Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
TED Audio Collective. You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. So when I think about the ways that I'm personally trying to be a better human, a lot of big picture stuff comes to mind. But then I also think about trying to be better at the specific roles that I play every day. And obviously, one of those roles, quite obviously, is being a host.
I would like to be better at hosting and interviewing and having great conversations. And I think that probably a lot of you out there would also like to improve your skill at having a great conversation. It's an important skill and one that we don't often think about very consciously. So today on the podcast, let's talk and more importantly, let's listen to a really seasoned professional. Today we have Celeste Headley here with us.
She is an award-winning journalist who has done everything from anchor morning news programs on public radio to covering presidential campaigns to co-hosting Retro Report on PBS. She's also the author of We Need to Talk, How to Have Conversations That Matter. And here is what she has to say about how to do that. Now, I make my living talking to people. Nobel Prize winners, truck drivers, billionaires, kindergarten teachers, heads of state, and
Plumbers. I talk to people that I like, I talk to people that I don't like, I talk to some people that I disagree with deeply on a personal level, but I still have a great conversation with them. So I'd like to spend the next 10 minutes or so teaching you how to talk and how to listen. Many of you have already heard a lot of advice on this, things like look the person in the eye, think of interesting topics to discuss in advance, nod and smile to show that you're paying attention.
Repeat back what you just heard or summarize it. So I want you to forget all of that. It is crap. There is no reason to learn how to show you're paying attention if you are in fact paying attention. Now, I actually use the exact same skills as a professional interviewer that I do in regular life. So ...
I'm going to teach you how to interview people, and that's actually going to help you learn how to be better conversationalists, learn to have a conversation without wasting your time, without getting bored, and please God, without offending anybody. We've all had really great conversations. We've had them before. We know what it's like. The kind of 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.
There is no reason why most of your interactions can't be like that. No reason my interactions can't be just like that. The bar is set very high. I better not mess this interview up now. If I do, Celeste is definitely going to notice. This is like playing pickup basketball with LeBron. I am going to bring Celeste in in just a moment. But first, an ad.
How to be a better human is brought to you by Progressive, where customers who save by switching their home and car save nearly $800 on average. Quote at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $793 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2021 and May 2022. Potential savings will vary.
Hello, hello. I'm Malik. I'm Jamie. And this is World Gone Wrong, where we discuss the unprecedented times we're living through. Can your manager still schedule you for night shifts after that werewolf bit you? My ex-boyfriend was replaced by an alien body snatcher, but I think I like him better now. Who is this dude showing up in every episode?
Everyone's old pictures. My friend says the sewer alligators are reading maps now. When did the kudzu start making that humming sound? We are just your normal millennial roommates processing our feelings about a chaotic world in front of some microphones. World Gone Wrong, a new fiction podcast from Audacious Machine Creative, creators of Unwell, a Midwestern Gothic Mystery. Learn more at audaciousmachinecreative.com.
Find World Gone Wrong in all the regular places you find podcasts. I love you so much. I mean, you could like up the energy a little bit. You could up the energy. I actually don't take notes. That was good. I'm just kidding. You sounded great. So did you. Okay, we are back. Are you ready to have a great conversation? I sure am. Let's do it. I'm Celeste Headley. I'm a journalist and bestselling author of We Need to Talk.
The first thing that I guess we should start with is how did you first learn how to have great conversations? Did I learn that? I mean, I feel like I'm always a work in progress on this, as we kind of all are. But I mean, I say that because if you asked the people I knew in
in college and said, hey, Celeste is a conversational expert, they would laugh. They would think you were joking because I was so annoying and irritating. But as I became a host for public radio, and if you're not steeped in radio, there's different levels of jobs, right? There's reporter, there's correspondent, and a host is someone who actually anchors a show. But a
A host is someone who does a lot of interviews. That's basically what a host is. And so, like you. So I wanted to up my skills. And because an interview is very similar to a conversation, I hit the books, right? I read all the information I could get on how to have a great conversation. And then I tested it out.
A radio studio is like a little conversational laboratory, so I was able to test it only to find that the advice we'd been getting for generations is bad.
And it's terrible advice and it doesn't work. So I had to start from scratch. When you were in college and people would have said that you were not a great conversationalist, why? What was it that you were doing that was bad? Oh, pretty much everything. I talked too much. I did not share the space. I was not a great listener. I was constantly trying to prove how smart I was and how much I knew. I was trying to change people's minds.
Pretty much if you go down the list of 10 tips that I use in the TED talk, I did all those things wrong. All of them. So I can't imagine I was very enjoyable to talk to. So was there a moment where you consciously thought like, I'm going to get better at this? Or was it just that you wanted to do this job and part of the job was having to be good at conversations? Yeah, it was really that. But, you know, there was another level to it, which was that when I became a paid conversationalist,
all those years as a reporter, I began to really become aware of my failings. Because when you're a reporter, your job is on the line to try to get people to talk. And I realized I wasn't as great at that as I thought I was. You have to completely flip the script, pardon the pun, to encourage other people to talk. I'd always been a good talker.
But I'd never, it turned out I hadn't developed the skills the other way to get other people to be good talkers. Not just to get them to talk, but we're trying to get them to be good at talking, right? As this whole process was happening, like there was no one like on the road to Damascus epiphany moment for me. But I will say that, you know, while I was...
doing all this research and thinking all these thoughts, and they were percolating for years, actually. I had a pretty significant conversation at my workplace in New York that I needed to go well. And I did everything that I thought I needed to do to make that a successful conversation, and it did not go well. It was a disaster. And that, for me, if there ever was any one moment, that was a sort of enlightening moment of
wow, I really am not as good at this as I thought I was. So practically, how can we practice? What's the equivalent of, you know, going to the empty parking lot and taking the car out for a spin in a safe place?
I mean, the most important thing is that you work on one thing at a time. You know, I do public speaking and workshops all over the world, or I did before the world shut down. It's so common for people to leave those keynote speeches and be like, okay, from now on, I'm going to be a great conversationalist. Yeah.
I'm going to be an awesome listener. No, you need to pick one thing. If you're not good at backing into a parking space, that's what you work on. You just back into parking spaces over and over and over again. So if you are the kind of person who interrupts all the time,
Focus on your interrupting. Bring other people into the effort. Say to your friends and your colleagues, "Listen, I know I interrupt a lot. I'm really trying to work on it. And please help me if I interrupt you, just tug on my sleeve." Or if we're on Zoom, just raise your hand or DM me to let me know because I need your help. Sometimes I'm not aware when I'm doing it, so please help me remember. And if you make it sort of a community
effort that accomplishes a couple of things. A, you're way more likely to follow through. But B, that's sort of letting the other people in your life know that you're working on it, that you're aware and you're working on it. How do you know what your big mistake is that you should start by working on? I think a lot of people do know. But I think if you don't, that's when you have to ask other people.
And I did the same thing of, listen, I'm trying to up my conversational skills. What am I getting wrong? And the people who had been talking to me for years of my life and had been tolerating my mistakes for that long, they were quite ready with the list. And so you have to prepare yourself not to get mad at them. You can't at that point punish them for their honesty by being
being angry or defensive about it. Don't defend yourself. Don't argue with them. Just say thank you and work on it. But you're going to have to ask other people. Yeah, I feel like one of those road to Damascus moments like you described before for me was my wife and I have been dating for a long time before we got married. And we had this dinner that I thought was like incredible, right? Everyone was laughing, having this amazing time. I told these stories and people had a great time. And afterwards, she was like, you did not let anyone else talk at that.
And I was like, but everyone was laughing. They were having so much fun. And she's like, you didn't ask any questions and no one else spoke. And she was upset. And after that, I kind of played it back in my head and was like, oh, what I think of as a successful conversation is not leaving a lot of space for other people. And that was something I really had to consciously work on. And it's still an active thing for me to to try and work on here. Yeah.
It's a really common mistake that people make to confuse good talking with good conversing. They are just not the same thing. And I think it's surprising to some people when I say, listen, if you're going to be good in conversation, your listening skills have to be just as good as your talking skills. And listening is the hard part. So what are some of the other common mistakes that people make?
