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We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter

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60 Highlights | 9 Notes

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Even if you set aside the humanity involved, that a person has just learned of the death of a loved one while
thousands of people listened in, her tears don’t make for a good broadcast. Hearing someone cry on the radio is
painful, not powerful. Most people, understandably, want to console the person and can’t. They want me, the
host, to console the guest, and often I don’t have the words or time to do so. If I had been listening more
carefully, I would have heard the turn in the conversation. I could have ended the segment and allowed Mallery
and France their privacy. I didn’t, and it still bothers me. I was too caught up in my own story to pay attention to
theirs.

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We spend a lot of time avoiding uncomfortable conversations and not enough time making an effort to
understand the people who live and work around us.

Truth from @celesteheadlee

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Researchers at the University of Maryland found that so-called communication inefficiencies cost US hospitals
about $12 billion every year.7 That’s a conservative estimate. It includes wasted time on the part of doctors and
nurses, but over half of the cost stems from extra days that patients spend in the hospital because of information
that wasn’t shared in a timely or clear manner.

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For example, a lot of hiring managers make the mistake of assuming that someone who talks well and a lot will
be a good salesperson. The idea is that if someone is an entertaining storyteller, he or she must be great at
seducing a client. But often the truth is just the opposite. Some of the most effective salespeople, the ones who
sell the most, are those who can listen and respond.9 Those who can hold good, balanced conversations are the
ones who ultimately close the deal.

Yep, my experience too @celesteheadlee

The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not
listened. —WILLIAM WHYTE

Indeed

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Empathy, at its most basic, is the ability to sense someone else’s feelings, to be aware of their emotional state,
and to imagine their experience.

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Ronald Sharp, a professor of English at Vassar College, coauthored The Norton Book of Friendship with his
lifelong confidante, Eudora Welty. He touched on this evolving definition of friendship in a 2016 interview with
the New York Times. “Treating friends like investments or commodities is anathema to the whole idea of
friendship,” Sharp said. “It’s not about what someone can do for you, it’s who and what the two of you become
in each other’s presence. The notion of doing nothing but spending time in each other’s company has, in a way,
become a lost art. People are so eager to maximize efficiency of relationships [through texts and tweets] that
they have lost touch with what it is to be a friend.”6

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While I was writing this book, I used a planner (so analog!) to keep a running tally of my face-to-face
conversations each day. Before this exercise, I estimated that I probably had three or four substantive
conversations a day. But after tracking them carefully, it turned out that most days I was having perhaps one or
two, sometimes none. It felt like more because I was communicating with people all day. But I was rarely
talking with them.

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Nine out of ten times, if they have a question, it’s about how to deal with other people and their awful
conversation skills. “What if someone else won’t stop talking?”

Mention in interview my article on getting people to stop talking.

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Here are a couple of questions I almost never hear: “I always interrupt people. How do I stop doing that?” “I get
bored when other people talk. Can I change that?” We tend to blame bad conversations on other people.
Awkwardness on a first date? The other person isn’t a very good talker. Heated fight at the dinner table? Your
uncle is an ignorant bully.
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Here’s the thing, and the main reason I think that disastrous discussion had such a profound impact on me: I
really should have owned that conversation. For once, I was fully prepared and I expected to achieve a specific
goal. Plus, I’m a professional talker. By all objective measures, I’m better at conversation than the majority of
people. At that point, I’d been a radio reporter and anchor for about twelve years. I’d studied with some of the
best interview coaches in the business, participated in prestigious fellowships, read dozens of guides. I had even
done interviews with experts on the subject of conversation. I’d talked with people who had studied human
conversation for years. I should have been better at communication than most people. But I wasn’t. That day was
an eye-opener for me. Over the course of my journalism career, I’d read about people who are bad
conversationalists. I hadn’t known that I was one of them. I’d sat through workshops, listening to stories about
hapless reporters who got rolled over in interviews and lost control while the guest dominated the exchange. I
had laughed smugly. But guess what? People who get rolled over often don’t see the roller coming.

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Being a good talker doesn’t make you a good listener, and being smart might make you a terrible listener.
Highly educated people also tend to place a great deal of value on logic and discount the importance of emotion.
You can’t win a debate with an emotional argument, of course, but conversation is not debate and human beings
are inherently illogical. We are emotional creatures. To remove, or attempt to remove, emotion from your
conversation is to extract a great deal of meaning and import.

