The Most Important Skill I Learned In Billion-Dollar Boardrooms

0:00 This is how you master the art of conversation, even if you're shy or introverted. >> I can't talk to girls. >> I don't know what to say to him. >> I know I sound like an idiot. >> It gives you an unfair advantage in your career and your relationship. I was ridiculously shy growing up. I used to rehearse every line in my head before saying it. But what I learned is this, you can't control a conversation with tricks like smiling longer or tilting your head. Half of that conversation isn't even yours. So today, I'll share four skills that make your conversation more interesting, more successful, more meaningful. And the last one can save a relationship you deeply care about. Let's start with the one that surprised me the most. The person you just met likes you more than you think. Psychologists at Cornell, Yale, Harvard paired up strangers and they had them talk to each other. And afterwards, every person had to answer two questions.

1:06 How much did you like the other person? And how much do you think they liked you? On that second question, every single one of them consistently guessed low. They underestimated how much others liked them. The researchers called it the liking gap. And here's the interesting part. People later watched the recordings and they could easily tell how much they liked each other. It was right there on screen. But during the actual conversation, most guessed it wrong. Because during the conversation, you're busy watching yourself. You get too wrapped up in what you should say and how it will be received by the other person that you don't notice that the other person's sending clear signals that they like you. When I was young, I was a total klutz.

2:00 I was painfully shy. I lacked in confidence, and I was 100%sure women would not find me attractive or charismatic. The moment they will get to know me, they'll run away. So, in every conversation, my guard would be up. I would be so stressed out. How am I coming across? Do I sound stupid? What should I say next? Should I be funnier? It are those moments that you're attracted to someone that you stop having a conversation with them, and you start having it with yourself.

2:37 >> Sandeep? >> And we think that they're watching every move of ours. But psychologists tell us about the spotlight effect. So, at Cornell, students walked into a room wearing a very embarrassing t-shirt. And they guessed about half the room would notice. Only 20%did. We're all in our own heads most of the time. So, how do you get out of this trap? Four moves. Play. P L A Y. P is for projection. Think about the last great movie that you watched in a movie theater. Now, were you worried about how you looked sitting in that theater, whether there was popcorn on your shirt?

3:25 Of course not. You were completely absorbed in the story. Well, you can try to do the same in a conversation. Stop watching yourself. Get absorbed about the movie that's playing in front of you. The person you're with. I ask myself one question. What's the one thing about this person I don't know? That changes your nervousness into curiosity. Now, L is for liked. Now, we talked about it, the liking gap. Remember the other person likes you way more than you think. So, don't walk into a conversation assuming rejection.

4:05 Give them a chance. I wish I knew that when I was in my 20s. A is for allow. Allow yourself to be seen. When you rehearse lines before meeting someone new on a date or interview, it can actually make you more nervous, not less. You should note the key themes, of course, that you want to cover, but allow room for who you are. Nowadays, I always tell myself, if they don't like my face, well, that's the only one I've got.

4:38 And Y is for yes. Say yes to your nervousness. Don't fight it. Your heart races when you're nervous, and it races when you're excited. So, why not call it excitement? I've been performing on stage since I was a teenager. And even today, I can feel my heart thumping before I get on. I tell myself, yeah, this is exciting. And get on with it. And here's the reason why I called the first skill play, because you can plan all day long about what you're going to say, but you can't plan what they're going to say back.

5:17 Think of any conversation like a tennis match. You hit the ball, see what comes back, and respond. The magic is in that back and forth. And the secret of a great rally is knowing what to do with whatever comes back. The difference between a boring conversation and a fascinating one is what you ask next. I call this skill stones and seeds. Some questions are like stones. They land with a thud and go nowhere. Some are seeds. They grow into stories. Here's an example.

