Back in the day, when I was just starting to give talks on the power of conversation to change hearts and minds, I used to end my presentation with a slide that said:
Talk is cheap.
So do more of it.
It would always get a laugh, but the goal of course was to counter the popular notion that talking is of little value — it’s action that matters. And for sure, talk that’s intended to avoid or replace action isn’t worth much. But talk as the action can change lives and outcomes. One dramatic example: Just think of the Moscow–Washington hotline put into place at the height of the Cold War. Those conversations helped avert nuclear catastrophe. (They also call into question the wisdom of waiting until the absolute last minute to actually speak to our adversary.)
So no, talk is not cheap, and that’s something a lot of us seem to have forgotten, or perhaps have lost faith in. At least that’s the perspective of my most recent podcast guest, Douglas Stone — a mediation expert, former associate director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, and co-author of the New York Times best sellers, Difficult Conversations, How to Discuss What Matters Most, and Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well.
In our conversation, he put it this way (edited for clarity):
“It feels like it's gotten harder to persuade people that talking to each other is a good thing. We not only understand each other less well, we’re less interested in understanding each other. In fact, it's almost as if talking to people on the other side makes you one of the bad people...you’re collaborating with the enemy.”
Doug pointed out that a huge part of the problem, of course, is the polarizing influence of the media and social media: “If you don't feel outraged after you’ve watched whatever your news show of preference is, then they didn't really do their job. And if they did do their job, and you do feel outraged, then you're sitting around going, ‘Well, I feel outraged... what do I do? I have to go complain, I have to hate all the people who are my neighbors who might see this differently.’ And it just pushes people further and further away from each other.”
As outrage grows, talking to each other seems to make less and less sense. We’ve overheated our brain’s fight/flee/freeze survival drive, which operates on the principle that you can’t negotiate with a hungry tiger. But as I mentioned last week, ideas are thoughts, not tigers. They can’t be killed and they easily slip through any cage.
So what can we do? Doug suggests we reconnect with the benefits of conversation. “Talking does tend to increase trust, it does tend to enhance relationships. And it's your best shot at changing other people's attitudes in the way that you hope they will change.”
Of course, not any conversation will do that. It takes a special kind, one rooted in a meaningful relationship. To drive that point home, Doug shared a story about how the simple process of getting to know each other helped end one of the world’s longest standing international border disputes:
"We had about 10 representatives from both sides. And these were politicians and generals. And the first thing we did, much to their consternation — they just wanted to get into negotiating the border — was an exercise that would help them to get to know each other. And it turned out that two of the generals, who were on opposite sides, each had children with special needs. And there was no national identity either of them had that was more important to them than that.
“And by the end of that first day, they had a lifelong connection. It completely transformed how they saw each other and how they saw the dispute, and they ended up reaching an agreement on what, at the time, was the longest ongoing border dispute in the world. They settled it. They did good work on the problem as well, for sure, very good work. But that personal connection was really huge in terms of transforming that situation.”
Now you and I won’t be negotiating border disputes any time soon, but opportunities to connect with our "other" are with us every day. To quote Doug one more time: “There's plenty of humanity in others for us to learn about.”
If you'd like to listen to my entire podcast with Doug — which I highly recommend — here's the link: Just do these three things...