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In this chapter, we start the healing process by revealing some habits that rob power from speaking and listening, and some forces in the modern world that are undermining or even threatening our spoken communication.

THE 4 LEECHES

Over the years, I’ve identified a set of very common emotional drivers that tend to suck power out of communication. I call them the 4 Leeches. Most people (me included!) have most, or all, of them in some form. I’m not suggesting they are bad, wrong or to be condemned outright; whilst it may never be possible to surgically remove them, the trick is to be conscious of them and not let them run the show. That, sadly, is what happens much of the time for many people. The result is simply loss of power and effectiveness. The degree of loss depends on the power these leeches have over you. If they remain in the dark, operating below the level of consciousness, they can become dominant character traits, severely compromising the ability to listen well and speak effectively.

The main reason for the negative impact of the leeches is that the underlying emotion giving rise to all 4 of them is fear.

Over the next few pages we’ll get to know all 4 leeches. Some may be minor or even non-existent for you, but I’m willing to bet you’ll identify at least one that has affected (or is currently affecting) your outcomes in life. As you consider the leeches and become conscious of their existence within you, their power will be lessened. Simply shining the light of mindfulness on them causes them to wither and lose their power. They grow and strengthen in the dark, and they hate that light!

LOOKING GOOD

We all like to look good. However, this basic human desire can often get in the way of our listening and our speaking.

“I know.”

Sometimes, looking good evinces itself in 2 simple words. The very first story in Paul Reps’s Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (a great compendium of Zen tales) is a salutary one for anyone who tends to use those words overmuch. Here it is as recounted in that book:

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

If I know everything, what can I learn? Absolutely nothing. A Zen proverb sums up this proposition nicely: “Knowledge is learning something every day. Wisdom is letting go of something every day.”

Even without the use of the actual words, it can be very deflating to be around someone who is professionally impossible to impress. I remember a conversation at TEDGlobal in 2012 with communication expert Trisha Bauman that illustrates this very well. She moved to Paris and for a while thought that she had become inept at communicating her excitement at the sights she was encountering all over the city: every time she extolled the beauty of some landmark, her new friends responded with a shrug and words to the effect of “Of course.” It took some time for her to realise the issue was not with her; in that circle of people, if not in Paris generally, it was considered a loss of face to be seen to be impressed by anything at all. Being insouciant was being cool. That’s all very well, but it does dampen the fire of childlike excitement, so it clearly acts as a joy-kill. Joy is such a rare commodity in this world that it seems tragic to go around killing it.

Maybe you can relate to this aspect of looking good: stomping, or even delicately treading, on the naive delight of others in order to appear wiser, cooler or more experienced than they are.

Speechwriting

We may have other, more subtle ways of looking good that tarnish communication. In his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, Stephen R. Covey wrote: “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” I call this ‘speechwriting’: while that irrelevant noise (you speaking) is going on in front of me, I’m concentrating on composing my next brilliant monologue. This practice often produces the “anyway…” non-sequitur that blatantly ignores what was just said (but not heard) and moves the topic to a completely different place. This is a trait that often afflicts people in power, even though it is definitely not a good style of leadership: it demoralises the ignored party and can even be humiliating if others are present.

If you tend to do this, try devoting yourself to really listening, and trust that your voice will find the right response without you needing to compose, edit and approve your script in advance.

Competitive speaking

One step up from speechwriting is competitive speaking. You may know someone who practices this very potent form of joy-killing that’s all about looking good. I might enthuse: “We’re so excited to be going to Greece on holiday this year,” and the competitive speaker will jump in with: “Oh yes, I’ve been to Greece 6 times and I love it!” My feeling? Deflation. My little piece of joy has been made to look second-rate.

If you ever feel the temptation to indulge in speaking as a competitive event, remember the words of Lao Tzu, the author of the Tao Te Ching: “Avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.”

Embellishment

The word hyperbole comes from ancient Greek, combining 2 words: hyper (beyond) and bole (a throw). We ‘throw beyond’ reality to exaggerate for effect, as in “I’ve been waiting ages for you!” In the main, this is benign and both parties know what’s being done, but the habit of hyperbole can take hold of us and make right-sized words feel insufficient; this can in turn lead to a habit of exaggerating, which can itself be progressive and turn into lying (about which we will be talking more later in this chapter).

