Dez regras para conversar melhor

all right I want to see a show of hands how many of you unfriended someone on Facebook because they said something offensive about politics or religion child care food and how many of you know at 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 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 in anti-vaccine those subjects 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 pure 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 now part of that is due to technology these smart phones 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 him how to speak on a specific subject without using notes and he said this I came to realize 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 communication 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 sustained coherent confident conversation 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 talked 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 many of you have already heard a lot of advice on this things like look the person in the eye think of interesting things topics to discuss in advance look nod and smile the 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 there is no reason to learn how to show you're paying attention if you are in fact paying attention

now I actually use the exact same skills as a professional interviewer that I do in regular life so I'm gonna teach you how to interview people and that's actually going to help you learn how to be better conversationalist learn to have a conversation without wasting your time without getting bored and please God without offending anybody we've all had really great conversations we've had them before we know what it's like the kind of conversation when 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 so I have ten 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're already enjoy better conversations 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's in your hand I mean be present be in that moment don't be thinking about your arguments you have with your boss don't be thinking about what you're gonna 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 number two don't pontificate if you wanted to state your opinion without any opportunity for response or argument or push back or grouse write a blog no there's a really good reason why I don't allow pundits on my show because they're really boring if they are conservative they're gonna hate Obama and food stamps and abortion if they're a liberal or they're gonna 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 Emma 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 listener again assume that you have something to learn Bill Nighy everyone you will ever meet know something that you don't I put

it this way everybody is an expert in something number three use open-ended questions in this case take a cue from journalist start your questions with who what where when why or how if you put in a complicated question you're gonna get a simple answer out if I ask you were you terrified you're gonna respond to the most powerful word in that sentence which is terrified and the answer is yes I was there 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 gonna get a much more interesting response 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 asked 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 and we stopped listening stories and ideas are gonna come to you you need to let them come and let them go 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 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 that you lost a family member if you're talking about the trouble that they're having at work don't tell them about how much you hate 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 says I have no idea people who brag about their IQs or losers conversations are not a promotional opportunity 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 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 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 listen his way out of a job why do we not listen to each other number one we'd rather talk what 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 words 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 you have to 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 one more rule and Norton and it's this one be brief all of this boils

down to the same basic concept and it is this one be interested in other people 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 home 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 started I kind of grew up assuming everyone has

some hidden amazing thing about them and I 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've never disappointed you do the same thing go out talk to people listen to people and most importantly be prepared to be amazed thanks