(Video link here.) When we find ourselves without the patience or gas to watch a TED talk, we use a trick to glean the great information they often hold: We read the transcript, at our leisure. Celeste Headlee’s 10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation offers seriously useful insights about how to hone your communication skills to achieve great 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.”
We’ve condensed her entire list, including the Crap Advice she advises you forget (below). The most important is Number 9:
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.
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.”
Bill Nye: “Everyone you will ever meet knows something that you don’t.”
It made us think of the great Karl Pilkington quote we read at Nitch:
If I had to give up my mouth or my ears, I’d definitely get rid of my mouth. You learn nothing from your own talking. I know everything I’m going to say, I never surprise myself.
Celeste Headlee’s 10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation
1. Don’t multitask. And I don’t mean just set down your cell phone or your tablet or…whatever is in your hand. I mean, be present. Be in that moment. 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.
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2. Don’t pontificate. If you want to state your opinion without any opportunity for response or argument or pushback or growth, write a blog.
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..more likely to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener.
3. Use open-ended questions. Start your questions with who, what, when, where, why or how. [Not yes-and-no answers.]
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.
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4. Go with the flow. Stories and ideas are going to come to you. You need to let them come and let them go so you can keep listening.
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5. If you don’t know, say that you don’t know.
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6. 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.
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7. Try not to repeat yourself. It’s condescending, and it’s really boring, and we tend to do it a lot.
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8. Stay out of the weeds. Forget the [unnecessary] details. Leave them out. 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.
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9. 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.
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.”
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