Language gets degraded if we frequently use words that are over-strong in order to impress. ‘Fantastic’ once meant strange or exotic, related to fantasy. ‘Amazing’ once meant causing wonder or astonishment. These words have long since been downgraded and are now almost exclusively used as synonyms for ‘excellent’; their differentiated meanings have all but disappeared. I often speak in the USA, where the habit of describing everything from a pair of trainers to a hamburger as ‘awesome’ is very widespread. But if a pizza is awesome, how do you describe a stunning sunset? The word has been devalued and its power lost. In another example, the prefix ‘super’ has started cropping up everywhere: it seems that being excited is no longer sufficient: we must be ‘super-excited’ now.

This diluting of perfectly appropriate words is a tendency to be resisted, I think; it’s a kind of verbal inflation that leaves us all impoverished as words lose their power and their meaning. Perhaps the fast-cut, multi-channel world is creating an addiction to intensity that drives us to use ever-more hyperbolic language. The cost is that many perfectly effective words are being diluted and our ability to express ourselves with precision is being diminished.

Exercise: Say what you mean

This is a tough one. Take on the challenge of saying exactly what you mean and no more – no hyperbole, which means cutting out the intensifiers like ‘really’, ‘very’, ‘super’ unless they are genuinely required, and right-sizing your adjectives. You may want to give yourself a short time limit on this at first, maybe an hour or at most a day. It’s a challenging discipline, but its benefit is a degree of recalibration: you may find you have more capacity to express strong feelings by giving back the strength to extreme words.

BEING RIGHT

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker.

- Tyron Edwards

If there is one thing we like more than looking good, it’s being right, usually in a conversational zero-sum game – in other words, I am right and you are wrong, which makes me feel I am better than you. The desire to be right often drives us to make other people wrong, which can be very destructive in relationships. As the American author, educator and therapist Harville Hendrix said: “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be in a relationship? Because you can’t always have both. You can’t cuddle up and relax with ‘being right’ after a long day.”

The need to be right arises from a fear of being disrespected, or simply of being seen as we really are – flawed human beings, perfectly imperfect, full of contradictions and confusions. We yearn to feel justified and respected, and being right (or making others wrong) is the route we often choose to achieve these desires, because it sets us above other people.

It’s not easy to be around someone who has to be right the whole time.

Interrupting

One common habit that springs from the desire to be right is interrupting. This may result from speechwriting, as described earlier, but it can, and often does, arise with no planning at all – simply an overbearing desire to disagree, demand an answer or make a point now, without waiting for the other person to finish.

This is becoming more common in our impatient world, particularly in the media, where ‘attack journalism’ is rife: politicians have learned that they do not get time to develop arguments or to give nuanced answers before they are interrupted, a trait that has accelerated the descent of political debate into soundbites, as well as being a very poor role model for debate in general.

It’s not just media interviewers who interrupt: the habit is widespread even in situations where listening can mean the difference between life and death. A survey of physicians in the US and Canada found that patients were interrupted an average of 18 seconds into their opening statements; less than a quarter were allowed to complete what they wanted to say.

Interrupting has 2 unfortunate consequences. First, we don’t get to hear what the other person was going to say, which might have been useful or enlightening, and not what we expected. Second, it most likely damages the rest of the conversation by changing the dynamics – no longer equal, as the interrupter has exercised dominance – as well as the emotional context; the interrupted person may well feel belittled and offended, giving rise to anger, resentment and unwillingness to be open from that point.

Remember, as with all these observations, I am not saying the thing is always bad and wrong. Sometimes we do have to interrupt people! We may be wildly excited; they may have misunderstood; there may be time pressure or even danger; some people are just very long-winded. What am I saying is that, if it becomes a habit, it will reduce the power and effectiveness of your communication.

Exercise: Breathe!

Are you an interrupter? Do you know someone who is? If so, here’s a simple exercise to try. Breathe.

Before you speak, develop the habit of taking a deep breath. This is much easier and more natural than the old-fashioned advice to count to 3 (or even 10!) before speaking, which itself distracts you from listening to the other person.

As you take your lovely big in-breath, you may just notice that the other person is still speaking!

PEOPLE-PLEASING

Most people like to be liked, but when that turns into a great fear of being rejected or of failing, the result can be people-pleasing, a behaviour pattern that equates one’s own worth with the perceived happiness or approval of others. This is often (though not always) due to experiences of wounding rejection or harsh criticism early in life.

People pleasers may say yes when they mean no, for example going out when they would much rather stay in. They may agree in conversation with opinions that they fundamentally disagree with internally. They may deny their own truth in how they dress, behave and interact with others in order to be liked.