Well, I don't know if it's the most common. It's hard to know. But the one I get the most pushback on is the one where I say, don't equate your experience with other people's. When someone's telling you something that they're going through that is painful or a struggle they're having, we have a tendency to share our own similar experience. So somebody says like, you know, my parent passed away.
And we say, oh my God, I'm so sorry. You know, when my mom died, it was horrible. I don't know how I got through it, but you know what? You're going to be okay. And I get a lot of pushback on this. And it's something that the sociologist Charles Derber described as conversational narcissism. This ability that we have to turn the focus back to ourselves in a conversation. It seems like there's...
In some ways, there's a contradiction around taking that advice, right? Because when you're sharing something painful, what you really want is for the other person to just be present and create space for you. But when you're sharing something that's not painful, there is this joy in sharing
finding these points of mutual connection that are maybe unexpected. Yes. So it's a really good point. Yeah. If somebody says, I saw, you know, this movie, I absolutely want you to say, hey, I saw that, too. Or I haven't seen that yet. Is it good? I absolutely want people to find those commonalities. But in the spaces where someone is going through a struggle, that is not the time for that. It's not the time. Yeah. And I feel like so much of that, too, often comes from this
this good place that is misguided of wanting to fix it. And I think especially for me, just speaking for myself as a, you know, as a heterosexual North American male, I feel like I'm very socialized to be like, if there's a problem, I should fix it. It's like, that's what I should do to be helping rather than one of the most powerful things that I think I've learned with a lot of people who I love, who have problems that I can't fix is instead of trying to just jump right into that to say,
What do you want? How can I be useful right now?
Do you do you want me to try and fix it or do you want me to just hear? And I've been shocked by how often the answer is, oh, I just want you to hear. You don't have to offer me a bunch of hypotheticals. And also because the solutions that worked for you will rarely work for someone else. It's a different situation. It's a different person. I feel like sometimes people are struggle to know how to have the lower pressure conversations to the ones that aren't about like big, dramatic things or, you
traumatic events or anything like that. So what are some of the specific things that people can do in those conversations to be better at that, even if you're just trying to make friends or go from a friendly acquaintance to an actual friend? It's like Terry Gross is the host of an NPR show called Fresh Air. And she says the only icebreaker you'll ever need is tell me about yourself.
So find something about them that you can ask about. And there's always something a all of the clothes that someone put on. They put thought into they put that on for a reason. So ask him about what they're wearing, the jewelry they've got on their tattoos. Believe me, every tattoo has a story behind it. Ask him about.
Pretty much any possible thing you could, a specific thing. Because remember what I was talking about, how pleasurable it is to talk about yourself. You can give someone else that pleasure. You can make them feel that rush of enjoyment simply by encouraging them to tell you about themselves. I mean, that's the whole secret of being a great...
radio host or a podcast host, your goal is not to be smart. I could care less. The audience does not care if I'm smart as a host. I am trying to get the best out of this guest, which means I need to know what are they experts in? What is this person's expertise? And it's the same thing with the people you meet in real life. That person you've just met at the grocery store is an expert in something.
Okay, so perfectly. Let's talk about you, Celeste. Let's talk about what you're an expert in. I think that both your books have something really interesting in common, it seems to me. You know, Do Nothing about taking some of the attention economy away and actually being present. And then this book about Great Conversations, it seems to me that both of them are really about being in the moment. Is that something that you see as a thread between them two?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Presence and awareness, especially self-awareness. You know, I'm a Buddhist and in Buddhism, when you are working on compassion, it's hammered in over and over again, like it all starts here. And so a lot of it is self-awareness. Self-awareness and self-compassion. Very, very important. And at least for me, very difficult to do.
It's interesting that you referenced your Buddhism because that's also something that you talked about in your talk as perhaps the most important part of having great conversations. Let's listen to what you had to say. This is not the last one, but it is the most important one. 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. Buddha said, and I'm paraphrasing, "If your mouth is open, you're not learning." And Calvin Coolidge said, "No man ever listened his way out of a job." Why do we not listen to each other? Number one, we'd rather talk.
