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Verbal Communication, Fixed · Humanity Working

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, Paul.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: Good to see you.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hey.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do uh verbal communication fix today.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: What is what specifically are we going to cover?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, this is a fun one, Matt, because this is the one I think that I'm asked to help teams and organizations more often on than anything.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Verbal communication and written communication are actually the number one and number two soft skills on job descriptions as well.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: But to sort of get specifically into what we're looking at here, you can think of it as your ability to express yourself clearly and effectively in real time.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: One of the hardest challenges is that you have to do it largely on the spot.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't have time to prepare.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it can happen from anywhere, right?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody calls you when you weren't expecting to hear it, or somebody stops you in a hallway.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's so important because it sh it is those moments that allow you to be able to reflect your best self or your worst self, much more so than in polished presentations.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, that speaks to how those unplanned moments can matter so much.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it really does because it is the it's the thing that people often remember, right?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: It is the serendipitous conversation that you had with somebody and they s you spark something in somebody else.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: It might make the difference between to get that unexpected project that gets you a promotion.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: It might be the thing that you don't remember, but actually held you back because you interacted with somebody in a slightly off way when they bumped into you.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's all of that kind of stuff that can be that can be very tricky.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's something actually that I personally have struggled with over the years, particularly the unplanned versions of it.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because some people who listen to the podcast regularly know I have this thing called apantasia, which means that I have no, I have no visual memory.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: So if I bump into somebody unexpectedly, there's a strong chance that I won't know who they are.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so I am like when I very first interact with somebody in an unexpected way, my brain is furiously worrying in the background saying, Who the heck is this person?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that can ruin that that that first impression that is an important part of effective verbal communications.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you think we're at?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: Are people getting worse at this?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, our we've done some research on this, and and the answer is actually kind of a strong yes.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we talked a lot about the fact that when it comes to these human characteristics, the best way, the only way really, is regular practice.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: And ideally, regular practice with with some purpose.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the reality is that we as a society are spending a lot less time talking to each other.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what, Matt?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is just wildly weird when you really think about it.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you go back 20, 30 years, think about how much it would cost to make a telephone call to somebody.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it cost real money.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: If it was not a you had to think about where they lived.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: If you were not calling somebody down the street, it would you would actually have to like pay a bunch of money to speak to them for any period of time.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you can speak to anybody anywhere in the world, basically for nothing, and you can do it in you can do it in real time.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And despite this fact, we almost always will choose to text or choose or just not choose to not communicate at all, versus having the uh having that type of verbal interaction with people.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then also because of these virtual worlds that we've created for ourselves and our ability to be able to talk to any talk to any entity, including virtual entities, not even talking to human beings, we're spending a lot less time in physical spaces communicating with each other as well.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we've we've voted that as a society that this verbal communication thing is is tough, so let's just not do it.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the less we do of it, the worse we get at it.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so that is causing that's causing world challenges.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting too when you put it in terms of like, you know, it used to cost money to make telephone calls.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: You had to actually care what zip code or what uh area code you were calling.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and there was time and money associated, you go by the minute, whether it was a payphone or just how telephone bills worked.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: I remember in college people would rack up inordinate amounts of telephone bills and itemizing our telephone bill with college roommates and stuff, and we inadvertently made it so cheap we lowered the value of it almost to make it so it's not useful.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas you would hold it so dear, like, hey, I'm gonna do this and it's gonna cost me 150 bucks to call my friend in California.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: So you're gonna make the most of that conversation.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's wild, man.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and people would be very, very intentional about it as well.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so what would happen is that you would there'd be sort of two versions of this.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: One whereby you would be like, I really value this relationship.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so even if it's gonna cost me a bunch of money, I'm just gonna sit and chat to this person for an hour, and I'm gonna make that investment, and I'm gonna make that emotionally count.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so these were the these were the free form exchanges that we that we had with people, but we placed an enormous amount of value on it.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: My grandparents didn't have a telephone in their in their house, and they were quite elderly, so they would then have to, they would have to walk down the street to the telephone box, they would have to wait outside the telephone box because there might be a queue, and then they would make the call, and then that call was the connection, and so you would focus a lot on emotional resonance.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Then the other aspect of it as well would be that if you were gonna call somebody and you needed to get some points across, you would make notes ahead of time.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: I need to cover these three or these four or these or these five things.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you would think about okay, how am I gonna get across what I need to get across in the five minutes that I can afford to communicate to communicate with this person?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so the various different aspects of verbal communication were honed by the fact that the medium made it expensive and therefore of higher value.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, we're really talking about the ones that were happening across telephone calls, et cetera.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, a lot of this also applies to in-person as well.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's fascinating.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: You the also with the phone thing, I was trying to think what generation would hear what we're talking about and absolutely have no idea what we're talking about from that.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: I and I'm like, when the iPhones came out in what 2007, you were still paying for cellular minutes.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: You were, yeah.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: And thinking about your time, and it might even still be part of it now for like calling.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like that has changed so drastically.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: But the in-person one is also uh, you know, a direct corollary if we're getting worse at that as well, yeah, maybe due to the pandemic most recently, but the the way office work has changed and being around people.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: So, how do you get better at it now?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, just before we get to that, I think that second piece of it is really is really important.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: I just mentioned that we're sort of like opting out of it because it's uh because it's harder.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: The thing that we've not spoken about, there is a real meaningful shift that people are making towards having easy conversations versus hardcom versus hard conversations.