We all have this in us to some degree, especially in the formative and emotionally vulnerable teenage years when we try on identities, join tribes and even adopt uniforms to feel ‘part of’. Who wants to be a social reject? Also in totalitarian societies people-pleasing can be a life or death affair: not many people in North Korea are interested in standing in their own truth and fearlessly expressing their real opinions, and quite understandably so when the consequence is almost certain death. The same forces can be in play in any social group founded on bullying and intimidation, and when such a group dominates a country the resulting people-pleasing behaviour from millions has devastating consequences, as the Nazis demonstrated in the 1930s and 40s.

In free societies, we do have a choice, and as with all the leeches, it’s a question of degree. If someone is (and is perceived to be) very driven by people-pleasing, it will rob their communication of power. Agreeing with people all the time can be perceived as weakness, invalidating the views expressed. Honesty and authenticity are absent, and as we’ll see later, they are key foundations of powerful communication.

Exercise: Values

If you find yourself people-pleasing overmuch, try taking some time to think about your own values. These are probably best expressed as single nouns, for example loyalty, passion, generosity, curiosity or fairness. Ask yourself: what do I stand for? What is important in life? What are my principles? What’s not negotiable? Write down everything that comes to you… take your time, come back from time to time until you are sure you’ve captured every possibility. Then whittle them down to a manageable number, maybe 4 or 5 at most. If you can make a mnemonic out of them that helps to make them more memorable! (As an example, my values are faith, love, acceptance and gratitude, which spell FLAG – easy for me to hold on to even with my patchy memory!)

When you have your core values clear, it becomes much easier to stand in them and not be blown around by other people’s opinions or needs. You also gain a litmus test you can use from now on to make decisions easier: is this course of action in line with my values?

FIXING

For some people, it’s not acceptable for others to be upset. This may derive from people-pleasing, or it may be that strong negative emotion is itself something to be feared, either because of too much of it in a violent or explosive family of origin, or perhaps because of complete lack of experience of it, with a cool, reserved family of origin where emotional expression was unacceptable.

Either way, fixing is trying to make it all right. “Don’t cry” or “Don’t be upset” will be the primary response to pain.

Sometimes people need to be upset, and to express that in grief, sadness, anger or other strong negative emotions. If repressed instead of expressed, these emotions can go deep and dark and corrupt people as they fester.

My aunt told me a story that illustrated how even well-intentioned fixing can cause damage. She was born in Cardiff, Wales in the 1920s. When she was a little girl, her parents told her that she was going to have a baby brother or sister. She was so excited! The spare room was decorated as a nursery and as she watched her mother’s bump grow she imagined playing with her new sibling. Eventually the day came and her parents went off to hospital. She waited at home with a neighbour, watching through the net curtains… but when her parents returned, they were alone. Nothing was said; she was sent to stay with relatives. When she returned, the nursery had been redecorated. She did eventually get 2 little brothers, and much, much later she learned that her first brother had been stillborn – but she never forgot the confusion and loneliness she felt that day. Doubtless my grandparents decided not to discuss it so as not to upset her, but the effect on her was that a bond was broken and she found it harder to trust people from that day on.

Fixing, whether by withholding like that or by distracting or obscuring with extravagant affection, can deny people the feelings they need to feel and thus obstruct healing. Not only that, but many fixers habitually deny themselves strong feelings.

When communication is driven by the need to fix, it will lose power and effectiveness because there is a hidden agenda at work – one that is all about the fixer’s needs, even though it may be disguised as love.

Exercise: Expressing

Many fixers grew up in reserved families and learned that it is not ok to express, so if you are generally very reserved and avoid strong emotion, a great first step to allowing other people to express strong emotions is to practice doing it yourself. The best access to letting go like this may vary widely from person to person. Some might try watching a few very emotional films and letting themselves have a good cry! More direct and beneficial for others might be to take up a martial art, as long as the teaching emphasises the spiritual aspects of the art and not just the physical: paradoxically, punching things in a spiritual way can put you in touch with the gentler, feeling side of yourself. For yet others, strong experiences like bungee jumping or parachuting or even extreme sports might be very liberating. At the very extreme, there’s primal therapy!

Try a few tentative steps and see what works for you. This is all about balance: we are not our feelings, and we don’t have to express every emotion to the max – but equally it is not healthy to repress our own strong feelings, or to stop others from having theirs.

