Let's Talk: How to Have Better Conversations

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A “good conversation” here, then, is one that promotes understanding. Good conversations are good for you If you haven't seen it, about 34 million of your peers have so go Google it after this podcast. Celeste is also an internationally recognized journalist and radio host, professional speaker, and author of several bestselling books, including We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter, Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving, as well as books on race and sexism. So, she is such a wonderful guest to have. Celeste, welcome to the Leadership 480 podcast. OK, Neil, I’ll reveal the correct answer later in the programme. During a long career, DJ and BBC radio presenter, Nihal Arthanayake, has had conversations with hundreds of people. Now he’s used these experiences to write a book entitled, ‘Let's Talk: How to Have Better Conversations’. Here Nihal tells another radio presenter, Michael Rosen, of BBC Radio 4’s, Word of Mouth, about the influence of his mother who also loved talking to people in her job as a nurse: So pretty much, like just everybody, he just started asking people, "Here's the map, here's the last we had of the submarine. Take a guess where it is." And he took the average of the answers, and they found the submarine. That is how beautifully we are designed to think as a group. And a diverse, independent group of thinkers is going to be more accurate, more innovative, less error-prone than even your most highly paid and experienced consultant. Open it up.

And good conversation involves taking turns, not talking over someone – trying to silence people by talking more loudly, forcefully, and persistently than them. Absolutely. And I think that really ties in nicely with with the time management and scheduling and, and almost ensuring people that even though they’re not in a physical office, they don’t have to be running 10 times faster, because they’re not being seen every day. I think that’s a really, really strong key message. I’d love to take the time to the time to thank you for joining us today, Richard, and thank you for everyone listening on joining us on the latest Let’s Talk Talent podcast. It’s been really great to hear your thoughts and opinions, Richard, and I know I’m definitely going to take away the bonus conversations, because that makes me feel a lot more excited to have those conversations. Brilliant, and absolutely, I think broadband is gonna be key to everyone’s world at the moment. And I’m sure many of us listening today, or many of our listeners have probably experienced the drop out so can actually vouch and be with you on that journey and and wish you all the best at bringing that connectivity and pushing your speeds higher. So thanks, Richard. So, okay, we have to be honest about a few things when it comes to leadership, and I would encourage leaders to stop being afraid of transparency. Stop making your decisions with your executive team and no others. I highly recommend a book called The Wisdom of Crowds but let me just boil this down to you. Most leaders fail, statistically speaking, the majority of leaders fail. And we need to be honest about that and understand that if you are a leader, statistically speaking, you are going to fail. So rather than constantly thinking of yourself as part of the minority who are succeeding and everybody else is the failure, start asking yourself, in what way am I failing? What am I missing? What are my blind spots? And how can I open up my decision making to the largest group of people possible? For example, we know that mergers and acquisitions are much more likely to succeed if a company makes their decisions on that issue by simply polling everyone who works for a company, double digits, more likely to be successful.

So, one of the things that people often talk about they feel like they have lost in remote culture, but it's not just true in remote culture, it can be true in any work conversation, so often we feel very focused on the need to have a productive conversation. You need this, I need this, we've got to decide this, which is fine, we do have to do those things. But there's also the pleasure of the conversation in part to build our business relationship, but in other ways of just, it's a moment for human connection. Stop lecturing. It might make you feel good, but it only makes you feel good for a very short span of time. And it definitely doesn't make the other person feel good. Ask open-ended questions Read this fascinating book and you'll become a better listener, a better conversationalist and better company' Adam Kay

When people think about being a good conversationalist, they focus on the talking part, and not the listening part,” Heyman said. “We often think of listening as a passive process, but it doesn’t have to be. Active listening involves giving your undivided attention to people. This helps people feel understood and cared about, and it can build trust and strengthen relationships.”In many ways this is not like any of the books I have read in the past, in the sense that this is not an easily read fiction book, or even an autobiography. In some ways this is very similar to some of the other books that I have read more recently, in that this requires concentration and provokes introspection, and a desire to continue to develop. We can improve the way we talk with each other, says UC San Diego psychology professor Gail Heyman. Some people may be better conversationalists to begin with, but Heyman would like to discourage you from “spending much time thinking about ‘natural differences’ in this or other aspects of life,” she said, “because then you start going in unproductive directions like feeling superior or inferior to others. It’s better to focus on things you have control over, and there is a lot you can do to get better at conversations.” The expertise trap is such a danger, and it leads to group think, it leads to all kinds of really, really bad decisions. So, the way to get around that is to constantly approach your team members with curiosity and understanding that even if you held a job 15 years ago, you have no idea what that job entails now and here's this person right in front of you who's in that job and could enlighten you and really help you out. And if you approach your conversations that way, you will never be short of topics. It sounds like you had a good chinwag– a long and pleasant conversation between friends, which is great because in this programme we’re talking about talking. We’ll be discussing conservations – the exchange of ideas, thoughts and feelings that happens when people talk to each other. And as usual we’ll be learning some new vocabulary as well. in a conversation, look at the people around you like an orchestra. Your job is to give each part a chance to play - the strings, percussion, brass, and woodwind.

That's so interesting. It's that, I'm thinking of when you lay awake at night and you're replaying this conversation in your head and you're like, "I said everything wrong. I've totally embarrassed myself," especially when it comes to a work situation. So maybe the other person isn't noticing some of these things, but there are a few things maybe we're doing where we do come off worse than we want to be perceived. So where do a lot of people go wrong in their conversations? How do we mess this up? You also have to be willing to have the door slammed in your face a few times.” A lot of public speech takes place today in the performative space of social media. Are we losing the ability to hold a conversation?

In the post-covid world where you are more likely to converse over social media, Teams or chat apps we are losing the art of conversation, Nihal argues. However, he is keen to point out: