organizations see it as part of the infrastructure for learning, belonging, leadership, and healthy development. This keynote is a practical guide to helping the next generation build the conversation skills they need not only to succeed, but to form strong relationships, participate meaningfully in their communities, and navigate an increasingly complex world.