THE 7 DEADLY SINS

In my fifth TED talk, I listed 7 deadly sins of speaking. Of course, this is an arbitrary list, but since the talk went up on TED.com in 2015 I haven’t had anyone suggest anything major that’s missing, and many people have communicated how useful they find it.

Again, I want to stress that I am not saying these 7 things are inherently wrong, and to be banned or deplored. Most of them can be useful or enjoyable in moderation, even if as guilty pleasures. However, as with the 4 leeches, I am suggesting that people who habitually (often unconsciously) indulge in any of these traits become harder to listen to, as well as less good at listening.

People sometimes ask me to explain the relationship between the 4 leeches and the 7 deadly sins. The answer is that the leeches lurk behind and generate all 7 sins – and behind all of the leeches, as we know, is fear.

Let’s meet the 7 deadly sins.

GOSSIP

Non-male loquare absenti amico (Speak no evil of an absent friend).

- Titus Maccius Plautus, Trinummus IV, c. 190 BC

My definition of gossip is speaking ill of someone who’s not present. It’s not gossip to praise someone who’s not there, nor is it gossip to criticise someone to their face.

Gossip is probably the most common form of triangulated communication, which is usually a recipe for trouble. In triangulated communication, person A speaks to person C about an issue he or she has with person B instead of trying to solve the matter directly with person B, thus creating a triangle. Usually person A is seeking validation and/or sympathy. You can hear this going on any day if you sit on a bus or train and listen to the phone conversations around you: in my experience, the vast majority involve gossip in this fashion.

Gossip is seductive, and so common that we tend to become desensitised to it; it has become normal and acceptable. It’s a multi-million-dollar business too, from the obvious specialists like celebrity magazines, TV shows, blogs and YouTube channels to the subtler instances in many quality media.

Gossips are superficially popular and it’s tempting to listen in, especially if we’re in a group who are all indulging. Nevertheless, everyone knows that the moment we leave, a gossip is likely to be speaking about us in exactly the same lurid, critical terms that were just being applied to someone else. Gossips are not credible; much of what they say is unsubstantiated and even malicious; often it is twisted or exaggerated for greater effect, producing a ‘Chinese whispers’ effect that amplifies stories whilst insisting that every detail is true.

Exercise: Gossip abstinence

If you indulge in gossiping, try abstaining, initially for a short period. It may be that you can commit to do this for a day, or even a week, to start with. Be conscientious: this may involve not reading magazines, watching your usual TV, accessing your favourite blogs or website, and even not seeing certain friends or colleagues or walking away from some conversations. You can usually make an excuse to do so without letting people know what you’re doing – or you could enrol some of your associates in the game and make it easier by holding one another accountable.

This is non-trivial and may even be impossible for you, but even if you don’t achieve 100 percent abstinence you will give yourself a chance to break the habit and set a new baseline.

CONDEMNING

There are no 2 words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job.’

- Terence Fletcher in Whiplash

Do you know anyone who habitually condemns or finds fault, for whom nothing is ever good enough, like the monstrous character Terence Fletcher as brilliantly portrayed by JK Simmons in the film Whiplash?

I feel for anyone who grew up with such a parent – the kind who, when their child scores 95 per cent in a test, demands to know what happened to the other 5. It becomes wearing to be around someone whose listening is always for defects and failure, and whose speaking is endless castigation and condemnation.

Of course, we must condemn evil. As John Stuart Mill said in 1867: “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

However, like the other 6 sins, this is a habit we can fall into if our default position becomes critical and condemnatory. It pays to check-in and ask the question: am I over-critical? Do I give praise where it’s due? Do I naturally give compliments? When is the last time I praised my family? My team or direct reports at work? My friends?

If your honest check-in reveals that you tend to be critical rather than encouraging by default, try this exercise.

Exercise: Praising

Buy a notebook or use a spreadsheet or notes app. Make a page or sheet for each of the people closest to you – family, friends and workmates could all be included – and then set a routine at the end of each day to log in one column instances when you condemn or criticise them and in another column instances when you praise, encourage or compliment them.

After a few weeks, your behaviour will change as this feedback reveals the weight of your interactions. You may then wish to set yourself targets for praising until it becomes more and more natural and the condemning habit has been replaced by a more neutral stance where you give praise and criticism when they are appropriate, rather than condemning by rote.