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: And easy conversations versus hard conversations is reflected by the communities that we build online, which are typically echo chambers of our own points of view.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not having to talk to people that that disagree with us.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's easier still by making it asynchronous.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: We just type something into the void and then somebody will type type something back.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's easier still when we start communicating with artificial intelligence that is pre-programmed to agree with us and support our viewpoints.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: We discussed this on our episode about sycophancy, but it's a but that reflection of our of our own point of view.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so that the muscle is going because we're doing less of it, but the muscle is also going because of what we're choosing to do instead, which is just the most lightweight, lazy version of this that you can possibly imagine.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now to get to your point about how you make it better, part of it is leaning in to it, right?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: It is it is seeking out people that uh you don't necessarily agree with.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's picking, it's instead of texting, picking up the phone and talking, instead of picking up the phone and talking, going to the coffee shop and meeting.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you know how like people would say, oh, I'd rather than stand, I'd rather sit rather than sit, I'd rather lie down.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: We're sort of like doing that version in terms of how we communicate, and we need to do the opposite, right?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Rather than lying down, we need to sit rather than sit and we need to stand.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the and this is something that we've just got to do on a on a consistent basis.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: We have specific formula for what people should look like in terms of how they communicate.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: We can talk about that potentially in a future podcast, but I think I think for now, I think the most important thing is to is to get into the habit of doing the thing that is a bit harder.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's crazy.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's very interesting when you think about it that way.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: So a vital aspect of communicating is also listening.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: That plays a big part too, right?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: 100%, 100%.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: And this is something that again we tend to be getting worse and worse at for exactly the same reasons that I was just talking to you about.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: If everybody's just repeating back what you think already, you don't really need to listen, right?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because there aren't differences that you need to you need to probe, right?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: If people are just echoing back what you think, then it doesn't really matter.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: You can just you can you can just uh you can almost do like a yes and a yes and without even thinking about it.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's one of the reasons, one of the many why we've where we've got traditional we've consistently got a lot worse at listening over the last few years.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: But the point here is that you can't uh actually truly have a meaningful conversation if uh you uh do not uh actually deeply understand what the other person uh is saying.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a really hard thing to do in the moment because uh most of us today when we're having a conversation, we're spending more time thinking about the next thing we're gonna say versus uh thinking and absorbing what the other person is saying.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you can actually measure this interestingly, Matt, by looking at pauses.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: So if you were to look at conversations that happened 15 or 20 years ago and record those conversations, you would have heard longer pauses between when person A speaks and when person B speaks, and those pauses have got shorter and shorter because we're not listening, internalizing, responding.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: We are half listening and then waiting to rush in with our corresponding point.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's not all of what listening is, but focusing on listening when you're having when you're having a conversation and reminding yourself to listen when you're having conversation will create a slower conversation, but it will almost always create a deeper conversation.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a skill you have to hone for sure.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's too easy, and different types of brains move differently and do different things.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: You could get you could be intently listening and then catch one word that sends you into a thought pattern, and you didn't even you weren't intentionally trying to.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this happens to me all the time.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm in, but also I need to start processing that thing that caught my attention in the background.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then it's like you're fighting a battle internally to stay on, but still process the thing so you don't forget about it.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: And there's all it's a crazy skill to start developing.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: All right, so we could go hours on this one, I think.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: But let's get to what's something simple that someone listening could do this week to help out with their with their skill development here.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Take one of those people that you would that you haven't spoken to for a while, or it's almost always been a text conversation or something like that, and set aside some time, a good amount of time, longer than you think you need, to have a uh a conversation with that person.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Ideally in person, it doesn't have to be.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: But if you think you're gonna talk to them for 20 minutes, set aside 45 so that you've got the space around it if it goes long.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um and have a use the time to have a meaningful exchange with that human where every time they're saying something, you are listening intently and then you're putting in that like half-second pause to respond meaningfully to the to the human the human being.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the one thing I will add here, Matt, is that we've touched today on a tiny piece of what is a much, much deeper topic.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll probably come in and and do some some other things, I think, probably related to some of the the deeper specifics, because there are occasions where you want to turn that 45-minute discussion into a 20-minute discussion that is really, really high impact in a short period of time.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the first thing we need to do is get really good at listening clearly to what the other person is saying and responding meaningfully with that person and navigating disagreements, navigating alternate points of view, and coming to something that is deeply satisfying for both of the parties.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love the idea of seeking non-echo chamber conversations as a good place to have that skill honed and tested.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so verbal communication fixed.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: What's the what's the next interview, Paul?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so uh as a reminder for folks, we are we have these fixed uh episodes as it were every Tuesday, and we're adding in additional interviews as and when yeah as and when we get interesting and really great guests.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: The one we have coming up this Thursday is well, it's radical, actually.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's with somebody called Ines Garcia.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she's written a book called Nature's Blueprint for Business.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's basically an argument that the way we build our organizations is completely wrong.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it always has been, because we're not learning the lessons from how nature is building out resilient systems that don't just last for 10 years or 20 years, but last for, I don't know, a billion years.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is it's not really an argument for environmentalism, really.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's just about seeing how the world works and learning from it when we're building organizations.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's super fascinating stuff.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've I did the interview, I think, a couple of weeks ago now, but I still still can't stop thinking about it.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: Excellent.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: All right, so that's Thursday, and next Tuesday as normal, we'll be doing another uh fixed episode, this time focused on written communication, right?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, so I that's uh let's uh let's get that one uh recorded and out to people for next Tuesday.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: All right, thanks everybody.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: All right, thanks, bye-bye.
• 18:22
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• 18:26
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• 18:32
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• 18:35
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• 18:43
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