When I'm talking, I'm in control. I don't have to hear anything I'm not interested in. I'm the center of attention. I can bolster my own identity. And look, I know it takes effort and energy to actually pay attention to someone. But if you can't do that, you're not in a conversation. You're just two people shouting out barely related sentences in the same place.
You have to listen to one another. 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." One more rule, and it's this one: be brief. All of this boils down to this same basic concept, and it is this one: be interested in other people.
Be interested in other people. Well, I am certainly interested in what Celeste has to say. I can't wait to hear even more from her. But first, an ad. We'll be right back.
Warmer, sunnier days are calling fuel up for them with factors. No prep, no mess meals. You can meet your wellness goals. Thanks to this menu of chef crafted meals with options like calorie smart protein plus veggie vegan or keto and factor has fresh never frozen meals, which are dietician approved and ready to eat in just two minutes.
That sounds like a dream come true. I cannot wait. So no matter how busy you are, you will always have time to enjoy nutritious, great tasting meals. Make today the day that you kickstart a new healthy routine. What are you waiting for? Head to factormeals.com slash betterhuman50 and use code betterhuman50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month. That's code betterhuman50 at 50%.
factormeals.com slash betterhuman50 to get 50% off your first box, plus 20% off your next month while your subscription is active.
I want to tell you about a new podcast from NPR called Wild Card. You know, I am generally not the biggest fan of celebrity interview shows because they kind of feel packaged, like they've already told these stories a bunch of times before. But Wild Card is totally different because the conversation is decided by the celebrity picking a random card from a deck of conversation starters. And since even the host, Rachel Martin, doesn't know what they're going to
pick, the conversations feel alive and exciting and dangerous in a way because they're vulnerable and unpredictable. And it is so much more interesting than these stock answers that the celebrities tend to give on other shows. You get to hear things like Jack Antonov describe why boredom works or Jenny Slate on salad dressing or Issa Rae on the secret to creativity.
It is a beautiful, interesting show, and I love it. Wildcard comes out every Thursday from NPR. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. We are back with Celeste Headley. We are talking about great conversations and what she has learned about how to have them from all of her interviews over the years. Well, I feel like we've talked a lot about...
the interview context. But one of the things that I think is so great about your talk and your work in general is that you've been really, I think, mindful of how to take the things that you use professionally and make it useful for regular everyday people in terms of having conversations.
So what about what do you do when you're in that situation where you're in a conversation and you're like, oh, I forgot all the things that Celeste taught me. I just lost them. How do you win them back when you're when you realize you've dug yourself a hole? I have learned to own up to it.
And say, what do you just say? Like, I'm sorry. I say, okay, stop for a second because I, I, my mind just wandered. When you said blah, blah, blah, my mind wandered off. This is the last thing I heard. Would you mind rewinding for me? Can you repeat what you just said? And actually people appreciate that. You, you would think it's often, often people are afraid that's going to be awkward, but in fact, no, people appreciate the fact that you're listening and that you care enough to
to let them know when you didn't, that you still want to hear it as opposed to just rolling your eyes and like, you know, letting them keep talking.
Yeah, I also just I know for myself, I so often if someone if I can tell someone's not listening, I'm so likely to read into that as like, oh, they don't like me or oh, I said something horrible. And so if they were to say like, oh, I just got distracted by thinking about something else, it would almost be a relief. Right. Absolutely. You know, there's a number of ways you can improve your listening. One of the things, you know, when I do workshops, I have people play games all the time. But one of them is to start your sentence with the last word somebody used.
So if the last word I used was used, you would say used. Well, that kind of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you'd go on. It obviously doesn't lead to particularly smooth conversation, but as an exercise, it does get you into that habit of constantly tuning back in because you're waiting. The other thing is that when you're listening to somebody else talk, listen for the
the meaning of what they're saying. Be constantly asking yourself, occupy your brain so that it doesn't tootle off. Occupy your brain in listening as though you had to then give an essay report on this is the meaning of this poem, of this spoken word poem, right? Listening for the underlying meaning of what they're saying really helps you to stay tuned in.