NEGATIVITY

Next door to habitual condemnation is constant negativity. I told a true personal story to illustrate this in my TED talk. My mother suffered from dementia in the last years of her life, and this intensified an already somewhat pessimistic outlook. Her world view became entirely negative, even on days when she was completely lucid. I went to visit her in hospital one-day when she was recovering from a small fracture, bringing with me her favourite newspaper. As I handed it to her, I said “Oh look, it’s October the first today.” She replied: “I know, isn’t it awful?” If the date is awful, what hope is there? I tried to make a joke of it, but I knew inside that she was serious; as time passed, it became harder and harder to bring her out of the dark into any sort of light, and it made being in her company emotionally draining.

It is simply debilitating to stay around someone who is highly negative. We might say brightly: “What a lovely morning!” only to be dampened with “It’s going to rain later.” When this dynamic is repeated endlessly, it’s like trying to push water uphill: our positive energy becomes sapped and we end up feeling low as well. The only solution is to leave for a while to recharge.

Exercise: watch NOT

Check-in and ask yourself if the word NOT crops up regularly in your speaking. Any sentence including that word is likely to be negative: some people I have met unconsciously inject the word in almost every utterance. If in doubt, ask a friend or record some of your conversations to check. Encouraging people are easier to listen to!

COMPLAINING

Do not listen to those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious.

- Og Mandino

I’m a Brit so I know this one very well! Complaining is our national pastime, although fairness compels me to add that this habit does generally overlay a bulldog spirit that still exists today: we may complain, but we do tend to knuckle down when required.

Not all complaining is a sin. If a restaurant serves you a bad dish or if a person or institution fails to deliver on a promise, complain! If you can change anything you don’t like, it’s right and proper to take action and that often starts with complaining.

The kind of complaining I’m suggesting you pay attention to is the useless kind: complaining about the weather, the government, your neighbour, your sports team… anything that’s beyond your capacity or your willingness to change. If you can change it, act. If you can’t change it or you won’t act, complaining is simply viral misery, infecting the person you are complaining to with your own negative emotion.

This kind of complaining can become an unconscious habit. Do you know an inveterate complainer – someone who moans about just about everything; someone for whom nothing seems to be right? It’s hard to be around such a person, and hard to listen to them for any extended period.

Exercise: Gratitude

If you have fallen into the habit of complaining, sit down with a piece of paper and write a gratitude list. Write down everything you can think of that you can be grateful for. This may include any positive aspects of your health, your relationships, your possessions, your achievements, your service for others, your legacy, your surroundings, your experiences. Write until you can’t think of anything else. Keep the list by you and reflect on it for a few minutes every day. Add to it every time you think of something new to be grateful for. Gratitude is the most powerful antidote to self-pity and a complaining habit.

EXCUSES

An inverse expression of the Looking Good leech is desperately trying to avoid looking bad. We all make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes upset others by creating cost or other negative consequences for them. In the face of anger or pain, it’s tempting to remove ourselves from the line of fire by blaming something or someone else for what happened. “It wasn’t my fault – what could I do?” Sometimes that really is true, but very often if we look closely, we will find that we did have a major part to play in what happened.

I’m sure you’ve made excuses at some point in your life, and you’ve probably had it done to you many times. It is common human behaviour, but as with the other deadly sins of communication, the problem arises if it becomes a habit. Some people are blame-throwers, casting themselves as eternal victims with the fault being everywhere but here. This kind of behaviour creates 2 costs.

First, it’s dishonest, or at best dissembling, so it undermines trust. People don’t give credence to someone who blithely bends or breaks the truth simply to look good or justify themselves.

Second, it obstructs growth. If we refuse to take responsibility for an error or failing, it is very likely to recur: you can’t fix something that you swear is not broken. This kind of denial can be very destructive, obscuring self-awareness to the point where we think we are other than what we really are. The first step in transforming anything is to become aware of it. Repeated excuses deny us the chance to improve, because we believe there’s nothing wrong with us.

EXAGGERATION AND LYING

We talked about embellishment earlier in the context of the Looking Good leech. However, embellishment is not restricted to hyperbole; it can express itself in embroidery of the truth. I wonder if you’ve ever claimed to have read a book you haven’t read, or to have watched a movie you’ve never seen, or to have known someone you really don’t know? I suspect we’ve all done this kind of thing at some point. Mild embroidery like this is relatively harmless, and sometimes it can be a form of rapport-building to warp our reality just a little to fit more comfortably with someone else’s – but beware, lying is just around the corner.

