100. Shut Up! How to Communicate Better by Talking Less
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Each week, guest speakers will join me for interactive lectures and Q&A sessions on topics like persuasion, storytelling, nonverbal presence, and reputation management. The course starts September 24th, and registration is now open. Learn more at continuingstudies.stanford.edu. There's a fine line we all must walk when we communicate.

We have to say enough to get our point across, but we want to avoid over-talking. Today, we'll explore talking too much and how to listen more. I'm Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast.

Today, I look forward to speaking very concisely, mind you, with Dan Lyons. Dan is a journalist, author, and sometimes screenwriter. He wrote for Newsweek and Forbes and recently released his third book, STFU, The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World. Welcome, Dan. I'm excited for our conversation, and I must admit, very aware of what I am saying.

I'm curious, what motivated you to write this book? And how do we know if we're an over-talker? It's a great question. And full disclosure, I was motivated to write the book because I talk too much. And I became aware of this and I became aware that it had caused me problems in my professional and personal life. And I set out to try to figure out, well, why do some people talk too much?

And how can you fix that? And I started doing research and I stumbled across a concept called talkaholism that was defined in the 90s. A talkaholic is defined as someone

who speaks even when they know what they're about to say will hurt them. Even when they know that it's in their best interest to not speak, they still speak. So it's a compulsion akin to an addiction. And there's a test you can take. It's in my book, and I think we have it on the web someplace too, called The Talkaholic Scale. Maximum score is 50, and I got a 50. So I definitely had my work cut out for me.

Wow. So this is a book out of personal need and passion, it sounds like. If we do learn that we are a talkaholic, what are two or three hacks or bits of advice you could give us to help us not talk as much?

Yeah, I invented little games. I have five sort of tips, but one of my little games is just when possible say nothing, which is sounds insanely easy. Maybe it's always possible to say nothing, but it's not quite so easy. And I'll try to practice it in situations where I would talk when I don't need to, like I'm at the grocery store and I'm checking out and part of me wants to say, Hey, you know, how are you doing? You know, how's your day going? Busy today, huh? And then

How long you work to, you know, like all that kind of stuff. So just bite the urge to do that. Another bit of advice I have in the book and I've tried to live by is to get off social media or to spend as little time as possible because I think it's programming you

to be agitated, which causes you to talk more. And another thing I've done that I really recommend is finding ways to add silence to your life. And for some people that might be meditation. For me, it's been a practice called forest bathing, which I write about in the book. You get a guide and you go off into the forest and you sort of drink up this benefit of the trees. So those are a few things I've found that have helped me bring

Yeah, some quiet to my life, which then helps me to talk less. So the key there is finding a way to, as you just said, bring quiet. And that then reduces, I guess, the urge to fill the space and to take up talk time. Yeah, because we have that natural urge to talk.

jump right in where we're not typically not good listeners. And that's the other thing I've really practiced on. And one of my five points is learn to be an active listener. And so I've, I will sometimes go into a conversation resolving beforehand to only ask questions, good questions, and then listen, and then not do the thing where you're speaking. And I'm just waiting for you to finish so I can say my thing, but to really just have no agenda to let you speak

And ask, just respond to what you say to mirror it back or ask a question to help you continue where you were going. It's selflessness, which is more natural to some than others, I guess. But yeah, it's about putting the other person first.

So not only do you put the other person first, but it sounds like you really double down on listening. And what I heard you say is while not having an agenda, while you're receiving the information from the other person, you actually go into these situations with some questions or ideas that you want to, to bring out of that conversation. So you put yourself in a position where you can listen. Is that what I heard correctly?

Yes, that's it. And then you want to resist the urge to have that list of 10 questions. I mean, this is more for when I'm doing an interview with someone and say, so I have a very definite agenda. I need to get something. But you have the thing where you have question one, question two, question three, and you ask question one and the person sort of answers the question. But of course, if you're doing that, says something really interesting that if you were really listening, you'd go, oh, wait a minute, what's that? And you'd let yourself

digress rather than just going, okay, good answer. Let's go to question two. It's almost like improv. There's this idea to one way to learn to listen is to do this, this thing in improv they do called yes. And where it's all about listening to whatever the other person says, you say yes. And, and continue that. So you can't really go into that improv skit with a plan.

The one key nugget I want to take away from what you said about listening is you're listening, not just to respond. You're really listening to understand. And that's a mindset shift for me personally, and I think for many of us. And I really appreciate that. And I have to remind myself of that, that if I really want to connect with you, I have to listen to understand. I'm not just listening to get enough information so I can say my next piece.

I want to ask a question that I'm very curious about as we've been talking. Is there a difference between over-talking and verbose writing? Do those who talk too much tend to write too much too? And are there different bits of advice you would give depending on the venue of our verbosity? I don't know if you could say there's a direct correlation between everybody who is an over-talker is also an over-writer. However, I do think, boy, those two often, you do find them in the same person.