In that same vein, I did it. See, it's subtle, but I did it in that same vein. What are other ways that we can practice active listening? Because these are so helpful. I love these. These are in there. So you could just do them in any conversation. You could do them today. Another thing is actually this might surprise people is interrupt when you need to. And I say this because sometimes other people aren't aware of how long they've gone on.
Like, it's funny because I was doing an interview with a podcast host, however long ago it was. And the person said, wow, you talk in soundbites. And I'm like, I've been in broadcasting for 20 years. Like, I try to keep it so it's easy for some poor producer to edit.
But oftentimes people don't. There's a lot of people who will talk on end, on end, and end, and end. And I will interrupt them. And I'll say, hang on, hang on. Because what you said is really interesting. Let me ask you. Let me, let me...
add some context, but I will force them to take turns with me. Yeah, it's it feels like a lot of this comes down to trust on both sides, right? Like trusting that the other person will allow you to speak again so you don't have to get it all out at once. And also trusting that if you don't say it all at once, that it will still continue to be a conversation. Yeah. But the thing is, is that maybe you don't have to say it all.
We have this tendency to say everything that we know about a subject all at once. We do a brain dump. But that's not really a conversation, right? That would be, I mean, that means that what you're saying wouldn't change if you were by yourself.
What you say and the way you say it should change because of the other person that's there and what they say in return. So maybe you don't need to tell that whole story, especially since most of us have stories that we return to again and again and again. Maybe that story becomes better because of their reaction to it. So with some of these people,
situations where a lot of us end up in a conversation with someone who it's just a struggle to connect with them. And maybe that's a person who's in our family. Maybe it's our boss or someone who we have to interact with repeatedly. How do you go about trying to connect with someone who it's just not natural? It's not that immediate flow. We have to go back to your questions. And, you know, asking good questions is also a skill that can be learned.
So one of the other principles that I talk about in the TED talk is open-ended questions. I explained that in journalism, the rule is that if you put in a complicated question, you're going to get a simple answer out and you don't want the simple answer. So you put in a simple question and that gets you the complicated answer. So get good at asking short,
open-ended questions, not, oh my God, you're in Texas. I heard that everybody's power was out forever. It looked horrifying. I'm so sorry for you. Are you terrified? Then you're going to get either, yes, I was terrified or no, I wasn't. But if you say, what was that like? What has happened over the past 20 hours? What do you need? Very brief, short questions. Then you will actually get more detailed answers.
answers from them. I just have to sit with that for a second because I feel like that's so profound and very, it's really deeply meaningful in both like a practical terms, but also philosophically, right? When you give the person space for that, you get out what you allow them space for. I'm curious. I think this applies to conversations and to interviews, but how do you
back off from difficult topics when either it seems like this person that you're speaking with seems to be avoiding it and doesn't want to talk about it or maybe isn't comfortable or maybe where you yourself feel like this isn't where you want to go in this conversation? I generally either if it's me that doesn't want to talk about it, I'll say this is a sensitive topic. I don't really I don't want to talk about it right now. Let's talk about something else. Tell me the best thing that's happened to you in the past month.
If I can sense that someone else is getting uncomfortable, okay, I have to have a word of caution here, which is that be careful what you think you know about the other person's reaction. If it looks to you as though someone is feeling uncomfortable with a topic, I usually just ask and I will say, "I'm sorry, is this making you uncomfortable? We don't have to talk about this," and just give them an out. But I have to make sure first that I've read them right.
Because it could be that they very much want to talk about it, but it's difficult. So you getting away from it or moving away from something can make them feel, it can reinforce their feelings.
idea that it's something to be ashamed of or something that is difficult to talk about. Right. You don't want to ever make somebody feel like it's it's undiscussable. I feel like that idea that discussing things makes them worse is one of the biggest and most dangerous myths about conversation. Right. So, yeah, I think that when we when we get these big weighty issues, you know,
we have a misguided tendency to not think, to think that we should avoid them and talk about other things and keep it light. But that's not really the case at all. Yeah, I don't even have a response to that. You just said it right. Oh yeah, well, that wasn't your question. As far as open-ended questions, that's a fully closed-ended not question.