As with all the 7 sins, this behaviour can become habitual and progressive: lies tend to beget more lies, which can lead to embarrassment, pain and even tragedy. This is a common theme in fiction, from Shakespeare’s plays, many of which revolve around lies resulting in either laughter or tears, to the disturbing book and film The Talented Mr. Ripley which brilliantly depicts how lies can escalate and trap the perpetrator in pain. There are reasons for this literary fascination with lying: it is very common, and it can be dramatically destructive.

The effect of lying on communication effectiveness can be seismic. If anyone is recognised as a habitual liar, their words are at best suspect, and at worst completely disregarded.

Exercise: Rigorous honesty

Pay attention for a few days to your honesty level. We all like to think we’re totally honest, but few people are: white lies pop out to make people feel better or avoid criticism or punishment; maybe exaggerations become habitual to curry favour and be more respected. If you spot any pattern, take stock and consider instituting a rule of absolute honesty in the area of concern. In my experience, settling for near-honesty is not as effective as an absolute commitment where the line is clear and you do not cross it. Be careful not to hurt people around you with rigorous honesty: it is always possible to say nothing, or if compliments are demanded and you cannot honestly give one, you can use double-edged praise, like one actor passionately (and honestly) telling another that his performance was ‘unforgettable’!

DOGMATISM

I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.

- Barack Obama

The Being Right leech is foursquare behind this sin. Most of the time, the shells fired in the conversational battle to be right are opinions. I grew up in a household where opinions and facts were rarely differentiated, which gave rise to a lot of table thumping and raised voices. These days, I believe this distinction is critical for harmony so I offer a gentle suggestion in my talks and I’ll make it to you now. Try using the phrase: “Would you like my opinion about that?” You do have to be ready for the answer no! Sadly, all over the world in billions of conversations every day, opinions are given without seeking any permission, often forcefully or even violently.

Internalising this distinction between opinions and facts is a crucial foundation of humility, and a necessary condition for peaceful coexistence. It’s Wednesday. The sun will rise tomorrow morning. My name is Julian. This book is called How To Be Heard. These are facts and there is no point disputing them. However, much of daily conversation involves opinions – about sport, politics, society, other people’s behaviour, the best course of action in a business or in a team, likely outcomes in the future, or effects of past actions (even historians love to disagree!). The problem lies in attachment. When we identify our own worth with our opinions, we become upset or angry when they are challenged; this is the fear-based energy that drives many arguments and confrontations.

Of course, we need to stay true to our values and our beliefs without being blown about by everyone else’s, but we also need to have the capacity to learn and grow. We are not our opinions: we create or collect them.

If you can practice being conscious of the difference between you and your opinions, you may find life becoming much more serene – and more interesting too, as you may be more open to new thoughts and perspectives.

TECHNOLOGY

Most people view technology as inherently benign, which is a rather dangerous generalisation. Certainly, nobody in the world can stop the march of technology, and its benefits are clear: we augment our own capabilities (or even our reality) with a tidal wave of devices and apps; we enjoy cheap food, clothes and energy; we move around the world on faster cheaper, more powerful transport systems. It’s seductive and even addictive, which makes it easy to be oblivious to what economists call the externalities – the costs we don’t explicitly pay. Pollution, climate change and degenerative diseases like cancer and dementia may be the most widely reported consequences of our technological lifestyle, but I believe communication is another significant casualty. Let’s look at how.

RECORDING

Somewhere around 4 thousand years ago, complex writing was invented. This was transformative: for the first time, it was possible to record human discourse and thought – or maybe just a shopping list! Initially hand-crafted and slow to reproduce, this invention nevertheless shaped the world as books like the Bible, the Koran, the I Ching and Plato’s The Republic (all hand-copied at first) influenced millions. The ability to publish the written word accelerated by orders of magnitude with Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1440. A little over 4 hundred years later, Thomas Edison patented the phonograph and we became able to record sound as well as words. Within 40 years, the movie camera existed and the toolkit was complete. Now, millions of people consult YouTube by default to find instructions for anything from baking a cake to building a house. As TED’s Curator Chris Anderson said in his TED talk on this subject, online video is the new de facto educational system for many millions, especially in places that don’t have traditional educational infrastructure.

Once, all human knowledge was handed down aurally. You sat at the feet of your teacher and if you missed it, you missed it. Pythagoras considered listening to be so much more important than looking that his probationary pupils, or akousmatikoi, were required to sit silently and listen to their teacher deliver the lectures from behind a screen so that their eyes did not distract them from the most fundamental channel of communication: sound.