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Think about some of the stereotypical refrains offered up to people who share their pain. “There are plenty of
other fish in the sea” may be true, both literally and figuratively, but I doubt it has ever comforted someone
who’s just been dumped. “That job wasn’t a good fit for you anyway” or “You’re disturbing everyone in the
restaurant” or “Crying won’t help” have probably never consoled anyone, either. Approaching emotional
problems with logic is a strategy that is doomed to failure.

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If you align expectations with reality, you will never be disappointed. —TERRELL OWENS

Amen

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Taking a moment to think about your own expectations and sharing them with your conversational partner sets
the stage for a productive exchange. It’s the equivalent of walking into the grocery store with a list instead of
browsing through the aisles; you’re much more likely to get what you need and leave feeling satisfied.
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If an African American woman can talk respectfully and openly with a grand dragon in the KKK, I find it hard
to believe that you can’t talk to the guy in the coffee shop who’s wearing a Trump T-shirt or the woman in your
office who can’t stop talking about her vegan diet.

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Through my experience and research, I’ve identified five key strategies that help facilitate a productive dialogue.
They are: be curious, check your bias, show respect, stay the course, and end well.

Possible interview focus?

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Listening to someone doesn’t mean agreeing with them. The purpose of listening is to understand, not to endorse.

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This tendency to lump people into groups is known as the “halo and horns effect.” Psychologists call it a
cognitive bias or a “bias blind spot.” Basically, when we approve of a single aspect of another person, we are
more likely to judge them positively for other aspects. It takes just one common, important interest for us to find
someone believable, trustworthy, and likeable. The opposite is true as well: if we disapprove of someone’s
appearance, opinion, occupation, or another personal aspect, we are more likely to disapprove of everything
about them. Like me, you must see this play out all the time in both public and private life. You hear that
someone served time for drug possession and you make up your mind that they’re threatening or untrustworthy.
You hear that a friend’s husband cheated on her, and you find you can’t give him a good reference for a job.
Research suggests that while most of us acknowledge that bias exists, we don’t think we are influenced by bias
all that often. We accept the existence and pervasiveness of unconscious bias but aren’t conscious of our own.
Here’s the bald truth: we are all biased. Every human being is affected by unconscious biases that lead us to
make incorrect assumptions about other people.3 Everyone.

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Apologizing isn’t easy. It can be painful and awkward, but that’s the point. When we apologize, the other person
sees us struggling, knows we feel uncomfortable, and their compassion response kicks in. Sincere apologies are
powerful agents for reconciliation.

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Let me emphasize that we’re not talking about extreme circumstances here, but the average conversation you
may have on a daily basis. I’m not suggesting you apologize to a murderer or anyone else who’s committed an
act of terrible cruelty. I’m not talking about a conversation with Pol Pot, I’m talking about a chat with a stranger
in the coffee shop or a coworker in the lunchroom.
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“My idea of good company . . . is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of
conversation; that is what I call good company.” “You are mistaken,” said he gently, “that is not good company,
that is the best.” —JANE AUSTEN, PERSUASION

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I know that many people think they can multitask, and I used to be one of them. If you’ve ever watched a short-
order cook or an emergency room nurse or a middle school teacher work, you might be tempted to believe it’s
possible. But as MIT neuroscientist Earl Miller says, “The brain is very good at deluding itself.”2 When we
think we’re multitasking, what we’re really doing is rapidly switching from one task to another. We don’t
perceive this shift in attention, so we believe that we can actually focus on two things at the same time. Sadly,
that’s why so many people continue to text while driving.

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This technology makes us smarter, right? Brace yourself, because the facts don’t bear out that little illusion,
either. Psychologist Glenn Wilson found that if you are trying to focus on a task but you know that an unread e-
mail is sitting in your in-box, your IQ can fall by 10 points. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that helps
us prioritize tasks and make executive decisions, is easily distracted by new stuff. It wants to look and see what
the e-mail says. It expends energy thinking about opening that e-mail and your cognitive abilities drop.