And I think overriding is just as bad as over talking. It's been easier for me to deal with it. I can be pretty brutal when I edit my own stuff. I can go back and really cut it. But you're doing that after the fact. I've done some work talking with people in business, communicating in a professional setting. And I encountered a guy who would have a weekly one-on-one with his team.

and would just get on the call and talk for half an hour and maybe say, let me share my screen and let me show you some slides and eat up the whole hour and then time's up. And then when he wrote, he would write way too much. I started talking to him about it and he said something I thought was really interesting, which is that I think I talk too much because when I'm with the people I manage, I need to prove to them

that I'm smart. I deserve to be their boss and don't wear everybody. I've got it under control and here's what we're doing. And when I'm in a meeting with my superiors, I feel like I have to earn my seat at the table and look at all the stuff I know and look at how much value I add, et cetera, et cetera. And I thought, well, yeah, so it's,

I guess it's driven by insecurity and it requires a certain amount of confidence to not indulge that way. We've had a few fellow colleagues at the business school who study power, Deb Grunfeld, Jeff Pfeffer have come and they've talked about how silence is actually a way to increase your status and power. Those who have status and power are permitted to be silent. And it sounds like the

person you were coaching and working with could use some of that advice. It's not all about the talking. It's actually about the not talking that can give you that status and power. The one thing that we can do in writing that we can't necessarily do in real time and speaking is you can edit, as you said you did. Before we send out that email, we can go back and say, is this clear? Is this concise? How could I make this shorter to help

reduce the verbosity that I think many of us put in. I think many of us talk and write in almost a stream of consciousness way. And I think if we reflect and edit, we can do ourselves a service and those who have to suffer through all of those words. To your point about power, Bob Green, Robert Green wrote this book, The 48 Laws of Power. And like one of the top ones is powerful people always say less than they need to.

And I was talking to Scott Galloway recently. He was saying it's the ultimate flex, like silence. Being able to sit there is like such a flex, right? And it could be mean if you're doing it just to make people uncomfortable because people get very uncomfortable very quickly with silencing.

Absolutely. So, Dan, I'd like to look at the other side of the interaction. What advice do you give to those of us who have to deal with people who talk too much? How do we shut them up? You buy them a copy of my book and you leave it under a desk when they're not around. That's it. Now you get me in a fat fastball right over the middle of the plate. No. So, yeah, I mean, it's a delicate situation. I believe that most people, though, who talk too much know that they talk too much. They're aware of it.

And often they wish they could not do it. They are aware that it's a problem and they just don't know how to do that. And there, I think sometimes depending on your relationship with the person, you can sort of in a conversation, bring it around to that. And it's like, you do kind of talk too much and you could listen more and bring it up in a supportive way. I think the worst one of the interrupters though, and I,

how do you deal with them? And in one chapter, I talk a lot about it. There are a lot of ways to deal with an interrupter and it's very situational. Give me an example of one or two. How do you stop somebody from interrupting like I just did there to you? Well, see, that's a good interruption. I don't think all interruptions are bad. That was in a way saying, Dan, you've been going on here. Let me help you bring you back. It's a conversational skill, right? But

One thing I think is a really great idea is at the beginning of a meeting, you just set the ground rule up front, which is that we're going to have this meeting. We're going to let everybody talk. I want to let everybody have a turn and a full turn.

before the next person jumps in. Of course, that does open up the possibility for someone to do what I do, just ramble. So you could add the caveat that if you're rambling, I will help you come to the point. But that way you've set that rule up front. So then if someone does it, you say, ah, hey, remember we said, all right, okay, fine. I mean, so there are polite ways to handle it.

The other good one is to pull someone aside, someone who's a chronic interrupter and just say, Hey, look, I don't want to embarrass you in front of the group. I want to run something by you that I often coach people to do. And I learned this in one of my son's kindergarten class. I was helping in the classes sometimes parents do. And the kindergarten teacher left and chaos ensued. She had to take a phone call and I was the only adult in the room and in moments chaos ensued. And I'm trying, yeah, Johnny, stop that. Sally said, and she walks in, sees the chaos.

takes a deep breath and she simply starts rewarding people. She says, Rachel, I love how you're sitting still. And Sam, I love how you're playing with the scissors appropriately.

And everybody just got back into shape. And I often will advise people in some of the situations you're just talking about is highlight when they do something well. So when somebody says something concisely and clearly, say, that was really helpful how you said that so clearly. So you're not saying you talk too much all the time. You're highlighting when they do something well. Have you used that as a technique? And is that something that's

useful do you think in these situations? I think that's an incredibly good idea. I have not ever used that, but it is positive reinforcement, right? And I think it also sets the template or a model for everyone else to say, wow, that was amazing. You just made that point so concisely and even look around and everybody, you saw that, right? That was great. And then now let's all aspire to do that.

