Let's Talk: How to Have Better Conversations

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Yeah, absolutely. And surprise is one of the most enjoyable things ever. Only lawyers ask questions they know the answer to. If you're not a lawyer, stop doing that. You need to be curious. Look, think of it this way, number one, you already know everything that's going to come out of your mouth. So, the only way you're going to learn things is by what other people tell you. That's number one. The other thing I will say is that if you stop being curious about things, if you stop allowing other people to surprise you, then you are missing out on the vast majority of topics that are never going to cross your desk. It's just like our curated social media feeds. Because there's benefits to curating those feeds, but also it means that we're pretty much only seeing the stuff that we think is related to us, that we like, that is similar to us, we are so rarely going to be truly surprised.

Ah yes, in your question you asked how long the world’s longest telephone conversation lasted. It guessed it was an incredible 24 hours and 4 minutes… was I right? What is it that I haven't asked.... One of the questions I often ask people at the end of interviews is, "What have I not asked you that you expected to talk about? What should I have asked you?" And those kinds of open-ended questions, what is it that I'm missing, are really going to help you. That's how you become the kind of leader who people enjoy talking to, that they feel comfortable going to them with situations. Maybe it's just like, I have a feeling something's going wrong here. That may never be expressed if every conversation has to be productive. People may never wave those yellow flags instead of red if you have made this stricture that every conversation has to be directed, time limited, and productive. So, leave things open for people to muse. Remember that deep thought is rarely productive or directed. Deep thought ambles, deep thought explores, and deep thought is curious, but deep thought is what drives innovation and creativity.Something can be considered a good conversation if it does what the people involved want it to do,” Heyman said. “People have a wide variety of goals in conversations, and in some cases the goals are strategic, such as convincing someone to agree with you or getting them to realize that you exist. These kinds of conversations are important, but they don’t interest me all that much.

That was good. Thank you so much for an amazing conversation today. I certainly felt the pressure, so hopefully from every podcast now on, I will get better and better following your advice in this episode. So, thank you for spending your time with us today. I loved having you on the show. The survival instinct is the basic instinct in humans and animals to do something in a dangerous situation that will keep them alive.Unfortunately, we are in an age now when we tend to wholly define someone by one thing – you know, you’re Catholic, you’re Protestant, you’re a Leaver, you’re a Remainer, you’re woke, you’re racist, but that’s not all of who someone is. And one of the book’s aims is to encourage people to be a little bit more introspective about who you are, and look at your own prejudices and biases. If we do that more effectively, we can connect with others more openly.” Talking about yourself, what you know, what you like, the things you believe, we know through neuroscientific research, activates the same pleasure center in the brain as sex and heroin. And so, if you give other people the opportunity to talk about themselves, what they know, what they like, what they believe, they're going to feel great. And so, then they will be impressed with you. They'll be like, "Wow, they are a great conversationalist," but really, you've just made them feel wonderful.