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Humans aren’t as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be
they humans or other animals on Earth. So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy.
Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were “reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.” —NEIL
DEGRASSE TYSON

Amen

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A good friend of mine lost her dad some years back. I found her sitting alone on a bench outside our workplace,
not moving, just staring at the horizon. She was absolutely distraught and I didn’t know what to say to her. It’s
so easy to say the wrong thing to someone who is grieving and vulnerable. So, I started talking about how I grew
up without a father. I told her that my dad had drowned in a submarine when I was only nine months old and I’d
always mourned his loss, even though I’d never known him. I just wanted her to realize that she wasn’t alone,
that I’d been through something similar and could understand how she felt. But after I related this story, my
friend looked at me and snapped, “Okay, Celeste, you win. You never had a dad and I at least got to spend thirty
years with mine. You had it worse. I guess I shouldn’t be so upset that my dad just died.” I was stunned and
mortified. My immediate reaction was to plead my case. “No, no, no,” I said, “that’s not what I’m saying at all. I
just meant that I know how you feel.” And she answered, “No, Celeste, you don’t. You have no idea how I feel.”
 She walked away and I stood there helplessly, watching her go and feeling like a jerk. I had totally failed my
friend. I had wanted to comfort her and, instead, I’d made her feel worse. At that point, I still felt she
misunderstood me. I thought she was in a fragile state and had lashed out at me unfairly when I was only trying
to help. But the truth is, she didn’t misunderstand me at all. She understood what was happening perhaps better
than I did. When she began to share her raw emotions, I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to say, so I
defaulted to a subject with which I was comfortable: myself.

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Sociologist Charles Derber describes this tendency to insert oneself into a conversation as “conversational
narcissism.” It’s the desire to take over a conversation, to do most of the talking, and to turn the focus of the
exchange to yourself. It is often subtle and unconscious.1 Derber writes that conversational narcissism “is the
key manifestation of the dominant attention-getting psychology in America. It occurs in informal conversations
among friends, family, and coworkers. The profusion of popular literature about listening and the etiquette of
managing those who talk constantly about themselves suggests its pervasiveness in everyday life.”

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Research shows that we spend about 60 percent of our time in conversations talking about ourselves. Most of the
remaining time is spent talking about a third person, not the person we’re talking to. One study found that “most
social conversation time is devoted to statements about the speaker’s own emotional experiences and/or
relationships, or those of third parties not present.”

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The more comfortable you are, the more difficult it is to empathize with the suffering of another.

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I never give advice unless someone asks me for it. One thing I’ve learned, and possibly the only advice I have to
give, is to not be that person giving out unsolicited advice based on your own personal experience. —TAYLOR
SWIFT

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In the interest of full disclosure, I want to be clear about my perspective on this issue. I’m a mixed-race woman
whose ancestors were slaves on a Georgia plantation. I can’t pretend that I’m unbiased on the Confederate battle
flag, as the flag is a symbol of torture, oppression, and enslavement to me. However, I’m also a professional
journalist and I welcome an open, honest conversation from all sides on the issue. I don’t make public policy.
My job is to give you all the information and let you decide as objectively as possible. . . . As always, we don’t
just welcome your comments, we’d love you to enter the conversation with us.

Disclaimer to her radio audience

Our differing opinions on this one issue of the battle flag didn’t interfere with our ability to talk to one another or
respect one another, and it doesn’t necessarily follow that because we disagree on this, we disagree on
everything. Furthermore, our disagreements didn’t prevent us from listening to one another. In order to have
important conversations, you will sometimes have to check your opinions at the door. There is no belief so
strong that it cannot be set aside temporarily in order to learn from someone who disagrees. Don’t worry; your
beliefs will still be there when you’re done.

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More than half of all Americans say most of their friends share their political views and we are really reluctant
to talk about issues that might spark an argument.6 Pew Research calls this the “spiral of silence.” Most people
(excluding online trolls) are not willing to share their views on politics, either on social media or in person,
unless they are reasonably convinced that people agree with them.

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The famed therapist M. Scott Peck wrote that true listening requires a setting aside of self. “Sensing this
acceptance, the speaker will feel less and less vulnerable and more and more inclined to open up the inner recess
of his or her mind to the listener.”8 This setting aside of the self—and all of the opinions, causes, beliefs, and
biases that come with it—is one of the cornerstones of great conversation.

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One of the best lessons I’ve learned in nearly twenty years as a journalist is that everyone has something to teach
me. If you can find it within yourself to stop using conversations as a way to convince people that you’re right,
you will be stunned at what you’ve been missing. A flood of information will rush in to fill the vacancy left
behind by your ego.

