10 ways to have a better conversation
By Celeste Headlee
All right, I want to see a show of hands. Howmany of you have unfriended someone on Facebook. Because they said somethingoffensive about politics or religion, childcare, food? And how many of you knowat least one person that you avoid because you just don’t want to talk to them?You know, it used to be that in order to have a polite conversation, we justhad to follow the advice of Henry Higgins in ‘My Fair Lady’: Stick to theweather and your health.
But these days, with climate change and anti-vaxxing,those subjects – are not safe either. So this world that we live in, this worldin which every conversation has the potential to devolve into an argument, whereour politicians can’t speak to each other, and where even the most trivial ofissues have someone fighting both passionately for it and against it, it’s notnormal. Pew Research did a study of 10,000 American adults, and they found thatat this moment, we are more polarized, we are more divided, than we ever havebeen in history. We are less likely to compromise, which means we’re not listeningto each other. And we are making decisions about where to live, who to marryand even who our friends are going to be, based on what we already believe. Again,that means we are not listening to each other. A conversation requires abalance between talking and listening, and somewhere along the way, we lost thebalance. Now, part of that is due technology. The smartphones that you alleither have in your hands or close enough that you could grab them really quickly.
According to Pew Research, about a third ofAmerican teenagers send more than a hundred texts a day. and many of them,almost most of them, are more likely to text their friends than they are totalk to them face to face. There is a great piece in The Atlantic. It was writtenby a high school teacher named Paul Barnwell. And he gave his kids a communication project. Hewanted to teach them how to speak on a specific subject without using notes. Hesaid this, I came to realized, I came to realize that conversational competencemight be the single most overlooked skill we fail to teach. Kids spend hourseach day engaging with ideas and each other through screens, but rarely do theyhave an opportunity to hone their interpersonal communications skills. It mightsound like a funny question, but we have to ask ourselves: is there any 21-centuryskill more important than being able to sustain coherent, confident conversation?
Now I make my living by talking to people.Nobel Prize winners, truck drivers, billionaires, kindergarten teachers, headof states, plumbers, I talk to people that I like, I talk to people that I don’tlike. I talk to some people that I disagree with deeply on personal level. But Istill have a great conversation with them. So I’d like to spend the next 10minutes or so teaching you how to talk, and how to listen.
Many of you have already heard a lot ofadvice on this, things like look the person in the eye, think of interestingtopics to discuss in advance, look, nod and smile to show that you’re payingattention, repeat back what you just heard or summarize it. So I want you toforget all of that. It is crap.
There is no reason to learn how to show you’repaying attention if you’re in fact paying attention. Now I actually use theexact same skills as a professional interviewer that I do in regular life. So I’mgoing to teach you how to interview people, and that’s actually going to helpyou learn how to be better conversationalists. Learn to have a conversation,without wasting your time, without getting bored, and, please God, without offendinganybody. We all had really great conversations. We’ve had them before, we knowwhat it’s like. The kind of conversation where you walked away feeling engagedand inspired, or where you feel like you’ve made a real connection or you’vebeen perfectly understood. There is no reason why more of your interactions can’tbe like that. So I have 10 basic rules. I’m going to walk you through all ofthem. But honestly if you just choose one of them and master it, you arealready enjoying the better conversation.
Number one: Don’t multitask. And I don’tmean you just set down your cell phone, or your tablet or your car keys orwhatever in your hand. I mean, be present, be in that moment. Don’t think aboutyour argument you had with your boss. Don’t think about what you’re going tohave for dinner. if you want to get out of the conversation, get out of theconversation, but don’t half in it, and half out of it.
Number two: don’t pontificate. If you wantto state your opinion without any opportunity for response or argument orpushback or growth, write a blog. Now there is some really good reason why I don’tallow pundits on my show. Because they are really boring. If they’ve conservative,they’re going to hate Obama and food stamps and abortion. If they’re liberal,they are going to hate big banks and oil corporations and Dick Cheney. Totally predictable,and you don’t want to be like that. You need to enter every conversationassuming that you have something to learn. The famed therapist M. Scott Pecksaid that true listening requires a setting aside of oneself. And sometimesthat means setting aside your personal opinion. He said that sensing thisacceptance, the speaker will become less and less vulnerable and more and morelikely to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. Again,assuming you have something to learn. Bill Nye: Everyone you will ever meetknows something that you don’t. I put this way. Everybody is an expert insomething.