5:59 You meet someone at a dinner party and you ask, "Well, what do you do?" >> Oh, I'm an accountant. >> Oh, cool. Where do you work? >> Manhattan. >> Oh, yeah, okay. Have you worked there long? >> 4 years. >> That's a conversation full of stones. It goes nowhere. Now, let's try it again with a seed. "What do you do?" >> Oh, I'm an accountant. >> Oh, cool. Did you always want to be an accountant? >> Actually, no. I wanted to start my own company.

6:28 >> Really? What kind of company? >> It's a long story. So, when I was little >> Now, you're off. Whatever she will say next is a story only she can tell. You heard something unexpected. You picked up that thread and followed it. That's improvisation. And sometimes you can even start with the seed itself. You don't have to say "What do you do?" all the time. You can try something like, "Hi, what's been the most interesting part of your week?" Harvard University researchers studied conversations during real speed dates.

7:00 And people who asked more questions were better liked. Well, that makes sense. But the real advantage came from follow-up questions. People asked follow-up questions were more likely to get a second date. I wish I knew that when I was in my 20s. But all kidding aside, a follow-up tells the other person you heard them and you want more. And sometimes the most important seed is the one nobody plants.

7:39 Growing up, my dad and I didn't get along. Some of you may have heard already, I've talked about this. He was physically abusive and now that I have had some distance from my past, I think he may have suffered from mental health issues and wasn't able to talk about it to anyone, wasn't able to ask for help. Anyway, so I ran away from home as a teenager, was homeless for, a little bit, ended up training as a monk.

8:16 And years later, I had settled down in Boston. And my dad came to visit me and my fiance, now my wife. And it's very interesting. I could see how proud he was that I had landed on my feet. He loved our home. We never talked a lot, but we had some occasional conversations. I don't think we ever became friends, but I was able to see that vulnerable human being behind the father figure that weighed so heavily in my life.

8:59 You know, he was just like any of us trying to find his way home. And on his way back to Mumbai, at the airport, he took my hand gently and kissed it and, said, "Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations." He said it three times. And he said, "I'm so proud of you." And, that was the last time I saw him. You know, when he passed away, I wish somebody had asked me gently Hey, tell me about your dad.

9:41 You know, that would have been such an amazing seed. Because I would have talked about him for hours. About how a deeply flawed man who was lost all his life found his way back home toward the end. That would have been a great conversation. I would have loved to have that conversation with someone, with anyone. That's the power of seeds. Some seeds can grow a tree and some can heal the withering ones.

10:17 This is where AI can help you nurture those seeds with an automation tool like Zapier. They're sponsoring this part of the video because I wanted to show you how I keep track of what people share with me. Zapier has this thing called MCP. It's just a fancy word for a gateway that connects your AI agents to the apps that you use. So, you're not limited to that prompt window. You go to Zapier. You connect it within minutes and you do it only once.

10:47 You choose which apps you want to connect to and give AI all the permissions you need. I am turning on Google Calendar, Google Docs and my Gmail. And that's it. You're done. I keep a simple Google Doc for my people notes. So, after a conversation, I would type something like Taylor's piano recital is on November 10th. Draft and send an email wishing her good luck on the 9th. Add it to my people notes and put a reminder in Google Calendar to ask her how it went when I see her on the 15th.

11:24 So, you see, the seed is planted and the reminder shows up right when it matters. Now, onto the third skill, you can ask beautiful questions all evening and still leave them knowing nothing about you. We have covered how to draw people in. Let's talk about how to let them in. Few movie stars have become more recognizable around the world than Sylvester Stallone. Rocky, Rambo, The Expendables, he's been the action hero of a generation for almost 50 years now.

12:02 But, we found out recently you can be known by millions and still struggle to let someone truly know you. In a recent interview that I saw about his memoir, he talks about his incredibly rough childhood and a very flawed, complex relationship with both his parents. And for his entire life, he had locked all those painful memories away.

12:33 He even called his famous physique his armor. In In one of the most heartbreaking moments, he confessed that he didn't really figure out true love until he was around 70. Stallone was one of the most recognized stranger we knew nothing about. So, it's so important that you let someone in. When you do, you can follow one simple rule. You can be personal, not private.

