result of this of course is more noise, to the point where the World Health Organisation (WHO) rates noise pollution as the second-largest global threat to health, just behind air pollution. The WHO estimates that in Europe over one million years of healthy life are lost every to traffic noise pollution. As we’ve seen, 8 million Europeans are having their sleep disrupted night after night by traffic noise, with drastic effects on their health, as well as huge resulting costs – up to 2 percent of GDP according to official estimates, which amounts to over 300 billion euros a year.
Noise pervades many vital spaces because we design them with eyes, not ears.
In classrooms, acoustics are often so bad that speech intelligibility is less than 50 percent for pupils more than a few feet from the teacher, while noise levels during groupwork are exceeding levels dangerous for the health of teachers and children.
In hospitals, noise levels are up to 12 times the WHO recommended maximum, which means patients struggle to sleep – and sleeping is how we get well. It’s no surprise that noise is the number one complaint of patients in US hospitals. Studies have shown that simply sensitising staff to the sounds they are making can cut noise levels by up to 3 quarters, so just listening can make a massive difference.
In offices, noise is again the number one complaint, with millions feeling the frustration of trying to concentrate in open-plan spaces that are designed to support only one kind of work: collaboration. We clearly need much more quiet working space.
The story goes on, in hotels, in shops, in restaurants, in airports and train stations, and even in our homes. Noise is all around us. We need to start listening in order to control it and stop these negative effects on health, effectiveness and happiness.
TECHNOLOGY
The breakthroughs in communication of the last several decades have almost all been text-based: email, SMS, instant messaging and social media all rely on eyes and fingers. The result is that millions of people would rather have a conversation in writing than in sound.
The Sound Agency did some research with our friends at Edinburgh Sterling University into preferred channels and messages and it yielded some fascinating insights. Older people were wedded to email, while the middle generations loved SMS and the youngest preferred IM or social media platforms. This brings a whole new dimension to the generation gap: not only do the generations have different attitudes and vocabularies, but also entirely different channels of communication. All the samples agreed on one thing: they preferred to ask someone out, or break up with someone, in writing – possibly because in a scary conversation like that, it’s safer not to be around to experience the response in person!
MIT professor and TED speaker Sherry Turkle wrote an excellent book called Alone Together on the effects of technology on our relationships. She suggested that, far from bringing us together in a global village, technology is increasing alienation and pushing people apart as we move from a few deep relationships to many shallow ones. I agree with her. In my workshops, I sometimes ask for a show of hands if people do email in bed at night while lying next to their loved one. Increasingly the majority of the people in the room own up to this very destructive behaviour, which I see as another nail in the coffin of spoken communication, driven in by the irresistible hammer of technology. Professor Turkle’s follow-up book, Reclaiming Conversation, is a wonderful, passionate plea, based on 5 years of research, for us all to rediscover the critical humanizing art of conversation. Highly recommended, and absolutely in tune with everything you will read in this book.
EDUCATION
We have 4 communication channels: reading, writing, speaking and listening. Two send; 2 receive. Two are for the eyes; 2 for the ears. Reading and writing are considered core skills in every curriculum in the world, while speaking is barely taught in schools – listening, even less so, maybe because it’s a silent skill. Sadly, millions of children leave school every year having never been taught how to use their voice to its full, to speak powerfully and well, to look after their precious hearing, or to listen consciously.
Tip: Take some time now to ask yourself, what sounds stop you from working? From resting? From relating to your family, friends and colleagues? From exercising? From sleeping? From enjoying yourself?
Once you have that list, try the exercises again but this time ask yourself, what sounds do/could help you in all these things?
Listening is the doorway to understanding, and speaking is the strongest expression of ourselves in the world. We need to re-learn how to speak and how to listen. Helping you to achieve that is the mission of this book.
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