But today, the premium on careful listening is greatly diminished. We can check the book, listen to the recording or watch the video. There is growing debate about the value of teaching any facts at all to children, since almost anything can be discovered or checked on the Internet. We simply don’t have to listen as carefully as we once did, because the cost of not listening is far less than it once was.

As we discussed in Chapter One, writing is the hare to the tortoise of spoken communication: this relative newcomer has quickly overtaken speaking, to the point that millions prefer to text, email or message than to speak. As the skills of speaking and listening are undervalued, they are not taught or tested in school; as they are underused in social, business and political interaction, they fall into disrepair. The result is the erosion of accurate expression and reasoned debate, and the rise of soundbites, bombast and polarisation.

HEADPHONES

Like most pieces of technology, headphones can be used for good or for ill. Let’s consider the upsides first, of which I think there are 4.

I use noise-cancelling headphones on flights and they do an excellent job of eliminating the debilitating sound of wind rushing over the fuselage at 600 mph.

At home, I very much enjoy listening to music through high-quality headphones, which do give wonderful value: you have to spend somewhere between 20 and 100 times as much to achieve the same quality of sound through a physical hi-fi system, so audiophiles with a limited budget are well advised to choose headphones, as long as their listening is always individual.

In places with negative or distracting sound, headphones can be the only way to get some peace if you are trying to concentrate or relax. The Sound Agency and Ecophon released a free app called Study some years ago for exactly this purpose, and it has proved very popular. It plays a soundscape specifically designed to help you work and mask any irritating noise without itself distracting you. It stops after 45 minutes to remind you to take a short break.

Finally, there is the thesis of Professor Michael Bull, aka “Professor iPod”, that many people wear headphones when moving around in order to gain more control over their personal environment. There is so much intrusion in the modern world, whether from pointless noise, from other people or from marketers, that it’s a natural and understandable response to disconnect by setting an aural no-go zone with headphones – the grown-up equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and humming loudly in order not to hear someone.

However, there are 2 major downsides with headphone use and they both affect communication negatively.

First, millions of people are permanently damaging their hearing by listening too loud, for too long. Most mobiles are capable of delivering at least 100 dB through typical headphones; even where mandatory default volume limits are in force, users can and often do override them. The recommended maximum daily exposure time to 100 dB of sound is just 15 minutes. It breaks my heart to think of the millions of young people who are listening at this level for hours a day. Noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) is set to become an epidemic; a 1998 study found that already around one in 7 American teenagers had permanent hearing damage, and I have no doubt the situation is much worse today. Hearing degrades with age, so we are storing up a massive issue where in a decade or 2 large portions of the population will be at best hard of hearing, and at worst profoundly deaf.

TIP: A simple rule of thumb for safe listening is: if you can’t hear someone speaking loudly to you from 3 feet away, it’s too loud. Also, buy the best headphones you can possibly afford. Poor quality headphones tempt you to turn up the volume in order to get that visceral buzz from the music.

Second, schizophonia. This is a term coined by the Canadian composer and writer Murray Schafer, who also invented the word ‘soundscape’. Schizophonia refers to a disconnect between what we’re seeing and what we’re hearing, which is absolutely what happens when you put on headphones for commuting, shopping or working. We’ve noted the beneficial, noise-blocking aspect of this above, but there are 2 common costs.

First, hearing is our primary warning sense and when we disconnect it we can put ourselves in harm’s way. There is a new breed walking the streets that insurance companies are calling ‘podestrians’, and it seems they are causing numerous accidents by stepping out in front of cars they don’t hear, which causes the driver to brake suddenly and get hit by the car behind.

Second, schizophonia destroys social interaction. Board any bus, subway or train and you will see a good proportion, possibly the majority, of the passengers wearing headphones. We may not speak much when commuting but we are at least sharing an experience and conscious of one another. With headphones on, that link is broken and our social spaces are fractured into millions of individual sound bubbles. In that situation, nobody is listening to anybody.

Think about your own headphone use. Make sure you are listening safely and that you have the very best headphones you can afford, especially if you listen for long periods or frequently. And be conscious also of the effects on your connections with humanity and especially your family, friends and workmates.

ALONE TOGETHER

This section is named after an excellent book by MIT’s Professor Sherry Turkle, a fellow TED speaker whom I met when she gave her TED talk on this topic. Sherry was originally a major proponent of technology, and in particular its capacity to bring us together in the fabled global village, where all of humanity is connected and understanding is naturally enhanced. However, her research has caused a complete shift in her perspective and she now believes that technology is disconnecting us and loosening traditional social ties, a position elegantly expressed in this book and her more recent one, Reclaiming Conversation.

