Alison Wood Brooks

I'm Alison Wood Brooks, a behavioral scientist and the O'Brien Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. I study the psychology of conversation: why we say things we shouldn't, don't say things we should, and how emotions shape how we think and interact at work. I teach a popular MBA course called "How to talk gooder in business and life," built around four skills I call TALK: Topics, Asking, Levity, and Kindness. I'm the author of Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves, founder of TALK Studios, and I help leaders, teams, schools, and families treat conversation as a learnable skill, not a fixed talent.