instant message than talk to ask someone out, or to break up with someone. The next oldest generation loves the big social media platforms, and the one above that is lost in email overload. When we want to communicate, our first instinct is to reach for a piece of technology and type.
This is about to change, even for the most tech-savvy. Billions have been invested in speech recognition and voice synthesis, and more importantly in artificial intelligence (AI). Scary as this development may be (check TED to understand why), it does mean that within the next 5 years we will be having meaningful, natural conversations with machines. When each of us has our own AI assistant, we will have no need to deal with dozens of apps and our umbilical connection with screens will be broken. Unless we want to look at something, we will simply ask. Voice communication will be back, as we query the Internet, make travel reservations, carry out financial transactions, manage our houses and cars, send messages and even (whisper it) communicate with other human beings by speaking and listening.
In parallel, we saw in the year 2016 what happens in politics if people can’t or won’t listen. Democracy depends on civilised disagreement, which requires listening to people with whom we disagree and understanding and respecting their perspective. It also requires the skill of oratory, the elegant and skilful exposition of an argument in a debate in order to persuade others or explain complex issues. Increasingly, political discourse is being carried out in soundbites to journalists or even in 140 bombastic characters. People seek out proof’ that they are right on the Internet, collecting views that support theirs and ignoring antithetical ones. This is a recipe for polarisation. The only antidote is skilled conversation: conscious listening and powerful speaking working together.
These 2 crucial abilities affect one another in a circular relationship: it’s hard to be a great, powerful speaker if you don’t listen, or to be a great listener if you can’t articulate your own thoughts. This is the central subject matter of this book.
Technology is unstoppable, so time is short. We urgently need to reclaim the art of conversation. However, if we look to traditional education, there is little or no infrastructure to help us. Very few schools teach speaking or listening in any serious way, and no countries that I know of have national curricula with exams in these vital life skills. This is the gap that this book is designed to fill: we urgently need to educate ourselves if we are to master sound communication, pun intended. My TED talk on powerful speaking is the seventh most-viewed TED talk of all time, with around 50 million views on the Internet at the time of this writing. It’s wonderful that so many people have taken this in – but the talk is only a few minutes long, and necessarily passes over much of the depth and breadth of the topic. It’s also worth noting that my TED talk on conscious listening has only one quarter as many views, which says something about our communication. We prioritise sending over receiving, which is itself a dangerous mistake.
For all these reasons, I was delighted when Mango offered me the opportunity to write a whole book about the skills of speaking and listening. At last, I can make publicly available the content and the lessons I’ve learned from seminars and workshops on conscious communication that I’ve given to thousands of people over the last few years. I hope the result will be interesting, engaging, transformative, – and most of all a practical resource you can pick up and refer to again and again.
If you want to make a difference in the world, or to be a great parent, or to have a brilliant relationship, or to lead and inspire people, or to be someone that people stop to listen to, or to be a real friend, or to be a star salesperson, or even to stand on the TED stage and change the way people think forever… this book is for you.
Table of Contents
Chapter 3: Exploring listening and speaking
Chapter 4: How to listen consciously
Chapter 5: How to achieve perfect content
This book contains many exercises and suggestions that will help you to become a conscious, attentive listener, and a powerful, effective speaker when you practice them. That’s a lot of potential work, so we start in this chapter with the why… revealing the 4 effects of sound; the power of conscious listening and speaking and what you can gain by improving these skills; and the issue that almost everyone suffers from.
What’s at stake for you?
Working in 4 powerful but largely unnoticed ways, sound (especially how we speak and how we listen) affects almost everything we feel, think and do. Inevitably this process shapes the full panoply of our results in life, both today and in the long-term.
Over the years, I have distilled this process down to 3 core outcomes: happiness, effectiveness and wellbeing. If none of these are important to you, you need read no further! However, I suspect they do matter a lot to you, so let me promise you that the information, exercises and revelations in this book do, when practiced, have the power to transform your outcomes in all 3 of these critical areas.
Let’s look at what you stand to gain from taking this path.
HAPPINESS
We all know what happiness is, but achieving it remains the eternal human challenge. It certainly isn’t about material possessions or financial wealth: once people are above the poverty level and not stressing about where their next meal is coming from, psychologists find that there is no correlation at all between money and happiness. Nor do fame, respect or reputation create happiness: famous or gifted people are just as prone to misery as the rest of us (maybe more so if you believe the gossip pages).
The only factors that do seem to correlate with happiness are connectedness and service. People who have strong family and social connections, or who serve others in meaningful ways, tend to be happier than average.
Both traits require well-developed speaking and listening skills. Service can only be effective if you listen well so that you understand what someone really needs; good functional relationships are built on clear, compassionate two-way communication. You’ll be learning skills throughout this book that will enhance your relationships at work, at home and in your community, and that will generate greater happiness for you as a result.
The sound around you also has an impact on your happiness. Noise creates stress, and often real pain and misery. Pleasing sounds that mean something to you may instantly make you feel good.
