A lot of the advice about charisma or communication tries to alleviate the same anxiety — How am I coming across? — and then offers tips on telling a compelling story, making a perfect pitch or a better argument, or how to have a surprising fact or quirky anecdote in your back pocket to wow your audience.

But if you watch the people who are most interesting in conversation, they’re not the ones desperately sweating out an interesting story for attention. They’re visibly interested and creating interest is a lot easier than producing charm because you don’t have to manufacture it. You just have to unlock it, and ley curiosity not just improve the conversation but changes everyone’s brain and nervous system.

How Curiosity Affects the Brain and Reduces Anxiety

My friend and colleague Judson Brewer has watched this happen in brain scanners. Curiosity lights up the networks associated with learning and insight as the brain comparing and connecting and working produces new ideas. And, it does something else interesting- curiosity quiets anxiety in the amygdala. Think about it: Anxiety tells us to avoid – this new thing might be a threat — and thus narrows the field of focus, and sets us up to fight or flee. Meanwhile curiosity tells us to approach- this new thing is interesting! Now it widens the field of focus and suggests we lean in and learn. Our brains can’t actually run both of these systems at once, so when we move toward that thing with curiosity, the alarm starts to quiet down.

And yes, even the alarm of boredom. I was recently at a dinner party with someone who’s business was sand. Yes, that sand, like the tan colored stuff at the beach that your kids track into the house. I thought I was in for a prolonged torture session, but leaned in and decided to ask more questions. That’s when the sand industry got interesting- did you know the whole sand industry is in recession down right now because the glass industry is down, replaced by plastic on most consumer products except for alcohol, but alcohol consumption is way down.

Climate change has messed up the wine industry, young people are using THC and staying in, and its driving up ticket sales for concerts and restaurants which used to rely on alcohol sales to underwrite the food and entertainment. Sand is related to climate, culture, young people, food. Who knew? Maybe sand is interesting after all.

Curiosity helps us suspend judgment which opens us up for more bandwidth cognitively. This is why curiosity it’s actually the whole technique for listening for communication for charisma. And if you’re actually interested your face does the right thing on its own your body follows your questions come out sounding natural and organic instead of like a furious brainstorm. You can’t fake the signals of interest but you don’t need to because if you’re actually curious there they are. To paraphrase the journalist Kate Murphy, you don’t need to act interested and like you are paying attention, if you are in fact curious and attentive. So find something interesting about sand!

The problem though is most conversations start in a way that make it hard. Like with the realization of oh shit, this person in the sand business. Or we have to convince someone of something, or that we’re interested, or assuming we know where a conversation is going. Notice of these are closed down assumptions and conclusions, the opposite of curiosity, which shut down our capacity to listen.

The shift is moving ourselves from “this is boring” to “how could this be interesting?” or from “I’m trying to persuade” to “I’m trying to understand,” from conclusions to curiosity. And not just about their pain points or needs, emotionally intelligent people will smell that coming, but get curious about them, or at least why sand is interesting to them.

Questions to Foster Curiosity and Better Listening

• How might I be wrong or ignorant here, or at least not 100% right?
• What in this person’s history might have led them to this moment or perspective?
• What emotions are running beneath the surface?
• What do I have in common with them?
• What could I learn from this interaction, or what could surprise me?

The last question in some ways is the most important. If you finish a conversation, any conversation, and you can’t answer that, you probably weren’t really listening, so much as waiting your turn, whether it’s a dinner party small talk, a well tread disagreement with your spouse, or even a failed negotiation.

Try it

Can you get genuinely curious and interested, even in a frustrating, boring, or overwhelming conversation? Ask yourself those questions above before, during and after the conversation. Practice in a low stakes audience—an acquaintance, colleague, or even a stranger or your waiter. (Just don’t be creepy.)