In your book, you cite some fascinating evidence about the mental and physical benefits of being a good conversationalist. How do you define a good conversationalist and what are some of those benefits that you write about?

I'm so glad you mentioned that because I thought it was the most interesting thing in the book. And I thought it was the thing that everyone would be talking about in this book. And yet hardly anyone ever brings it up, but this, the story, the chapter about this psychologist named Matias male, who was at university of Arizona. And I came across his work and it blew my mind.

He spent his entire career studying speech and its connection to emotional and physical well-being. His primary thesis being that speech is so integral to who we are that it must be connected to other things in our life. And so he did studies and found that people who have good conversations tend to be happier on average than other people. They did the same experiment or similar experiment, but instead of measuring the

good conversations to self-reported scores on happiness, measured it to immune system and found that people who have good conversations also have healthier immune systems, which leads to his theory, which hasn't been proven yet, that you could then do things in reverse and say, if you have more good conversations, you can make yourself happier and healthier. And his thing is like, take two conversations and

see me in the morning or something that you could prescribe conversations as medicine. Now, the great question you asked is what is a good conversation? And at first, when he was telling me this, I thought, oh, this destroys my thesis because he's saying talking is great. Go talk, talk a lot. And he said, well, no, because a great conversation is about listening. And it probably involves you talking less, but asking good questions and, and

The one example he used to me was the difference between saying, Hey, how are you? And going, no, how, how are you? I really want to know about this. So yeah. So good conversations about, and basically he calls it meaningful and substantive. So the conversation we were having is a good conversation. I don't know if you've ever been in a social situation where for whatever reason, maybe nobody knows each other well, everybody, or this,

People are too afraid to really get real about anything or be authentic. So the entire conversation remains very, very superficial. And afterwards, you almost feel like

like hungry or like that was, it's, it's a, it's a weird, bad feeling. It feels empty. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. I think that's fascinating that conversation can impact our health and even just posing the hypothesis that using conversation to help yourself feel better and be healthier. I think that's wonderful.

And clearly for people who do what we do, that's great. All of a sudden there's a whole nother level of benefit good communication provides. So Dan, before we end, I'd like to ask you the same three questions I ask everyone who joins me. Are you ready for that? I am ready and ready to go. All right, here we go. If you were to capture the best communication advice you ever received as a five to seven word presentation slide title, what would it be? Can I only use four? Cause I would say talk less, say more.

Perfect. And as somebody who talks about talking less, I think it's very appropriate to have fewer. And based on everything we've talked about, that makes a lot of sense. Talk less, listen more. You have had an opportunity to interview and speak with lots of people. So I'm very curious to get your answer to question number two. Who is a communicator that you admire and why? I've always thought Barack Obama was a fantastic communicator in two directions. One is that he is

terrific at giving speeches and you can study his speeches and learn from them. But then he is also a phenomenal listener, apparently an even better listener than he is a speaker. And I think maybe in second place, I would say Steve Jobs. And if you want to see a masterclass in public speaking, just watch the iPhone podcast.

introduction, which you can see on YouTube. I write about it in the book. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And number three, what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? First, I would say empathy and mirroring. So somehow engaging with the person and letting them know that you feel empathy with them. The next one would be listening. I feel like that's probably number one, really, and related to empathy. And I think

The third thing would be trust and somehow building a sense of trust between you, establishing a feeling of trust is a big ingredient to a great conversation. Absolutely. And I think empathy and listening build trust. Could you explain for a moment a little bit more what you mean by mirroring? That might be a new concept for some of our listeners. So there's this FBI technique of getting people to talk by literally mirroring.

saying whatever the last three or five words they said that, and then starting with that. But mirroring, I mean, basically someone says something and it's different than I went to Hawaii and Hawaii went to Hawaii too. It's, it's that someone says, boy, I really had a rough day. Oh my God. Like my wife had a very rough day. It's the end of semester. And I found that all I had to say was, wow, you had a really rough day. Wow. And she'd tell me, I was like, wow, that is

Wow. I can tell you're really upset. Just observing, right? Being a mirror, right? Just observing.

And of course that builds trust and it builds empathy because then she goes, yeah, you get it. Like you understand. I'm like, yes, I do. So it's really reflecting back what you're hearing. And I actually taught ninth grade for two years, many, many years ago. So you can tell your wife that I have complete empathy for what she, she's going through at the end of the semester. It is insane. And so, so I am glad she has you to, to be her mirror and to empathize with her.

Dan, thank you so much. I appreciate all of your insights and tips and guidance that can really help us to have better conversations, to listen more, and for those of us who need it, to talk less. I wish you all the best with your new book, STFU, The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World. Thank you again. Oh, thank you, Matt.

Thanks for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast from Stanford Graduate School of Business. This episode was produced by Jenny Luna, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music was provided by Floyd Wonder. For more information and episodes, find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you, and please make sure to subscribe and follow us on LinkedIn.

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