So I think a lot of people, myself included, are feeling like because of the past year of isolation and of so much more limited social interaction, we're a little rusty at conversation. We're a little rusty, especially at in-person conversation. I'm feeling a little bit more awkward than I've felt before in my life. And do you have ideas for how
people can start practicing these conversations again in a low stakes way so that you don't have your like big, this has to go well conversation while you're not feeling totally in the zone. Well, you've just said probably the most important word here, which is low stakes. So I would keep it very, very low stakes. I would call up your friend and say, hey, I only have five minutes. I just wanted to catch up. Is that OK? And then keep it to five minutes.
So that's absolutely what I would do. And I would not do that over Zoom. Leave Zoom out of it. If you're out shopping, have that quick back and forth with your barista or wherever you are. If you are with your mask on or use the phone, but do it that way. The other thing I would say is that it's going to be okay.
You know how to do this. We're almost at the end of our time. And this is a great I can tell it's a great conversation because I could talk to you for four more hours and I wouldn't run out of things to ask you about. I'm curious to talk about one kind of bigger philosophical question that relates more to your work than the day to day conversations, I think, which is how do you balance having a good conversation with not giving a platform to things like hate speech or prejudice?
That is a great question. In fact, I just finished writing a book we're in editing now. My new book that comes out this fall is called Speaking of Race, which is about how to have conversations about race. So
All right, what's the best way to say this? Can you summarize your entire book in one question's answer? Well, that's the thing. You know, you spend all this time researching for a book and then it's all here in your head. So I want to be, I'm not practiced yet at making this short. So a couple things. There are basically three types of people in the world when it comes to race and diversity or any of the isms, ageism, ableism, all that stuff.
But the most important group are these ones in the middle who could go either way. They could be swayed, they could be persuaded. When you're talking to that person who says hate speech, I'm not talking about a microaggression, I'm not talking about using the wrong word, and this isn't a true dyed in the wool racist, this is someone who is careless or inconsiderate perhaps. Talking about an actual hate speech person, they're not your audience.
Because there's nothing you can do to change them. Who your real audience is the people who are listening, who are the people in the middle. This section who might be persuaded. So A, what is it you want to tell those people? You want to tell them A, that that speech is absolutely unacceptable, will not be tolerated. And B, that there's a better way. You want to make sure that they know that that is not the norm.
We have to make sure that they know that the norm is this, that that kind of language hurts people. That's your audience. Yeah, it's it's hard. It's challenging because it feels like sometimes we fall into the trap of trying so hard to convince people who maybe we're not going to be able to convince that we lose the people in the middle. Here's the thing, Chris, and this is
If you remember nothing else from this entire conversation that we've had, remember this. You are not going to change anyone's mind, period, paragraph. It's not going to happen. I don't care what your data is. So the more you condemn someone, the more you otherize them. I know people don't want to hear this. I know that what people really want is for that people who have hurt others to face consequences. And I want that too. But that can't happen over the course of your conversation.
If you're really focused on progress, then you have to treat them like a human being. You don't have to agree with them. You don't have to endorse them. Listening is not endorsement, but you have to treat them with basic common human respect.
Well, you've given us so much to talk about and think about. And I really hope that people will take these ideas and continue these conversations with people in their lives. Thank you so much for being here. And thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. My pleasure. Thank you.
That is our episode for today. This has been How to Be a Better Human. I am your host, Chris Duffy. Thank you so much to our guests, Celeste Headley. This show is produced by Abimanyu Das, Daniela Bolorezo, Frederica Elizabeth Yosefov, and Karen Newman at TED, and Jocelyn Gonzalez and Sandra Lopez-Monsalve from PRX Productions.
I am so glad that you listened. I hope you have a great conversation about what you learned. Or maybe you have a great conversation about something else. Get talking, people. We'll be back next week with another episode for you. Support for the show comes from Brooks Running. I'm so excited because I have been a runner, gosh, my entire adult life. And for as long as I can remember, I have run with Brooks Running shoes. Now I'm running with a pair of Ghost 16s from Brooks.
incredibly lightweight shoes that have really soft cushioning. It feels just right when I'm hitting my running trail that's just out behind my house. You now can take your daily run in the Better Than Ever Go 16. You can visit brookscrunning.com to learn more. PR.