Number three: use open-ended questions. In thiscase, take a cue from journalists. Start your questions with who, what, when,where, why or how. If you put in a complicated question, you’ve going to get asimple answer out. If I ask you were you terrified, you’re going to respond tothe most powerful word in that sentence, which is terrified, and the answer isyes, I was, or no, I wasn’t. were you angry, yes I was very angry. Let them describeit. They’re the ones that know. Try asking them things like, what was that like?How did that feel? Because then they might have to stop for a moment and thinkabout it, and you are going to get a much more interesting response.
Number four: Go with the flow. That means thoughtsthat will come into your mind, and you need to let them go out of your mind. Weheard interviews often in which a guest is talking for several minutes and thenthe host comes back in and asks a question which seems like it comes out ofnowhere, or it’s already been answered. That means the host probably stopped listeningtwo minutes ago because he thought of this really clever question, and he wasjust bound and determined to say that. And we do the exact same thing. We’resitting there having a conversation with someone, then you remember that timethat we met Hugh Jackman in a coffee shop. And we stop listening. Stories and ideasare going to come to you. You need to let them come and let them go.
Number five: if you don’t know say that youdon’t know. Now, people on the radio, especially NPR, are much more aware thatthey’re going on the record, and so they’re more careful about what they claimto be an expert in and what they claim to know for sure. Do that. Err on theside of caution. Talk should not be cheap.
Number six: don’t equate your experiencewith theirs. If they are talking about having lost a family member, don’t starttalking about the time you lost a family member. If they are talking about howmuch trouble they are having in their work, don’t tell them about how much youhate your job. It is not the same, it is never the same. All experiences are individual.And more importantly, it is not about you. You don’t need to take that momentto prove how amazing you are or how much you’ve suffered. Somebody askedStephen Hawking once what his IQ was, and he said, I have no idea. People whobrag about their IQs are losers. Conversationis not a promotional opportunity.
Number seven: try not to repeat yourself. It’scondescending, and it’s really boring, and we do it a lot. Especially in workconversations or in conversations with our kids, we have a point to make, so wejust keep rephrasing it over and over. Don’t do that.
Number eight: Stay out of the weeds. Frankly people don’tcare about the years, the names, the dates all those details that you are strugglingto come out of your mind. They don’t care. What they care about is you. They careabout what you are like, what you have in common. So forget the details, leavethem out.
Number nine: this is not the last one, butit is the most important one. Listen. I cannot tell you how many reallyimportant people have said that listening is perhaps the most, the number onemost important skill that you could develop. Buddha said, and I’m paraphrasing,if your mouth is open, you’re not learning. And Calvin Coolidge said, no man ever listenedhis way out of a job. Why do we not listen to each other. Number one, we’drather talk. When I am talking, I am in control. I don’t have to hear anything I’mnot interested in. I am the centre of attention. I can bolster my own identity.But there is another reason. We get distracted. The average person talks atabout 225 words per minute, but we can listen at up to 500 words per minute. Soour minds are filling in those other 275 words. And look, I know, it takes effortand energy to actually pay attention to someone. But you don’t do that, you’renot in a conversation. You’re just two people shouting out barely relatedsentences in the same place. You have to listen to one another. Stephen Coveysaid it very beautifully. He said, most of us don’t listen with the intent tounderstand. We listen with the intent to reply.
One more rule, number 10, and it’s thisone: be brief. A good conversation is like a miniskirt, short enough to retaininterest, but long enough to cover the subject.
All of this boils down to the same basicconcept, and it is this one: be interested in other people. You know, I grew upwith a very famous grandfather, and there was kind of a ritual in my home. Peoplewould come over to talk to my grandparents, and after they would leave, mymother would come over to us, and she’d say, do you know who that was. She wasthe one runner-up to Miss America. He was the mayor of Sacramento. She won aPulitzer Prize. He’s a Russian ballet dancer. And I kind grew up assumingeveryone has some hidden, amazing thing about them. And honestly, I think it’swhat makes me a better host. I keep my mouth shut as much as I possibly can. I keepmy mind open. And I am always prepared to be amazed, and I’m neverdisappointed.
You do the same thing. Go out, talk topeople. And, most importantly, be prepared to be amazed.
Thanks
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