13:06 Personal is what you care about, what you've been learning recently, what mistakes you've been making, the things that you can laugh about, something that surprised you this week. When you share all that openly, people relate to you. And private is what you share with a few trusted ones. It starts with how you answer the simplest questions. >> Do you like traveling? >> Yeah, I love it.

13:38 Or you can say, "Yeah, I love it. The trips I love the most are the ones with no fixed plan. I want surprises to come my way." Now, they know something about you. You've opened the door to let someone in. Think of yourself as a house with three emotional rooms. The porch is where the superficial facts live. Everyone can know your job, your favorite sports team, but the second room is your living room.

14:09 That's your personal space. This is where real conversations happen. And then, there's the bedroom. That's your private space. It's for the few people who become close to you. So, that's the progression. Stallone kept everyone on the porch for almost 70 years of his life. You don't have to. And now, the final skill that can make or break any conversation. You can win an argument and lose a relationship.

14:41 Lose the argument, keep the relationship. Researchers recorded 112 visits between doctors and patients. Only about a third of the patients got to explaining why they'd come in. And even then, the doctors jumped in about 11 seconds after the patient started talking. And that's the habit. We all tend to do that because we're very good at solving things. And I used to do this at work. Someone starts explaining, and halfway through, I've already decided what the solution's going to be. But, that's not the right way of having a meaningful conversation. I think of conversations as having three purposes.

15:24 One, fix. The other person wants a solution. They want to fix a problem. That's why they're talking to you. Two, figure out. They want to explore it with you. Think it out loud. And three, feel. They just want to be heard. So, for example, your partner says, "I don't think I like my job." If it's a fix conversation, they want help. They want to solve the problem. They want to find a new job. If it's a figure conversation, they're still trying to decide where they fall, what to do next.

16:00 And if it's a feel conversation, they just need someone to hear how hard their work has been lately. So, your job changes in each of those conversations. If you diagnose it wrong, it becomes a hard conversation to recover from. >> Let's find you a new job. >> I can't just find a new job. You're not listening. >> So, just ask, "Do you want to be helped, heard, or hugged?" There's something to it. Now, this skill is harder when you are the problem. Your partner says, "You never listen to me."

16:37 And your instinct is to immediately defend yourself. "Never? What do you mean never? We just talked for 2 hours yesterday." The first step is to not become defensive about it. My biggest lesson here comes from negotiation experts Roger Fisher and William Ury. They wrote a book Getting to Yes, and they talk about looking past what someone is saying and get to what they're actually worried about, what's causing that behavior. "Hey, I didn't hear from you all weekend."

17:10 You know, that may sound like a complaint or even an accusation, but maybe the worry underneath might be I missed you. Then, the second step is to create safety so the other person doesn't feel defensive about it. Talk about the observation and not the person. If you say, "Hey, you missed the deadline." Okay, that's a problem, but you can talk about it. You can recover from it. If instead you say, "You're so irresponsible."

17:43 That's hard to recover from. And third, one argument, one issue. In the middle of the dishwashing argument, if you start arguing about your mother-in-law, it will never end well. So, try to stay on the core topic. And now, both of you have enough room to think together. Every time I have hung in there just a little bit more and stayed open to hear the other person's perspective, it has completely deflated the pressure of a hard conversation. The hardest moment in any conversation is when you're hurt and sure you're right.

18:26 That's when the most powerful thing you can say is, "Can you please help me understand?" Because the person across from you matters more than winning this round. And this is why this fourth skill is so important because a great conversation can change your life, literally. Years ago, I missed a train and met a complete stranger on the platform. And that single conversation changed my life. We started a band together. We made music together. We traveled the world. So, your life and your relationship with someone you love is one never-ending conversation.

19:06 There is a song in Hindi that I think about a lot. The lyrics can roughly be translated as one long melody of love flowing like the waves that rise and fall. That's life. It's nothing more than a story that you and I share together. Thank you. And I love you.