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TED Talk No. 32

00:12

All right, I want to see a show of hands: how many of you have unfriended someone on Facebook
because they said something offensive about politics or religion, childcare, food?

00:23

(Laughter)

00:25

And how many of you know at least one person that you avoid because you just don't want to talk to
them?

00:30

(Laughter)

00:32

You know, it used to be that in order to have a polite conversation, we just had to follow the advice of
Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady": Stick to the weather and your health. But these days, with climate
change and anti-vaxxing, those subjects --

00:44

(Laughter)
00:45

are not safe either. So, this world that we live in, this world in which every conversation has the
potential to devolve into an argument, where our politicians can't speak to one another and where even
the most trivial of issues have someone fighting both passionately for it and against it, it's not normal.
Pew Research did a study of 10,000 American adults, and they found that at this moment, we are more
polarized, we are more divided, than we ever have been in history. We're less likely to compromise,
which means we're not listening to each other. And we make decisions about where to live, who to
marry and even who our friends are going to be, based on what we already believe. Again, that means
we're not listening to each other. A conversation requires a balance between talking and listening, and
somewhere along the way, we lost that balance.

01:34

Now, part of that is due to technology. The smartphones that you all either have in your hands or close
enough that you could grab them really quickly. According to Pew Research, about a third of American
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 to talk to them face to face. There's this great piece in The
Atlantic. It was written by a high school teacher named Paul Barnwell. And he gave his kids a
communication project. He wanted to teach them how to speak on a specific subject without using
notes. And he said this: "I came to realize..."

02:08

(Laughter)

02:12

"I came to realize that conversational competence might be the single most overlooked skill we fail to
teach. Kids spend hours each day engaging with ideas and each other through screens, but rarely do
they have an opportunity to hone their interpersonal communications skills. It might sound like a funny
question, but we have to ask ourselves: Is there any 21st-century skill more important than being able to
sustain coherent, confident conversation?"

02:38

Now, I make my living talking to people: Nobel Prize winners, truck drivers, billionaires, kindergarten
teachers, heads of state, plumbers. I talk to people that I like. I talk to people that I don't like. I talk to
some people that I disagree with deeply on a personal level. But I still have a great conversation with
them. So, I'd like to spend the next 10 minutes or so teaching you how to talk and how to listen.
03:04

Many of you have already heard a lot of advice on this, things like look the person in the eye, think of
interesting topics to discuss in advance, look, nod and smile to show that you're paying attention, repeat
back what you just heard or summarize it. So I want you to forget all of that. It is crap.

03:23

(Laughter)

03:26

There is no reason to learn how to show you're paying attention if you are in fact paying attention.

03:34

(Laughter)

03:36

(Applause)

03:39

Now, I actually use the exact same skills as a professional interviewer that I do in regular life. So, I'm
going to teach you how to interview people, and that's actually going to help you learn how to be better
conversationalists. Learn to have a conversation without wasting your time, without getting bored, and,
please God, without offending anybody.

04:00

We've all had really great conversations. We've had them before. We know what it's like. The kind of
conversation where you walk away feeling engaged and inspired, or where you feel like you've made a
real connection or you've been perfectly understood. There is no reason why most of your interactions
can't be like that.

04:17

So, I have 10 basic rules. I'm going to walk you through all of them, but honestly, if you just choose one
of them and master it, you'll already enjoy better conversations.
04:27

Number one: Don't multitask. And I don't mean just set down your cell phone or your tablet or your car
keys or whatever is in your hand. I mean, be present. Be in that moment. Don't think about your
argument you had with your boss. Don't think about what you're going to have for dinner. If you want to
get out of the conversation, get out of the conversation, but don't be half in it and half out of it.

04:50

Number two: Don't pontificate. If you want to state your opinion without any opportunity for response
or argument or pushback or growth, write a blog.

05:02

(Laughter)

05:05

Now, there's a really good reason why I don't allow pundits on my show: Because they're really boring. If
they're conservative, they're going to hate Obama and food stamps and abortion. If they're liberal,
they're 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 conversation assuming that you have something to learn.
The famed therapist M. Scott Peck said that true listening requires a setting aside of oneself. And
sometimes that means setting aside your personal opinion. He said that sensing this acceptance, the
speaker will become less and less vulnerable and more and more likely to open up the inner recesses of
his or her mind to the listener. Again, assume that you have something to learn.