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Research shows that when we repeat something multiple times, it ups our chances of remembering it.1 The
benefit increases if we repeat that information to another person, but the benefit isn’t shared with the person
listening. So, if you’re in a meeting and you repeat a deadline to your team four times, you’ll probably
remember it well but your team members are no more likely to retain it than if you’d mentioned it only once.

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Over the next few weeks, get into the habit of pausing for a couple of seconds before you respond to someone.
Before you repeat yourself, take a moment to find something new to say. You can even ask your friends to tell
you when you’re repeating something. I had my son say “echo” every time I started repeating things, and after
hearing it a few dozen times, I began to break the habit.
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Many of us can remember pulling all-nighters in which we used flash cards or other repetitive study aids to cram
for an upcoming test, all the while sucking down coffee. We may have thought that was a winning strategy, but
new research shows that repeatedly drilling names or numbers doesn’t help you remember them. If you want to
make something stick, spaced repetition is the way to go. Spaced repetition is a clever variation on cramming
that allows time to pass in between a repeat of information. I know some high-powered executives who swear by
it, as well as medical students and even people with mild dementia. There’s a popular program called
SuperMemo that allows you to use spaced repetition to memorize vocabulary, poetry, and nearly any other
information you input.

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Repetition is often boring, unnecessary, and counterproductive. It seems to be most effective as a memory aid
for the speaker and not the listener, and that’s why it’s often a conversation killer. The only way to make sure
you’re not teaching people to tune you out is to pay attention to what you’re saying. Listen to yourself first. You
may be surprised by what you hear and hear and hear.

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I don’t mean to suggest that using open-ended questions is always the best strategy, or that all open-ended
questions are good questions. Most of us have heard some terrible questions during job interviews that weren’t
improved by the fact that they were open-ended. “What’s your biggest weakness?” “Where do you see yourself
in five years?” “Why do you want this job?” Those questions are open-ended, but very few applicants will
answer them honestly. (For the record, “How does/did that make you feel?” is also a terrible question. It may be
open-ended, but it’s become so cliché that it’s been vacated of any meaning.)

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Surely one of the most compassionate and patient conversationalists in recent history, Fred Rogers (of Mister
Rogers’ Neighborhood) once described the power of questions in this way: “In times of stress, the best thing we
can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as
important as our answers.”

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“We get wise by asking questions,” wrote novelist James Stephens, “and even if [they] are not answered, we get
wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as a snail carries its shell.”3 Sometimes a question
can be an inspiration, an impetus to further exploration and discovery. Some of the greatest innovations of
humankind began with simple questions.

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I think it is perfectly possible to avoid saying things that you don’t know for sure and get comfortable with
saying “I don’t know.” There are two important reasons to do this: first, you establish a foundation of trust and
honesty, and second, you admit your own fallibility.
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While it is always tempting to add your two cents in a conversation, I strongly advise you not to say things that
you don’t know to be factually correct; nor should you offer opinions on subjects about which you know very
little. To be perfectly clear, reading the first couple of paragraphs of an article that someone posted on Facebook
is not the same as “knowing” something to be true. And limited experience does not make you an expert. Just
because you’ve had a baby doesn’t mean that you know everything about pregnancy; golfing a few times a year
doesn’t make you a pro. When you pretend to know more than you do, you will eventually give someone bad
advice or prevent them from seeking the guidance of a real, bona fide expert. In the words of the great poet
Alexander Pope, “A little learning is a dangerous thing.”

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In Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s book Think Like a Freak, there’s a chapter called “The Three Hardest
Words in the English Language.” You might think those words are “I love you,” but the authors argue that those
words are actually “I don’t know.” They cite research in which children between the ages of five and eight were
asked a series of questions and up to 75 percent of them answered yes or no even when they couldn’t possibly
have known the answer.

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Steven Levitt suggests that the temptation to pretend to be an expert is especially strong in the business world.
He says the MBA (master of business administration) students he teaches are very good “at faking like they
know the answer when they have no idea.” But he goes on to say that the “fake it till you make it” mentality is
completely counterproductive. “It might keep your job for another week or another month,” he says, “but that’s
not the point. The goal is to be good and to improve and to learn and to make things better and the only way to
do that is to start by saying, ‘I don’t know.’”

