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