05:52

Bill Nye: "Everyone you will ever meet knows something that you don't." I put it this way: Everybody is
an expert in something.

06:02

Number three: Use open-ended questions. In this case, take a cue from journalists. Start your questions
with who, what, when, where, why or how. If you put in a complicated question, you're going to get a
simple answer out. If I ask you, "Were you terrified?" you're going to respond to the most powerful
word in that sentence, which is "terrified," and the answer is "Yes, I was" or "No, I wasn't." "Were you
angry?" "Yes, I was very angry." Let them describe it. 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
think about it, and you're going to get a much more interesting response.
06:40

Number four: Go with the flow. That means thoughts will come into your mind and you need to let them
go out of your mind. We've heard interviews often in which a guest is talking for several minutes and
then the host comes back in and asks a question which seems like it comes out of nowhere, or it's
already been answered. That means the host probably stopped listening two minutes ago because he
thought of this really clever question, and he was just bound and determined to say that. And we do the
exact same thing. We're sitting there having a conversation with someone, and then we remember that
time that we met Hugh Jackman in a coffee shop.

07:17

(Laughter)

07:18

And we stop listening. Stories and ideas are going to come to you. You need to let them come and let
them go.

07:25

Number five: If you don't know, say that you don't know. Now, people on the radio, especially on NPR,
are much more aware that they're going on the record, and so they're more careful about what they
claim to be an expert in and what they claim to know for sure. Do that. Err on the side of caution. Talk
should not be cheap.

07:46

Number six: Don't equate your experience with theirs. If they're talking about having lost a family
member, don't start talking about the time you lost a family member. If they're talking about the trouble
they're having at work, don't tell them about how much you hate your job. It's 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 moment to prove how amazing you are or how much you've suffered. Somebody asked
Stephen Hawking once what his IQ was, and he said, "I have no idea. People who brag about their IQs
are losers."

08:20

(Laughter)
08:22

Conversations are not a promotional opportunity.

08:28

Number seven: Try not to repeat yourself. It's condescending, and it's really boring, and we tend to do it
a lot. Especially in work conversations or in conversations with our kids, we have a point to make, so we
just keep rephrasing it over and over. Don't do that.

08:46

Number eight: Stay out of the weeds. Frankly, people don't care about the years, the names, the dates,
all those details that you're struggling to come up with in your mind. They don't care. What they care
about is you. They care about what you're like, what you have in common. So forget the details. Leave
them out.

09:08

Number nine: This is not the last one, but it is the most important one. Listen. I cannot tell you how
many really important people have said that listening is perhaps the most, the number one most
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 listened his way out of a job."

09:32

(Laughter)

09:33

Why do we not listen to each other? Number one, we'd rather talk. When I'm talking, I'm in control. I
don't have to hear anything I'm not interested in. I'm the center of attention. I can bolster my own
identity. But there's another reason: We get distracted. The average person talks at about 225 word per
minute, but we can listen at up to 500 words per minute. So our minds are filling in those other 275
words. And look, I know, it takes effort and energy to actually pay attention to someone, but if you can't
do that, you're not in a conversation. You're just two people shouting out barely related sentences in
the same place.

10:14

(Laughter)
10:16

You have to listen to one another. Stephen Covey said it very beautifully. He said, "Most of us don't
listen with the intent to understand. We listen with the intent to reply."

10:28

One more rule, number 10, and it's this one: Be brief.

10:32

[A good conversation is like a miniskirt; short enough to retain interest, but long enough to cover the
subject. -- My Sister]

10:38

(Laughter)

10:39

(Applause) All of this boils down to the same basic concept, and it is this one: Be interested in other
people.

10:50

You know, I grew up with a very famous grandfather, and there was kind of a ritual in my home. People
would come over to talk to my grandparents, and after they would leave, my mother would come over
to us, and she'd say, "Do you know who that was? She was the runner-up to Miss America. He was the
mayor of Sacramento. She won a Pulitzer Prize. He's a Russian ballet dancer." And I kind of grew up
assuming everyone has some hidden, amazing thing about them. And honestly, I think it's what makes
me a better host. I keep my mouth shut as often as I possibly can, I keep my mind open, and I'm always
prepared to be amazed, and I'm never disappointed.

11:28

You do the same thing. Go out, talk to people, listen to people, and, most importantly, be prepared to
be amazed.
11:38

Thanks.

11:39

(Applause)

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