Seduced by technology and especially social media, we have moved from a few deep face-to-face relationships to a large number of shallow, distant ones: the words ‘friend’ and ‘like’ have a rather different meaning today compared to 20 years ago. Much of our interaction has become text-based, and youngsters are clearly not developing the social skills to manage face-to-face communication well, or to develop the empathy that arises from practicing being receptive to the subtleties of voice and body language. Much of the time we are now distracted, our attention and consciousness somewhere else. I am often struck on train journeys by the paradox of a carriage that at first seems full of convivial conversation – until it becomes clear that all the conversation is with people who are not in the carriage at all. There is a covert rudeness, I think, in someone turning fellow travellers into non-people so that he or she can have an intimate phone conversation without any sense of embarrassment or awkwardness.

I call the syndrome of constant text-based communication through mobile devices and social media ‘personal broadcasting’. Twitter, Facebook and the rest are entrancing millions of people to believe that the world constantly needs to know their ‘status’. The balance between sending and receiving is tipping further away from listening, and it’s a vicious circle as the skills of face-to-face conversation wither, making it ever-more challenging to actually speak to someone and ever-more tempting to send them a text.

We may even become driven by a new social fear called FOMO, or fear of missing out – a desperate urge to check and recheck social media in case someone has tagged or messaged us, or tweeted about us. FOMO can become obsessive and even pathological, and it probably plays a role in the depressing picture of a family sitting around the dinner table, all looking at their phones. Research among teens indicates that much of their conversation (when it occurs in person) is about what they are seeing on their phones. This level of connectedness paradoxically weakens our links with those around us.

Exercise: Tech check

This is an extensive enquiry that I ask people to start in my workshops on communication. Take a few minutes to start yours now: consider carefully how technology affects your communication – both speaking and listening, at home, at work and with your friends or important social groups. Keep this one at the front of your consciousness, because technology changes fast, and its effects are not immediately obvious as we rush to adopt the latest gadget. Before TV, families used to talk, read, make music together, eat at the table, play games… aim to look afresh at least once a year at your use of tech and its effects on your social behavior.

IMPATIENCE

How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

- William Shakespeare, Othello

There is little doubt that technology is eroding our ability to focus and concentrate for an extended time on one task or object, be it a book, a piece of music or a conversation. A 2015 study of more than 2,000 people by Microsoft found that the average attention span had fallen from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to just 8 seconds, which is less than the estimated attention span of a goldfish. The study also found that people were better at multitasking than previously, but the influence of technology was clearly dividing the generations: 77 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 responded “yes” when asked, “When nothing is occupying my attention, the first thing I do is reach for my phone,” compared with only 10 per cent of those over the age of 65. Increasingly, we listen to tracks, not albums; we channel-hop rather than watching entire shows; we browse the web, spending on average less than a minute on any page; and many young people feel under-stimulated if they are not consuming 2 or even 3 streams of input at the same time.

Impatience has had a major effect in political discourse, where we have little time for oratory. The advent of instant, 24-hour news means that most political expression happens not in debating chambers but in front of TV cameras or even on social media. Fuelled by the need to create something to say all day, even in the absence of any real events, a mainstay of the media response has become ‘attack journalism’, which is obsessed with scandal. Demanding an answer to the question “Who is to blame?” has become the primary purpose of much interviewing and editorial decision-making. This springs from the Being Right leech, of course: we all feel a little better if we can be outraged and judgmental about someone or some organisation doing terrible things, so we implicitly encourage this kind of media sensationalism and witch-hunting. The same leech, expressed in constant impatience, fuels an epidemic of interrupting in media debate (and in millions of private conversations too).

The result is that the soundbite has become the prime vehicle for explaining political policy or opinion; get your proposition across in 20 seconds, or you will be interrupted. Politicians have learned to be ‘on-message’ at all times, employing large media teams to brief them and buffer them from aggressive questioning; they now avoid expressing strong opinions if at all possible, in case they are called to account later for changing their mind (which is now a heinous crime for some reason).

The conversation that arises in this fast-cut, short attention span, confrontational, blaming world is inevitably impoverished. This is true not only for politics but also for day-to-day discourse. Real listening takes time and effort; it is not compatible with multitasking or an eight-second attention span. Effective speaking requires being fully present and conscious. It’s not surprising that so many conversations end with a dismissive “whatever!”