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The business psychiatrist Mark Goulston says we only have about forty seconds to speak during a conversation
before we run the risk of dominating the exchange. He describes the first twenty seconds as the green light,
when the other person likes you and is enjoying what you have to say. The next twenty seconds are the yellow
light, when “the other person is beginning to lose interest or think you’re long-winded.” At forty seconds,
Goulston says, the light turns red and it’s time to stop talking.1 Take a moment to gauge just how long forty
seconds is. Look at the second hand on your clock or watch, start to tell a story, and stop when you’ve hit forty
seconds. That’s not a lot of time! If you waste it with superfluous detail, you’ll never get to the meat of your
message.

Past CFL guest

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Let me go a step further and suggest that you eliminate the phrase “Well, actually . . .” from your lexicon. I don’t
usually give advice about specific words or phrases to use or avoid, but I’ll make an exception here. Much like
 “I’m not a racist, but . . . ,” nothing good will come after the words “well, actually.” If you really need to correct
someone because something bad will happen if they don’t have the accurate information, find another way or
wait until they’ve finished their story. If it’s trivial, a correction is not necessary. No one needs to interrupt a
story about dinner in order to explain that real champagne only comes from France.

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Harvard psychologist Shelley Carson has demonstrated that creative, highly intelligent people are seven times
more likely to have low latent inhibition.1 Translation: the smarter and more creative you are, the more trouble
you may have in tuning out distractions. In some ways, the stereotype of the “airhead” creative is true—those of
us with strong creative impulse are more likely to get lost in the endless hallways of our own minds.

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Once you’re aware of the thoughts that come into your head, don’t fight them or try to “clear your mind.” You
can’t stop your brain from thinking, and actively resisting your thoughts can be very distracting. Instead, when a
thought comes into your head, simply say to yourself, “That’s a thought,” and then try to return your focus to the
conversation.

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The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own
weekend. —CHUCK PALAHNIUK

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This seems to suggest that we are not very objective in measuring the success of our conversations. How many
times have you walked away from a job interview and thought, I nailed that, only to be surprised later that you
didn’t get the job? There could be any number of reasons why you weren’t hired, but one of them might be that
you talked about yourself more than you listened. So you felt great, but the person on the other side of the desk
didn’t. If we judge the success of a conversation based on how we feel, it could be that we’re led astray by the
dopamine surge we get from talking about ourselves.

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When asked, the majority of businesspeople and academics say listening is one of the most important skills
required of an effective professional. And yet, fewer than 2 percent of articles in business journals address the
topic of active listening. The same thing is true in our schools. You can easily find a class on public speaking but
rarely one on how to listen. That’s unfortunate because, as it turns out, listening must be taught.

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In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion. —ALBERT CAMUS
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By the time I get home from work, talking has exhausted me and I need silence for a few hours. I often don’t
have the energy to be chatty with the customer service rep or the landscaping guy. Rather than risk being rude, I
delegate those conversations to someone else. By the time I’m done with dinner, I’m usually ready to listen
actively and engage with people positively.

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The researchers found that the happiest students spent a third less time engaged in small talk and had about twice
as many substantive conversations as the rest of the group. They concluded that “the happy life is social rather
than solitary and conversationally deep rather than superficial.”

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It’s neither helpful nor productive to involve yourself in a discussion when you’re tired or irritated and
headachy. If you force yourself to talk when you don’t want to, you won’t be satisfied with your end of the
conversation and you probably won’t retain what was said on either side. You should never feel guilty for
walking away from a conversation in which you’re not able to mentally invest.

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Even if you only have one conversation a day, it should inspire and enlighten you. Those are the kinds of
conversations that will enrich your life and bring you a greater understanding of the people and world around
you.

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Scientists have identified many ways to foster empathy, including playing music in a band2 or reading more
novels,3 but one of the most effective methods is conversation. Good conversation allows you to learn about
someone else’s experience, to compare it with your own and imagine how it must feel to walk in someone else’s
shoes. The researchers at the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley—an
organization dedicated to using neuroscience and psychology to create a more resilient and compassionate
society—recommend increasing empathy through interaction. They offer four simple ways to increase empathy:
1.Active listening 2.Sharing in other people’s joy 3.Looking for commonalities with others 4.Paying attention to
faces

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Celeste’s first book was Heard Mentality, designed to help those who want to start their own podcast or radio
show. Celeste is also a classically trained soprano who performs whenever she gets the time. She lives in
Marietta with her son and her two rescue dogs.
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